Judge — August 30, 1919 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

room, disguised in special delivery. The letter was unsigned, but she recognized the perfume as one on sale by all the best soapists. “Oft,” it began—and she smiled. Angela liked soft letters, and one that began with “oft,” she knew, would be as gooey as the inside of a ripe Camembert cheese. “Oft have I admired your smart closed carriage, your proud, board walk, the graceful swinging of your gait. They have quite run away with my heart, although my liver and lungs still remain unmoved. If you care to share a little whale and butter- milk at Kid's restaurant tonight with one who adores the very tacks you walk on, wire Ham-and- eggs, care United Stogie Store, No. 1142, Hoboken-on-the-Sewer. I thank you. Green Mustache.” Hatched in the happiness of her soul, a baby hope, no bigger than a Boston baked bean, flapped its beak and cawed in ecstasy. That day for lunch Angela Bish ate a heavy dessert to keep her spirits down. But, all the after- noon, the girls at the Almost-Fur factory, seeing her giggle over her glue, decided that she must have received the happy news of a death in the family She walked to the as if on hair And sure enough his mustache was green; and he must have deen green himself to take Angie so seriously. Few would have taken her at all. He held out a hand like twenty cents’ worth of bananas, and lifted his two-quart hat. “Angela,” he said, “long as I have known you—and it is now almost a whole minute—never have.I seen you more beautiful!” The compliment instantly went to her head, and there, in the great dim solemn silent spaces, it roamed about like a tailless cat in a cathedral. And her smile was that of one who has just borrowed a $400 squirrel coat to be photographed in. That is, if there are $400 squirrels. I doubt it She couldn’t eat. Indeed, long as she had practised the art, it was all she could do to do nothing. But he ate heartily and handily and greedily and gaudily in great glorious gosh-awful gobs. Like a fireman feeding a furnace, his knife went up and down. Was it time for the clinch yet? she wondered. No, there was still considerable pineapple pie on his mus- tache; and she decided to wait till he had finished his repast - at last it was all gone. Angie opened her eyes again. Now, little one,” said he, “come along with me We are going to have one of those wonderjazz evenings you read about in the fifteen cent magazines.” This was no news to little Angela, only, it wouldn't be like one of those short stories, she had decided; iit restaurant Sue Hav Grow Wart or would be a regular he-and-she serial, as illustrated by an artist with-three-names. . She took his arm, together with everything between his hat and heels, including the Flor de 14th St. cigar that was slowly turning his green mustache violet Come with him? You couldn’t have melted her off with an acetylene blast. She had grown on him like a wart or a bad habit, for richer, for poorer, for sale or for instance till death did them p * . * . . unctu re. . . . The hall of the Grafolion Com- pany was cold, so cold as to be well-nigh rectangular. As he poked her through the transom Angie was saying to herself, “Once I get him in my arms, nothing shall ever part us except mar- riage!” With her personality and her biceps she felt sure that she could hold him and his cigar Poor Angela! She was as opt mistic as a centipede about to attempt to cross a freshly var- nished floor. And yet, once alone with him— for when they went in, his cigar went out—she found, somehow, she just couldn't do it. It was not her will that relented, she had made no will. It was nothing so petty as pity, nor was it the mole on the bow of his nose. No, it was only the long overdue fact that she was handcuffed to the wall, and, try as she might, with all her might, she could not pull it down She could not even bend it. It was lucky for her that she was used to being a wallflower. I wish I didn’t have to describe the scene that followed. But your vulgar curiosity must be satisfied. Yet how shall I bring it home to you, if you insist upon having a ghastly thing like that in your own home? I can only say that, when that brute in human form ap- proached her as if to kiss and, my gawd! did nor kiss, her bloodshot shrieks sounded as follows: "AG AAHOS% |!" “’*|t|OW F 0° CE tS One would have thought they were dismembering a Member of Congress. Her screams filled the hall to repletion. And still the man she would vamp and could not, kept three-eighths of an inch from her, his green mus- tache brushing her nose. It was a ticklish situation for Angela. As near he was as rent day, yet far away as fairyland or the Differential Calculus. She never could tell them apart; few can. But what, ladies and gentlemen, was the most mysterious machine just abaft her fore-quarter, whose wheel, the while, was revolving with the hellish cruelty of a taximeter taking a girl home to the Bronx? It turned on and on. . . . Once she had left the water turned on all day in the bathtub. This was like that— only the floor was not so wet... . And as it turned, yy oN Him Like a \ Bao Hasit