A Daughter of Delilah — page 23: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

14 A FALSE TELEGRAM. ‘‘Perhaps Queenie herself is coming!’’ was the thought that flashed through Alston’s mind, and a burning, happy thrill made his heart bound. ‘“‘If she isin trouble, I will risk my immortal soul to help her!’ He called for wine, to which he helped himself freely, and dreamed happy dreams of the woman who had be- witched his very being. | Then he became impatient. Why had he not taken the precaution to telegraph in reply to Isabel’s message? Two hours passed, and he half staggered to his feet, but the wine had made him hilarious. ‘‘T must return to my friends in Cincinnati,’’ he told the landlord. ‘‘Here is my address, if any one comes to meet me. Telegraph me at once, and I will repay you. It may be a pleasant hoax on the part of some fellows in New York,’’ he added, ‘‘and I shall have to get level with them !”’ He went away with a good deal of devilment in his heart, but it was soon forgotten under the generous in- fluence of the wine he had imbibed. He sang many songs by the lonely way, and some of them would have brought a blush to beauty’s cheek. He had picked them up during wild midnight orgies in an underground slum nota stone’s throw from Madison Square Garden; ugly ditties paraphrased from the wanton rubbish which the habitue of the music hall considered delectable fare, when trilled from the lips of some painted and shameless jade under the glitter of a thousand lights—under the glamour of spangle and sheen, to the strains of voluptuous music, which was ever wel- come to the senses of the lewd. He thought of Isabel Russell, and his tongue was em- Gomicboo cS (E(0) mn