The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1903-05-17


Total.... ................. .....$3,50l
That SO for food covers the ice and
gas. Fun is a very comprehensive term.
1t includes for one thing what you call
entertaining.
There is something that doesn't mean
the same thing to the native New Yorker
that it does to the transplanted citizen.
1t doesn't mean to me for instance, the
giving of dinners to friends and ac-
quaintances who live here. 1t means the
giving of breakfasts, dinners and suppers
and lodging to the friends and relatives
from out of town.
THAT accounts in part for the $1,000
allowed for food. 1t means the paying
rent all the year for a room that is oc-
cupied perhaps only half of the year and
that family of three all alone doesn't
really need.
"A great many years ago somebody
wrote book called Sunshine and
Shadow in New York He knew what
would sell best, SO he put IN ten pages of
shadow for every one page of sunshine
and told about places on the Bowery in
comparison with which Suicide hall would
be a Sunday school.
well, the book agents were all ac-
completes of the author and they man.
aged to plant that book on about every
farm and in every village home in New
old family Bible and you'd always find
the two books together on the same tidy
on the sitting room table
THE folks got their notions about New
York from that horror of volume and
that's why the departure of the young
man for this town is generally looked
upon up there with msgiving. All the
folks are down at the train to bid him
a fearful good-by and they are all cock
Sin l1af bat will n oo in
They are even surer that they will never,
never come here to visit him.
How little they know what they are
talking about, BY the end of the first
six months they get over the shock of
surprise at not hearing that the absent
one is in jail or the potters feld-that
particular cemetery was played up good
and strong in Sunshine and Shadow
At the end of the first year the boldest
of the maiden aunts will screw up her
courage and after a weeks study of the
timetables and many postais to make
sure that she will be met al the station
and not left alone there a minute, she
will venture to New York.
That's when the young man must
move into a fiat with guest room, no
matter whether he is getting $500 or
$1,000 a year. They will all follow the
aunt. Sunshine and Shadow will be
room tables up in the country and in
its place will accumulate, year by year,
neat little stacks of theater programmes
saved as souvenirs of the various visits
to Jim in the city.
THE acquiring of those souvenirs ac-
counts largely for the expenditure of the
$500 that I have charged up against fun.
It's fun for the folks anyhow. But I
enjoy IT, too so let them come and I'll
still have a new hat when l need one,
w. II. d. to the contrary notwthstand-
ing
'Theatre-going, however, is not the
only form of amusement for the dweller
on Washington Heights. He discovers
when he moves up there that New York
city is as fine a place In summer as it
is in winter.
1T isn't really necessary 10 go away
for a vacation. There are the two rivers,
the Harlem and the Hudson, within five
minutes walk on either side of him and