With the team thus strengthened we went on and won the Trinity and Villa Nova games and reached the big annual Thanksgiving Day battle against Miss Spence’s School with a record of three victories and four defeats, having been nosed out on successive Saturdays by Moler’s Barber College, the War College of Washington, La Salle Extension University and the Weehawken School for the Blind.
I might say in passing that the last named institution beat us by trickery. When we came on the field, our opponents were sitting at various corners with their eyes closed and tin cups in their hands in which passers by were expected to drop coins. I was taken in and would surely have dropped a dime in the opposing captain’s cup had it not been a habit of mine never to carry more money in a game than was necessary to tip the officials. Some of the other boys loosened up, however, and as soon as the cups were filled, the “blind” men opened their eyes with a whoop and proceeded to give us a licking. At that we might have trimmed them if, the night before the game, we hadn’t gone out and got blind ourselves to make it more even. The Weehawken team’s college color was light yellow and this was the origin of the expression blind man’s buff.17
With the approach of Christmas I was swamped with invitations from classmates to spend the Holidays at their homes. I accepted the invitation of Jack Grudge, son of Henry Grudge, then president of U.S. Steel. Grudge père’s fortune was estimated in the hundreds and Mrs. Grudge was social dictator of New York and Staten Island; no one could claim to have “made” Society until he had been in the Grudges’ palatial town house at West Sixteenth street and the river.18
There were two daughters in the family, Vera and Bera Grudge, co-eds at Princeton. Vera was a pretty, interesting girl, but Bera, besides always wearing rompers, was what the French would euphemistically call nutté. To whatever remark you addressed to her, she would reply “Sis-Boom-Ah! Tiger!” Her father rented a covey of tigers from the Bronx Zoo and had them there in the house, hoping she would get disgusted with them, but she would lie right down in front of them, look them in the eye and sis-boom them ad Nassaum. Her father said to me one night:
“Lardy,” he said, “I’d give anything to get Bera married off.”
“All you have to do,” I replied, “is get her married. She is already off.”
“The trouble is,” he continued, when the laughter had died down to a certain extent, “that she is tiger mad. She won’t look at a human.”
“Well,” I said, “about your only chance is to marry her to a blind tiger.”
Jack Grudge afterwards told me that his father certainly enjoyed my visit.
The Grudges had so many house guests that Christmas that it was necessary to institute a first and second table system for meals. I sat at the second table between Bera and the laundress, a Mrs. Stevens. Our banter would often be interrupted by Bera just when Lydia (Mrs. Stevens) and I were “going good.”
“Mrs. Stevens,” I would say, “I once had a sister who was quite fond of one of her gowns, but she would wear it only in the front yard.”
“Why?” This from Mrs. Stevens.
“She said it was her laundress.”
“Sis-boom-ah! Tiger!” This from Bera.
On another occasion Mrs. Stevens told me that another guest, a Mr. Spurl, brought his laundry down to her and bet her she couldn’t “do it up” in four hours.
“Did he win?” I inquired.
“He lost his shirt,” said Mrs. Stevens (Lydia).
“Sis-boom-ah! Tiger!” This from Bera.
X
A Gay Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve at the Grudges’! No Christmas Eve since has seemed like anything at all. With all their wealth and position, my host and hostess and their children were intensely democratic and their servants joined in the festivities on an equal footing with the family and guests. In fact, Mrs. Stevens (Lydia), the laundress who sat beside me at meals, was quite the life of the party and kept us in spasms of laughter. For example—
“Mr. Lardner,” she said to me as we watched Bera Grudge and the hostler trim the tree, “I suppose I may expect a present from you.”
“Yes,” I replied, “and it will be something appropriate for a person of your calling. I am going to give you a cuff in the neck.”
“If you do,” she retorted without an instant’s hesitation, “I will be hot under the collar.”
“Underwear, did you say?” I put in.
“Sis-boom-ah! Tiger!” murmured Bera.
This was before the invention of evergreens and the baubles and candles were hung on a shoe tree.
When the tree had been trimmed, the question arose as to who would hang up the stockings.
“Why not Mrs. Stevens?” I said jokingly. “She certainly ought to be an expert.”
“I’ll hang one on your jaw in a minute,” teased the laundress.
A few moments later, Mr. Grudge, whom his friends called Doc because his home overhung the river, suggested:
“Let’s have some carols.”
“But don’t bring Earl!” said the laundress.
The singing was interrupted by the noise of an infant’s cries upstairs.
“Is that your baby?” I asked Mrs. Stevens.
“Yes, sir,” she replied, and Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson,19 who were at the party, got their idea for a song hit from those two simple lines.
As we were all separating for the night, Mrs. Grudge asked me whether I would care to accompany her and Vera and Bera on a mission of charity early Christmas morning.
“Every Christmas,” said Mrs. Grudge, “the two girls
