It is on account of this new standard that rapidity in a transaction on the Street is appreciated more than correctness of detail. A broker to-day will take more credit for having received and executed an order for Chicago and returned an answer within six minutes, than for any amount of careful work. The order may have been ill executed and the details mixed, but there will have been celerity of execution to boast of
The young man who expects to succeed in business to-day must be a “hustler,” have a snap-shot style in conversation, patronize rapid transit vehicles, understand shorthand, and eat at “breathless breakfasts.”
Being taken recently to one of these establishments for “quick lunch,” as I believe the correct phrase is, to eat buckwheat cakes (and very good they were), I had an opportunity of studying the ways of the modern time-saving young man.
It is his habit upon entering to dash for the bill-of-fare, and give an order (if he is adroit enough to catch one of the maids on the fly) before removing either coat or hat. At least fifteen seconds may be economized in this way. Once seated, the luncher falls to on anything at hand; bread, cold slaw, crackers, or catsup. When the dish ordered arrives, he gets his fork into it as it appears over his shoulder, and has cleaned the plate before the sauce makes its appearance, so that is eaten by itself or with bread.
Cups of coffee or tea go down in two swallows. Little piles of cakes are cut in quarters and disappear in four mouthfuls, much after the fashion of children down the ogre’s throat in the mechanical toy, mastication being either a lost art or considered a foolish waste of energy.
A really accomplished luncher can assimilate his last quarter of cakes, wiggle into his coat, and pay his check at the desk at the same moment. The next, he is down the block in pursuit of a receding trolley.
To any one fresh from the Continent, where the entire machinery of trade comes to a standstill from eleven to one o’clock, that déjeuner may be taken in somnolent tranquillity, the nervous tension pervading a restaurant here is prodigious, and what is worse—catching! During recent visits to the business centres of our city, I find that the idea of eating is repugnant. It seems to be wrong to waste time on anything so unproductive. Last week a friend offered me a “luncheon tablet” from a box on his desk. “It’s as good as a meal,” he said, “and so much more expeditious!”
The proprietor of one down-town restaurant has the stock quotations exhibited on a black-board at the end of his room; in this way his patrons can keep in touch with the “Street” as they hurriedly stoke up.
A parlor car, toward a journey’s end, is another excellent place to observe our native ways. Coming from Washington the other day my fellow-passengers began to show signs of restlessness near Newark. Books and papers were thrown aside; a general “uprising, unveiling” followed, accompanied by our objectionable custom of having our clothes brushed in each other’s faces. By the time Jersey City appeared on the horizon, every man, woman, and child in that car was jammed, baggage in hand, into the stuffy little passage which precedes the entrance, swaying and staggering about while the train backed and delayed.
The explanation of this is quite simple. The “influence” was at work, preventing those people from acting like other civilized mortals, and remaining seated until their train had come to a standstill.