oom, helping to drown or perhaps only serving to accentuate the babel
of talk and the clatter of dishes that arose on every side. Men in
evening dress and women in all the colours of the rainbow, _decollete_
to a degree, were seated at little tables, blowing blue smoke into the
air, and drinking green and yellow drinks from glasses with thin stems.
A troupe of _cabaret_ performers shouted and leaped on a little stage at
the side of the room, unheeded by the crowd.

"Ha ha!" said Knickerbocker, as we drew in our chairs to a table. "Some
place, eh? There's a peach! Look at her! Or do you like better that
lazy-looking brunette next to her?"

Mr. Knickerbocker was staring about the room, gazing at the women with
open effrontery, and a senile leer upon his face. I felt ashamed of him.
Yet, oddly enough, no one about us seemed in the least disturbed.

"Now, what cocktail will you have?" said my companion. "There's a new
one this week, the Fantan, fifty cents each, will you have that? Right?
Two Fantans. Now to eat--what would you like?"

"May I have a slice of cold beef and a pint of ale?"

"Beef!" said Knickerbocker contemptuously. "My dear fellow, you can't
have that. Beef is only fifty cents. Do take something reasonable. Try
Lobster Newburg, or no, here's a more expensive thing--Filet Bourbon
a la something. I don't know what it is, but by gad, sir, it's three
dollars a portion anyway."

"All right," I said. "You order the dinner."

Mr. Knickerbocker proceeded to do so, the head-waiter obsequiously at
his side, and his long finger indicating on the menu everything that
seemed most expensive and that carried the most incomprehensible name.
When he had finished he turned to me again.

"Now," he said, "let's talk."

"Tell me," I said, "about the old days and the old times on Broadway."

"Ah, yes," he answered, "the old days--you mean ten years ago before the
Winter Garden was opened. We've been going ahead, sir, going ahead. Why,
ten years ago there was practically nothing, sir, above Times Square,
and look at it now."

I began to realize that Father Knickerbocker, old as he was, had
forgotten all the earlier times with which I associated his memory.
There was nothing left but the _cabarets_, and the Gardens, the Palm
Rooms, and the ukuleles of to-day. Behind that his mind refused to
travel.

"Don't you remember," I asked, "the apple orchards and the quiet groves
of trees that used to line Broadway long ago?"