Page:The New Yorker 0003, 1925-03-07.pdf/14

12 Opera Hats By adopting most of the foregoing suggestions, you can save enough in a few years to afford an entire TAKE the liberty of offering a brief addition to I last week's list of owners of opera hats in Greater evening at a Broadway dance club.-S. S. New York. There is some argument, I understand, as to whether the list will be used as the basis for the Ten Little Subway Guards establishment of a new aristocracy or as a sucker list for a new oil stock. At all events: 'Ten little subway guards, riding down the line. One was taken off to save a day's wages, Name Address Occupation And then there were nine. John Emerson ............ 126 E. 54th St........Labor Leader Kenneth McKenna The Playhouse ..Actor Nine little subway guards, keeping traffic straight. William Rhinelander One was displaced by a loud-speaker that nobody Stewart On Tour Benedict could understand, Walter Wanger 485 5th Ave. Magnate And then there were eight. Jonathan Cape London, Eng. Visitor -H. A. M. Eight little subway guards, more or less alive. "Three were dropped all at once when the company What A Young Man Should Know installed a new safety door, And then there were five, "HE taxicabs around Grand Central Station are mostly red-metered, which means thirty cents Five little subway guards, full of repartee. for a starter and correspondingly big charges later. Two got the gate when the directors discovered that You can buy a round trip ticket on the Tube to mechanical devices protected the public much Newark for a few cents more than the fare one way. better, The left-over stubs make good memoranda cards. And then there were three. If you come from Newark by Tube and want to get to Thirty-third Street, you have to ask for an Three little subway guards, on their daily run up-town slip when giving up your ticket to the con- Until the company announced that to insure maxi- ductor. Otherwise you will be soaked an extra four mum safety and efficiency in operation train doors would be opened and shut by a push- cents to get out at the Gimbel end. If your penny fails to produce a piece of chocolate button in the despatcher's office, And now there's not a one, or gum in the subway, there is nothing to be done -A. H. F. about it except to rattle the machine. On the other hand, the loss of a nickel in a public The Optimist telephone is not necessarily total. If you spend enough time getting the operator back, you can give her your Pop: A man who thinks he can make it in par. name and address and the company will refund. Johnny: What is an optimist, Pop? THE Metropolitan Monotypes НЕ VERDED from Russia at the age of eight, Toured the world and learned my trade. Reared among free-thinkers in a Jersey town, Now they seek me out, the managers, The only God I knew I weigh, consider, choose ; The one my Catholic playmates prayed to every night, The play must be what I consider good, So when it came to praying, Before I touch the script. And I had great need of prayer, turn away twice as many as I direct. I lifted up my Jewish voice to Him Especially am I known for comedies of the drawing Saying: "Good God, please make me an actor." room, I was clerking then in Evans's Drug Store; Plays that require an old-world touch, Every Wednesday I laid off My triumph came To see a matinee, When I played chess with kings and queens, Being docked the while Heirs-apparent, princesses and Lords; Three from my eighteen weekly dollars. The critics raved, discovered me, But I saw Barrymores, And smart New York rushed in to see the play, Drew, Gillette, Maude Adams, "Where royalty behaves as we who know them know Saw each move they made, "Real royalty behaves." Heard each inflection of their velvet tones, Alone, I am the one who knows, Then plodded to my dingy room, (And maybe too, the Philadelphia druggist), Kneeling, serene in simple sesame of prayer.... How I, born beyond the pale in a Riga ghetto. Reared in America, praying to an alien God, His Son was Jewish, Can wear so well this purple Perhaps that's why He answered me, And turn to gold the tinsel in their minds. Anyway I got a job as actor, --Murdock Pemberton Digitized by Google