O.O. McIntyre

Wilmington Morning News/September 13, 1920

NEW YORK, Sept 11.—A page from the diary of a modern Samuel Pepys: Up and walked up and down a new neighborhood to which we lately moved. Very fair stone houses and a good market place, but all the people ride in petrol wagons, yet I am content. Took bread and coffee in a railroad station inn and it was pretty to see the hurrying crowds with strained faces and eager looks and I enjoying my ease.

Came upon a fellow who befriended me many years ago, when I needed his help and he was tight as an owl with drink and was mightily in decay, which was sad, but he seemed vexed to the blood at my preaching and left me. On Forty-second street there was a commotion and being curious edged into the crowd and it was only two street urchins rolling dice.

The cool weather brings many back to town and I saw Miss Nora Bayes, the play actress, who has grown very plump and her hat was full of fine yellow feathers. And Ben Ali Haggin, the painter, who makes me think of the typical New Yorker I had pictured mentally before coming here. Too, I saw Arch Selwyn, the play man; Baruch, the banker, and LeRoy Scott, the writing fellow.

My dog seems upset at his new demesne and spends the hours chasing his silly tail. In the evening S. Tilton came to call, bringing fruit, and I read aloud from an old McGuffey reader I used at school and we laughed right merrily. Then some music and by and by to bed.

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Mourning may be carried to ridiculous extremes. A young New York girl, recently widowed, went to Paris for her mourning clothes. When she came back she was ready at the pier to pose for the photographers in mourning costume that was made plainly to excite comment more than to express quiet grief. That was only two months ago. The other night I saw her at a gay nocturnal rendezvous. She had discarded mourning entirely save for a spangled bandeaux of crepe she wore around her head.

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Watching New York awake to another day is an interesting phenomena. Paris awakes with song and New York like something has to be done—no matter how painful. The first signs of dawn bring out the street flushers in the Tenderloin district. Rubber booted, pipe-smoking fellows man the hose. The news venders have opened their huts by 4, although they have few sales before 5, but what sales they make they exact a double price. Taxi stands begin to fill up at 5:30. At 6 the subway kiosks disgorge the first thin vanguard of sleepy eyed workers, growling and surly. Nobody whistles like they do in smaller communities, before sunrise. At 7 the whirr of life is at top speed. Shops open. Window washers and sidewalk sweepers are at work. It is not until 10 o’clock, however, that the morning grouch has faded and New York begins to smile.

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The craze for French menus in New York is driving the steady diner out to distraction. Unless one understands French the average café card is hopeless. I am quoting from the headings on a menu card before me—and not an item under the headings are in anything save French. The headings read: huitres (oysters); hors d’oeuvres (relishes); potages (soup); poissons (fish); buffet froid (cold meats); rotis (roasts); legumes (vegetables) and entremets (dessert). There is nothing about the menu to indicate that a fellow with a corn beef and cabbage appetite may secure a filling of that toothsome delicacy. Even the ice creams are camouflaged and what is plain ice cream sounds like a dramatic line of Sarah Bernhardt in the last act.