There is probably no street in the world that has the same number and style of restaurants as Broadway, New York, especially the kind that are within the bounds of the Tenderloin. Chuck Conners would call them feed joints; the irreverent might refer to them as hash houses, and the slangy man or woman who wanted to designate them might be pardoned for dubbing them lobster palaces. But there would be a lot of sense and reason in the last if you were only on, or took the time to think it over.
There is nothing to them in the daytime, and the heavily carpeted floors and snowy-clad tables burdened with silver and glass are practically out of commission. There are a few waiters on duty, but no one ever heard of them being overworked, even with the rush of the merry-merry after a matinee.
These money-makers begin to rouse up a bit about the time the average man of business affairs is finishing his quiet dinner at home, but the time to go there if you want to see things, and by things I mean the sights and celebrities, is after the theatres have let out the evening performance. Then, if you amount to anything, you will have a table where you can see and be seen, and you will feast upon a bite that will cost you nothing less than a ten-dollar bill, not including wine.
 
It’s only a dream after the lobster course
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The shining lights of this world are in a class by themselves, and include the bookmaker with a loud voice—a trifle heavier than his bank roll; the gambler, soft of hand and manner; the sport who has done something or other at some time or other to entitle him to a passing recognition; the detective sergeant, who is a necessary evil, and who mixes in for business purposes of his own, and not for the purpose of doing the work for which he is paid by the city; then, last of all, the actor—star or semi-star.
They order as if the cooks in all the world were working for them alone, and the waiters were employed for their exclusive benefit. They are epicures and gourmets by force of circumstances, and the circumstances are a roll of bank bills about the size of a man’s wrist. Most of them have risen to a mushroom-like affluence.
The money came quickly, and they are spending it just as quickly.
They know the difference in wines simply because of the price, and they order that which sounds the best, so for that reason a stream of the juice of the grape floods a bunch of uneducated palates and floats high-priced food that would kill a man with an ordinary digestive apparatus.
Not one in a hundred of these men were to the manor born; their lives were cast in stony places and what they are they made themselves by sheer force of will, or else they accepted the golden wreath of opportunity and knew which road to take when they came to the forks.
At a table near the wall is a man who twenty years ago was a bootblack of the city’s streets.
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From river to river there was no spot on which he could put his finger and say:
“This is my home.”
He grew up like a blade of grass sprouting between stones, and he fought tooth and nail for his life. He knew what kicks and cuffs were, and if his memory isn’t bad he knows yet.
He blacked the boots of a man with florid face, a heavy gold chain across his vest, and a mammoth stone blazing like a headlight in his scarf, and because this boy was bright of eye and keen of wit his customer, whose business was politics, took a fancy to him. Had this little nomad been born with a gold spoon in his mouth he could not have fared better, nor could his prospects have been more alluring, for a politician, you know, is a man who, when he goes to bed at night, hangs his trousers on the bedpost, and when he wakes up in the morning the pockets are full of money. At least, that is my idea, and if I am wrong just let some of the leading politicians of to-day contradict me, and tell me truly how they got theirs.
While this man is eating his lobster a la Newburg, and sipping the wine that cost him $5 a bottle, I’ll go on with the story.
For about two weeks he blacked his patron’s shoes, and then one fateful morning the man with the bull neck said sharply:
“Chuck that box away, son, and come along with me.”
He didn’t wait for the boy to take the cue and act on it, but he gave the box a kick with his square-toed boot that sent it to the middle of the street, and then he led
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 the boy to a clothing shop where he had him fitted out with everything a fellow that size ought to have.
He saw possibilities in this youngster, and he figured that it would be a wise move to have some one as close to him as his shirt, and upon whom, in time of trouble, he could depend with absolute certainty.
A good bed, good food three times a day and money in the pocket serves often to make a marvelous transformation, and it was so in this case, and the erstwhile bootblack forgot in a moment that he had ever shined shoes or performed any menial services for any human being. He was swept along on the tide of prosperity with his patron and he scoffed at poor things and poor people, as might have been expected. He was aggressive to everyone except his source of income, whom he followed and fawned upon like a hound.
The work he did was criminal, but he did it cheerfully, even though a hundred could have sent him up the river with a word. His morals were as flat as a desert, and he grew into a selfish, egotistical, arrogant, blatant man whose friends were friends by force of circumstances, and not by reasons of any virtues that he possessed, or of any real liking they had for him.
In the course of time the big man with the neck of a gladiator died, and was buried in a manner fitting his life. A ton of flowers followed him to the six-foot hole which had been provided for him; a few bottles of wine were drunk by his cronies to drown their grief and to toast his successful debut into that new and unknown world to which he had gone, and that was all.
The bootblack, who had taken himself seriously, and was fond of calling himself a gentleman on all possible occasions, for no other reason apparently than that he
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 wore the best clothes that money could buy, took possession of his patron’s effects, rifled his safe, his desk, and appropriated to himself everything that was of the slightest value, and then developed into a short card man.
So he sits there to-night, eating lobster and talking to a woman who, between you and me, is worth looking at more than once.
By an old and familiar, as well as extremely simple, process she had taken his name. It was a trifling matter, settled in a moment over a small bottle, and her only speculation was as to whether he could suitably provide for her.
It was a very good investment for him, for she has proven to be a very useful little lady in more ways than one. She knows a lot of real nice boys, and when they get very sporty she tells them about a good gam............