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Show VOICES OF THE STREET. A friend of mine informed me, confidentially, confi-dentially, the other eveuing that the oyster had made its annual debut in the soup and was a greater drawing card than ever for the restaurants. It was a jovous piece of news and I hied myself with a gleesome hie to the nearest caravansary cara-vansary to revel in the presence of the taciturn and reticent bivalve. There are many ways of approaching the average Salt Lake restaurant and winning its guileless confidence. ' Tho first thing you do after passing the door is to look around for a seat; after you have found the seat you are looking look-ing for you sit In it. By and bye a tall, grim-visaged individual indi-vidual with a mature look of intellectuality intellectu-ality dripping from his countenance conies over in your vicinity and looki at you. After "ho has satisfied himself that you are not Tascott ho wanders over to the next table and brushes a few imaginary crumbs to the floor. Then he comes back and looks at you again to avoid tho possibility of a blunder blun-der in his former scrutiny. After a long time ho comes within ear shot and you murmur gently but firmly that you want some oysters. Ho looks at you again in a sad, aimless manner and goes away. Then you sit there upon a hard-bottomed chair and ruminate upon the awful possibilities of a waiter hurrying. What would be tho result? Would the proprietor tall dead, paralyzed; or would he get out his telescope and search the heavens for the millennium? After you have worn your braiu out, and it lays down to sleep in a corner near your cerebellum, to keep warm, wondering if nature had anything to do with making the waiter slow, and whether or not he thinks, and why does .ho brush the invisible crumbs from the table and let tho real ones remain; and why are his pants always so very "loud;" and does he believe in an after existence? exis-tence? You become worn out and helpless and sit there as a galley slave at the mercy of a cruel keeper. By and bye he comes back and looks at you again. Thon he rubs his chin as though lie wore thinking. Finally he vomes to the conclusion or, perhaps, it comes to him that you really want the meal you ordered, and he starts for the kitchen. In the course of time he reappears carrying a. tray, and as your hunger bogins to rub itself in joyous anticipation, an-ticipation, tho waiter drops the tray upon a tablo over near tho door and slowly places his burden before a large man with wild eyes anil a se?ming desire de-sire to get up and break furniture. At last your oysters are brought to you. Your heart gives a wild Ella-Wheeler-Wilcox throb.and in the amazement amaze-ment at thi! finul delivery of the bivalves and you forget to fall on j our knees and bless the waitorfor saving your stomach from starvation. v At least, that was my experience. The oyster, as yet, is a shy little fellow, fel-low, ana docs not come to the surface of the soup to greet you with u smile on its complexion. Hut tries to avoid you, and stay away from you and would seem to prefer mingling with the crackers crack-ers rather than exploring tho mysteries of your iuternul economy. To bo frank, the oyster, thus far this season, is a "cove." He has passed the summer in idleness and dust upon the tho back shelves of tho corner grocery, instead of laying off Boston harbor protecting pro-tecting its interests in tho pearl crop. The waiter, whose existence you had forgotten by this time, comes over and looks at you again to assure himself that there is only one of you. Then he makes a jail delivery of a block of paper from somewhere about his person. per-son. A lead pencil is extracted from behind his ear. The pencil communes with the paper, which later on passes into your possession. It reads: : HOLD OVEtt llESTACBANT. j : . Meals served while : you wait. ; :No. of persons , i : A mount to '.Extras : Total so: : tP"Please pay at the counter. You wander over to the counter and make a deposit to a young gentleman with an intellectual white collar and thon disappear out into the glad brightness bright-ness of the eleotrio light and make your peace with the other world as your hopes for peace in this are forever blighted. Celbe Clake. |