I will tell you about Monsieur Le Bon Chef, though by no means did I learn this all my first afternoon. I only picked up a little here and there, now and then. He came to this country a French immigrant from near Toulouse six or so years ago, his heart full of dreams as to the opportunities in America. Likely as not we might now have to add that, after many searchings, he landed a job peeling potatoes at fifteen dollars a month. Monsieur Le Bon Chef was no Bon Chef at all when he landed—knew none of the tricks of “chefness” to speak of. His first day in America he sought out an employment office. Not a word of English could he speak. While the employment agent was just about to shake his head and say, “Nothing to-day,” a friend, or at least a countryman, dashed up. “I have a job for you,” said the countryman, and he led my Bon Chef to New York's most aristocratic hotel. Monsieur Le Bon Chef could not know there was a cooks' strike on. Down to the kitchen they led him, and for some weeks he drew ten dollars a day wages and his room and board right there at the hotel. To fall from Toulouse into a ten-dollar-a-day job! And when one knew scarce more than how to boil potatoes!
Of course, when the strike was over, there were no such wages paid as ten dollars a day. Nothing like that was he earning these six years later when he could make the beauteous works of art in jelly. I asked him if he liked his work. He shrugged his shoulders and brushed one side of his rather bristly blond mustache. “Na—no like so much—nothing in it but the moaney—make good moaney.” He shrugged his shoulders again and brushed up the other side of his mustache. “No good work just for tha moaney.” You see he really is an artist. He was my quiet, nice friend, Monsieur Le Bon Chef. Indeed, one night he gave me a wondrously made empty cigar box with a little lock to it. “Ooh La-la!” I cried, and made a very deep bow, and said in what I'm sure was correct French—because Monsieur Le Bon Chef said it was—“Thank you very much!”
So then, all there was on our side of the kitchen was my little compartment and the not quite so little compartment of Monsieur Le Bon Chef, whose confines reached around the corner a bit. Around that corner and back a little way were two fat Porto-Rican women who washed glasses and spoke no English. Beyond them, at the right of the stairs going up to the main kitchen, were clean dishes. They came on dumb-waiters from some place either above or below.