The hotel gave me a room without making me tell my age or my occupation or my parents’ birthplace. The room has a bath, and the bath has two water faucets, one marked hot and one marked cold, and when you turn the one marked hot, out comes hot water. And there’s no Peter James around to make you bathe when you don’t feel the need.
The room has a practical telephone too, and pretty soon I’m going to start calling up acquaintances with kind hearts and good cooks. The first who invites me to dinner is in tough luck.
Friday, October 5. Chicago.
“Miner” Brown, the great three-fingered pitcher, used to be asked the same questions by every one to whom he was introduced. As a breath-saving device he finally had some special cards printed. On one side was his name. On the other the correct replies:
1. Because I used to work in a mine.
2. It was cut off in a factory when I was a kid.
3. At Terre Haute, Ind.
4. Rosedale, right near Terre Haute.
5. Not a bit.
When he left home in the morning he was always supplied with fifty of these cards, and sometimes he got rid of the whole supply before bedtime.