Oh, many a charred secret into the garbage can goes
That from the kitchen range in blackened cloud once rose.
Tell her that there is a professor at Yale whose father was a junk man.
All this and more tell the garbage man's little girl.



The Palace



Someone was telling me of an old couple who lost everything they owned
at the time of the fire, and that they were very brave about it and
never broke down, and even helped others, but that when someone came
running up and said: "The Palace is on fire," they both sat down on the
curb and gave way completely to grief.

And they say that after the fire the first piece of publicity which was
given to the world as a proof that San Francisco would come back, was
that the Palace would be rebuilt immediately. And a man from Virginia
City, a descendant of the Comstock days, told me that in Nevada they
speak of "The Palace" as Russians speak of the Kremlin as a pivot of
destiny. What I am trying to say, of course, is that the Palace is a
tradition just as the Waldorf-Astoria is a tradition, only not at all in
the same way.

The Palace is a great place for women who are alone and a place where a
man may bring "the missus" with impunity. The Palace is stylish,
perhaps, but principally it is select. It suggests to me women who wear
suits of clothes, mostly dark gray, all wool and a yard wide, women who