Psmith, Journalist. P. G. WodehouseЧитать онлайн книгу.
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P. G. Wodehouse
Psmith, Journalist
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664189967
Table of Contents
CHAPTER III — AT "THE GARDENIA"
CHAPTER V — PLANNING IMPROVEMENTS
CHAPTER VII — VISITORS AT THE OFFICE
CHAPTER VIII — THE HONEYED WORD
CHAPTER XI — THE MAN AT THE ASTOR
CHAPTER XIII — REVIEWING THE SITUATION
CHAPTER XV — AN ADDITION TO THE STAFF
CHAPTER XVI — THE FIRST BATTLE
CHAPTER XVII — GUERILLA WARFARE
CHAPTER XVIII — AN EPISODE BY THE WAY
CHAPTER XIX — IN PLEASANT STREET
CHAPTER XXI — THE BATTLE OF PLEASANT STREET
CHAPTER XXII — CONCERNING MR. WARING
CHAPTER XXIII — REDUCTIONS IN THE STAFF
CHAPTER XXIV — A GATHERING OF CAT-SPECIALISTS
CHAPTER XXVI — A FRIEND IN NEED
CHAPTER XXVII — PSMITH CONCLUDES HIS RIDE
CHAPTER XXVIII — STANDING ROOM ONLY
CHAPTER XXIX — THE KNOCK-OUT FOR MR. WARING
PREFACE
THE conditions of life in New York are so different from those of London that a story of this kind calls for a little explanation. There are several million inhabitants of New York. Not all of them eke out a precarious livelihood by murdering one another, but there is a definite section of the population which murders—not casually, on the spur of the moment, but on definitely commercial lines at so many dollars per murder. The "gangs" of New York exist in fact. I have not invented them. Most of the incidents in this story are based on actual happenings. The Rosenthal case, where four men, headed by a genial individual calling himself "Gyp the Blood" shot a fellow-citizen in cold blood in a spot as public and fashionable as Piccadilly Circus and escaped in a motor-car, made such a stir a few years ago that the noise of it was heard all over the world and not, as is generally the case with the doings of the gangs, in New York only. Rosenthal cases on a smaller and less sensational scale are frequent occurrences on Manhattan Island. It was the prominence of the victim rather than the unusual nature of the occurrence that excited the New York press. Most gang victims get a quarter of a column in small type.
P. G. WODEHOUSE New York, 1915
CHAPTER I—"COSY MOMENTS"
The man in the street would not have known it, but a great crisis was imminent in New York journalism.
Everything seemed much as usual in the city. The cars ran blithely on Broadway. Newsboys shouted "Wux-try!" into the ears of nervous pedestrians with their usual Caruso-like vim. Society passed up and down Fifth Avenue in its automobiles, and was there a furrow of anxiety upon Society's brow? None. At a thousand street corners a thousand policemen preserved their air of massive superiority to the things of this world. Not one of them showed the least sign of perturbation. Nevertheless, the crisis was at hand. Mr. J. Fillken Wilberfloss, editor-in-chief of Cosy Moments, was about to leave his post and start on a ten weeks' holiday.
In New York one may find every class of paper which the imagination can conceive. Every grade of society is catered for. If an Esquimau came to New York, the first thing he would find on the bookstalls in all probability would be the Blubber Magazine, or some similar production written by Esquimaux for Esquimaux. Everybody reads in New York, and reads all the time. The New Yorker peruses his favourite paper while he is being jammed into a crowded compartment on the subway or leaping like an antelope into a moving Street car.