beings should be permitted to organize their own lives, and decide for themselves whether a supper-dance after the theater or the Opera is harmful. At luncheon time the hotels present another aspect. They still do a thriving business; but, as I have said in a previous chapter, for many and many a year there had been little drinking in the middle of the day. With fewer people to serve, and fewer meals to serve, hotel men have been driven to ask more for that service which they continue to render. The one bright thought in this painful readjustment is the fact that the Prohibitionists must help the rest of us to make up the loss of revenue. Their checks, hitherto much less than ours, are now quite the same. But, then, I imagine few of them have ever cared for brilliant lights and smart napery, preferring to dine in the dim sanctity of basements and back rooms at an hour so early that daylight has hardly gone when the “supper bell” rings. The color and joy of the Ritz or the Plaza would scarcely appeal to a fanatic. But to get back to the bootleggers. There are many degrees of them. Some are honest; others are not. Once in a while a gin bottle will contain nothing but water; and sometimes whiskey will have been diluted, and near-beer sold as the regular thing. Yet with an established trade, and recognized business, conditions are improving. Even as there is honor among thieves, the latest model of bootlegger must play the game squarely; and those of the better class frown upon chicanery, and are disgusted when spurious material is sold. They realize that if inferior liquor is delivered, sales may soon cease altogether. Therefore those who have their best interests at heart--and their name is legion--are cautious and painstaking, and will honestly tell a customer whether he is buying synthetic gin or pre-Volstead stuff. I do not pretend to know the workings of this nefarious trade; but I do know this: that many Italians and Germans and Frenchmen, among others, are doing a thriving business, and are only too glad to donate part of their enormous commissions to the local ring who, in return, offer them complete protection. And from talks which I have had with various restaurant proprietors who likewise pay graft regularly, I know that our Government has lost the respect of practically every foreigner; for he sees not only his own people defying the law, but the Americans disobeying it under his nose. He says that so long as there are grapes on vines and apples on trees; so long as fermentation is a natural process, there will be drinking in the world; and he cannot understand why it is against the law to take a sip of red wine with one’s spaghetti, or a nip of brandy with one’s coffee. It is all incomprehensible to him. His children grow up, seeing him have no reverence for the laws of the country he has adopted.