But so far I had kept below the Fourteenth Street belt in my investigations. Roast beef is a cosmopolitan habit, and knows no arbitrary boundaries; so I went uptown. Into one of the larger of our largest hotels, one which is not so near the Grand Central Station as to be in the train-shed, and yet not so far removed from it as to be represented by a different Assemblyman. Here, I felt, would be the test. Could roast beef come back? Surrounded by glittering chandeliers and rich tapestries, snowy table linen and silver service, here was the chance for the ordinary roast beef to become a veritable dainty, with some character, some distinctive touch that should lift it above all that roast beef has ever meant before. I entered the dining-room, in high hopes.
Clad in a walking suit of virile tweed, I considered myself respectably dressed. Not ostentatiously respectable, mind you, but, since most of the other diners were in evening dress, rather distingué, I thought.
But apparently the hotel retainers weren't trained to look through a rough exterior and find the sterling qualities beneath. They looked through my rough exterior all right, but they didn't stop at my sterling qualities. They looked right through to the man behind me, and gave him the signal that there was a seat for him.
Not to be outdone, however, I got my place in the sun by cleverly tripping my rival as he passed me, so that he fell into the fountain arrangement, while I sat down in the seat pulled out for him by the head waiter. And, once I was in, there was nothing for them to do but let me stay.
After I had been there a few minutes a waiter came and put on a fresh table cloth. Five minutes later another man placed a knife and spoon at my plate. Later in the evening a boy with a basket of rolls wandered by and deposited one on my table with a pair of pincers. Personally, I was rather glad that it was working out this way, for it would make my story all the better, but I might have really been in a hurry for my dinner.
It wasn't long, as the crow flies, before one of the third assistant waiters unloosened enough to drop round and see if there was anything else I wanted besides one roll and a knife and spoon. I looked over the menu as if I were in a pretty captious mood, and then, with the air of an epicure who has tasted to the dregs all the condiments of Arabia and whose jaded palate refuses to thrill any longer, I ordered "roast beef."
It was billed as "90 (.80)," which didn't strike me as being very steep, considering the overhead expense there must be in keeping little knots of waiters and 'bus-boys standing round doing nothing in the further corner of the room.
The waiter wasn't very enthusiastic over my order, and something saved me from asking him if they threw in "a side" of mashed potatoes with the meat. He seemed to expect something more, even after I had ordered potatoes, so I suggested an artichoke. That cheered him up more than anything I had done that evening, and he really got quite fratty and said: "A little salad, sir?" Again I imitated a man who has had more experience with salads than any other three men put together and who has found them a miserable sham.
"No; that will be all for now," I said, and turned wearily away. I wanted to tell him that I had a dinner coat at home that looked enough sight better than his, but there is no use in making a scene when it can be avoided.