Judge — February 1933 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

Judge Mastress Pepys’ Journal By Baird Leonard ANUARY 9.—A dull, mizzling day, so I did match its mood by falling upon disorderly closets and bureau drawers with the sullen violence of an avenging fury, reflecting, over the inventory of my Christmas presents, that portfolios with eighteenth cen- tury bindings and patent tin-openers which make short shrift even of sar- dine boxes give a delight which varies in kind rather than in degree, and that I am a lucky woman to have received one of each. Swept out ruthlessly all apparel and acces- sories of no immediate use, resolving never again to keep an ill-fitting jacket or an unbecoming hat, no mat- ter how much I have laid out for them, and when I did come upon forty-five cents beneath the lining of an old evening bag, my feelings were akin to those of Balboa when he did first behold the Pacific. The tele- phone a-ringing, and it was Mary Carpenter of Watertown, so full of the Oxford Group conference in Briarcliff that I did sit spellbound for thirty minutes with a wet cleans- ing cloth in my hand, nor could I believe my ears, neither, from such a humorist as Mary and in such a material age, so I did ask her for Thursday luncheon, for, albeit I may have to hear a good deal about the Day of Pentecost, it will be a splendid opportunity to go into the psychology of takeout re-bids with the best con- tract player of my acquaintance. Moreover, if I am to be spiritual clay in the hands of an evangelical potter, it would behoove me to select a worldly and sympathetie moulder like Mary, whom I can trust not to go off on a picn‘c and leave me in the oven. And even though a signifi- cant change be not wrought in my entire life, it will at least avail me something if I can be brought to forgive Samuel for having his wing chair recovered in a chintz which looks as if it had been out in the rain all night. Mightily pleased that my morning’s work did achieve a gleam- ing boudoir, faintly and pleasantly redolent of the Roman Hyacinth bath essence which Meg Millar sent me from London, and which came through the customs with so little fanfare that I do live in daily dread lest the Collector of the Port appear at my door any moment and demand it of me. All the afternoon on the chaise-longue with “In Time for Murder,” when I had probably have better spent my time finding out (Page 27, please) Why not exhibit the poses most likely to be assumed? 14