Sun hunting Author:Kenneth Lewis Roberts Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OF THE TELEGRAM-EXPECTERS OF THE DATE- GUESSERS—AND OF THE STATISTIC-WEEVILS There are many lonely men and women at Palm Beach who almost cry with gratitud... more »e when somebody speaks to them. They are like many Congressmen, who are big people at home, but of less account in Washington than a head porter. Out of all the people who flock to Palm Beach to spend large amounts of money and bask in the soothing rays that emanate from the socially prominent, ninety per cent. might be compared to very small potatoes in a two hundred-acre lot. Even the majority of the people whose names are names to conjure with in Palm Beach society can't be found in the pages of Who's Who. The majority of men who pay the bills af the big hotels are forced to struggle hard to kill time when they have finished their golfplaying for the day. Enormous numbers of them seem to spend most of their spare time sitting dolefully around hotel lobbies and expecting telegrams that never come. If you fall into conversation with any man in any Palm Beach hotel lobby, he invariably explains his inactivity by saying that he is expecting a telegram. Next to expecting telegrams, the most popular Palm Beach time-killer seems to consist of wondering what day of the week it is. Sneak up behind any two important- looking men who seem to be discussing affairs of moment, and the chances are ten to one that you will hear the following weighty conversation: "Is to-day Tuesday or Wednesday? I sort of lose track down here." "To-day? Why to-day's Wednesday. No; hold on! It's Thursday, isn't it?" "No, I don't think so. I think it's either Tuesday or Wednesday. Still, I don't know: it might be Thursday." "No, I don't believe it's Thursday. I was expecting a telegram on Tuesday, and it would have had to come before Th...« less