Page:The New Yorker 0002, 1925-02-28.pdf/3

Advisory Editors: Ralph Barton, Marc Connelly, Rea Irvin, George S. Kaufman, Alice Duer Mitter, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

LAST week saw Spring coquetting on Fifth Ave- nue, but aside from that uncalendared escapade (did you ever notice that sunny late-winter days on the Avenue always seem brighter and more gay with promise than anywhere else in town?) there weren't many events of interest to mention in my letter to Aunt Evelyn in Dubuque. Despite implica- tions of the catch-line of a certain new magazine most of the old ladies in Dubuque are most keenly interested in things that are supposed to interest only New Yorkers.

However, I told her about the number of men popping up from the South for a few days with offensively tanned faces and the irritating information that they

“They needed an angel in heaven intend to go back again in a couple of days for an- So God took Caruso away."

other month of tropic ease. I thank my lares and penates that at least the time is not ripe yet for their was the Height of Something in belles lettres but in that mist of the dawn ahead in which one senses Per- insufferable farewells as they steam away for sum- mers abroad. fection an even higher monument to beauty has taken form out of the haze. It is the following from a new popular song entitled "My Kid": Ciro's opened the other night with Mary Hay and “He comes downstairs in his little white nightie Clifton Webb as the supper club's dancing team and when they inaugurated their partnership last Tuesday And says his prayers to God Almighty." night a noticeably smart crowd filled the place. I didn't go myself after an attache of the restaurant discounted the need of any further guests the opening night by declining, over the phone, to reserve a table for Aunt Evelyn's nephew.

I'd have been obliged to forego the event anyway, it turned out, as a sudden call took me to Baltimore for the night. The Congressional Limited, I discov- ered, has put in practice the dining car booking system one finds on trains in England. Sittings are assigned by cards distributed by the dining car steward an hour or so before the diner is open, It's a good system, as the English found out several years ago, though it was not functioning any too smoothly on the Limited. When three of us marched in, as our cards provided, at 6:15, take our places at Table A-8, four in- dividualists were firmly intrenchered, I hope, never- theless, that the system can be put into practice over here as I know of few unhappier moments than that of discovering, after a feeling progress through five or six cars, that the corridor of the diner is packed like a six o'clock subway train.

I hope that eventually the orderly arrangement of dining car sittings will be able to do away with the annoying no-smoking-in-the-diner rule. The sole rea- son for its existence to-day is its discouragement of the lingering passenger who likes a cigarette or cigar with his coffee. I should think the perfect working of the new system would allow the momentary comfort of tobacco in the minute and three-quarters consumed by the waiters in bringing change.

I used to think that

I am told it is making thousands of better men and women in vaudeville and night club circles.

The elderly matron with the lifted face has become so common that it must be a very good joke about her that gets even a glancing attention. But the case of Mrs. Louise Conti, 83 years old, erstwhile bathroom maid at the Plaza, demands a pause in the day's occu- pations. It seems, says the World, that Mrs. Conti has worked hard all her life. When she was 78, Mrs. Conti was still able to stand on her hands.

But a few months ago, despite her matutinal application to the programs of calisthenics in the newspapers, she found herself a bit stiff in one or two muscles when the day's work of cleaning forty or fifty bath tubs was over. There were unquestionably wrinkles in her hands. So she accepted the invitation of a beauty specialist whose newspaper advertisement informed her that a free clinic was available for such as she. She tried to take advantage of the offer, but to her discomfiture and the amazement of the beauty doctors her skin was fine and clear, her teeth were sound, her eyes were bright and from her conversa-