The son of a wealthy Eastern brewer, born with a gold spoon in his mouth, and taught to believe that the world was made for his especial benefit, after blazing his way along the White Light thoroughfare for a few years, and making a name for himself as a spender of rare ability, took it suddenly into his head to reform. A good many hard nights had brought out a crop of fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and high living had added several inches to his waist line. But he was still good looking and ruddy cheeked, and there were a number of charming ladies living on certain side streets who knew him well enough to call him by his first name, and who were always glad to see him whether he did the sucker trick of opening bad wine at $5 a throw or not. In his mind the first step toward reformation meant marriage with some nice respectable young woman who had been correctly brought up, and whose family tree would bear investigation, and as his income was somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 it wasn’t hard to find what he wanted, for ninety-nine women out of a hundred would cheerfully fasten themselves to a monstrosity if there was a bank book in the inside pocket.
He picked out the girl he proposed to turn from a Miss into a Mrs., paid attention to her for thirty days without a break, then he proposed and was accepted, and the date of the marriage was set for two months later. It was a case of thirty and sixty days, with no discounts off.
It is usual in a case of this kind to give a farewell dinner to the bunch, to have one last good drunk and then a laborious climb aboard the water wagon until after the honeymoon. So he hunted up one of his best friends and told him the glad news.
“Never again for me,” he said, “and all the Dotties and Lotties and Totties can strike my name off their lists, for I’m going to marry, old man, and settle down to business. But I’m going to have one big blaze before I go, and I want you to get it up, for you can lay out a dinner better than anyone I know, and besides, I’m going to have you for my best man when I get hitched. Now go as far as you like and damn the expense. Have a stag with all the good fellows there that we know, and we’ll set off a few fireworks that will give them something to talk about.”
The banquet room of a big hotel was engaged, and the French chef got an order to lay out a spread that would make an old Roman feast look like a Bowery beef stew. Then the enterprising best man, who was something of a high roller himself, set his wits to work to devise a novelty that would top anything in the banquet line ever seen in New York after the lights were turned on. About fifty invitations went out, and in response to them on one eventful Saturday night, half a hundred dyed-in-the-wool sports, of the kind who buy diamond rings for little ladies who dance well, settled themselves in very comfortable chairs, and prepared to have the time of their lives and wish good luck to the man who was going to become respectable. The dinner was only a side issue, for it was to be nothing more nor less than one great drunk, and that was understood from the start. So the wine flowed as freely as water in the spring when the melting snows flood the brooks and swell the rivers, and for every five men there was one waiter to see that no one went thirsty. From ten until twelve the black-jacketed servitors drew corks and filled glasses, and then the best man pulled himself to his feet, propped himself between the arm of his chair and the table and commanded order that he might be heard.
“There is a pudding coming,” he began, “and in view of the fact that I invented it myself I would like to have you fellows sit up and take notice.”
Then he motioned to the head waiter and sank back in his chair. Five men, each one holding up his end of a platform about four feet square on which was a monstrous concoction of pastry, staggered in. A vacant place had been cleared on the table, and when it was placed in position a yell went up from the crowd.
“I’ll take a slice off the top,” sang the bridegroom, as he waved a glass of wine aloft.
“Cut it, Bill,” said the best man, and one of the waiters, grinning, went at it with a huge carving knife. He slit it from top to bottom in two places, and as the crust crumbled away half a dozen birds fluttered out, and when the pastry cook’s creation was demolished there was disclosed a young woman rather scantily draped and with a figure worth missing a train for.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said, smiling, and then she stepped out.