TIME-OFF FROM THE SHOW New York Sights Which the Visitor Should Not Miss

You can’t expect the visitor to New York during the automobile show to stand in front of automobiles all day and all night. He’s got to look at something else once in a while, just so that he can see the automobiles better when he goes back to look at them. That’s only common sense.

Now comes the big question—what to look at? New York is a big city now, and unless you are careful you will look at the wrong things and before you know it, it will be time to go back and you will have seen nothing. Or practically nothing. Or next to nothing.

Let us say (Oh, go on! Be a good sport! Let us), let us say that you are to be in New York four days and six nights. Here is a schedule which you may follow or not, but, at any rate, look it over. It suggests something for you to do every evening and, in case you have any spare time during the day, there are one or two extra hints.

MONDAY EVENING

Of course, the very first night that you have free you will want to see the new Reinach collection of tapestries at the Metropolitan Art Museum. This collection is one of the most valuable in the world, and one of the hardest to hide under. The tapestries hang some four feet off the ground, so the minute you try to hide under one of them you are quite exposed up to at least your chest, maybe oftener than that.

Most of the tapestries in the exhibit are French, and consequently are kept in a little room off the main hall, to which admission is obtained only by conference with the curator. Of the others, the most interesting is that which depicts the hunting of a stag in the Middle Ages. In the lower left-hand corner you see the huntsmen starting out after the stag, carrying hauberks and falcons. As you work up through the tapestry, from left to right, it gets even less interesting, until, by the time they have caught the stag in the upper right-hand corner, you aren’t looking at it at all and have passed on to the next tapestry which shows huntsmen of the Middle Ages chasing a fox.

It has just occurred to us that the Art Museum is not open evenings; so this plan for Monday night is out. You will have to find something else to do. There is a good place on West Fifty-sixth Street.

TUESDAY EVENING

The Public Library, at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, is open until 11 o’clock. You will surely want to see this. Enter by the side door on the Forty-second Street side, as there are two of the nastiest lions you ever saw guarding the front entrance. Ring the little bell by the side entrance and when the man comes ask for Joe Delaney. He will ask who wants to see him and you say that Bob Benchley sent you. He will then let you in to the downstairs lobby, where there is an elevator to take you up to the reading room. This elevator is not running; so you will have to walk up three flights of marble stairs, and a pretty tough pull it is, too.

You will find the reading room brilliantly lighted and practically full of books. Go straight to the case marked “Biography M-TO.” Beginning at the top shelf, left-hand corner, pull all the books out, from left to right, and throw them in a pile on the floor. Pretty soon you will have quite a big pile and can begin on the case marked “History-Renaissance.” This will make another big pile. By this time, you will have several attendants helping you and you can work faster. If you stick to it until 11 o’clock, you will be able to pull out all the books on that side of the room and scuffle through them. Then you can go back to your hotel, tired but happy.

WEDNESDAY EVENING

By this time, you will be perhaps ready to see a little of the so-called “night life” of the metropolis. There is no better place to do this than at the Woman’s Exchange, on Madison Avenue between Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Streets. The specialty here is breads and cakes, and if you can get a table by the window you can eat your fill while watching the Madison Avenue trolley cars go thundering by. It would be well to wear your old clothes to this place, as along about 9 o’clock in the evening things begin to rough up quite a bit, and, by the time the fresh batch of cup cakes is ready at 10, the joint is a regular bedlam. It was here that Harry Thaw had been dining the night he shot Stanford White.

THURSDAY EVENING

We have saved until your last night in New York the big thrill of the week—riding on the Shetland ponies in Central Park. They usually put the ponies to bed at sundown, but by slipping the pony-man a dollar bill you can get him to leave as many of the little fellows out as you may require.

About nine o’clock things begin to rough up quite a bit.

Get to the park at about 8 p. m., wearing red coat and riding breeches. You might as well take along a good, big whip, too, in case your pony gets fresh. Carrying children about all day as they do, they are quite apt to think that they can do anything they like, and you must be ready to show them that they can’t. They will respect you all the more after a couple of good belts.

Once aboard the ponies, the best course is around the reservoir. Five times around at a brisk canter makes a nice ride. In case your feet drag on the ground (the ponies are pretty small) you can tuck them in under the saddle or else let them drag. For steeplechase racing it will be better to let them drag, as it makes it harder for the little animals to get over the hurdles. If you have lots of money to spend on the thing, you can give a hunt breakfast at the Central Park Casino.

ALTERNATE ENTERTAINMENT

Although you may have seen something of the automobile at the show, you will get a better idea of what the automobile really means to our civilization by coming with me to a little private exhibition which I will be glad to stage any afternoon between the hours of 4 and 6:30. I wish that every automobile manufacturer and salesman could join in, because I want them to see just what it is that they have done. If I had my way, I would get them all reservations on a train leaving the Pennsylvania station at 5:30 p. m. Then, at 4:45, I would start them from Forty-fourth Street in taxicabs or private cars and say: “Now, you big automobile men, you have got forty-five minutes to go half a mile in. And there isn’t another train until tomorrow morning.”

I would follow behind on foot, and when they were held up by the jam of automobiles at Forty-second Street for five minutes, I would jeer. When they were held up at Fortieth Street, I would hoot. During their five-minute holdup at Thirty-ninth Street, I would taunt them with: “What price automobiles, now?” and while they were chafing at the tieup at Thirty-eighth Street, I would call out: “Get a horse!” I would make them so sore at the automobile as an institution that they would swear never to make another.