Gone, But Hardly Forgotten

A Glimpse at the Government's Newly Organized High-Society Labor Camps

SCHUYLER LENOX

I HAVE Cooney to thank for it Of course, you all know Cooney, the man who used to be head house detective at the Biltmore. At any rate, if you don't know him, you may be sure he knows you. Knowing people is Cooney's business. That is why he is at present working for the Government in the quiet, unobtrusive channels of the Secret Service.

Really, I believe if I had not run across Cooney just when I did, I should now be biting my nails in the upholstered solitude of a private filbert-farm, a hopeless victim of ingrowing loneliness.

My sense of loneliness came on gradually, like mumps. The first symptoms of it were apparent just after the passing of the Government's so-called Anti-Loafing Law. But I did not connect the two phenomena, at all.

Oh, no! It took Cooney to do that.

People kept asking me: "Where is So-andSo?" "Where are all those happy friends of ours?" "Where, for instance, are the cabaret lads and lassies, all those dare-devil, care-free boys and girls who used to sit around the restaurants, listening to the ragged jazz, and wooing the good Widow Clicquot?" And, always, the same answer, "Where, indeed?"

Yes, the good old days have gone. The happy people have simply disappeared.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

SHALL never forget, for instance, my first glimpse of the U—Club window with-

out Horace Gribben; the club mastodon. The sight of the empty window froze me to the pavement. It was as if a burglary—grand larceny—had been committed.

The great red chair in the corner still bore the intaglio of his sumptuous curves, but of the original there was not a vestige. Rushing through the club entrance I at once sought out the person most likely to possess definite information, Miss Sisley, the bar-tendress (for, of course, the club was among the first of the city organizations to fall in with the spirit of the times and replace its able-bodied men servants with female help). Miss Sisley was plainly embarrassed at my question.

"Mr. Gribben, sir. . . . Oh, yes . . . Mr. Gribben ... he went away. . . . That is, some gentlemen came ... he was taken . . ." "What was he taken with?" I asked, the idea of apoplexy being uppermost in my mind.

"With a truck, sir, but . . . but, you might ask at the office, sir. I can't talk."

As if to prove her last statement she lapsed into silence. The office was no more communicative.

SADLY perplexed, I fared forth to an appointment with old Mrs. Pruhn-de-Peyster. You know, of course, that estimable lady's propensity for public appearances. There was to be a special afternoon concert at the Metropolitan, a last gorgeous flare-up of the musical season. Imagine my surprise when I was shown into an empty box. To right and left of me stretched the golden horse-shoe, a barren waste of emptiness. How thin and spindly were the golden chairs unadorned by the usual gorgeous bulks of humanity.

Where were .they all, the glittering exponents of the law of the survival of the fattest? And where, too, the sylph-like debutantes who usually formed their entourage,—those clinging vines who clustered about their massive parents and told them what was going on! The hollow boxes echoed my query, "Where, O, Where?" That evening was the evening set for the opening of the Follies, and Stepney Foote, of course, had ring-side seats. He had bid in a box, seating six, for two hundred dollars, absurdly cheap considering war prices. Naturally, I was keen to go.

Would you believe it, the shrimp never showed up at all; I shared my rage, and six perfectly good chairs, with old Peter Vanderpoel, who has not been able to put his entire left foot on the ground since Delmonico moved up-town, and who has a face like a mixed grill.

Not a single male of the younger dancing set was in evidence. They had all disappeared as if by magic, leaving, in New York society, a glorious garland of girls completely surrounded by tufts of white hair and bald domes of silence. It was too much! It was then, as I fled toward the elevators that I ran into Cooney.

"For Heaven's sake," I burst out, "where is everybody ? What has happened to New York ? Come on around the corner and wise me up."

I used the vernacular on Cooney—and it worked. Over a brace of bevos I gave him a resume of my harrowing day. Friendly but always on his guard, he heard my story and finally unbent enough to say, "It's the new law, kid, see? We gets orders to round 'em up, see, and we rounds 'em up." Gradually, the truth dawned on me. The Anti-Loafing Law had gone into effect. To my delight Cooney continued with an invitation. "Me and the Chief are going out to-morrow to look 'em over. If you'd like to come along, I might be able to work you in as an assistant. Anyway, be at the 57th Street Station at 8:30—an' bring a coat."

YOU may be sure I let nothing stand between me and that engagement. Cooney was as good as his word and, after a curt introduction to the Chief, I slipped into the front seat beside the driver and we shot off across the Williamsburg Bridge as if the traffic laws were mere literature—like the anti-gambling rules in a club book.

It is not possible for me to be too definite as to where we went. Obviously, if all the world knew the locations of the great useful-laborcamps, there would be an embarrassment of visitors. Suffice it to say then, that somewhere near the Piping Rock Club, on Long Island, I caught a glimpse of the first great uselessuseful-labor-camps on Long Island. This was the Debutantes Camp, one of the tremendous organizations which are doing so much to convert aimless idleness into willing hearts and helping hands. A great plain of some twenty acres, evidently part of a neighboring estate, was absolutely pink with debutantes—pink being the color of the uniforms in this particular camp.

There must have been at least five thousand of them—some bending over fresh-cut furrows, others filing by with flat baskets hung on pink ribbons over their shoulders. In a passing group I suddenly saw Sibyl de Peyster, and involuntarily called her name, to my great regret, for—an instant later—I saw that she was in tears. Yes, great round tears coursed down her pink and white cheeks.

"Sibyl," I cried, "what is it. Aren't you happy?"

"Happy!" she answered, gaily, "I was never so happy in my life. It's the onions. I am planting them. Aren't they beauties?" She held one up to me, and my eyes filled sympathetically. But, with a back-breaking jolt, the driver threw the car from standing to high speed and we were off, the flat country soon streaming behind us.

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OUR next stop was somewhere near Tuxedo. I do not even remember crossing the ferry; I think we must have driven over through the Hudson tubes. At any rate, there we were, and before me stretched one of the most wonderful sights I have ever seen. At the end of a narrow valley, sloping at one end, was a wide platform upon which stood a mass of great figures dressed in horizon blue rompers.

"Matrons' Camp," said the Chief. "Making grape juice for the Navy."

I could hardly believe my eyes. At a sharp word of command from a slim officer in khaki, the entire group of heroic female figures suddenly seated themselves on long wooden benches. Simultaneously the level of the platform sank several inches and a great stream of grape juice gushed forth, through large pipes, at a lower level, where it was scooped up and poured into metal containers by other workers. A well-known voice pierced my amazement; it was none other than Mrs. De Peyster, radiant with health and vigor.

"I'm Top-Sergeant of the bottling squad," she said proudly—"and oh, how I love it. I was so sorry about the concert at the Metropolitan, but . . ." I hastily interrupted her in order to give her good news of Sibyl, for our time was short. Two minutes later I was whisked away on another mad whirl in the machine.

THE last stop was perhaps the most interesting, if not the most spectacular of all, for it was here that I saw what I had always considered absolute wasteproduct converted into splendid usefulness and energy.

This time the scene was an interior, a long, well-lighted shop of orthodox army construction, the open windows of which commanded a wonderful view of the rolling hills near Bernardsville—somewhere between the Post and the Pyne estates.

Facing each other, at long tables, were row upon row of busy masculine figures, clad in homespun pajamas, intently absorbed in operating hundreds of sockknitting machines.

"The Social Club Register Camp; there's your friend Foote," said Cooney at my elbow, and there, sure enough, was Stepney in the very act of delivering a ball of yarn to no less a person than good old Horace Gribben. All down the line were other familiar faces, and shapes— the entire U-Club outfit.

IT was just like old-home-week, and my heart bounded at seeing my friends again. Stepney was dancing down the aisle with all his old grace, a gay vendor's cry on his lips—"Yam! yarn ! who'll buy my fresh-laid yarn!" While Horace bent patiently over his machine crooning an old knitting song, "Turn-the-heel, O, turn-the-heel; perl-away, my baby."

You should have seen the look of innocent amazement on his face as he looked up at me!

"Hello," he said. "Sorry I can't stop, but the right foots are forty socks ahead."

He nodded toward Sam Merrywell, his vis-a-vis, and I realized the ingenuity of dividing the tables lengthwise, to create competition between the lefts and rights.

"I found this in your box at the club," I said. But the only answer was "Turnthe-heel, O, turn-the-heel." He was oblivious to all but his song and his stint.

As I thrust the letter (it was only an old bill) into my pocket, Cooney motioned me to go. It was just as well.

During the ride home, I realized, not without a touch of sadness, that what society had lost in these, its bright ornaments of club, of ball-room, of opera and of roof-garden life, it had more than made up for in practical usefulness.

"Yes," I thought, that night, just before I ostermoored myself in the harbor of dreams: "Though we see them not, it is nice to know that they are there—; and, after all, perhaps it is just as well for us to let them stay there, at least for the duration of the war!"