SPOON COLLECTING THE FAD.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 370, 11 June 1903, Page 6

SPOON COLLECTING THE FAD.

Women Have Escorts Take Them from Restaurants—iA Propetetov's Idea*. ... '1 don't object to fads on principle," said the proprietor of a fashionable Broadway restaurant to a reporter for the iNew Tor* Times the other day, "but there is one in vogue now that I would like to see run its course and give way to one which respects the rights of property. The young women oi this town have a craze for collecting restaurant spoons. They don't care for them at all, unless they bear the mark of the house from which they were filched. No, they won't take them themselves. The average young woman, all reports to the contrary notwithstanding, is timjd when in a public diningroom. They simply intimate to their gentlemen acquaintances that they appreciate such things and the men they do the rest. "I can't say how many I have lost from good customers whom I couldn't call down even if I were to catch them red-handed. The customer of a place like this is likely to be worth several hundred dollars in the course of a year, and a few spoons more or less would not cut down our profits to any large extent, but the practice is annoying, and for that reason more than any other I would like to see it abandoned. "Say, I knew one young fellow who couldn't steal even to please his best girl. What do you suppose he did? He went and had a lot of spoons especially stamped with the names of different restaurants and gave them to her one at a time. She undoubtedly has a large collection, but I have often wondered since I heard about it if she would set as much store by them as she does if she were to be Informed that the donor? SQOMt by them honestly."