In his very handsomely appointed suite of apartments on the upper West Side is a young fellow who has good enough blood in his veins to be game and take his medicine, and with sense enough to keep his mouth shut. Across the bridge of his nose are three knife cuts made by a blade that was very keen, which was held by a hand that knew its business. His doctor tells him that it is not at all serious, even though inconvenient—you know how doctors talk when there is a good fat fee at the other end of the line. He also says that there is nothing in the world that will prevent and eradicate those three disfiguring scars, even after the wound has been thoroughly healed and every possible surgical precaution taken.
And there’s the rub.
Through all the rest of his life this man, upon whom the world has been smiling since his birth, will be marked with the signs of his folly.
So much for the present.
Now for the recent past.
Put her in tights and she would have been an Oriental sensation
The woman was a Syrian beauty with sloe eyes and an olive skin that was like a piece of copper-hued satin, so soft and smooth and free from blemish was it. There was a faint flush of red in her cheeks, too, as if the hot blood was trying to break through the tender skin. Her lips were red and full, and because of all that riot of color her teeth showed whiter than they really were. She had, besides, small feet and slim, trim ankles.
Any wise man will appreciate that and understand why they are brought into this story. Up to the age of twenty-five the male animal looks at the female face and is satisfied. After that no such casual scrutiny satisfies him. First face, hair and general contour, then ankles, and often it is the last view which does the work or turns the trick, which is the same thing, only it is expressed differently. This is with the assumption, of course, that the man has enough discrimination to want quality, not quantity. Quantity is unwieldy and unsatisfactory from every viewpoint except from that of the gentleman who is in the butcher business, and who wants a standing advertisement for his shop. Embonpoint is all right in sausages but not in women, excepting—and that is understood—those on dime museum platforms.
The first name of the lady was Dekka, the rest was unpronounceable and we’ll let it go at that. She was a seller of Oriental goods, not from a Tenderloin standpoint, but real merchandise such as is recognized by the law—laces, draperies, bits of cunningly embroidered silks, and even rugs, which she called carpets, with the accent on the first syllable. Her stock was carried in a dress suit case which was handled by her “brother,” who was also a Syrian, and he only resembled her because he, too, had black eyes, an olive skin and dark crispy hair, to say nothing of his small feet.