Building, its owls' eyes glowing in the
night, its presses thundering, the elevated thundering beside it. Here
was a business manager whom he knew. Then to the Herald Square Theater
on the opposite side of the street, ablaze with a small electric
sign--among the newest in the city. In this, as in the business office
of the _Herald_ was another manager, and he knew them all. Thence to the
Marlborough bar and lobby at Thirty-sixth, the manager's office of the
Knickerbocker Theater at Thirty-eighth, stopping at the bar and lobby of
the Normandie, where some blazing professional beauty of the stage
waylaid him and exchanged theatrical witticisms with him--and what else?
Thence to the manager's office of the Casino at Thirty-ninth, some bar
which was across the street, another in Thirty-ninth west of Broadway,
an Italian restaurant on the ground floor of the Metropolitan at
Fortieth and Broadway, and at last but by no means least and by such
slow stages to the very door of the then Mecca of Meccas of all
theater- and sportdom, the sanctum sanctorum of all those sportively au
fait, "wise," the "real thing"--the Hotel Metropole at Broadway and
Forty-second Street, the then extreme northern limit of the white-light
district. And what a realm! Rounders and what not were here ensconced at
round tables, their backs against the leather-cushioned wall seats, the
adjoining windows open to all Broadway and the then all but somber
Forty-second Street.

It was wonderful, the loud clothes, the bright straw hats, the canes,
the diamonds, the "hot" socks, the air of security and well-being, so
easily assumed by those who gain an all too brief hour in this pretty,
petty world of make-believe and pleasure and pseudo-fame. Among them my
dearest brother was at his best. It was "Paul" here and "Paul"
there--"Why, hello, Dresser, you're just in time! Come on in. What'll
you have? Let me tell you something, Paul, a good one--". More drinks,
cigars, tales--magnificent tales of successes made, "great shows" given,
fights, deaths, marvelous winnings at cards, trickeries in racing,
prize-fighting; the "dogs" that some people were, the magnificent,
magnanimous "God's own salt" that others were. The oaths, stories of
women, what low, vice-besmeared, crime-soaked ghoulas certain reigning
beauties of the town or stage were--and so on and so on ad infinitum.

But his story?--ah, yes. I had all but forgotten. It was told in every
place, not once but seve