“Folks are queer,” John would drawl. “Queer and just alike, too. If you hang about the water-front in Liverpool, Rio, Boston, or Shanghai, and if you don’t watch out you’ll be robbed. But if you go back to some quiet little village near any of these harbors you’ll find kindly, hard-working, gentle folk who are glad to help you and wish to do you no harm.”
“But tell me about these places in Chicago?” Jimmie would insist.
“What places?” John would ask, as if he did not know.
“The places where you eat with a feeling that there’s a knife at your back,” Jimmie would hunch forward expectantly in his chair.
“Oh, those places!” John would grin. “You’re safe enough there if you’re in the know. They spot you soon enough. They read your stuff in the papers. If a reporter doesn’t go around exposing them, these places you know, on the near west side, where the light-fingered fellows, the hold-up men, and a bank robber or two hang out he’s as safe as in a church. I think they really enjoy our company. Some of them,” John would chuckle, “are poets and novelists gone wrong. They have the desire to create or destroy. It’s easier to destroy than create so that’s what they do.
“But, of course,” he would hasten to add, “you wouldn’t know what I mean by all that. And I’m not going to take you there, so let’s talk about that place on the near north side where you get real Swedish cooking, big rings of cold meat in a sort of candied jelly, minced chicken, strange, rich desserts and real coffee. All spread out on a long, bare wooden table where you can help yourself.”
“Um,” said Jimmie.
“We’ll go there the very next time,” was John’s instant decision.
John had written a small book on “Places to eat.” Some day he would be a famous novelist, Jimmie was sure of that. He never grew tired of listening to John as, in slow, melodious rhythm, he read aloud some short piece of fiction that he had just finished writing.
For the most part John’s stories found their way to the waste basket, but every now and again his name was featured on the cover of a well-known magazine. This, of course, filled Jimmie, his ardent young admirer, with delight.