Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/238

"Only Two Miles to Terrace Tavern—Chicken, Steak and Lobster Dinners." "One Mile More to Terrace Tavern—Dancing Every Evening Six to Two—Happy Hatton's Celebrated Syncopated Seven." A speedometer mile-and-three-quarters beyond this last there is a giant crimson arrow pointing into a thicket and the terse injunction, "TURN HERE FOR TERRACE TAVERN," in letters a foot high.

At night, the injunction is continually obeyed. Car after car leaves the highway and twists along a serpentine side-road, until its headlights are one with the light that blazes like noon in the clearing at the end. August Schultz has ever been a firm believer in electricity for outdoor use. It allures, it looks hospitable and happy and as an aid to motorists somewhat inebriated it is invaluable. For indoor use, of course, he doesn't think so much of it.

Terrace Tavern is long and low and sprawling, made of stucco. It has a red tile roof, innumerable windows bonneted with red-and-white striped awnings, and below the window, boxes, in which things assorted grow. A liveried negro with a flashing white grin holds the door wide for you to enter, then lets it whisk to behind you so abruptly that you feel as though you had been swept in by a broom. On the wings of this head-start you hasten down a long tunnel of hall paved with red carpet, and bring up against a triple barrier of tall painted screen, velvet rope, and dinner-coated functionary who eyes you phlegmatically. From behind the screen, sounds issue . . . the wham-wham of jazz, or the combined roar of speech and laughter and forks on china . . . orchestra and guests in alternate hubbub. The dinner-coated functionary has to incline his ear to your lips to hear you say, "A table near the floor if you have it," and you have to