two years!_"





II

THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED


A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores
you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.
Therefore let us have the moral first and be done with it. All is not
gold that glitters, but it is a wise child that keeps the stopper in his
bottle of testing acid.

Where Broadway skirts the corner of the square presided over by George
the Veracious is the Little Rialto. Here stand the actors of that
quarter, and this is their shibboleth: "'Nit,' says I to Frohman, 'you
can't touch me for a kopeck less than two-fifty per,' and out I walks."

Westward and southward from the Thespian glare are one or two streets
where a Spanish-American colony has huddled for a little tropical
warmth in the nipping North. The centre of life in this precinct is "El
Refugio," a cafe and restaurant that caters to the volatile exiles from
the South. Up from Chili, Bolivia, Colombia, the rolling republics of
Central America and the ireful islands of the Western Indies flit the
cloaked and sombreroed senores, who are scattered like burning lava by
the political eruptions of their several countries. Hither they come to