ast.
For of all them young hicks in the bond room I expect Lester is about
the most ambitious would-be sport we've got.

You see, I've known Lester Biggs more or less for quite some time. He
started favorin' the Corrugated with his services back in the days when
I was still on the gate and rated myself the highest paid and easiest
worked office boy between Greeley Square and Forty-second Street. And
all the good I ever discovered about him wouldn't take me long to tell.

As for the other side of the case--Well, I ain't much on office scandal,
but I will say that it always struck me Lester had the kind of a mind
that needed chloride of lime on it. I never saw the time when he wasn't
stretchin' his neck after some flossy typist or other, and as sure as a
new one with the least hint of hair bleach showed up it would mean
another affair for Lester. Maybe you know the kind.

And he sure dressed the part, on and off. The Tin-Horn Sport Cut clothes
that you see advertised so wide must be made and designed 'special for
Lester. I remember he sprung the first pinch-back coat that came into
the office. Same way with the slit pockets, the belted vest and other
cute little innovations that the Times Square chicken hounds drape
themselves in.

I wouldn't quite say that he'd pass for the perfect male, either. Not
unless you count the bat ears, face pimples, turkey neck and the cast in
one eye as points of beauty. But that don't seem to bother Lester in the
least. He knows he has a way with him. His reg'lar openin' is "Hello,
Girlie, what you got on the event card for tonight?" and from that to
makin' a date at Zinsheimer's dance hall is just a step. Oh, yes, Lester
is some gay bird, if you want to call it that.

And all on twenty a week. So of course that interferes some with his
great ambition. He used to tell me about it back in the old days when I
was on the gate and hadn't sized him up accurate. Chorus girls! If he
could only get to know some squab pippin from the Winter Garden or the
Follies that would be all he'd ask. He would pick out his favorite from
the new musical shows, lug around half-tone pictures of 'em cut from
newspapers, and try to throw the bluff that he expected to meet 'em
early next week; but as we all knew he never got nearer than the second
balcony he never got away with the stuff.

"Suppose by some miracle you did, Lester?" I'd ask him. "What then?
Would you blow her to a bowl of chow mein at some chop s