There is a great deal of fire-water in sight at Palm Beach at all hours of the day and night; and the débutante who can’t absorb eight cocktails without raising her voice or falling over the chairs is regarded as being handicapped by some sort of inherited weakness. One of the most frequently pointed-out personages at Palm Beach is a very fat man who can—according to the claims made for him by his admirers—drink thirty-five cocktails at one sitting without blinking. The price of Scotch whisky starts down around forty dollars a case in the summer time and works gradually upward until at the height of the season one is paying from seventy to one hundred dollars a case for it.

The building-boom that has struck Palm Beach in the last five years is claimed by most of the loose claimers and enthusiastic drinkers to be due to Prohibition. A great many cottages have been erected by persons of wealth and social prominence in these five years; and the prevalent architectural idea for a simple little Palm Beach cottage seems to be a Spanish modification of a Union Station, or a Court of Jewels at a successful World’s Fair.

To hear the drinkers tell it, these houses have been built so that the owners could have a place in which to drink without being watched or hurried or made to feel uncomfortable. This may be possible; but if it is, the house builders are the only ones who haven’t felt free to drink when and where they choose.

The truth of the matter unquestionably is that the people who built houses liked the place and the climate, and so built in order to enjoy them more thoroughly than they could be enjoyed in a hotel room smelling faintly of damp carpets and previous occupants.

CHAPTER XII

OF NUTS IN THE COCONUT GROVE—OF BRADLEY’S—OF THE RELAXATION AND AMUSEMENT OF THE BEACH CLUB-FELLOWS—AND OF GAMBLING IN GENERAL

After one has spent a fatiguing afternoon pricing whisky flasks, or being pushed along avenues of palms and Australian pines in a wheel-chair, or indulging in a little steady bridge and drinking, or some other equally arduous pursuit, the smart thing to do is to go to the Coconut Grove and participate in a little tea and dancing.

The Coconut Grove consists of a large and beautiful grove of coconut trees surrounding a polished dance floor. All the coconuts have been removed from the trees, owing to their well-known habit of falling off unexpectedly and utterly ruining any one who may be lingering beneath them. Thus the only nuts in the grove are the ones who come there to dance.

The Coconut Grove starts doing business at half past five every afternoon in the bright sunlight; but in a few minutes the tropic night closes down just as advertised in all books on the South Seas. By a little after six o’clock the only illumination comes from strings of red electric light bulbs strung through the palms and from the occasional flare of a match as some distinguished social butterfly tries to find out how much whisky he has left in his cane.

Later in the evening, the smart thing to do is to go over to what is formally known as the Beach Club, but universally spoken of as Bradley’s. As trains from the north enter the Palm Beach station, the enormous bulk of the Royal Poinciana Hotel stretches out at the right of the train. On the left of the train, directly opposite the station and so close to the train that the traveler could toss even a lightweight biscuit on to its roof from the car window, is a long, low, white frame building with a large revolving