The Voice of the City: Further Stories of the Four Million
John Stuart Mill · en
"He's the same thricks of spakin' and blarneyin' wid his hands,"
sighed Katy, "as the Frinch nobleman at Mrs. Toole's that ran away
wid Mr. Toole's Sunday pants and left the photograph of the Bastile,
his grandfather's chat-taw, as security for tin weeks' rint."
Mr. Brunelli continued his calorific wooing. Katy continued to
hesitate. One day he asked her out to dine and she felt that a
dénouement was in the air. While they are on their way, with Katy in
her best muslin, you must take as an entr'acte a brief peep at New
York's Bohemia.
'Tonio's restaurant is in Bohemia. The very location of it is secret.
If you wish to know where it is ask the first person you meet. He
will tell you in a whisper. 'Tonio discountenances custom; he keeps
his house-front black and forbidding; he gives you a pretty bad
dinner; he locks his door at the dining hour; but he knows spaghetti
as the boarding-house knows cold veal; and--he has deposited many
dollars in a certain Banco di-- something with many gold vowels in
the name on its windows.
To this restaurant Mr. Brunelli conducted Katy. The house was dark
and the shades were lowered; but Mr. Brunelli touched an electric
button by the basement door, and they were admitted.
Along a long, dark, narrow hallway they went and then through a
shining and spotless kitchen that opened directly upon a back yard.
The walls of houses hemmed three sides of the yard; a high, board
fence, surrounded by cats, the other. A wash of clothes was suspended
high upon a line stretched from diagonal corners. Those were property
clothes, and were never taken in by 'Tonio. They were there that wits
with defective pronunciation might make puns in connection with the
ragout.
A dozen and a half little tables set upon the bare ground were
crowded with Bohemia-hunters, who flocked there because 'Tonio
pretended not to want them and pretended to give them a good dinner.
There was a sprinkling of real Bohemians present who came for a
change because they were tired of the real Bohemia, and a smart
shower of the men who originate the bright sayings of Congressmen
and the little nephew of the well-known general passenger agent of
the Evansville and Terre Haute Railroad Company.
Here is a bon mot that was manufactured at 'Tonio's:
"A dinner at 'Tonio's," said a Bohemian, "always amounts to twice the
price that is asked for it."
Let us assume that an accommodating voice inquires:
"How so?"
"The dinner costs you 40 cents; you give 10 cents to the waiter, and
it makes you feel like 30 cents."
Most of the diners were confirmed table d'hôters--gastronomic
adventurers, forever seeking the El Dorado of a good claret, and
consistently coming to grief in California.
Mr. Brunelli escorted Katy to a little table embowered with shrubbery
in tubs, and asked her to excuse him for a while.