O.O. McIntyre

Lexington Herald-Leader/July 19, 1914

NEW YORK July 19 — A page from the diary of a modern Samuel Pepys: Up early and to the depot to see W. Larkin and Mistress Charlotte, home from India and he brought me a noble carving. We fared forth by coach to Bowling Green. There light, and talked of many things, eat newly catched mackerel and hot bread.

Great news that Sir James Cox is nominated albeit I know little of politics. While I labored on an opposition journal in Dayton I learned to know his fine qualities and shall vote for him, yet I know too that Sir Warren Harding is a good man.

Called to account this day for a foolish letter writ a friend in anger and we talked long and earnestly with the result that we are on better terms and I am resolved I should be cudgelled for a fool. My dog is without fleas for the first summer, thank Heaven.

To my haberdasher where I selected light yellow silken gloves and so thru the city not a little proud, God knows, to meet several scriveners who feigned not to notice my little conceit. Yet I know well they were eaten with jealousy.

Home and fell to reading Stevenson’s tale of the South Seas and so absorbed that I forgot the company my wife, poor wretch, had invited but all very joyful withal. Then lay late reading and J Gwynn came knocking at my chamber long past midnight to tell me a strange story. And so to dreams.

***

Rennold Wolf, the famous chronicler of Broadway for the Morning Telegraph, is taking his first vacation in years — ten to be exact. He is going to London to write four plays that have been rattling around in his head for some time. No first night is complete without Ren. And no banquet — wet or dry — is a howling success without him as a toastmaster. He is the best after dinner speaker in New York. Wolf came from a little town upstate. He knocked around on Park Row until the late Alfred Henry Lewis suggested a job for him on the Telegraph. Between first nights he has managed to write 14 plays, many of them in collaboration with his best friend Channing Pollock. It is rumored on Broadway that he has decided to give up newspaper work but the theatrical profession is hoping it is just a rumor.

***

I don’t know exactly what it is but there is something that reminds me of William Jennings Bryan in the five-story fall that a Bronx man had the other day. After he struck the pavement he jumped up and walked away with a broad smile.

***

The faces of women in New York these days are ghostly in their whiteness. It is startling — even eerie — to the visitor. They are remindful of statues in chalk. Coatings of white powder and liquid give the appearance of the mask of the mime. Only the women of Broadway splotch their white cheeks with red. Whiteness seems to be a fad along the avenue. Rouge is banned. But under the eyes are penciled black shadows. Only one description fits it. It is merely disgusting.

***

A young girl nineteen went out with some young men and women on her first “party” one day last week. She was induced to take a drink of brandy — the first drink she had ever tasted. Three hours later she was taken to a hospital in convulsions. The next day she was permanently blind. The brandy was made of wood alcohol. The other members of the party only suffered a slight illness.