IN GENTLEST CHICAGO

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 August 1929, Page 3

IN GENTLEST CHICAGO

“NEVER SEE A GUNMAN.”

■ “Bootleggers and gangsters?” I ed plaintively. The smile of The Man from Chicago broadened, says a wuter in the Sunday Express. . “Gats and hi-jackers?” I queried desperately. The mouth qf the Man from Chicago began to twitch dangerously. , • . “Gang wars?” I breathed hoarsely. The Man from Chicago began to laugh. He sat in his chair and roared until the tears ran down his cheeks, and then, while I leaped to one side, reached for his hip and drew out, not a “gat,” but a handkerchief, and tried to quench his guffaws. And this is a man from tlie city where they shoot one another “Good morning;” from the city where, when a man has succeeded for 15 years, he feels inclined to write to the papers asking, “Is this a record?” No, Mr. Francis Neilson, citizen of Chicago, was disappointing. “My wife,” said The Mun from Chicago, trying hard to stop laughing, “my wife, ha, ha, wouldn’t know a gangster if she saw one —and what’s a ‘gat’? “A gun,” I informed this synthetic Chicagoan.

“Look here,” said the Man from Chicago, “the town’s just like any other large city in the world. Over here you seem to have the idea that we peep out of our front room windows and look at the murders on the lawn. Take it from me, you never see a gunman. Everything is civilised. Even the bootleggers send their sons to Harvard and leave them drink districts in their wills. Gats and gangsters—oh, ha, ha!” “Ha, ha,” I answered emptily staring at the faultless tailoring, the lack of bulge on the hip of the perfect trousers, and listening to the accentless English voice.

“So this is what fifteen years in Chicago does to an English ex-Liberal M.P. —leaves him untouched.” I thought trying hard to “place” Mr. Nelson in a category of types. He went to the United States some 15 years ago, and made a fine name as a playwright. He is the joint author of “The Butterfly On the Wheel,” and a Liberal M.P. in 1910; also he was a member of “The Men Who Come Back.”