New York: Confidential‪!‬

P-s-s-t—

Lait and Mortimer want a word with you—confidential:

The authors had a lot of fun writing these pages. And infinitely more getting what they put into them. They both turned prematurely gray becoming Broadway-wise.

What you will read here they observed, absorbed, inhaled and swallowed through the years. They lived it.

This tome has no message. It may be helpful, it may be useful, but never purposeful, though it attempts to offer much sound advice. But who ever followed sound advice? If folks did, there would be no more marriages, divorces, gambling, guzzling, dancing, romancing, chasing, cheating, slickers, suckers, hussies, hangmen or hangovers—heaven forbid!

The "Confidential" in the title means Lait and Mortimer, who have never been in Grant's Tomb, have been in a lot of other places not so roomy, gloomy or wide open. It means they got their stuff off the record and on the up-and-up.

Therefore, this is not for Aunt Katie from Keokuk, but Uncle Dave the Deacon might find it of value next time he attends a convention in New York.

If you are seeking an orthodox guide or travel book about Gotham, lay this down. You will find little about the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge or the $2.50 cruise around Manhattan. The shelves of stores and libraries already groan under the burden of books on those subjects.

No. This is a commentary on and compendium of the Big Burg from the inside out, with some facts and observations that could amaze, amuse and steer not only strangers, but most of those supposedly nonexistent Americans, native New Yorkers.

The gaucherie of many locals as well as all yokels defies the emery-wheel polish of the world's most exciting, most thrilling and most misunderstood metropolis.

The cognoscenti—you can count them on the keys of the piano that Polly Adler stored when, after 40 years of lucrative operation of the oldest profession, she quit and went to Hollywood—know a few things, but their experiences have been circumscribed. Knowing New York is a full-time career.

To those who still get dizzy looking up at the tall buildings, who think a headwaiter smiles at them because he likes them, who send notes back to the stage-door tender and who think this is just Milwaukee multiplied, we cheerfully dedicate the memory of our mornings after and aspirins thereafter. We will them the thousands of waking hours when we should have been asleep, as lagniappe.

But we believe that if our readers study this work assiduously and note its findings and one-way arrows, they may avoid some booby-traps. We believe so, though we don't expect so.