O.O. McIntyre

Lima Republican-Gazette/April 2, 1920

NEW YORK April 1 — Two beautiful women, apparently living in the very lap of luxury, were found In Riverside Drive apartments dying from poison, self-administered, last week. They had been cast adrift by two rich men who supported them in elegance until the liaisons become tiresome. Neither case was related to the other, but the simultaneous actions have also brought home again to New York the tragic side of the Salamander.

At the operas, smart cafes and In the theatre boxes these women are always present fighting boredom. They are studies in upholstered elegance, their furs and jewels coming from the ends of the earth. Life is a dizzy whirl of the beauty parlors, the shops and the restaurants.

Like birds of a feather they flock together, looking upon their sisters with a cynical smile. Each is a fatalist. They know that any day may bring a sudden hiatus into their lives—perhaps a first page scandal.

“If it wasn’t for our kind,” said one in a court trial recently, “the blackmailing type of detective agencies would go out of business.”

Their names were always assumed and under the names they have open accounts at the biggest shops. They are rarely seen with male escorts. Now and then one revolts— goes back to the simple life, marries and is happy. At a fantastically brilliant celebration of the New Year attended by a conglomeration representing every grade of society a startlingly beautiful woman arose from a table.

She was like a flower, all perfume and softness and color, for her career had not yet stamped Itself on her face. “I am leaving New York tomorrow” she said. “Drink a toast to a girl who wants to be good — who is going to forsake pearls and limousines for a little real love and poverty.”

A man at the table paled. A gleam of something like tragedy passed between them. She smiled at him faintly. And his eyes remained fixed upon her as though he were looking upon a ghost. And at last he arose, bowed very gravely without a smile—and departed. Everyone understood the drama in real life. And the girl kept her word, and the man who told me the story told me that he happens to know that she is very happy.

***

Canfield’s gambling house, hard by Delmonico’s, has been turned into a restaurant — one of those small French affairs with low lights and two-colored decorations. It is called the Trianon. The old Canfield decorations are to remain even to the famous lambs that were carved, ironically perhaps, into the woodwork.

***

There is nothing for the men to do these Saturday afternoons but go on a “shopping jag.” The new indoor sport is the natural recreation that lays hold of men who have been working hard all week and are turned loose at noon on Saturday with plump envelopes. They relieve the desire to cavort by buying a lot of things they need and a lot they do not need.

There was almost a scene in a haberdasher’s shop the other Saturday when a citizen offered to treat a friend by buying him a green necktie when the latter was just recovering from an attack of jaundice. Instead of staggering home with a list to the portside, the delayed husband now arrives with a load of shirts, collars and ties.

***

Little Irving Berlin Is going to build a theatre. He has bought the plot in the Roaring Forties, and let the contract. It will be called the Music Box. And to those who pity the children of the slums think for a moment of Little Irvie. For even in my time I can remember when he sang songs and thumped a piano in a Chinatown resort—Nigger Mike Salter’s—for nickels and dimes that patrons tossed him. Environment? It was terrible. But Berlin is nevertheless a genius, a gentleman and a millionaire.