Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-08-31
Drawings by Wallace Morgan

at the Hotel Plaza is ridiculous. It's worse than
that. It's hopeless There's the park across 59thst.,
with lake in it and wet possibility of drown
ing. Round the corner the trlncated rumbes half
hourly invitations to sightseeing and suicide. Over
the square, UP and down the avenue, and along
both edges of both the adjacent side streets the vel
low red green, and blue taxicabs offer var1egated
opportunities for instantaneous death. For cheer
full story start could, it to me, be dis
couragng And yet stories go, this comparatively
cheerful.
To make the start clear let me state that not
broke nor was Jack Mccain In fact we flush
that wrangling about who should pay for the
skinny little four-dolar luncheon that we had just
gormandized And while talking of Tipping a
two-bt piece decide the fate of ve-doar note the
Broke Man walked in. l knew him, and SO did young
Mccain. The three of us had worked together re-
porters
well for the love Take slant at Say, see
who's come in from the alfalfa!'
Jack excited, else he would not have stood in the
Plaza tearoom and waved his arms like Dutch wind
mill. l looked recognized and became just wild
eyed he. Sam Harins (that will do we'll as
any other the best al-round publicity Broadway
saw, sauntering through the of feminin
ty-incrusted tables, Sunny Jim smile his weather
beaten face, nnety-dollar suit his good-natured
Frame a ten-dollar lid in one hand and gold-headed
cane in the other
Hello, Fellows!' said Sam as he slid into chair.
am broke and looking for sucker
"What-again2" said Mccain
"Do look like guy who'd go broke and quit
the broke business Look me If you turned
your lamps of those summer seeming and-my
friends take-careof persons, you re looking at one
now. Hard luck is my middle Six days ago
had seventeen thousand bucks. Today have appe-
tite thirst eighty hotel BILL and fourteen
circus with nothing to satisfy any of them Ask me
to do something
"Have drink, ;" said Jack.
"Have another, Sam,' said 1.
agreed twice, . said he
"And, by the way" he went on to Jack while
the waiter shooting the fzz water into the
first glass, you ought to be able to help me out
of this tangle. Not that you're the sucker said
was looking for; but-the Mccain family hasn't
been heard of since you took your sisters French
maid to the at the Meadowbrook Hunt
Club. That two years ago. Think of it,
Man! For two whole years your family has been
doing nothing but cut coupons and listen to its |,
arteries harden Why can't we frame up some
sort of stunt where, by hitching my fourteen-car
show to your fourteen-carat kin, pull each
other out of the mud?'
THAT, as | recall it, precisely the way the
affair started. Harkins, it developed in the
of the next ten minutes conversation, had
East to collect several hundred dollars from
Red OHaher, wildcat Snowman, had obtained
judgment, and then had discovered that the on1v
thing attachable Reds circus, which was get
ting ready to leave the winter quarters White
Plains for a season the road.
TO get back the money had lent the Irish
man | had to buy his show said Sam aTalk
about feverish finance! Sam Harkins, with exactly
seventeen thousand dollars to his name coughs it
all up IN order to accumulate moth-eaten circus
which he has lien of twelve hundred dollars! |
must be getting in the simp class!7
John Henry McCann Jr., should have stated
before, was pink-cheeked, bue-eyed Individual
SIX feet something TALL born with creative faculty
intense liking for automobiles musical comedies
electric lights, and trouble and disposition as
harmless rattlesnake's. Harkins had touched
nerve center when he alluded to McCann's oc-
casional salies forth in quest of adventure