§ 294 A Warning Word to a Friend
Two Irishmen, newly landed, got jobs as laborers in a small machine shop on the second story of a loft-building, so-called, on the lower West Side of New York. Under the fire regulations, smoking by the operatives was not permitted while they were on duty. During their first morning in the new place one of the green hands, whose name was Donlan, craved a few comforting whiffs from his pipe. He voiced his desire and a friendly fellow-employee confided to him that in such cases it was customary to ask leave of the foreman to go to the washroom and there to steal a clandestine smoke.
Thus advised, Donlan approached his boss and inquired the whereabouts of the washroom.
“Go down the hall,” said the foreman, “and take the first turn to the right, and the second door you come to after that is the door to the lavatory.”
Donlan undertook to follow instructions but he made a mistake. In the darkness he took the turn to the left instead of the right-hand turn, and, opening the second door, stepped into the elevator shaft and struck with a bump on the ground floor below.
Presently he came back upstairs. He was sweeping up rubbish when O’Day, his buddy, asked him where was the washroom.
Donlan gave him the direction as he remembered it, and, as O’Day turned to go, he called out to him:
“But say, Larry, look out for the top step—it’s a son-of-a-gun!”