tion class does
not include the _argot_), it is French slang. In the third place, the
gig is pronounced zhig, and the whole is not a respectable word.
Finally, it is a term of utter contempt.

A gigolo, generally speaking, is a man who lives off women's money. In
the mad year 1922 A. W., a gigolo, definitely speaking, designated one
of those incredible and pathetic male creatures, born of the war, who,
for ten francs or more or even less, would dance with any woman wishing
to dance on the crowded floors of public tea rooms, dinner or supper
rooms in the cafes, hotels, and restaurants of France. Lean, sallow,
handsome, expert, and unwholesome, one saw them everywhere, their slim
waists and sleek heads in juxtaposition to plump, respectable American
matrons and slender, respectable American flappers. For that matter,
feminine respectability of almost every nationality (except the French)
yielded itself to the skilful guidance of the genus gigolo in the tango
or fox-trot. Naturally, no decent French girl would have been allowed
for a single moment to dance with a gigolo. But America, touring Europe
like mad after years of enforced absence, outnumbered all other nations
atravel ten to one.

By no feat of fancy could one imagine Gideon Gory, of the Winnebago,
Wisconsin, Gorys, employed daily and nightly as a gigolo in the gilt and
marble restaurants that try to outsparkle the Mediterranean along the
Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Gideon Gory, of Winnebago, Wisconsin! Why
any one knows that the Gorys were to Winnebago what the Romanoffs were
to Russia--royal, remote, omnipotent. Yet the Romanoffs went in the
cataclysm, and so, too, did the Gorys. To appreciate the depths to which
the boy Gideon had fallen one must have known the Gorys in their glory.
It happened something like this:

The Gorys lived for years in the great, ugly, sprawling, luxurious old
frame house on Cass Street. It was high up on the bluff overlooking the
Fox River and, incidentally, the huge pulp and paper mills across the
river in which the Gory money had been made. The Gorys were so rich and
influential (for Winnebago, Wisconsin) that they didn't bother to tear
down the old frame house and build a stone one, or to cover its faded
front with cosmetics of stucco. In most things the Gorys led where
Winnebago could not follow. They disdained to follow where Winnebago
led. The Gorys had an automobile when those vehicles were entered from
the rear and when