My own story (1934)

MY OWN STORY tation of two plump girls going somewhere in a hurry. Our route was nearly always the same. Lillian lived in Seventy-sixth Street, so we dashed first into Central Park for a turn about the reservoir. Then if we weren't panting too painfully we would wheel over to Judge Smith's impressive house for a pre-luncheon call on the Judge. Because we sometimes wore tights on the stage and often dropped in unchaperoned upon the Judge, who was a bachelor and a famous character about town in the nineties, I'm afraid the neighbors looked upon us as "bad, bold females." His father had been a gallant officer in the Confederate Army, we were told by friends from the South. Nobody seemed to know just when the Judge, witty, amiable, and ease-loving, had drifted to New York. By the time Lillian and I met him, he was an established and familiar figure in the smart crowd that follows the horses from race track to race track, season in and season out. His title had nothing to do with a knowledge of Blackstone and torts; it derived solely from his uncanny gift for guessing what a given piece of horse flesh would do in a pinch, and to the fact that he was frequently called upon to say whose nose came in first. When I think of the innocent deviltries of the Judge, which consisted chiefly of paying us ex 83