ear?'

New York is a large city conveniently situated on the edge of America,
so that you step off the liner right on to it without an effort. You
can't lose your way. You go out of a barn and down some stairs, and
there you are, right in among it. The only possible objection any
reasonable chappie could find to the place is that they loose you into
it from the boat at such an ungodly hour.

I left Jeeves to get my baggage safely past an aggregation of
suspicious-minded pirates who were digging for buried treasures among
my new shirts, and drove to Gussie's hotel, where I requested the squad
of gentlemanly clerks behind the desk to produce him.

That's where I got my first shock. He wasn't there. I pleaded with them
to think again, and they thought again, but it was no good. No Augustus
Mannering-Phipps on the premises.

I admit I was hard hit. There I was alone in a strange city and no
signs of Gussie. What was the next step? I am never one of the master
minds in the early morning; the old bean doesn't somehow seem to get
into its stride till pretty late in the p.m.s, and I couldn't think
what to do. However, some instinct took me through a door at the back
of the lobby, and I found myself in a large room with an enormous
picture stretching across the whole of one wall, and under the picture
a counter, and behind the counter divers chappies in white, serving
drinks. They have barmen, don't you know, in New York, not barmaids.
Rum idea!

I put myself unreservedly into the hands of one of the white chappies.
He was a friendly soul, and I told him the whole state of affairs. I
asked him what he thought would meet the case.

He said that in a situation of that sort he usually prescribed a
'lightning whizzer', an invention of his own. He said this was what
rabbits trained on when they were matched against grizzly bears, and
there was only one instance on record of the bear having lasted three
rounds. So I tried a couple, and, by Jove! the man was perfectly right.
As I drained the second a great load seemed to fall from my heart, and
I went out in quite a braced way to have a look at the city.

I was surprised to find the streets quite full. People were bustling
along as if it were some reasonable hour and not the grey dawn. In the
tramcars they were absolutely standing on each other's necks. Going to
business or something, I take it. Wonderful johnnies!

The odd part of it was that after the first shock of seeing a