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never be abrupt and must be achieved by almost imperceptible
degrees. For this reason the passage of time from morning through
noon and the change in clientele from those impelled by urgency
or social inclination to a few· quick ones in the morning to the
Stork's patrons who begin drifting in oii the imponderable mar–
gins of lunchtime is never dramatic. The tides that ebb and fl.ow
past the plush rope and through the front bar are hardly ever well
defined or abruptly demarked with the single exception of theater
hour which is, all over New York, a more or less mathematically
fixed time of transition when an old order, nightly and on matinee
days, gives place to new.
For this reason the subdivision of this Book of the Hours of
the Stork into the three dominant periods of the drinking and eat-
ing day and night is almost entirely arbitrary, a device to establish a
pattern of chronology and editorial"order rather than a factual repre–
sentation of circumstance. To the casual and uninstructed eye there
would probably be small visible difference between the patronage
1
I
of the bar at one in the afternoon and eight in the evening except
for the presence of evening attire among the customers. The know-
ing observer would note, however, an absence of professional and
celebrity faces in the middle of the day, when a feminine clientele
is notably in possession, and a corresponding rise in the index of
43: Noon