Judge — October 29, 1921 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

Sally at eighteen, soon to be a mother, the mistress of a mansion and presumably the owner of a fashionable West End’ dressmaking establishment. T sounds like wild romance, doesn’t it? The trip from Hornsey Road to Regent Street is surely as far as from a log-cabin-to-the-White- House. But it is all quite plausible when you read, and tremendously fascinating. Sally, for all her weak- ness of the flesh in the matter of her lover, is so sharp, so unscrupulous, so selfish, so intelligent, so sure of herself and what she wants, so in- exorably driven to grasp at posses- sions, at the power of money, and through it all so pathetically a small, ignorant, suffering, striving girl blossoming into womanhood, that she almost stands as an epitome of any of us, at our best, and our worst, moments. She is in the mad race to rise and grab and “be somebody.” She is love surging for expression, and love calculating and _ cold. She is bourgeoise society stripped to its naked soul. She is the American magazine converted into art. And such art! Here is realism that ignores the trivial detail and plunges down to the significant thought and action. Here is such happy selection that one page does the work of two. Here is such clarity of narration that the story moves as unbrokenly as water from a full spring, and language so happy that it runs like quiet, vivid talk. We try, oh, .so hard, at being 100% American, but when we read an Eng- lish novel like “Coquette” we just can’t help shading off to 99%, and admitting the fact. The Confidant He enters the restaurant where I am eating. Close by are three empty tables—but he chooses to sit at mine. His opening wedge is a question con- cerning the tenderness of my steak. Thence he digresses to the weather, the number of miles he has just driven, a favorite home brew, the girl he had last night. He is not, he intimates grossly, a back number. His little piggish eyes snap and he licks his thick lips greedily. Pres- ently he teils me that he is the daddy of “three fine little girls.” I do not warm to his confidences and we fin- ish the meal in silence. Hey-nonny-no! By La ToucHE HANCOCK | WOULD love to adopt the Shake- spearean way Of composing a pastoral ditty; It would seem so appropriate having my say In a language so frightfully pretty, But I’m rather peculiar for one of my set, And I hate putting phrases in mo- tion, With regard to the meaning of which I regret I have always been short of a notion. For it’s ‘‘Hey-nonny-no” every minute, And that “Hey-nonny” worries me so, As you might go and ask me what is it, And I’m hanged if I “Hey- Nonny” know! So you’ll have to put up with the best I can do, With no aid from the popular poet, Which is certainly rather unlucky for you, But at least I confess, and I know it. I will sing you the moonbeams across the lagoon, Or the bee, that on rose-petals dozes, For it’s sweeter to sing of “The Sil- very Moon,” And “A Garden of Beautiful Roses.” Will you come where the dew- drops are dripping A monotonous melody low? I assure you it’s awfully ripping, So you mustn’t say, “Hey- Nonny-No!” comicbooks.com