But that curtain hadn't been up three minutes before I get my next shock
of disbelief about this well-known club man. You know what a good play
means in New York: a rattling musical comedy with lively songs, a tenor
naval lieutenant in a white uniform, some real funny comedians, and a
lot of girls without their stockings on, and so forth. Any one that
thinks of a play in New York thinks of that, don't he? And what do we
get here and now? Why, we get a gruesome thing about a ruined home with
the owner going bankrupt over the telephone that's connected with Wall
Street, and a fluffy wife that has a magnetic gentleman friend in a
sport suit, and a lady crook that has had husband in her toils, only he
sees it all now, and tears and strangulations and divorce, and a
faithful old butler that suffers keenly and would go on doing it without
a cent of wages if he could only bring every one together again, and a
shot up in the bathroom or somewhere and gripping moments and so
forth--I want to tell you we was all painfully shocked by this break of
the knowing New Yorker. We could hardly believe it was true during the
first act.
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