I

“I want you to take me to Palm Beach,” says she. “I want you to take a vacation, and that’s where we’ll spend it.”

“And that ain’t all we’d spend,” I says.

“Remember your promise,” says she.

So I shut up and listened.

The dope she give me was along these lines: We could get special round-trip rates on any o’ the railroads and that part of it wouldn’t cost nowheres near as much as a man’d naturally think. The hotel rates was pretty steep, but the meals was throwed in, and just imagine what them meals would be! And we’d be stayin’ under the same roof with the Vanderbilts and Goulds, and eatin’ at the same table, and probably, before we was there a week, callin’ ’em Steve and Gus. They was dancin’ every night and all the guests danced with each other, and how would it feel fox-trottin’ with the president o’ the B. & O. , or the Delmonico girls from New York! And all Chicago society was down there, and when we met ’em we’d know ’em for life and have some real friends amongst ’em when we got back home.

That’s how she had it figured and she must of been practisin’ her speech, because it certainly did sound good to me. To make it short, I fell, and dated her up to meet me downtown the next day and call on the railroad bandits. The first one we seen admitted that his was the best route and that he wouldn’t only soak us one hundred and forty-seven dollars and seventy cents to and from Palm Beach and back, includin’ an apartment from here to Jacksonville and as many stopovers as we wanted to make. He told us we wouldn’t have to write for no hotel accommodations because the hotels had an agent right over on Madison Street that’d be glad to do everything to us.

So we says we’d be back later and then we beat it over to the Florida East Coast’s local studio.