"Four dollars."
Not so bad at that—just the box-office price. You bring out four greasy one-dollar bills. His eyes fixed upon them, he places a ticket down upon the counter.
"There—there are two of us," you stammer.
He does not stammer.
"Do you think that they are four dollars a dozen?" he sallies.
You give him a ten dollar bill this time. You do not kick. Even though the show is perfectly rotten and the usherette charges you ten cents for a poorly printed program and scowls because you take the change from her itching palm, do not complain. You would not complain even if you knew that the man in the chair next to you paid only the regular prices, because he happened to belong to the same lodge as the cousin of the treasurer of the theater, while the man in the chair next to Katherine paid nothing at all for his seat—having a relative who advertises in the theater programs. You do not kick. Complaint has long since been eliminated from the New York code and you have begun to realize that.
*****
After the theater, another restaurant—this time for supper—more hat-boys, more brigandage but it is the thing to do and you must do it. And you must do it well. Splendor costs and you pay—your full proportion. If up in your home town you know a nice little place where you can drop in after the show at the local playhouse and have a glass of beer and a rarebit—dismiss that as a prevailing idea in the neighborhood of Long Acre square. The White Light district of Broadway can buy no motor cars on the beer and rarebit trade. Louey's trade in his modest little place up home is sufficient to keep him in moderate living year in and year out, but Louey does not have to pay Broadway ground rent, or Broadway prices for food-stuffs or Broadway salaries—to say nothing of having a thirst for a bigger and faster automobile than his neighbor. And as we have said, the opportunity for bankruptcy in the so-called "lobster palaces" of Broadway runs high. As this is being written, one of the most famous of them has collapsed.
Its proprietor—he was a smart caterer come east from Chicago where he had made his place fashionable and himself fairly rich—for a dozen years ran a prosperous restaurant within a stone-throw of the tall white shaft of the Times building. And even if the heels were the highest, the gowns the lowest, the food was impeccable and if you knew New York at all you knew who went there. It was gay and beautiful and high-priced. It was immensely popular. Then the proprietor listened to sirens. They commanded him to tear down the simple structure of his restaurant and there build a towering hotel. He obeyed orders. With the magic of New York builders the new building was ready within the twelvemonth. It represented all that might be desired—or that upper Broadway at least might desire—in modern hotel construction.
But it could not succeed. A salacious play which made a considerable commercial success took its title from the new hotel and called itself "The Girl from R——'s." That was the last straw. It might have been good fun for the man from Baraboo or the man from Jefferson City to come to New York and dine quietly and elegantly at R——'s, but to stop at R——'s hotel, to have his mail sent there, to have the local paper report that he was registered at that really splendid hostelry—ah, that was a different matter, indeed. Your Baraboo citizen had some fairly conservative connections—church and business—and he took no risks. The new hotel went bankrupt.[A]