There were two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care
about a mystery. So I began to inquire.
It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suit cases.
And then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This
serious query was at first received with suspicion because it sounded
like a conundrum. I was at last assured that its double form of
construction was designed to make lighter the burden of woman, who
makes up beds. I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why,
then, they were not made in two equal pieces; whereupon I was shunned.
The third draught that I craved from the fount of knowledge was
enlightenment concerning the character known as A Man About Town. He
was more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have a
concrete idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we
can comprehend it. Now, I have a mental picture of John Doe that is as
clear as a steel engraving. His eyes are weak blue; he wears a brown
vest and a shiny black serge coat. He stands always in the sunshine
chewing something; and he keeps half-shutting his pocket knife and
opening it again with his thumb. And, if the Man Higher Up is ever
found, take my assurance for it, he will be a large, pale man with blue
wristlets showing under his cuffs, and he will be sitting to have his
shoes polished within sound of a bowling alley, and there will be
somewhere about him turquoises.
But the canvas of my imagination, when it came to limning the Man About
Town, was blank. I fancied that he had a detachable sneer (like the
smile of the Cheshire cat) and attached cuffs; and that was all.
Whereupon I asked a newspaper reporter about him.
“Why,” said he, “a ‘Man About Town’ is something between a ‘rounder’ and a
‘clubman.’ He isn’t exactly—well, he fits in between Mrs. Fish’s
receptions and private boxing bouts. He doesn’t—well, he doesn’t belong
either to the Lotos Club or to the Jerry McGeogheghan Galvanised Iron
Workers’ Apprentices’ Left Hook Chowder Association. I don’t exactly
know how to describe him to you. You’ll see him everywhere there’s
anything doing. Yes, I suppose he’s a type. Dress clothes every
evening; knows the ropes; calls every policeman and waiter in town by
their first names. No; he never travels with the hydrogen derivatives.
You generally see him alone or with another man.”
My friend the reporter left me, and I wandered further afield. By this
time the 3126 electric lights on the Rialto were alight. People passed,
but they held me not. Paphian eyes rayed upon me, and left me
unscathed. Diners, heimgangers, shop-girls, confidence men,
panhandlers, actors, highwaymen, millionaires and outlanders hurried,
skipped, strolled, sneaked, swaggered and scurried by me; but I took no
note of them. I knew them all; I had read their hearts; they had
served. I wanted my Man About Town. He was a type, and to drop him
would be an error—a typograph—but no! let us continue.
Let us continue with a moral digression. To see a family reading the
Sunday paper gratifies. The sections have been separated. Papa is
earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising
before an open window, and bending—but there, there! Mamma is
interested in trying to guess the missing letters in the word N_w Yo_k.
The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial reports, for a
certain young man remarked last Sunday night that he had taken a flyer
in Q., X. & Z. Willie, the eighteen-year-old son, who attends the New
York public school, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to
make over an old skirt, for he hopes to take a prize in sewing on
graduation day.
Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a two-hours’ grip; and
little Tottie, the baby, is rocking along the best she can with the
real estate transfers. This view is intended to be reassuring, for it
is desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped. For it
introduces strong drink.
I went into a café to—and while it was being mixed I asked the man who
grabs up your hot Scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down what he
understood by the term, epithet, description, designation,
characterisation or appellation, viz.: a “Man About Town.”
“Why,” said he, carefully, “it means a fly guy that’s wise to the
all-night push—see? It’s a hot sport that you can’t bump to the rail
anywhere between the Flatirons—see? I guess that’s about what it
means.”