Back to 'True Confessions', There is No Balm in Gilead

There is a little item in a recent issue of the "New Yorker," easily overlooked, but significant just the same. Seems that a friend of the publication had occasion to visit Boston to see his favorite physician about a case of ulcers. Well, our subject, arriving at South Station, forthwith boarded a cab and was whisked to the Copley. What happened to him in the taxicab need not concern us here. To the ear of the trained Bostonian, however, the combination of "South Station" and "Copley" lacks a certain logical connection.

Mr. Ross, you ought to be ashamed. The Copley is just across the street from the Back Bay Station. When does a friend of the "New Yorker" get, off at South Station anyhow? All that indefinable air of well-being, good cigars and whiskey, that subtle compound of Brooks Bros., Yardley and Sulka disappear in a puff of smoke. The ruddy executive becomes a pathetic, puzzled little fellow in a battered fedora, clutching a suitcase in his arms and sweating profusely. He's probably run down at the heel, too. Hell, Harold, you might as well give him a dime and put him on the subway.