hich you automatically know the date of his birth. It
was a patriotic but unfortunate choice on the part of his parents. The
name did not fit him; was too mealy; not debonair enough. Nick. Nicky in
tenderer moments (Miss Bauers, Miss Olson, Miss Ahearn, just Gertie, et
al.).

His method with women was firm and somewhat stern, but never brutal. He
never waited for them if they were late. Any girl who assumed that her
value was enhanced in direct proportion to her tardiness in keeping an
engagement with Nick found herself standing disconsolate on the corner
of Fifty-third and Lake trying to look as if she were merely waiting for
the Lake Park car and not peering wistfully up and down the street in
search of a slim, graceful, hurrying figure that never came.

It is difficult to convey in words the charm that Nick possessed. Seeing
him, you beheld merely a medium-sized young mechanic in reasonably
grimed garage clothes when working; and in tight pants, tight coat, silk
shirt, long-visored green cap when at leisure. A rather pallid skin due
to the nature of his work. Large deft hands, a good deal like the hands
of a surgeon, square, blunt-fingered, spatulate. Indeed, as you saw him
at work, a wire-netted electric bulb held in one hand, the other plunged
deep into the vitals of the car on which he was engaged, you thought of
a surgeon performing a major operation. He wore one of those round
skullcaps characteristic of his craft (the brimless crown of an old felt
hat). He would deftly remove the transmission case and plunge his hand
deep into the car's guts, feeling expertly about with his engine-wise
fingers as a surgeon feels for liver, stomach, gall bladder, intestines,
appendix. When he brought up his hand, all dripping with grease (which
is the warm blood of the car), he invariably had put his finger on the
sore spot.

All this, of course, could not serve to endear him to the girls. On the
contrary, you would have thought that his hands alone, from which he
could never quite free the grease and grit, would have caused some
feeling of repugnance among the lily-fingered. But they, somehow, seemed
always to be finding an excuse to touch him: his tie, his hair, his coat
sleeve. They seemed even to derive a vicarious thrill from holding his
hat or cap when on an outing. They brushed imaginary bits of lint from
his coat lapel. They tried on his seal ring, crying: "Oo, lookit, how
big it is for me, even my thumb!" He called th