to myself I guess this one is a real New Yorker all right.

Lon Prince now says what's the matter with going to some corking good
show because nothing good has come to Red Gap since the Parisian Blond
Widows over a year ago and he's eager for entertainment. Ben says "Fine!
And here's the wise boy that will steer us right. I bet he knows every
show in town."

The New Yorker says he does and has just the play in mind for us, one
that he had meant to see himself this very night because it has been
endorsed by the drama league of which he is a regular member. Well, that
sounded important, so Ben says "What did I tell you? Ain't we lucky to
have a good old New Yorker to put us right on shows our first night out.
We might have wasted our evening on a dead one."

So we're all delighted and go out and get in a couple of taxicabs, Ben
and this city man going in the first one. When ours gets to the theatre
Ben is paying the driver while the New Yorker feebly protests that he
ought to pay his half of the bill, but Ben don't hear him and don't hear
him again when he wants to pay for his own seat in the theatre. I got
my first suspicion of this guy right there; for a genuine New Yorker he
was too darned conscientious about paying his mere share of everything.
You can say lots of things about New Yorkers, but all that I've ever met
have been keenly and instantly sensitive to the presence of a determined
buyer. Still I didn't think so much about it at that moment. This one
looked the part all right, with his slim clothes and his natty cloth hat
and the thin gold cigarette case held gracefully open. Then we get into
the theatre. Of course Ben had bought a box, that being the only place,
he says, that a gentleman can set, owing to the skimpy notions of
theatre-seat builders. And we was all prepared for a merry evening at
this entertainment which the wise New Yorker would be sure to know was a
good one.

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 telephon