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SAM IN THE SUBURBS
CHAPTER ONE SAM STARTS ON A JOURNEY
ALL day long, New York, stewing in the rays of a late August sun, had been growing warmer and warmer; until now, at three o’clock in the afternoon, its inhabitants, with the exception of a little group gathered together on the tenth floor of the Wilmot Building on Upper Broadway, had divided themselves by a sort of natural cleavage into two main bodies—the one crawling about and asking those they met if this was hot enough for them, the other maintaining that what they minded was not so much the heat as the humidity.
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The reason for the activity prevailing on the tenth floor of the Wilmot was that a sporting event of the first magnitude was being pulled off there—Spike Murphy, of the John B. Pynsent Import and Export Company, being in the act of contesting the final of the Office Boys’ High-Kicking Championship against a willowy youth from the Consolidated Eyebrow Tweezer and Nail File Corporation. The affair was{10} taking place on the premises of a few stenographers, chewing gum; some male wage slaves in shirt sleeves; and Mr. John B. Pynsent’s nephew, Samuel Shotter, a young man of agreeable features, who was acting as referee.
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In addition to being referee, Sam Shotter was also the patron and promoter of the tourney; the man but for whose vision and enterprise a wealth of young talent would have lain undeveloped, thereby jeopardising America’s chances should an event of this kind ever be added to the program of the Olympic Games. It was he who, wandering about the office in a restless search for methods of sweetening an uncongenial round of toil, had come upon Master Murphy practicing kicks against the wall of a remote corridor and had encouraged him to kick higher. It was he who had arranged matches with representatives of other firms throughout the building.
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