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Man About Town
by
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 estatc 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 cafe 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 undcrstood 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.”
I thanked him and departed.
On the sidewalk a Salvation lassie shook her contribution receptacle gently against my waistcoat pocket.
“Would you mind telling me,” I asked her, “if you ever meet with the character commonly denominated as ‘A Man About Town’ during your daily wanderings?”
“I think I know whom you mean,” she answered, with a gentle smile. “We see them in the same places night after night. They are the devil’s body guard, and if the soldiers of any army are as faithful as they are, their commanders are well served. We go among them, diverting a few pennies from their wickedness to the Lord’s service.”
She shook the box again and I dropped a dime into it.
In front of a glittering hotel a friend of mine, a critic, was climbing from a cab. He seemed at leisure; and I put my question to him. He answered me conscientiously, as I was sure he would.
“There is a type of ‘Man About Town’ in New York,” he answered. “The term is quite familiar to me, but I don’t think I was ever called upon to define the character before. It would be difficult to point you out an exact specimen. I would say, offhand, that it is a man who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At 6 o’clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners; but in the business of poking his nose into places where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester street to Harlem until you can’t find a place in the city where they don’t cut their spaghetti with a knife. Your ‘Man About Town’ has done that. He is always on the scent of something new. He is curiosity, impudence and omnipresence. Hansoms were made for him, and gold-banded cigars; and the curse of music at dinner. There are not so many of him; but his minority report is adopted everywhere.
“I’m glad you brought up the subject; I’ve felt the influence of this nocturnal blight upon our city, but I never thought to analyse it before. I can see now that your ‘Man About Town’ should havc been classified long ago. In his wake spring up wine agents and cloak models; and the orchestra ‘p1ays ‘Let’s All Go Up to Maud’s’ for him, by request, instead of Handel. He makes his rounds every evening; while you and I see the elephant once a week. When the cigar store is raided, he winks at the officer, familiar with his ground, and walks away immune, while you and I search among the Presidents for names, and among the stars for addresses to give the desk sergeant.”
My friend, the critic, paused to acquire breath for fresh eloquence. I seized my advantage.