Explore "Marny's Shadow" by Francis Hopkinson Smith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If you know the St. Nicholas -- and if you don't you should make its acquaintance at once -- you won't breakfast upstairs in that gorgeous room overlooking the street where immaculate, smilelees waiters move noiselessly about, limp palms droop in the corners, and the tables are lighted with imitation wax candles burning electric wicks hooded by ruby-colored shades, but you will stumble down a dark, crooked staircase to the left of the office-desk, push open a swinging, green baize door studded with brass tacks, pass a corner of the bar resplendent in cut glass, and with lowered head slip into a little box of a place built under the sidewalk.
Here of an afternoon thirsty gentlemen sip their cocktails or sit talking by the hour, the smoke from their cigars drifting in long lines out the open door leading to the bar, and into the caffe beyond. Here in the morning hungry habitues take their first meal -- those whose life-tickets are punched with much knowledge of the world, and who, therefore, know how much shorter is the distance from where they sit to the chef's charcoal fire.