Better to have loved a short man
Than never to have loved atall.
Better to have loved a short man
Than never to have loved atall.
THE WRONG PEW
For six midnights of the week, on the roof of the Moncrieff Frolic, grape-wreathed and with the ecstatic quivering of the flesh that is Asia's, Folly, robed in veils, lifts her carmined lips to be kissed, and Bacchus, whose pot-belly has made him unloved of fair women, raises his perpetual goblet and drinks that he may not weep.
On the stroke of twelve, when on stretches of prairie the invisible joinder of night and day is a majestic thing, the Moncrieff Follies—twenty-four of them, not counting two specialty acts and a pair of whistling Pierrots—burst forth into frolic with a terrific candle and rhinestone power.
Saint Geneviève, who loved so to brood over the enigmatic roofs of the city, would have here found pause. Within the golden inclosure of the Moncrieff Roof, a ceiling canopied in deep waves of burnt-orange velvet cunningly concealed, yet disclosed, amber light, the color of wine in the pouring. Behind burnt-orange portières of great length and great depth of nap, the Twenty-Four Follies, each tempered like a knife edge, stood identically poised for the first clash of Negroid music from a Negroid orchestra.
At a box-office built to imitate a sedan chair—Louis Quinze without and Louis Slupsky within—Million-Dollar Jimmie Cox, of a hundred hundred Broadway all-nights; the Success Shirt Waist Company, incorporated, entertaining the Keokuk Emporium; the newest husband of the oldest prima donna; and Mr. Herman Loeb, of Kahn, Loeb & Schulien, St. Louis, waited in line for the privilege of ordering à la carte from the most à la mode menu in Oh-là-là, New York.
The line grew, eighty emptying theaters fifteen stories below, sending each its trickle toward the Midnight Frolic—men too tired to sleep, women with slim, syncopated hips, and eyes none too nice. The smell of fur and fragrant powder on warm flesh began to rise on a fog of best Havana smoke. At the elevators women dropped out of their cloaks and, in the bustle of checking, stood by, not unconscious of the damask finish to bare shoulders.
When Mr. Herman Loeb detached himself from the human tape-line before the box-office, the firm and not easily discomposed lines of his face had fallen into loose curves, the lower lip thrust forward and the eyebrows upward. Sheep and men in their least admirable moments have that same trick of face. He rejoined his companion, two slips of cardboard well up in the cup of his palm.
"Good seats, Herman?"