Norwich bulletin., 1915-11-03

The Cafe Jitney was as popular as liver and bacon in mining camp. Hungry folks cried for it. They went to it the way a baby goes to a feather and molassesed fingers. They couldn't leave it alone.
 On this particular afternoon it was as full of diners as an original jit- ney is of nickel It was happy crowd What crowd would not be happy that has just filled up on beef and coffee with a side of beans. for 15 cents? So the crowd fingered and laughed and fingered some more, while people out side looked in, and envied.
 But their envy was as light froth on
 the shallow water of bay. compared to the deep submarine, gloomy dis satisfaction of the proprietor Of the Cafe Jitney. You might suppose that the sight of so many happy diners, pleased with what he had to sell. pay checks were expanding his pocket
 book; but not so. Because every en- vious outsider who looked in--and did nothing else-represented lost money. To see nickel go past his cafe with out coming in and dying on his cash iers counter, was acute agony to the proprietor of the Cafe Jitney. It was almost as bad to miss nickel he might have had as 1t was to draw check and lose it. So the proprietor was sore.
 Peering out through the dark cloud of gloom that surrounded him like a mist about mountain, he saw com ing up to the cashiers desk. next to his office, Jophanus Hackle. who was probably the most resourceful special writer on any Sunday paper outside an asylum.
 Jophanus Tackle had long ago writ ten about everything there was to write about; and he was still writing for the Sunday Whoop. The longer he wrote the better he wrote. His food. The proprietor of the Cafe Jit- ney was no psychologist, so the won derful resourcefulness of Jophanus Tackle had never engaged his atten- tion. If it had, he might have re- flected that it was lucky that peo- p1e's stomachs were not made like
 Jophanus' brain. If they had been, the restaurant business would have
 been about as profitable as shoe store in Yucatan.
 It was Jophanus. with the six-cylin- der, self-starting. three-speed mind
 who approached to pay his check at
 the counter. His eye pierced the pro-
 prietor's gloom like a torpedo pierc- ing a Swiss cheese. Being afraid of nothing but thirst. he entered the of. shook the damp and yielding hand of the proprietor and initiated converse tion
 Good business you're doing, old
 man. Never can find an empty seat,
 this time of day. Had to wait. I'd
 come in here oftener if you had more room.
 Then the proprietor exploded It didn't hurt anyone, because though his face was fat his voice was thin. He hated to give anything away, even
 sound. He swheezed like a 1910 model.
 That's what gets my goat,' he said. He was inelegant of expression. If he had been running a higher class cafe he would not have said that. But it conveyed his state of mind, which, after all, is one of the prime purposes of language. 'It sure gets my goat.
 Look at those simps They've gob- bled up less than two-bits' worth of food, every last one of them, and l there they sit playing with the table furniture-they'd pinch it if the best l of it wasn't no good--and they won't
 move along and let someone else come | in and do business. And if I asked them to hurry-to eat fast and beat l it-it'd queer me for good. Now, ain't l it the limit? I do every ounce of bus- mess I can do in this plant Pve got to the limit. The place is plumb full. There ain't another nickel to be squeezed
 And he would have wept if he had
 known how. To make all you can, and