OF THE TELEGRAM-EXPECTERS—OF THE DATE-GUESSERS—AND OF THE STATISTIC-WEEVILS
THERE are many lonely men and women at Palm Beach who almost cry with gratitude when somebody speaks to them. They are like many Congressmen, who are big people at home, but of less account in Washington than a head porter. Out of all the people who flock to Palm Beach to spend large amounts of money and bask in the soothing rays that emanate from the socially prominent, ninety per cent. might be compared to very small potatoes in a two hundred-acre lot. Even the majority of the people whose names are names to conjure with in Palm Beach society can’t be found in the pages of Who’s Who.
The majority of men who pay the bills at the big hotels are forced to struggle hard to kill time when they have finished their golf-playing for the day. Enormous numbers of them seem to spend most of their spare time sitting dolefully around hotel lobbies and expecting telegrams that never come. If you fall into conversation with any man in any Palm Beach hotel lobby, he invariably explains his inactivity by saying that he is expecting a telegram.
Next to expecting telegrams, the most popular Palm Beach time-killer seems to consist of wondering what day of the week it is. Sneak up behind any two important-looking men who seem to be discussing affairs of moment, and the chances are ten to one that you will hear the following weighty conversation:
“Is to-day Tuesday or Wednesday? I sort of lose track down here.”
“To-day? Why to-day’s Wednesday. No; hold on! It’s Thursday, isn’t it?”
“No, I don’t think so. I think it’s either Tuesday or Wednesday. Still, I don’t know: it might be Thursday.”
“No, I don’t believe it’s Thursday. I was expecting a telegram on Tuesday, and it would have had to come before Thursday. I guess it’s Wednesday.”
“Yes, I guess it is. I thought for a while it was Tuesday.”
“Oh, I don’t believe it’s Tuesday.”
“No, I guess it’s Wednesday, all right. That telegram ought to be here by now. How long are you staying here?”
“I don’t know. I’m expecting a telegram and I can’t tell till it gets here.”
Having reached a comparatively ripe intimacy by this time, it is almost inevitable that one of them should advance one of the thousand statistical questions that are so frequently encountered at Palm Beach, such as “Did you ever stop to think how many nails it took to build this hotel?” A few seconds later both of them have produced envelopes and are figuring busily.
Men who have traveled thousands of miles for the purpose of killing time at Palm Beach will frequently argue for two or three hours, and figure all over the backs of eight or ten envelopes and a couple of golf scores in an attempt to decide whether or not the value of all the diamond bracelets in Palm Beach would be sufficient to secure economic control of Russia. Newcomers to Palm Beach, knowing that America’s greatest financiers flock there during the season, frequently make the mistake of thinking that two men knitting their brows over a lot of figures are probably two great money-kings working up a scheme to corner the nation’s hop crop. In reality they are two ordinary citizens killing a little time by choking it to death with useless statistics.