Guided by certain unerring indications common to all such
resorts, he ascended the stairs and entered the large room over the
cafe.
Here were some twenty or thirty tables, at this time about half-filled
with Rooney's guests. Waiters served drinks. At one end a human
pianola with drugged eyes hammered the keys with automatic and furious
unprecision. At merciful intervals a waiter would roar or squeak a
song--songs full of "Mr. Johnsons" and "babes" and "coons"--historical
word guaranties of the genuineness of African melodies composed by red
waistcoated young gentlemen, natives of the cotton fields and rice
swamps of West Twenty-eighth Street.
For one brief moment you must admire Rooney with me as he receives,
seats, manipulates, and chaffs his guests. He is twenty-nine. He
has Wellington's nose, Dante's chin, the cheek-bones of an Iroquois,
the smile of Talleyrand, Corbett's foot work, and the poise of an
eleven-year-old East Side Central Park Queen of the May. He is assisted
by a lieutenant known as Frank, a pudgy, easy chap, swell-dressed, who
goes among the tables seeing that dull care does not intrude. Now,
what is there about Rooney's to inspire all this pother? It is more
respectable by daylight; stout ladies with children and mittens and
bundles and unpedigreed dogs drop up of afternoons for a stein and a
chat.
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