1937-08-20 — Page 12

POODLE BY RING LARDNER NEVER SOAP THE BEER GLASS

(Continued from Page 7)

He asked the nurse to send for Dr. Gregory. The nurse said that the doctor was somewhere în the hospital, and he said to send him to his room The room is a nice big room and full of books about travel in this country and Europe.

While he waited, Mr. Hughes said that he was allowed to go.. out alone after nine in the morn- ing provided he reported at the hospital for lunch and was in for good by five in the afternoon. The doctor had been after him to 'em- ground ploy a companion to go with him daytimes, not because there was danger of him doing anything rash, but to keep him from spending too much money.

If I wanted the job, I could have it because it would make him feel good to think he was help- I told him ing my mother's son. again that he had never seen my mother, that my name wasn't Ben Collins or Poodle Collins and did- n't even begin with a C, and that Pennsylvania was the closest I'd ever been to Oconomowoc said, Some day you'll trust me with your secret, but you can't fool me and we'll just let it go at that."

· He

I told him what I had been getting at Waldron's and he said he would pay me seventy-two hundred dollars a year and the my first month in advance. In pocket right now Tve got his cheque for five hundred, and the money I've been spending to-night is part of a hundred-dollar bill he gave me in case I needed cash, as I certainly did. It wasn't the doctor's business how much he paid me, but he wanted the doc- tor's approval of me as a man.

Finally the doctor showed up and Mr. Hughes introduced me to him: “Dr. Gregory, this a boy from my home town. We used to call him Poodle Collins and now he resents the nickname and den- ies the rest of it. But if he meets with your approval TI take him as a companion, and we've already agreed on terms.

The doctor said he would like to talk to me alone, and we went out to some visitors room or something, and I thought that as soon as I told him the truth Poodle would die the death of a

dog and I'd be as far out of a job

as I was this morning. But get this, the doctor said his own nÉT was Tyson not Gregory only Hughes insisted that he was Dr Gregory and that he'd known him in Cleveland, where Dr. Tyson had never been.

Mr. Hughes makes. Dr. Ty- son's cheques to cash because Dr. Tyson doesn't like to endorse them with the name Gregory This cheque I've got is made out to cash because I'd have trouble establishing myself as Ben Col- lins or Poodle and Mr. Hughes won't believe my name. is any thing else. Dr. Tyson said that if I was on the level it didn't make any difference what my name was or where I came from, he wanted Mr Hughes to have somebody with him when he's wandering around, to prevent him buying the corner of Forty-Sec and and Fifth Avenue and start- ing a rival Radio City.

He gets big mont

and spare Dr. Tyson

lot of

and no

The fella is harmless bad habits. He likes to go to matinees and picture shows and baseball in the summer. Won't that be tough, if Poodle can hold his job! And Dr. Tyson thinks I can if I pretend I came from Oconomowoc and know everybody I'm supposed to know, though the doctor says their records. show that Mr. Hughes didn't live in Oconomowoc and only spent a couple of summers there.

The doctor naturally wanted re- ferences and the only one I could give was Waldron's, with the old man still in Palm Beach. But he telephoned to the

treasurer

and the vice-president, and what they said madst have satisfied him. If it hadn't, Fd have gone down there and shot up the joint.

2

So that's about all I'm seventy-two hundred-dollar day nurse named Poodle. I spend eight hours a day, with a crazy person that pays me and the rest of the time with one that doesn't Only she ain't around just now. and maybe she won't be for quite a while. Because it seems that she called up Waldron's a half- hour before my regular lunch hour to-day and Waldron's had a new switchboard gal, which I don't blame them for, but the gal they fired had forgotten to leave instructions with the new protecting me, and the new one had never heard my name, but said to wait and she would, make inquiries.

one

Evidently she told Mary the

(Continued from Page 63 and the Australians, the Pata gonians and the Colonel's lady's bride table in Simla, India, is a stout with real stamina and stability. It can be mushed or

safaried. It can slumber four or five years on the shelf in some god-forsaken trading post and yet, when opened, sport a deep garnet translucence, a pale Mo- cha head capable of sustaining a pretzel, and a taste that.

Yet there are bona fide quaff- artists-milions upon millions of them--who prefer lager.

proving a success, now-pro- duces 83,000 gallons a day- Pilsner than 250 heirs and as- signs can consume, even counting their families (and Pilsner people prolific). Anyhow, there's a surplus, which is sold here and there over the globe, more or less serving as the model of what light lager should be like. Incid- entally the storage cellars, gouged out of solid limestone which pro- vides the right chill, total six miles.

Genuflecting humbly to the brewing citizens of Bohemia and their liquid masterpiece, I'd like to point out that the year 1842 New saw lager established year

This novelty beer first sudded forth in Germany about the 1840. Despite its placid name, which means "storage," it was re- volutionary, turning fementation procedure upside down; for the yeast employed, instead of start ing in at the top, tricked up from underneath, taking three times as long to do the job and requiring a lower temperature. Storage, too, was chilly

2

As compared with time-honour- ed ale, the upstart offered greater proportion of unferment- ed malt extract, more peptones, and a higher charge of carbonic acid-gas which gave zizz to the brew, but necessitated that drink- ingsbe more deliberate, lest rumbl- ing eructations occur.

up,

Fortunately, experimental sta- tions, known as beer gardens, were - set

with the result that it is now possible to state on the basis of a century of seidels that the ideal tempo is one litre (about equivalent to a quart) per hour. At this serene, medically-approv- ed tempo lager may be assimilat-

York City also. The lagering was done with the aid of a care which had a spring of water in. it-forgotten after the brewery moved, but destined to cost the diggers of the Eighth Avenue Sub- way a pretty penny when they struck it, still flowing, seemingly unsquelchable.

Meanwhile lager flooded clear to the Coast. You know the story, writ in large brick buildings with fat horses backing up trucks for more kegs. Now the trucks are. closed, almost air-tight, to keep the barrels cool: a great improve- ment.) What isn't sufficiently rea- lised is that during the twenty years immediately preceding Pro- hibition there had been a

decline in beer's alcobot Steady

per-

brews centage, so that American about matched the Munich ones, strength for strength. This tap- ering was no chiselry. It increased expertness in making a beer which would stand up on own legs, not alcohol's.

truth, which was that I hadn't ed indefinitely, giving one's kid o

been connected with

the place

since February 4th. So when I got to Bayside this evening there was no Parker sedan to meet me at the station and for the first time in months I had to use my key to open the Love Nest door. On the table in the hall there was 20 dollars and a note. It's short and I'll read it to you.

"I am going home to my mother and I wish I had never left her and never had met a man like you. I did not know there was such people in the world, people who can deliberately lie and lie to the person they have promised to love and cherish and who have

made as many sacrifices for you

as I do not know and certain- ly don't wish to know the name of the woman with whom you have been associating all the weeks when you pretended you. were still at work.

Occasions neys a royal flush- arise, however, when work has to be stepped up. For example, in the university town of Jena I encountered, and got myself rung in on, a student party celebrating the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Burschenschaft Germania, where, with a "Prince" and a "Cardinal" jointly presid- to ing, the ambitious idea was drink forty litres and be decorat-- ed with the Order of the Pie-eyed- Embryo. I failed. I managed to win the Knight's Cross, the Sae red Herring, and one ether pew- ter token of proficiency, but the Pie-eyed

Embryo, represented krug in hand and precociously happy, is still one of the things of which life has cheated me.--

I suppose, though, that to any- one hailing from Pilsen, Czecho slovakia, such ado. over forty litres would seem petty. For in Pilsen they really give beer some attention, it being a town where, by old Bohemian custom, one af the perquisites of burgherhood is the right to brew..

"When you have given her up and when you have secured a position and can support a true and loyal wife as she should be supported and when you have convinced me that you are through once and for all with the lies and deceptions and frauds and infide- lity which you have been prac- tising and laughing in your sleeve at the loving wife who has sacri- ficed her whole life to make you happy perhaps then and only then I may perhaps come back and resume my own humiliating position as your slave whom you

your h have treated worse than the with harems of Italy and

to not

will

:).

Not that Pilsen's brewoisie still practice the art individually. No, conversion to Lagerism in 1842 charged all that, because you can't make bottom-fermented beer with anything less than tops, in equipment, wisely, therefore, -250 burghers, pooled their rights and founded the Citizens'

not

you ing

Kindly be

Since re public's palate

was

its

the

from the effects of home brew (suitable for the hog-trough). needled near-beer, and that grim gangster gumbo known as "cold beer-brewers have made flavour their thrist-catcher. Not kick And thereby they have enormous- ly increased beer's popularity For the fun of beer is in drink- ing it in really adequate amounts, for health and hops' sake, than be so picayune as to bottles When the party's over you can shovel them, or let Dor kins shovel them. But never seek to know how many.

There are a few things, how- ever, in connection with beer enjoyment which do merit atten- tion. In the first place, tempera- ture.

Bottles should be cooled rather than frozen to death, or the contents will be cloudy, a bit flat, and weak-headed. For Ameri- can lager 45 degrees is about right. For ales and Pilsner 50 degrees; Guinness even higher.

As to glasses, may I suggest that the maid, wife, or sweetie ( a butler wouldn't) who washes them with the dinner dishes be shot? It's the only protection against flat beer; because the least trace of grease, even from a dish-towel, is fatal For best results, the glass should be freshly rinsed and dried onl on the outside

Pour

and place

aighten finally lift