I have often heard it said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but every time I ever seen men and women keep waiting for their eats it was always the frail sex that give the first yelp, and personally I’ve often wondered what would of happened in the trenches Over There if ladies had of been occupying them when the rations failed to show up. I guess the bombs bursting round would of sounded like “Sweet and Low” sang by a quextette of deef mutes.
Anyway, my two charges was like wild animals, and when the con finally held up two fingers I didn’t have no more chance or desire to stop them than as if they was the Center College Football Club right after opening prayer.
The pair of them was ushered to a table for four where they already was a couple of guys making the best of it, and it wasn’t more than ten minutes later when one of these birds dipped his bill in the finger bowl and staggered out, but by the time I took his place the other gent and my two gals was talking like barbers.
The guy was Francis Griffin that’s in the clipping. But when Ella introduced us all as she said was, “This is my husband,” without mentioning his name, which she didn’t know at that time, or mine, which had probably slipped her memory.
Griffin looked at me like I was a side dish that he hadn’t ordered. Well, I don’t mind snubs except when I get them, so I ast him if he wasn’t from Sioux City—you could tell he was from New York by his blue collar.
“From Sioux City!” he says. “I should hope not!”
“I beg your pardon,” I said. “You look just like a photographer I used to know out there.”
“I’m a New Yorker,” he said, “and I can’t get home too soon.”
“Not on this train, you can’t,” I said.
“I missed the Century,” he says.
“Well,” I says with a polite smile, “the Century’s loss is our gain.”
“Your wife’s been telling me,” he says, “that you’re moving to the Big Town. Have you ever been there?”
“Only for a few hours,” I says.
“Well,” he said, “when you’ve been there a few weeks you’ll wonder why you ever lived anywhere else. When I’m away from old Broadway I always feel like I’m only camping out.”
Both the gals smiled their appreciation, so I says: “That certainly expresses it. You’d ought to remember that line and give it to Georgie Cohan.”
“Old Georgie!” he says. “I’d give him anything I got and welcome. But listen! Your wife mentioned something about a good hotel to stop at wile you’re looking for a home. Take my advice and pick out one that’s near the center of things; you’ll more than make up the difference in taxi bills. I lived up in the Hundreds one winter and it averaged me ten dollars a day in cab fares.”
“You must of had a pleasant home life,” I says.
“Me!” he said. “I’m an old bachelor.”
“Old!” says Kate, and her and the Mrs. both giggled.
“But seriously,” he says, “if I was you I would go right to the Baldwin, where you can get a room for twelve dollars a day for the three of you; and you’re walking distance from the theaters or shops or cafés or anywheres you want to go.”
“That sounds grand!” said Ella.
“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, “I’d just as lief be overseas from any of the places you’ve mentioned. What I’m looking for is a home with a couple of beds and a cookstove in the kitchen, and maybe a bath.”
“But we want to see New York first,” said Katie, “and we can do that better without no household cares.”
“That’s the idear!” says Griffin. “Eat, drink and be merry; tomorrow we may die.”
“I guess we won’t drink ourselves to death,” I said, “not if the Big Town’s like where we been living.”
“Oh, say!” says our new friend. “Do you think little old New York is going to stand for Prohibition? Why, listen! I can take you to thirty places tomorrow night where you can get all you want in any one of them.”
“Let’s pass up the other twenty-nine,” I says.
“But that isn’t the idear,” he said. “What makes we New Yorkers sore is to think they should try and wish a law like that on Us. Isn’t this supposed to be a government of the people, for the people and by the people?”
“People!” I said. “Who and the hell voted for Prohibition if it wasn’t the people?”
“The people of where?” he says. “A lot of small-time hicks that couldn’t buy a drink if they wanted it.”
“Including the hicks,” I says, “that’s in the New York State legislature.”
“But not the people of New York City,” he said. “And you can’t tell me it’s fair to spring a thing like this without warning on men that’s got their fortunes tied up in liquor that they can’t never get rid of now, only at a sacrifice.”
“You’re right,” I said. “They ought to give them some warning. Instead of that they was never even a hint of what was coming off till Maine went dry seventy years ago.”
“Maine?” he said. “What the hell is Maine?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Only they was a ship or a boat or something named after it once, and the Spaniards sunk it and we sued them for libel or something.”
“You’re a smart Aleck,” he said. “But speaking about war, where was you?”
“In the shipyards at South Bend painting a duck boat,” I says. “And where was you?”
“I’d of been in there in a few more weeks,” he says. “They wasn’t no slackers in the Big Town.”
“No,” said I, “and America will never forget New York for coming in on our side.”
By this time the gals was both giving me dirty looks, and we’d eat all we could get, so we paid our checks and
