The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-11-09
MAIN SPORT IS
 PAYING ''UPS"
 IN NEW YORK
Always Costs More Than One Expects In Me-
 , .y tropolis.

] The great indoor and outdoor sport
 in New York. is Paying the Ups. 1 It is continuous performance in
 which the entire city takes part. The
 stranger in town is welcomed into the game with cheerfulness which l it is worth coming miles to see. In
 fact, the stranger has confident
 feeling that the game was devised
 for him, and the New Workers are
 let in on it because they are such
 lovers of clean sport.
 | You begin to play the fascinating game of Paying the Ups en route to the city. You sit comfortably in your Pullman gazing at the Jersey
 signboards, drinking in the beauties of matted milk, fly screens and Tur-
 kish tobacco, when the lure of the game first strikes you.
 Rooms $1 and Up. Hotel Ex Quisita. Hot and cold water, tele-
 phohe. Everything that Manhattan affords in the way of luxury" Fine! Just what you want! As
 the train goes whizzing by, you take
 out a notebook and make a memo randum of the Hotel Exquisita- Another few miles and another
 
 to, in the heart of the city. New York's exclusive hostelry.'' Better still! You like the idea Of being in the city's heart. You have heard so much, of the pulse of the great metropolis and you want to hear it beat, so you decide. on one Of those dollar-a-day rooms at the Per- fecto. v
 As the signboards skip by, you be-
 gin to marvel at the wild stories that have reached out-of-towners about
 the high cost of living in the metro
 polls.
 Perfect nonsense!' you comment scornfully. "They are all yarns. What cheaper would you want than a dolIar-a-day room on Fifth ave- nue?"
 Thick and fast they skim along, the Dollar Up signs, until you grow dizzy trying to remember if the Per fecto is at Fifth avenue and Fifty fifth street or Fifty-ffth avenue and Fifth street, and if the Elizabethan was the hotel that advertised show CTS, and breakfast served in the rooms at a dollar up.
 You snatch a few correct addresses from the alluring signboards and light-heartedly trip to telephone booth on your arrival.
 "Our rates for single room are
 $3 and up without bath, $5 and up with bath. Dollar rooms, did you say''--There is long pause, freighted with scorn. You imagine you can smell the violet sec on the handkerchief of the bored hotel clerk as he lightly f1ips it across his aching brow. "No we have no rooms at that
 price"-his voice comes back in a weary drawl. What did you say? Our advertisement? Oh, yes, we have a few very select, very choice rooms at a dollar. But, of course, those are all taken"
 So much for the Exquisite. You try the Perfecto and the Allrighto, the Justito and a few others whose seductive signs filled you with feeling that all is we'll in Manhattan. since rooms may be had at a dollar up.
 You give up the vain pursuit, after an hour of frantic telephoning. Your conversation with hotel clerks has made you feel as if you had been
 camping on the Astor-Vanderbilt's doorstep, asking them Ito adopt you, and their buffers had put you in com munication with the nearest police
 station or psychopathic ward. Consider your laundry list. It is veritable score card for the game of Up paying. Run your eye down both sides of it, male and female. It's Up, Up, Up. Everything is up. Waists, 20 cents up; handkerchiefs, 2 cents up; collars, 4 cents up; dress
 es, 30 cents up: pajamas, 15 cents up. You wonder why and how cuffs and collars and pajamas can differ from each other, and why a stand
 ard price for laundering. them could
 not be enacted by the legislature, and how the laundryman can differentiate
 between such apparently simple and
 similar articles. You gather together the few arti- cIes of apparel that you dared to
 wear during the week and take them apologetically to one of the few
 thousand French hand laundries around the corner. You call for them again, so as not to arouse the ire Of
 the laundryman and not to give him IAhe excuse of delivery to add to the ups.
 Take the simple matter of half a
 dozen collars at 2 cents up. They 1 added 50 cents to. your bill. You pay the ups for every other article that
 was washed. and you wonder, with
 Father Williams son. as you put down the cash to settle the ups, how they manage to do it.
 1 "Suits Cleaned and Pressed, 25 Gents Up.'' the tailor's sign across 1 the street reads. Of course he can 1 tell you that he is '.just out" of 25- cent cleaning mixture, but he can and he does tell you that your suit l is so elaborate, so in need of extra careful pressing and attention, that he must charge at least $1, and that
 if he does it for that price you are
 really getting wholesale rates.