The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-04-05
In New York
BY PAUL HARRISON

New Yorl-For strolling on , sunny afternoon, there's South Street, the cobblestoned avenue O sailors. Clans, oilskins, saloons sawser, anchors and sextants. Ant the Seamen's Church Institute ot New York, big, handsome build. ing topped by a lighthouse ano with clipper ship figurehead oj Sir Galahad over the entrance.
 x. Generally, about thousand men are there, from pink-cheeked cabin boys to leather-faced Bar. nacle Bills. They come for food. shelter, recreation, technical trains ing, advice, medical attention everything. Most of them pay; many can't.
 I looked over flew reports oi the Institutes social workers Some excerpts: A young ships engineer dropped in for advice on patenting an invention .. An able-bodied seamen ready to sail wanted to trade his gold watch for book he had been reading in the Joseph Conrad library
 Request for a job from another seaman just out of the hospital Only 33, he had spent 22 years at sea, eight of them under sail on his grandfather's schooner.
 s. o. s.
 Two-star telegram relayed by radio to ship bound for Panama. A sailors mother is dying in New England Impecunious Italian asks information on how to bring his wife and six bambinos over from Italy An A. B. wants somebody to type the words of a sentimena1 song he composed while working on coal barge. A galley chef wants materials to make a small model of an inven- tion for launching life boats After two years in hospital with a broken back, steward announces he has job in a chicken farm In Kansas and asks for reduced train fare. He gets 1t.
 A wiper asks a cash loan to get his false teeth (some of them gold) out of pawn ... Desperately .hom esick boy decides he has had enough of the sea and wants to get back to Nebraska =. Another lad wants to go back to Georgia but 1t prevailed upon to make one more voyage so he'll have a little money to help his parents.
 
 Dunnagc
 Three stories below ground lev el is a vast cavern where sailors store their belongings--about three thousand articles month. The stuff keeps accommodating, for some of the seamen never return. On rows and tiers of racks are duffel bags, sea chests, trunks. boxes and suitcases,. plastered with labels from faraway ports-Singapore, Rio, Calcutta, Cadiz.
 Luggage long unclaimed Is opened, and out of it tVmbles the men; letters and photographs, old coins, baby shoes, locks of hair. And an amazing assortment of ar- ticles which have been put into the Institutes museum; musical in- struments, sword canes, Chinese vases, Turkish beads, intricate carvings in ebony and ivory, nau- tical instruments, a silk hat, sun helmet, brass knuckles, handcuffs, a bottle of champagne, intact. Everything but parrots.
 BiIl of Fare
 I've had q history lesson from Fred G. Walther. maitre d'hotel of the Hotel McAlpin. A scholarly fellow--incidental one of the lecturers at Cornell University's Hotel School--he's full of infor- nation about the eating habits of the great. Also about early hotels back to the time when the first one was established, and guests brought their own food and beds,
 Louis XIV was the greatest gourmand: used to eat for eight 1 hours day. Charlemagne liked cabbage so much that he had a royal cabbage patch, and showed | it only to his intimatese. Old Louis Philippe, daunted by. his grocery and wine bills. was the first to in- stitute the idea of paying for . banquet. If you were invited you had to pay whether you attended or not.
 Charles V of Spain had such a passion for pickled herring that he sometimes visited the grave of William Bakeld, the Fleming who first pickIed a herring. Back in i the time of the early Celts there was a King Munroe who had the worlds worst table manners. Two meals were served him at every | dinner: one at the table with his guests, another at a small table behind him. When bored by tho other diners, the king would turn
 around and finish the meal with
 his back to sths company. ' .Ph OfaXananH. lH