Get Next‪!‬

One day last week I was beating the ballast up Broadway when Pete, the Piker, declared himself in and began to chatter about cinches at the track.


“Get the saw, Pete, and cut it,” I said; “it’s many a long day since I’ve been a Patsy for the ponies. Once they stung me so hard that for months my bank account looked like a porous plaster, so I took the chloroform treatment and now you and your tips to the discards, my boy, to the discards!”


Pete isn’t really a native of Dopeville-on-the-Fence, but he likes to have people think he knows the racing game backwards.


And he does—backwards. In real life he’s a theatrical manager and his name on the three-sheets is Peter J. Badtime, the Human Salary Spoiler.


In theatrical circles they call him the impresario with the sawdust koko and the split-second appetite.


Every time Pete poses as an angel for a troupe if you listen hard you can hear the fuse blow out somewhere between Albany and Schenectady.


From time to time over 2,197 actors have had to walk home on account of Pete’s cold feet.


Pete can develop a severe case of frosted pave pounders quicker than any angel that ever had to dig for the oatmeal money.


Pete is an Ace all right—the Ace of Chumps!