United States or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I was sittin' there starin' across the table, tryin' to size up this leather-faced old party with the bashful ways and the simple look in his steady eyes. The grizzled mustache curlin' close around his mouth corners, the heavy eyebrows, and the thick head of gray hair somehow reminds me of Mark Twain, as we used to see him a few years back walkin' up Fifth-ave.
And now I was just markin' time, waitin' for what might turn up, and feelin' equal to pullin' off any sort of a deal, from matchin' Piddie for the lunches to orderin' a new stock issue. What if the asphalt over on Fifth-ave. was softenin' up, with the mercury hittin' the nineties, and half the force off on vacations? I had a real job to attend to. I was doin' things!
It was chasin' him up that fetches me over on the West Side and through one of them nice, respectable, private-house blocks just below 14th-st. You know the kind, that begin at Fifth-ave. with a double-breasted old brownstone, and end at Sixth with a delicatessen shop.
It's this checkroom work of his, you know, at one of them swell Fifth-ave. joints where they have an extra night force on call for coming-out parties and dinner dances and the like.
"Found one in an old guide book and fixed it up like a chart, markin' off the reefs and shoals in red ink, and the main channels in black fathom figures. Now here's Front and South-sts., very shoal, dangerous passin' at any tide. There's a channel up the Bowery; but it's crooked and full of buoys and beacons. I ain't tackled that yet. I've stuck to Broadway and Fifth-ave. All clear sailin' there."
So, right in the height of his season, he's had to scratch his Horse Show entries, drop polo practice, and move into a measly six-room suite in one of them new Fifth-ave. hotels, with three hours of soul-wearin' officework ahead of him five days out of seven.
And, sittin' there sippin' his hock and seltzer, gazin' languid out on Fifth-ave., he gives kind of a classy tone to one of the swellest clubs in New York. There ain't any snobbish frills to him, though. He gets right down to brass tacks. "McCabe," says he, "what class of persons do you have as patrons."
Not out at their country place, either. She'd dragged Ferdie into town for a couple of weeks, and they'd been stayin' at the Ellins's Fifth-ave. house, just visitin' and havin' a good time. That is, Marjorie had. Ferdie, he spends his days mopin' about the club and taggin' Mr. Robert. "Better sneak off up to the Maison Maxixe with me," says I, "and brush up on your hesitation."
"Maybe that's why I couldn't locate this reservoir he said I ought to see, the one I was huntin' for when we fouled. See, it says corner of 42d and Fifth-ave., plain as day; but all I could find was that big white buildin' with the stone lions in front." "Naturally," says I; "for they tore the old reservoir down years ago and built the new city lib'ry on the spot.
"Say," says the driver, climbin' down to take a look at the baggage, "who you got sewed in the sack!" "Get on your perch!" says I. "Ain't you makin' extra money on this? And when you fetch up at the club, do it like you was used to stoppin' at such places." It was a great ride that me and the deer meat had across town and up Fifth-ave. I'd stopped once to put Mr.
Word Of The Day