The car turned in between stone pillars, and under an arch of red and
golden leaves, and swept up a long avenue to a house of innumerable
roofs. It was the grandest house Mr. Schwab had ever entered, and when
two young men in striped waistcoats and many brass buttons ran down the
stone steps and threw open the door of the car, his heart fluttered
between fear and pleasure.
Lounging before an open fire in the hall were a number of young men,
who welcomed Winthrop delightedly and, to all of whom Mr. Schwab was
formally presented. As he was introduced he held each by the hand and
elbow and said impressively, and much to the other's embarrassment,
"WHAT name, please?"
Then one of the servants conducted him to a room opening on the hall,
from whence he heard stifled exclamations and laughter, and some one
saying "Hush." But "Izzy" Schwab did not care. The slave in brass
buttons was proffering him ivory-backed hair-brushes, and obsequiously
removing the dust from his coat collar. Mr. Schwab explained to him
that he was not dressed for automobiling, as Mr. Winthrop had invited
him quite informally. The man was most charmingly sympathetic. And
when he returned to the hall every one received him with the most
genial, friendly interest. Would he play golf, or tennis, or pool, or
walk over the farm, or just look on? It seemed the wish of each to be
his escort. Never had he been so popular.
He said he would "just look on." And so, during the last and decisive
day of the "whirlwind" campaign, while in Eighth Avenue voters were
being challenged, beaten, and bribed, bonfires were burning, and
"extras" were appearing every half hour, "Izzy" Schwab, the Tammany
henchman, with a secret worth twenty thousand votes, sat a prisoner, in
a wicker chair, with a drink and a cigar, guarded by four young men in
flannels, who played tennis violently at five dollars a corner.
It was always a great day in the life of "Izzy" Schwab. After a
luncheon, which, as he later informed his friends, could not have cost
less than "two dollars a plate and drink all you like," Sam Forbes took
him on at pool. Mr. Schwab had learned the game in the cellars of
Eighth Avenue at two and a half cents a cue, and now, even in Columbus
Circle he was a star. So, before the sun had set, Mr. Forbes, who at
pool rather fancied himself, was seventy-five dollars poorer, and Mr.
Schwab just that much to the good. Then there followed a strange
ceremony called tea, or, if you preferred it, whiskey and soda; and the
tall footman bent before him with huge silver salvers laden down with
flickering silver lamps, and bubbling soda bottles, and cigars, and
cigarettes.
"You could have filled your pockets with twenty-five cent Havanas, and
nobody would have said nothing!" declared Mr. Schwab, and his friends
who never had enjoyed his chance to study at such close quarters the
truly rich, nodded enviously.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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