O.O. McIntyre

Lima Republican-Gazette/April 1, 1920

NEW YORK — A page from the diary of a modern Samuel Pepys: Up as the clock went nine and in good temper the sun being glorious. To be trimmed and Owen Davis, the melodrama scrivener, was there and also Alan Dwan. My thoughts uneasy about the high prices and many find they cannot live in the city which is a pity.

At breakfast a woman, well carriage, was in a pet because we had her table and she had such an air that I was moving away but did not and I learned she was a great lady of wealth but she knows little of manners. Home to see my new half shirts for summer wear.

Came F. O’Malley and he told me a brave tale of a famous wit who came to New York poor but was taken up a set of rich men and they told him secretly of a big deal in copper which would make him rich and he borrowed everywhere and he lost 50,000 pounds And he was never witty after that.

On the omnibus through through the town and the wind chilled my poor skinny legs so that I could scarcely walk. To the freak show again and a young fellow came in and saw the legless man and swooned away and I resolved to go there no more.

In the evening I wore my new dinner surtout and came R Long in his benzine wagon and to the Dutch Treat show, a merry affair, the quipping and quirking lasting until late. And so home and to bed.

The cafes have stopped one unpardonable annoyance. The bothersome young ladies who insisted that the patron buy pistachio nuts have sought other fields for their talents. The pistachio nut was solely to increase thirsts and in the old days were in quite large demand. Now no ono cares about a 14 karat thirst. It gets nowhere.

A small, genteel looking young woman with round baby eyes, set in a round baby face, recently introduced a new fad in a Greenwich Village restaurant. After she had finished her dinner the small round faced one who wore the over-seas hat of a famous war worker’s organization pulled out of her handbag a silken trifle that bore the dainty aspect of a sachet bag.

From the dainty trifle she disinterred a pipeful of smoking tobacco, which she adjusted dreamily in the bowl of a small genteel and properly colored pipe. Then she began to puff away in masterly fashion while her round baby eyes modestly regarded an evening newspaper.

“O, yes,” she lisped; “you see I’m fum Vaginia. Gran’ma smoked a pipe and so did great-gran’me. What was good enough for gran’me is good enough for me. All the blue bloods used to smoke pipes down in mah path of the country. I took it up when I was overseas helpin’ out with the morale. You see the boys needed the cigarettes so bad, it didn’t seem right for me to consume them.”

It is almost impossible to get out of this country these days. And it is a hard day for the crook who seeks to flit to some of the European capitals. Without a secretary of state, no passports are issued and the lines forming at the passports office present some pathetic sights. Many have been called home by sickness of loved ones and their impatience is almost at the boiling point, but every day they stand in line—waiting perhaps for some change in the situatlon.