| Show DUG MUSINGS I r BiilNyeGives Some Queer Incidents Inci-dents of Travel EXW TO FIND A GOOD HOTEL Ivro Ways of Securing a Hound of Ice CreamWhy 3111 and Jay Gould Get Cn So Well tFOr4T EStThmAY HERALD By special arrangement ar-rangement with the author UN BOARD THE DnttNQ UAR a SWEETBREAD May 51891 f p Fm writing thil in the dining car after a protracted interview with the steward regarding the business I used to think that to conduct a dining car required nothing but an unctuous smile and a desire de-sire to please and sol had thought seriously seri-ously of looking up a job in one of those I meandering refectories but it is really a pretty busy life after all Of course one does not have to attend to the running of the car from a railroad standpointm but he must deal with cooks waiters and supplies and besides he must keep a strict account of stock on hand as well r 1 i icijJ I I WATCHED THE CHILD fls of cash received and paid out I have just been assisting the conductor to make up his cash and declare a dividend divi-dend It is quite a job to do while the L train goes forty miles an hour and while the waiters are filling the aisles full of soiled linen and ill assorted profanity pro-fanity In the first place of course the checks given to passengers at table are all numbered num-bered like the hairs of ones head and in each daily report the dining conductor must give the number he closed with the day before as well as the one he opens with today This makes what k Diogenes used to call a dead open and shutNest Next the aplomb and style must be 1 duly considered There are all sorts of i ways of doing things For instance II take the simple matter of serving ice d cream I i went into Mr Dehnonicos place last winter and had something to eat winding up with ice cream It was as good ice cream as I ever put into my i head It consisted of the bust of a beautiful beau-tiful but rather cool brunette the face andfigure wherever the skin was visible visi-ble being made of chocolate while a I pale yellow vanilla constituted the economical eco-nomical waist of the party dress and alight a-light and gauzy veil of lemon ice was thrown carelessly over the head It was highly artistic and when it was frozen go fairly and so beautifully ready for the table I dont blame Charlie Delinon ico for feeling proud as he put on his coat and set the freezer back in the cellar cel-lar way to wait for another job Last week however I saw an ice cream signin thewindowas I journeyed through a Texas town and recalling the 10 cool yet innocuous beverage that I ate at the above New York boarding place I went in It was in front a bakery and the rather sickening odor of a last years candy pull seemed to still cling to the costly hangings Also a large peppermint pepper-mint candy cane hung in the window The memory of hot candy seemed to be in possession of the store There was no one else thereonly this sweet memory mem-ory So I passed on through an archway arch-way hung with costly purple canton flannel curtains and under a coal oil chandelier draped with scalloped tissue papeJ on which the fly of the period was holding a mass meeting The ice cream saloon was furnished with a rectangular table covered with real oil cloth made to look like marble Why anybody should ever try to imitate marble when i real marble is so cold and ghastly I do not know No one was in the ice cream parlor except ex-cept a hairless dog that was suffering from fatty degeneration There was also a sun bonnet on the ice cream table 1 pressed in through the kitchen where a nice tin basin of dried prunes was or were stewing On the hearth stood a plate with some Saratoga potatoes or autumn leaves in it Out in the backyard back-yard a man was wiping the nose of a little child Itseemed almost wrong to take him away from his job but I asked him how he was fixed for ice cream He said he could get me some It seemed that he was what is called a model husband I suppose that I should have stabbed him but I hated to get blood all over his little child I do not like the model husband Possibly because be-cause he has been held up to me at times when I was not good natured Wherever Wher-ever you find a model husband you generally gen-erally find that he has a baritone wife with unduly exposed fangs I returned to the store and stood around waiting for my delicatessen Meantime i I went in behind the counter and cracked nuts with a pound weight throwing the II shells into the sugar barrel I like to pick on a model husband because it is 7 7 most always safe I asked him if he were unmarried He looked around in a frightened way and said no His wife was at the Association hall where she was at the head of a committee The association had in hand the Amelioration Ameliora-tion of the Miscellaneous Poor also the Classification of Unidentified Children on their fathers side The work he said was getting be a wonderful one and had grown to such proportions that ittook all of her time so she had to Have an office up town The man wore nice long salmon colored col-ored whiskers and a celluloid collar He wiped off the top of the tablewith an I allpurpose dust cloth and put a tall I 1 goblet of rain water near me Then he nejotaway possibly to a neighbors I 04 MUU returned WIth an iron spoon with silver freckles on it Afterward he brought in a cake basket containing property cake You have seen it It prwo would look well enough in a photograph but would give an ordinary stomach heart disease Then came a porous towel or napkin and a thick saucer of granulated ice cream In driving nails with the saucer some one had chipped out a mouthful of the rich china and now the half melted mayonnaise ice cream was running out of that notch There were little lumps of butter in this ice cream silver gloss starch bergamot and circumstantial evidence evi-dence that the proprietor cleaned the lamps every morning before he made the ice cream for the day I paid two bits for the cream and remained re-mained watching the little child in the I store to see that its nose did not runaway run-away with it while the proprietor went out to the fair grounds to get change for a dollar I do not care much for ice I cream since that But to return to the dining car As I said not only the stock but the en regie business has to be looked after It would not do to run a dining car the way some hotels are run It would not only drive I I people to drink but it would drive them over another railroad The commercial L man is a throbbing advertisement for good or ill He will damn a hotel or dining car in ten days so that unless the proprietor has married well he will be canvassing for a snide family medical L work inside of a month When I began L to travel I went to such hotels as my able New York manager sent me to Sometimes he sent me to a hotel that had been burned two months Sometimes Some-times he sent me to a hotel that had become be-come morally a little rancid under anew a-new proprietor Once he sent me to an jnn which had its name in the hotel directory and when I got there I found I thc at it was a saloon with an annex th-c of a room in which the bartender bar-tender filed away such customers as could not bo shipped home Now however I simply get my eye on a good looking sample case and follow ort I from the depot I find that I do no take m t-ake any mistakes A traveling man generally is a good conversationist and if you listen to him you will notice that when not doing up a hotel he is doing un a railroad or a dining car and he is generally L gen-erally on the right side of the question too I believe that the press and the commercial men together can do and have done a good deal toward elevating the standard of American hotel cooking And yet there is a good deal of room for improvement After every days run or at the end of the trip the dining car conductor counts up his cash looks over his checks balances I bal-ances cash looks over his stock of liquors and checks up on that and then he begins to take stock in the kitchen The conductor told me that the chances for stealing on a dining car were about as good as they are for robbing a slot machine There used to be a chance to I make the price of two drinks out of a bottle of whisky but a keen young Jay Gould of a special agent discovered that there were twelve drinks to the bottle bot-tle instead of ten He was promoted and the < last perquisite even to the empty bottle was taken away from the conductor con-ductor Toward the end of the trip while the porter is brushing the dust earnestly off the back of one passenger and depositing it on the other while the prettier ladies a waiting anxiously to primp while the uglier ones are monopolizing the primping facilities and replacing their traveling teeth with those they wear in town the perspiring conductor of the dining car begins to check off with the aid of the cook the entire list of supplies sup-plies embracing over 4000 articles to see what will have to be bought so that the requisition may go in at once No one thinks while calmly eating inn sweet smelling diner and looking out over the velvety meads where the tomtit tom-tit greets the jocund morn that 4200 articles are in stock packed under the floor beneath his feet or concealed about the car and that all these must be kept in stock and in good shape all the time subject to the order of guests ggestsm DPOT 3 i d I 1 tti I 1 J I fffir I 7 I v4vi I FOLLOWING A GOOD VALISE Eggs oysters fish etc you can see are rather fragile stock to keep on hand and there are a great many other things besides that require watching It does not do to wait till the guest finds out about the decadence of eggs or the paresis pa-resis of the oyster The guest was not designed to act as an egg tester So everything has to bs practically approved ap-proved or condemned frequently from I the fresh wrung oxtail for soup down to the flageolet bean and the flushed features feat-ures of the lobster I All all must be looked over Even the nutmeg which has lasted over two or three trips has to be duly reported and its condition marked on the straw colored report and registration Eight kinds of soup four kinds of veal four kinds of ducks three of chickens etc etc are on the list from which the menu is made and from beef a la mode to wooden toothpicks the inventory must be made up each trip and the financial condition and the sanitary condition of the cuisine stated carefully Thirteen kinds of fish are on the list and any one of them if at all dissatisfied with its surroundings can take off the keen wire edge of pleasure even for a congressional funeral party Most people on board a train are like children they do not know where all these things come from but they lose their temper if they cannot get every thing They often sit and rack their t brains to think of something that they I may not be able to find and then they ask for it They are especially arid while going through a state where prohibition pro-hibition Deigns and they sometimes order or-der a jug before crossing the state line so that they may acquire it inside the state I Of course it is to be expected that on a dining car one can get beefsteak and I soft boiled eggs and toast and coffee but here are a few kitchen articles out ot about five hundred on the list which we would hardly expect to find Bottle holders bar strainers cigar holders liquor jiggers lemonade shakers mus tard cups towel holders wine servers butter prints can openers ice shavers cigar box knives wire cutters apple corers Marie Bains bottle brushes croquette cro-quette molds cake turners flesh forks egg slicers flue cleaners garnishing sets ice tongs jelly molds knife keelers boring knives meat saws paste brushes pot chains wire broilers water backs mustard oziers beaten biscuit bath brick and cochineal are articles that while dining we rarely call for and yet they are there all the time Then again who would think of calling call-ing in a dining room car for sandalwood beeswax off bearers sumps snaths winches peavies spokeshaves hoof rasps manicure sets button molds post augers stump pullers dental lathes raisin seeders pile drivers or shad boners No one At least I hope so For he vould not find them A young man in Dallas the other day told me of a good joke on Drexel Morgan Mor-gan Co and as they are doing so wel I presume they will not mind it if I tell it here You can never successfully pick on prosperous people Now look at Jay Gould I have always said what I liked I about Gould and yet he and I are just as good friends as ever we were I dont t see any difference at all He never used I to speak to me and he also does not yet But if he had been unfortunate for instance and life had been a failure or the sheriff had made him pay his fine for not serving as a juror last fall or had scared Mm and garnisheed his pay at the Western Union office Jay would have been ill tempered over what I have said and either stopped his paper or refused me the privileges of his rolling stock but now he and I just go along as we used to It has made no difference with either of us We are above it Well the young man said that he went east a while ago with a letter of tom fr t-om the Kansas City Safe Deposit and Savings bank for 500 He went into Drexel Morgan Cos and presented l it asking for 100 on account A clerk 1 took down a sortof timetable and looked over it then he asked the young man to be seated a moment He did so There was more consulting of the directory Later on a wide blue policeman came i and and asked the young man to join him in a little saunter The Texan was to be married that evening to a beautiful young lady of New York and so you can see how little interest he felt in trysting with a fat policeman who shaved himself him-self selfThe The young man was shut up in the cold matted atmosphere of the gaol in less than half an hour the accusers merely mere-ly telling him that there was no such bank as he claimed to HSve a letter from S We will now suppose that a week has passed by All is bright and chipper in the gay glad sunshine but pain alone is the portion of the felon The young man from Texas had not changed his collar for 168 hours His trunk had not been sent up to him and he had been nightyless if you will allow me to coin a term At that moment the doors opened and freedom entered You are released said a kind old man The Messrs Drexel Morgan Co present their compliments com-pliments and regrets They thought that Kansas City was in Kansas Possibly jokeis on Drexel Morgan i Co but if it is not on the young man from Texas I think it is on Kansas City What does the gentle reader with the bright new crisp unsalivated postage stamp for reply think about it |
