Part 14 (1/2)
”There's a sign behind you,” he said.
We looked, guiltily, and saw:
POSITIVELY NO SMOKING
The cocoateria on Eighth Street closes at one A. M. Between twelve-thirty and closing time it is full of busy eaters, mostly the night s.h.i.+ft from the Chestnut Street newspaper offices and printing and engraving firms in the neighbourhood. Ham and eggs blossom merrily. The white-coated waiters move in swift, stern circuit. Griddle cakes bake with amazing swiftness toward the stroke of one. Little dishes of baked beans stand hot and ready in the steam-chest. The waiter punches your check as he brings your frankfurters and coffee. He adds another perforation when you get your ice cream. Then he comes back and punches it again.
”Here,” you cry, ”let it alone and stop bullying it!”
”Sorry, brother,” he says. ”I forgot that peach cream was fifteen cents.”
One o'clock. They lock the door and turn out the little gas jet where smokers light up. As the tables empty the chairs are stacked up on top.
And if it is a clear warm evening the customers smoke a final weed along the Chestnut Street doorsteps, talking together in a cheery undertone.
No man has ever started upon a new cheque-book without a few sourly solemn thoughts.
In the humble waters of finance wherein we paddle we find that a book of fifty cheques lasts us about four months, allowing for two or three duds when we start to make out a foil payable to bearer (self) and decide to renounce that worthy ambition and make it out to the gas company instead.
It occurs to us that if Bunyan had been writing ”Pilgrim's Progress”
nowadays instead of making Christian encounter lions in the path he would have subst.i.tuted gas meters, particularly the quarter-in-the-slot kind that one finds in a seaside cottage. However----
Four months is quite a long time. It may be weak of us, but we can never resist wondering as we survey that flock of empty cheques just what adventures our bank account is going to undergo during that period, and whether our customary technique of being aloof with the receiving teller and genial and commentary with the paying ditto is the right one. We always believe in keeping a paying teller in a cheerful frame of mind.
We would never admit to him that we think it is going to rain. We say, rather, ”Well, it may blow over,” and try not to surmise how many hundreds there are in the pile at his elbow. Probably we think the explanation for the really bizarre architecture of our bank is to keep depositors' attention from the money. Unquestionably Walt Whitman's tomb over in Harleigh--Walt's vault--was copied from our bank.
The cheques in our book are blue. We have always regretted this. If we had known it beforehand perhaps we would have inflicted our problems upon another bank. Because there are so many more interesting colours for cheques, tints upon which the ink shows up in a more imposing manner. A pale pink or cream-coloured cheque for $2.74 looks much more exciting than a blue cheque for $25. We have known gray, pink, white, brown, green, and salmon-coloured cheques. A friend of ours once showed us one that was a bright orange, but refused to let us handle it. But yellow is the colour that appeals to us most strongly. When we were very young and away from home our monthly allowance, the amount of which we shall not state, but it cost us less effort than any money we ever received since, came to us by way of pale primrose-coloured cheques.
For, after all, there are no cheques like those one used to get from one's father. We hope the Urchin will think so some day.
We like to pay homage to the true artist in all lines. At the corner of Market and Marshall streets--between Sixth and Seventh--the collar-clasp orator has his rostrum, and it seems to us that his method of harangue has the quality of genuine art. He does not bawl or try to terrify or bully his audience into purchase as do the auctioneers of the ”p.a.w.nbrokers' outlets.” How gently, how winningly, how sweetly he pleads the merits of his little collar clasp! And there is shrewd imagination in his attention-catching device, which is a small boy dressed in black, wearing a white hood of cheesecloth that hides his face. This peculiar silent figure, with a touch of mystery about it, serves to keep the crowd wondering until the oration begins.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
With a smile, with infinite ingratiation and gentle persuasion, our friend exhibits the merits of his device which does away with the traditional collar-b.u.t.ton. His art is to make the collar-b.u.t.ton seem a piteous, almost a tragic thing. His eyes swim with unshed tears as he describes the discomfort of the man whose collar, fastened by the customary b.u.t.ton, cannot be given greater freedom on a hot, muggy day.
He shows, by exhibition on his own person, the exquisite relief afforded by the adjustable collar clasp. ”When the day grows cool,” he says, ”when you begin to enjoy yourself and want your collar tighter, you just loosen the clasp, slide the tabs closer together, and there you are. And no picking at your tie to get the knot undone. Now, how many of you men have spoiled an expensive tie by picking at it? Your fingers come in contact with the fibres of the silk and the first thing you know the tie is soiled. This little clasp”--and he casts a beam of affection upon it--”saves your tie, it saves your collar, and it saves your patience.”
A note of yearning pathos comes into his agreeable voice, and he holds out a handful of the old-fas.h.i.+oned collar-b.u.t.tons. ”You men are wearing the same b.u.t.tons your great-grandfathers wore. Don't you want to get out of collar slavery? _Don't_ you want to quit working your face all out of shape struggling with a collar-b.u.t.ton? Now as this is a manufacturing demonstration----”
On a warm evening nothing is more pleasant than a ride on the front platform of the Market Street L, with the front door open. As the train leaves Sixty-ninth Street it dips down the Millbourne bend and the cool, damp smell of the Cobb's Creek meadows gushes through the car. Then the track straightens out for a long run toward the City Hall. Roaring over the tree tops, with the lights of movies and shops glowing up from below, a warm typhoon makes one lean against it to keep one's footing.
The airy stations are lined by girls in light summer dresses, attended by their swains. The groan of the wheels underfoot causes a curious tickling in the soles of the feet as one stands on the steel platform.