n a suspicion in you--such is your
distemper--that it is too much a witch's cauldron in the kitchen, "eye of
newt, and toe of frog," and you spy and poke upon your food. Bus boys bear
off the crockery as though they were apprenticed to a juggler and were only
at the beginning of their art. Waiters bawl strange messages to the cook.
It's a tongue unguessed by learning, yet sharp and potent. Also, there
comes a riot from the kitchen, and steam issues from the door as though the
devil himself were a partner and conducted here an upper branch. Like the
man in the old comedy, your belly may still ring dinner, but the tinkle is
faint. Such being your state, you choose a daintier place to eat.

Having now set upon a longer journey--the day being fine and the sidewalks
thronged--you pass by a restaurant that is but a few doors up the street.
A fellow in a white coat flops pancakes in the window. But even though the
pancake does a double somersault and there are twenty curious noses pressed
against the glass, still you keep your course uptown.

Nor are you led off because a near-by stairway beckons you to a Chinese
restaurant up above. A golden dragon swings over the door. Its race has
fallen since its fire-breathing grandsire guarded the fruits of the
Hesperides. Are not "soys" and "chou meins" and other such treasures of the
East laid out above? And yet the dragon dozes at its post like a sleepy
dog. No flame leaps up its gullet. The swish of its tail is stilled. If it
wag at all, it's but in friendship or because a gust of wind has stirred it
from its dreams.

I have wondered why Chinese restaurants are generally on the second story.
A casual inquiry attests it. I know of one, it is true, on the ground
level, yet here I suspect a special economy. The place had formerly been a
German restaurant, with Teuton scrolls, "Ich Dien," and heraldries on its
walls. A frugal brush changed the decoration. From the heart of a Prussian
blazonry, there flares on you in Chinese yellow a recommendation to try
"Our Chicken Chop Soy." The quartering of the House of Hohenzollern wears a
baldric in praise of "Subgum Noodle Warmein," which it seems they cook to
an unusual delicacy. Even a wall painting of Rip Van Winkle bowling at
tenpins in the mountains is now set off with a pigtail. But the chairs were
Dutch and remain as such. Generally, however, Chinese restaurants are on
the second story. Probably there is a ritual from the ancient days of M