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Hall ofFame
fast. But, say, when I found out I couldn't get a room,
it suddenly came to me that I didn't have one single,
clean, boiled shirt in my baggage, and tonight I've got
to go to a dinner where I just must wear a white shirt.
I didn't want to buy a new one. Well, at the desk they
connected me by telephone with the laundry. There
they told me it would take two days. That wouldn't
suit me. So I said to the fellow, 'Look here, I've got to
have a shirt tonight.
If
I dori't get it, I'll run through
your hotel naked.' And, by George, sir; he promised me
a shirt'.''
BREAD AND MILK FOR GATES
,
John W. Gates, of "Betcha-a-million" fame, and his
bosom friend, Colonel "Ike" Ellwood, appeared in the
Bar, occasionally, though Gates' favorite hangout was
the Men's Cafe, across the hall. With them when he
came to New York almost invariably trailed Colonel
John Lambert, sometime warden of Joliet, Ill., peni–
tentiary, but president of the American Steel
&
Wire
Company at the time of the formation of the Steel
Trust. In the Gates aura, too, one would discover John
A. Drake and the latter's brother-in-law, Theodote P.
Shonts-that was before he was made chairman of the
Panama Canal Commission-and Loyall
L.
Smith, a
millionaire who had once been a Chicago newsboy. And
while its owner was a strict teetotaler, the moon-face
of Diamond Jim Brady, brass fittings salesman, gor–
mand and dinner party impresario, could be seen cir–
culating among the crowd, as he buttonholed this or
that "Big Feller," the orb illuminated by forty to a
hundred carats of diamonds or emeralds, or sapphires,
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