“Yes,” he went on a little nervously, with a touch of strain in his voice, “it is nice to come to these places if you have the money. We all like to come to them when we can. Now I would like to come to a place like this, but I haven’t any money. I just walked in and I thought maybe I might get something to do here. It’s a nice brisk place with lots of people working.”
“Now, what’s his game?” I asked myself, turning toward him and then away, for his manner smacked a little of that unctuous type of religious and charitable emotion which one encounters in side-street missions—a most despicable type of sanctimonious religiosity and duty worship.
“Yes, it seems to be quite brisk,” I replied, a little coldly.
“But I have to get something yet tonight, that is sure, if I am to have a place to sleep and something to eat.”
He paused, and I looked at him, quite annoyed I am sure. “A beggar,” I thought. “Beggars, tramps, and ne’er-do-wells and beginners are always selecting me. Well, I’ll not give him anything. I’m tired of it. I did not come in here to be annoyed, and I won’t be. Why should I always be annoyed? Why didn’t he pick on Franklin?” I felt myself dreadfully aggrieved, I know.
“You’ll find the manager back there somewhere, I presume,” I said, aloud. “I’m only a stranger here myself.” Then I turned away, but only to turn back as he started off. Something about him touched me—his youth, his strength, his ambitions, the interesting way he had addressed me. My rage wilted. I began to think of times when I was seeking work. “Wait a minute,” I said; “here’s the price of a meal, at least,” and I handed him a bit of change. His face, which had remained rather tense and expressionless up to this time—the face that one always puts on in the presence of menacing degradation—softened.
“Thank you, thank you,” he said feverishly. “I haven’t eaten today yet. Really I haven’t. But I may get something to do here.” He smiled gratefully.
I turned away and he approached the small dark American who was running this place, but I’m not sure that he got anything. The latter was a very irritable, waspish person, with no doubt many troubles of his own. Franklin approached and I turned to him, and when I looked again my beggar was gone.
I often wish that I had more means and a kindlier demeanor wherewith to serve difficult, struggling youth.
I could not help noticing that the whole region, as well as this restaurant, seemed new and crudely assembled. The very management of this restaurant, the best in the place, was in all likelihood not the same which had obtained in the previous year. A thing like that is so characteristic of these mid-western resort atmospheres. The help (you could by no means call them waiters, for they were untrained in that branch of service) were girls, and mostly healthy, attractive ones—here, no doubt, in order to catch a beau or to be in a summer resort atmosphere. As I have previously indicated, anybody, according to the lay mind west of the Atlantic, can run a restaurant. If you have been a cook on a farm for some hay workers or reapers, so much the better. You are thereby entitled to cook and to be hailed as a restaurateur. Any domestic can “wait on table.” All you have to do is to bring in the dishes and take them out again. All you need to do to steak or fish or fowl is to fry it. The art of selection, arrangement, combination are still mysteries of the decadent East. The West is above these things—the new West—God bless it! And if you ask for black coffee in a small cup, or potatoes prepared in any other way than fried, or should you desire a fish that carried with it its own peculiar sauce, they would stare at you as peculiar, or, better yet, with uncomprehending eyes.