An automobile hack, the gasoline equivalent of the dilapidated horse-drawn station hack of earlier times, was standing beside the platform. We consulted the driver about luncheon.
"You kin get just as good eating at the lunch room over by the other station," he said, "as you kin at the hotel, and 't won't cost you so much. They charge fifty cents for dinner at the Eldridge, and the lunch room's only a quarter. You kin get anything you want to eat there—ham and eggs, potatoes, all such as that."
Somehow we were suspicious of the lunch room, but as we had to leave our bags at the other station, we told him we would look it over, got in, and drove across the town. The lunch room proved to be a one-story wooden structure, painted yellow, and supporting one of those "false fronts," representing a second story, which one sees so often in little western towns, and which of all architectural follies is the worst, since it deceives no one, makes only for ugliness, and is a sheer waste of labor and material.
We did not even alight at the lunch room, but, despite indications of hurt feelings on the part of our charioteer, insisted on proceeding to the Eldridge House and lunching there, cost what it might.
The Eldridge House stands on a corner of the wide avenue known as Massachusetts, the principal street, which, like the town itself, indicates, in its name, a New England origin. Lawrence was named for Amos Lawrence, the Massachusetts abolitionist, who, though he never visited Kansas, gave the first ten thousand dollars toward the establishment of the university.
Alighting before the hotel, I noticed a building, diagonally opposite, bearing the sign, Bowersock Theater. Billboards before the theater announced that Gaskell & McVitty (Inc.) would present there a dramatization of Harold Bell Wright's "Shepherd of the Hills." As I had never seen a dramatization of a work by America's best-selling author, nor yet a production by Messrs. Gaskell & McVitty (Inc.), it seemed to me that here was an opportunity to improve, as at one great bound, my knowledge of the theater. One of the keenest disappointments of my trip was the discovery that this play was not due in Lawrence for some days, as I would even have stopped a night in the Eldridge House, if necessary, to have attended a performance—especially a performance in a theater bearing the poetic name of Bowersock.
Rendered reckless by my disappointment, I retired to the Eldridge House dining room and ordered the fifty-cent luncheon. If it was the worst meal I had on my entire trip, it at least fulfilled an expectation, for I had heard that meals in western hotels were likely to be poor. It is only just to add, however, that a number of sturdy men who were seated about the room ate more heartily and vastly than any other people I have seen, excepting German tourists on a Rhine steamer. I envy Kansans their digestions. For my own part, I was less interested in my meal than in the waitresses. Has it ever struck you that hotel waitresses are a race apart? They are not like other women; not even like other waitresses. They are even shaped differently, having waists like wasps and bosoms which would resemble those of pouter pigeons if pouter pigeons' bosoms did not seem to be a part of them. Most hotel waitresses look to me as though, on reaching womanhood, they had inhaled a great breath and held it forever after. Only the fear of being thought indelicate prevents my discussing further this curious phenomenon. However, I am reminded that, as Owen Johnson has so truly said, American writers are not permitted the freedom which is accorded to their Gallic brethren. There is, I trust, however, nothing improper in making mention of the striking display of jewelry worn by the waitresses at the Eldridge House. All wore diamonds in their hair, and not one wore less than fifty thousand dollars' worth. These diamonds were set in large hairpins, and the show of gems surpassed any I have ever seen by daylight. Luncheon at the Eldridge suggests, in this respect, a first night at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and if it is like that at luncheon, what must it be at dinner time? Do they wear tiaras and diamond stomachers? I regret that I am unable to say, for, immediately after luncheon, I kept an appointment, previously made, with the driver of the auto hack.
"Where do you boys want to go now?" he asked my companion and me as we appeared.
"To the university," I said.
"Students?" he asked, with kindly interest.