Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/64

  wanderer ultimately reach his own front door and rededicate himself to the delights of home.



I feel weary of life, liberty and the pursuit of some one else's happiness, whenever some one tells me that the League of Nations is sure to be a failure, or reminds me that the American Press Humorists are going to hold their convention here next June and we shall all have to flog our lethargic brains into competition with all the twenty-one-karat drolls of this hemisphere—whenever, in short, life is wholly gray and oblique, I resort to Veranda's for lunch.

Veranda's, of course, is not its name; nor shall I tell you where it is. Eighteen months of faithful lunching and, perhaps, half a ton of spaghetti consumed, have given me a certain prestige in the bright eyes of Rosa, the demurest and most innocently charming waitress in Philadelphia. I do not wish to send competitors in her regard flocking to that quiet little Italian restaurant, where the table cloths are so white, the coffee so fragrant and where the liver and kidneys come to the board swimming in a rich brown gravy the reality of which no words can approach. And that Italian bread, so crisply crusted, so soft and absorbent within! A slab of Veranda's bread dipped in that 