Psmith, JournalistWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
General
Psmith, Journalist
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Humorous stories
Billy Windsor lived in a single room on East Fourteenth Street.
Space in New York is valuable, and the average bachelor's
apartments consist of one room with a bathroom opening off it.
During the daytime this one room loses all traces of being used for
sleeping purposes at night. Billy Windsor's room was very much like
a public-school study. Along one wall ran a settee. At night this
became a bed; but in the daytime it was a settee and nothing but a
settee. There was no space for a great deal of furniture. There was
one rocking-chair, two ordinary chairs, a table, a book-stand, a
typewriter--nobody uses pens in New York--and on the walls a mixed
collection of photographs, drawings, knives, and skins, relics of
their owner's prairie days. Over the door was the head of a young
bear.
Billy's first act on arriving in this sanctum was to release the
cat, which, having moved restlessly about for some moments, finally
came to the conclusion that there was no means of getting out, and
settled itself on a corner of the settee. Psmith, sinking
gracefully down beside it, stretched out his legs and lit a
cigarette. Mike took one of the ordinary chairs; and Billy Windsor,
planting himself in the rocker, began to rock rhythmically to and
fro, a performance which he kept up untiringly all the time.
"A peaceful scene," observed Psmith. "Three great minds, keen,
alert, restless during business hours, relax. All is calm and
pleasant chit-chat. You have snug quarters up here, Comrade
Windsor. I hold that there is nothing like one's own roof-tree.
It is a great treat to one who, like myself, is located in one of
these vast caravanserai--to be exact, the Astor--to pass a few
moments in the quiet privacy of an apartment such as this."
"It's beastly expensive at the Astor," said Mike.
"The place has that drawback also. Anon, Comrade Jackson, I think
we will hunt around for some such cubby-hole as this, built for
two. Our nervous systems must be conserved."
"On Fourth Avenue," said Billy Windsor, "you can get quite good
flats very cheap. Furnished, too. You should move there. It's not
much of a neighbourhood. I don't know if you mind that?"
"Far from it, Comrade Windsor. It is my aim to see New York in all
its phases. If a certain amount of harmless revelry can be whacked
out of Fourth Avenue, we must dash there with the vim of
highly-trained smell-dogs. Are you with me, Comrade Jackson?"
"All right," said Mike.
"And now, Comrade Windsor, it would be a pleasure to me to peruse
that little journal of which you spoke. I have had so few
opportunities of getting into touch with the literature of this
great country."
Billy Windsor stretched out an arm and pulled a bundle of papers
from the book-stand. He tossed them on to the settee by Psmith's
side.
"There you are," he said, "if you really feel like it. Don't say I
didn't warn you. If you've got the nerve, read on."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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