Page:Masterpieces of American Humor (Little Blue Book 959).djvu/52

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50
MASTERPIECES OF AMERICAN HUMOR

public services that of furnishing ice cream for evening parties. I always thoughtperhaps it was the working of an unchastened imaginationthat he managed to throw into his ice cream a peculiar chill not attained by either Dunyon or Peduzziarcades ambothe rival confectioners.

Perhaps I should not say rival, for Mr. Dunyon kept a species of restaurant, while Mr. Peduzzi restricted himself to preparing confections to be discussed elsewhere than on his premises. Both gentlemen achieved great popularity in their respective lines, but neither offered to the juvenile population quite the charm of those prim, white-capped old ladies who presided over certain snuffy little shops, occurring unexpectedly in silent side-streets where the footfall of commerce seemed an in-congruous thing. These shops were never intended in nature. They had an impromptu and abnormal air about them. I do not recall one that was not located in a private residence, and was not evidently the despairing expedient of some pathetic financial crisis, similar to that which overtook Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon in "The House of the Seven Gables." The horizontally divided street-doorthe upper section left open in summerushered you, with a sudden jangle of bell that turned your heart over, into a strictly private hall, haunted by the delayed aroma of thousands of family dinners. Thence, through another door, you passed into what had formerly been the front parlor, but was now a shop, with a narrow, brown wooden counter, and several rows of