After the theater, another restaurant--this time for supper--more hat-boys, more brigandage but it is the thing to do and you must do it. And you must do it well. Splendor costs and you pay--your full proportion. If up in your home town you know a nice little place where you can drop in after the show at the local playhouse and have a glass of beer and a rarebit--dismiss that as a prevailing idea in the neighborhood of Long Acre square. The White Light district of Broadway can buy no motor cars on the beer and rarebit trade. Louey's trade in his modest little place up home is sufficient to keep him in moderate living year in and year out, but Louey does not have to pay Broadway ground rent, or Broadway prices for food-stuffs or Broadway salaries--to say nothing of having a thirst for a bigger and faster automobile than his neighbor. And as we have said, the opportunity for bankruptcy in the so-called "lobster palaces" of Broadway runs high. As this is being written, one of the most famous of them has collapsed. Its proprietor--he was a smart caterer come east from Chicago where he had made his place fashionable and himself fairly rich--for a dozen years ran a prosperous restaurant within a stone-throw of the tall white shaft of the _Times_ building. And even if the heels were the highest, the gowns the lowest, the food was impeccable and if you knew New York at all you knew who went there. It was gay and beautiful and high-priced. It was immensely popular. Then the proprietor listened to sirens. They commanded him to tear down the simple structure of his restaurant and there build a towering hotel. He obeyed orders. With the magic of New York builders the new building was ready within the twelvemonth. It represented all that might be desired--or that upper Broadway at least might desire--in modern hotel construction. But it could not succeed. A salacious play which made a considerable commercial success took its title from the new hotel and called itself "The Girl from R----'s." That was the last straw. It might have been good fun for the man from Baraboo or the man from Jefferson City to come to New York and dine quietly and elegantly at R----'s, but to stop at R----'s hotel, to have his mail sent there, to have the local paper report that he was registered at that really splendid hostelry--ah, that was a different matter, indeed. Your Baraboo citizen had some fairly conservative connections--church and business--and he took no risks. The new hotel went bankrupt.[A] [A] Another hotel man has just taken the property. His first step has been to change its name and, if possible, its reputation. E. H. Beer and rarebits, indeed. Sam Blythe tells of the little group of four who went into a hotel grillroom not far from Forty-second street and Broadway, who mildly asked for beer and rabbits. "We have fine partridges," said the head-waiter, insinuatingly.