indications common to all such resorts, he ascended the stairs and entered the large room over the café.
Here were some twenty or thirty tables, at this time about half-filled with Rooney’s guests. Waiters served drinks, At one end a human pianola with drugged eyes hammered the keys with automatic and furious unprecision. At merciful intervals a waiter would roar or squeak a song—songs full of “Mr. Johnsons” and “babes” and “coons”—historical word guaranties of the genuineness of African melodies composed by red waistcoated young gentlemen, natives of the cotton fields and rice swamps of West Twenty-eighth Street.
For one brief moment you must admire Rooney with me as he receives, seats, manipulates, and chaffs his guests. He is twenty-nine. He has Wellington’s nose, Dante’s chin, the cheek-bones of an Iroquois, the smile of Talleyrand, Corbett’s foot work, and the poise of an eleven-year-old East Side Central Park Queen of the May. He is assisted by a lieutenant known as, Frank, a pudgy, easy chap, swell-dressed, who goes among the tables seeing that dull care does not intrude. Now, what is there about Rooney’s to inspire all this pother? It is more than respectable by daylight: stout ladies with children and mittens and bundles, and unpedigreed dogs drop up of afternoons for a stein, and a chat. Even by gaslight the diversions are meloncholy i’ the mouth—drink and rag-time, and an occasional surprise when the
