girl spoke up
and said it wasn't the hotel. New York was all squealers--worst "race"
she ever knew for meanness to one another--nothin' you'd ever see in
the Irish!

I thought back over the dinner conversation that noon. An Irish girl
asked me what my hurry was, when my work didn't begin till 1.30. I
told her I helped out the Spanish woman and remarked that I thought it
wrong that she didn't get more pay than I. "Say," said the Irish girl,
"you jus' look out for your own self in this world and don't you go
round worryin' over no one else. You got number one to look out for
and that's all."

The excitement of the day was that the Big Boss for the first time
took note of the fact I was alive. He said good evening and thought
he'd look in my ice chest. My heart did flutter, but I knew I was
safe. I had scrubbed and polished that ice chest till it creaked and
groaned the Saturday night before. The brass parts were blinding. But
there was too much food in it for that hour of the night. He called
Schmitz--Schmitz was abject reverence and acquiescence. It was, of
course, Kelly's fault for leaving so much stuff there when he went at
3. And Kelly was gruff as a bear next day. Evidently the Big Boss
spoke to him about sending stuff upstairs after the lunch rush was
over. He almost broke the plates hurling things out of the ice box at
2.30. And the names he called Schmitz I dare not repeat. He swore and
he swore and he _swore_! And he stripped the ice box all but bare.

How down on prohibition were Kelly and many of those waiters! Perhaps
all the waiters, but I did not hear all express opinions. A waiter was
talking to Kelly about it in front of my counter one day. "How can we
keep this up?" the waiter moaned. "There was a time when if you got
desperate you could take a nip and it carried you over. But I ask you,
how can a man live when he works like this and works and then goes
home and sits around and goes to bed, and then gets up and goes back
and works and works, and then goes home and sits around? You put a
dollar down on the table and look at it, and then pick it up and put
it in your pocket again. Hell of a life, I say, and I don't see how we
can keep it up with never a drink to make a man forget his troubles!"

Kelly put forth that favorite claim that there was far more evil-doing
of every sort and description since prohibition than before--and then
added that everyone had his home-brew anyhow. He told of how the chef