LIFE IN THE RITZ TENEMENT

[A recent ruling of the Tenement House Commission places all of New York’s new apartment-houses in the technical classification of “tenements” for the enforcement of certain clauses of the Tenement House Law.]

Scene: The rear of Mr. Brisbane’s new apartment palace—the Ritz Tower. It is Monday morning and the tenants are seen hanging out their wash from the kitchen windows.

Twenty-first Floor Back: Good morning to you, Mrs. Van Cleve! A charming day, isn’t it?

Twenty-second Floor Back: The same to you, Mrs. Thornton-Martin. And too charming a day to be cooped up inside like this.

Twenty-first Floor: My dear, the killingest thing! Speaking of being cooped up—did you hear that (lowering the voice) Freddie Welt was arrested Saturday?

Twenty-second Floor: The Welts on the thirty-fifth floor! My dear, how frightful! What for?

Twenty-first: Well, it seems that Freddie and some of the boys from the Linx Club had been playing polo—

“Good morning to you, Mrs. Van Cleve!”

(A delivery boy from Cartier’s clatters up the back stairway.)

Boy: Van Buren live here?

Thirtieth Floor: Two flights up. They’re out now. You can leave the stuff here.

Boy: Three thousand dollars collect on it.

Thirtieth Floor: Go on up and tuck it under the door.

Twenty-ninth Floor: I’m going to speak to the janitor about those folks on the twenty-eighth.

Thirtieth Floor: A lot of good it will do. They’re his cousins. What have they done now?

Twenty-ninth Floor: All their empty champagne bottles out by the back door where Reggie stumbles over them going to work in the morning! They had a lot of Roumanians up there last night till four in the morning.

Thirtieth Floor: Roumanians, eh? Why don’t those people go back where they came from if they don’t like it here?

Twenty-ninth Floor: That’s what I’d like to know. I said to Reggie last night, I said, “Reggie, if you were half a man you’d go down there and tell them that if they can’t behave themselves why don’t they go over to the Racquet Club where they belong.”

Twenty-eighth Floor (flinging open her window): Oh, is that so?

Twenty-ninth Floor: Yes, that’s so!

Twenty-eighth Floor: Well, if you’d keep that person with the fiddle quiet once in a while the rest of us might get some rest.

Twenty-ninth Floor (to the shaft in general): She calls Jascha Heifetz “that person with a fiddle!”

Twenty-eighth Floor: Jascha Heifetz or Mischa Elman—it’s all the same to me. Don’t he get enough money playing in concerts that he should come around playing at people’s tenements all the time?

Thirty-fourth Floor (slamming open the window): Shut up below there, will you! (Throws out a pan full of alligator pear rinds.)

The Policeman on the Beat (from below): Come on up there, cut that out or I’ll run yez all in!

(All the heads are drawn in and the windows slammed shut.)

A Voice on the Stairs with Bell Accompaniment: Oyster-forks sharpened! Oyster-forks sharpened!