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Bailey, Almira

"Vignettes of San Francisco"

We take visitors to see them. We brag about
them, and when we wish to be especially smart we pronounce them
caffa-tuh-ree-ah.
Personally, I am proud of our cafeterias, but I do not get on in them. I
enter hungry. I look sideways to see what other folks are eating. I
decide to have corned beef and cabbage and peach short cake and nothing
else. Then in the line I have the hurried feeling of people back of me,
and that I ought to make quick decisions. Everyone ought to eat salad,
so I take a salad. Then some roast beef looks good so I take that, and
the girl asks briskly with a big spoon poised, if I'll take potatoes,
and I don't wish potatoes, but she makes a great nest of them beside the
meat and fills the nest with gravy and I pass on. According to Hoover or
Maria Parloa or Roosevelt, I ought to have a vegetable, and so I take
two. Meanwhile I have taken bread, but the woman ahead takes hot scones
and so I do. I choose some thick-creamed cake, very fattening, but just
this once, and then, oh, I don't know. The tray is heavy and no place to
put it, and in my journeying I peek at the bill and it's over 75 cents,
and when I finally sit down opposite a stranger I find on my tray two
salads, and when I chose the other I don't remember.
But cafeterias are very fine for those who have cafeteria sense.

The Open Board of Trade

Months ago one of The Journal readers suggested a story to be found
down on Market street near the Hobart building.


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