You Should Worry Says John Henry | Page 7

room.
The next course was plain boiled potatoes with the jackets on, and baked potatoes with the jackets open at the throat, and then some roasted potatoes with Bolero jackets.
I was beginning to see that a man must have in his veins the blood of martyrs and of heroes to be a vegetarian and at the same time I could feel myself fixing my fingers to choke Ollie.
The next course was a large plate of potato salad, and then I fainted.
When I got back Ollie was standing near the table with a sweet smile on each side of her face, waiting for the applause of those present.
"Have you anything else?" I inquired hungrily.
"Oh, yes!" said Ollie. "I have some potato pudding for dessert."
When I got through swearing Ollie was under the stove, my wife was under the table, the dog was under the bed, and I was under the influence of liquor.
I'm cured.
After this my digestive tract will have to fight a sirloin steak every time I get hungry.
Besides, I don't want to live as long as Methuselah. If I did I'd have to learn to tango some time in the 875 years to come--then I'd be just the same as everybody else in the world.
Can you get a flash of Methuselah at the age of 64 taking Tango lessons from Baldy Sloane up at Weisenfeffer's pedal parlors? And then having to survive for 850 years with the dance bug in his dome!
Close the door, Delia; there's a draft.
When Peaches recovered from the shock of my outburst over the potato pudding she said the only way I could square myself was to take her to the very latest up-to-datest hotel in New York for dinner.
That is some task if you live up town, believe me, because they open new hotels in New York now the same as they open oysters--by the dozen.
However, after stuffing my pockets with all my earthly possessions, we hiked forth and steered for the Builtfast--the very latest thing in expensive beaneries.
Directly we entered its polished portals we could see from the faces of the clerks and the clocks that a lot of money changed hands before the Builtfast finally became an assessment center.
In the lobby the furniture was covered with men about town, who sat around with a checkbook in each hand and made faces at the cash register.
There are more bellboys than bedrooms in the hotel. They use them for change. Every time you give the cashier $15 he hands you back $1.50 and six bellboys.
We took a peep at the diamond-backed dining-room, and when I saw the waiters refusing everything but certified checks in the way of a tip, I said to Peaches, "This is no place for us!" But she wouldn't let go, and we filed into the appetite killery.
A very polite lieutenant waiter, with a sergeant waiter and two corporal waiters, greeted us and we gave the countersign, "Abandon health, all ye who enter here."
Then the lieutenant waiter and his army corps deployed by columns of four and escorted us to the most expensive looking trough I ever saw in a dining-room.
"Peaches," I said to friend wife, "I'm doing this to please you, but after I pay the check it's me to file a petition in bankruptcy."
She just grinned, picked up the point-lace napkin and began to admire the onyx furniture.
"Que souhaitez vous?" said the waiter, bowing so low that I could feel a chill running through my little bank account.
"I guess he means you," I whispered to Peaches, but she looked very solemnly at the menu card and began to bite her lips.
"Je suis tout a votre service," the waiter cross-countered before I could recover, and he had me gasping. It never struck me that I had to take a course in French before entering the Builtfast hunger foundry, and there I sat making funny faces at the tablecloth, while friend wife blushed crimson and the waiter kept on bowing like an animated jackknife.
"Say, Mike!" I ventured after a bit, "tip us off to a quiet bunch of eating that will fit a couple of appetites just out seeing the sights. Nothing that will put a kink in a year's income, you know, Bo; just suggest some little thing that looks better than it tastes, but is not too expensive to keep down."
"Oui, oui!" His Marseillaise came back at me, "un diner comfortable doit se composer de potage, de volaille bouillie ou rotie, chaude ou froide, de gibier, de plats rares et distingues, de poissons, de sucreries, de patisseries et de fruits!"
I looked at my wife, she looked at me, then we both looked out the window and wished we had never been born.
"Say, Garsong," I said, after we came to, "my wife is a daughter of the American Revolution and she's