Personally I was not favorably inclined toward either plan, so I elected to let my conscience be my guide, backed by personal observation and personal experimentation. I was traveling pretty constantly this past spring, and in the smoking compartments of the Pullmans, where all men, for some curious reason, grow garrulous and confidential, I put crafty leading questions to such of my fellow travelers as were over-sized and made mental notes of their answers for my own subsequent use. Since the Eighteenth Amendment put the nineteenth hole out of commission, prohibition and how to evade it are the commonest of all conversational topics among those moving about from place to place in America; but the subject of what a man eats, and more particularly what he eats for breakfast, runs it a close second for popularity.
For example, there is the seasoned trans-atlantic tourist who, on the occasion of a certain terrifically stormy passage, was for three days the only person on board excepting the captain who never missed a single meal. You find him everywhere; there must be a million or more of him; and he loves to talk about it, and he does.
But even more frequently encountered is the veteran drummerno, beg pardon, the veteran district sales manager, for there aren't any drummers any more, or even any traveling salesmen; but instead we have district sales managers featuring strong selling pointsI say, even more frequently encountered is the veteran district sales manager, wearing a gravy-colored waistcoat if a tasty dresser, or a waistcoat of a nongravy-colored or contrasting shade if careless, who craves to tell strangers what, customarily, he eats for breakfast.
I made it a point to study the proportions and hearken to the disclosures of such a one, and if he carried his stomach in a hanging-garden effect, with terraces rippling down and flying buttresses and all; and if he had a pasty, unhealthy complexion or an apoplectic tint to his skin I said to myself that thenceforth I should apply the reverse English to his favorite matutinal prescription.
CHAPTER IX Adventure of The Fallen Egg
Now, theretofore, for so far back as I remembered, breakfast had been my heartiest meal of the entire day, with perhaps two exceptionsluncheon and dinner. Precedent inclined me toward ordering
about as many pieces of sliced banana as would be required to button a fairly tall woman's princess frock all the way down her back, with plenty of sugar and cream, and likewise a large porringer of some standard glutinous cereal, to be followed by sausages with buckwheat cakes and a few odd kickshaws and comfits in the way of strawberry preserves and hot buttered toast and coffee that was half cream, and first one thing and then another. But Spartanlike I put temptation sternly behind me and told the officiating collegian to bring me plain boiled prunes, coffee with hot milk and saccharin tablets, dry toast and one dropped egg.
The prunes and the coffee were according to specifications, although, lacking the customary cream and three lumps of sugar, the coffee was in the nature of a profound disappointment. But a superficial inquiry convinced me that the egg was not properly a dropped egg at all.
Here was a fallen egg, if I ever saw one. I was filled with pity for itpoor, forsaken, abandoned thing, with none to speak a kind word for it! And probably more sinned against than sinning, too. Perhaps there was hereditary influences to be reckoned with. Perhaps its producer had been incubator raised, with no mother to guide her and only the Standard Oil Company for a foster parent. And what would a New Jersey corporation know about raising a hen?
Thus in sudden compassion I mused. To the waiter, though, I said:
"There has been a mistake here, alumnus. This egg never was meant to be droppedit was meant to be thrown. Kindly remove the melancholy evidences."
He offered to provide a substitute, but the edge of my zest seemed dulled. I made dry toast the climax of my chastely simple repast. It was simple and it was chaste, but otherwise not altogether what I should characterize as a successful repast. It lacked, as it were.
Let us pass along to noontime. Ere noontime came I was consumed with gnawing pains of emptiness. As nearly as I might judge, I contained naught save vast hollow spaces and acoustics and vacuums and empty, echoing, neglected convolutions. Sorely was I tempted to relax the rigors of the just-inaugurated régime; nobly, though, I resisted the impulse.
As I look back now on that day I find the memory of my suffering has dimmed slightly. The passage of weeks and months has served to soften the harsh outlines of poignant recollection. What now in retrospect most impresses me is the heroism I displayed, the stark fortitude, the grandeur of will power, the triumph for character. Sheer gallantry, I call it.