Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/146

120 tending to hypnotise them) who condescended to show them the sights of the metropolis, and, above all, take them where they could quadruple and quintuple their funds in a single evening. The passion for enrichment by a stroke of luck is, after woman and wine, the chief pitfall for "he-men." An appeal to this craze in Reubs ambitious to be "sports" has good prospects of success for brainy metropolitan prestidigitators.

On Buddie's and my entering into a solemn contract—very similar to a marriage bond—to be "best friends," he agreed to reserve one entire evening each week for me alone. But it was only the fourth that I had to sit in a Fourteenth Street restaurant for two long hours waiting in vain. I was -wiping my tearbedimmed eyes four times a minute. Other diners probably thought I was experiencing some overwhelming bereavement.

At ten I made the rounds of the gambling joints frequented by my soul-mate. I finally caught sight of his wondrous blonde hair and peachlike cheeks in the very last—as always happens—of his half-dozen stamping-grounds. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, it was pre-eminently New York's Monte Carlo (which name I give it in this book). The walls were paneled in rosewood. Every six feet a heavy gilt-framed plate-glass mirror reached halfway to the 15-foot ceiling. The latter was painted with Cupids and Venuses, in all sorts of poses, amid fleecy clouds floating in such a blue sky as is actually beheld only in Italy. The myriads of crystal prisms pendent from the huge chandeliers emitted all the colors of the spectrum. The floor was mosaic—in such exquisite patterns that it seemed a sin to set foot on it. The