Life — June 7, 1906 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

-LIFE- The Swirl of the Golden Test (With Apologies to David Belasco and Blanche Bates) The Girt Tur REPORTER FIRST PICTUR A glimpse of the home of Tue Girt. on Fijth zvo People Who Came jrom Nothing.) (In New York Avenue HE GIRL: Tha-a-ank you. There's worse ways to bring p a girl than in a saloon, ain’t there? Of course, I've only had thirty-two dollars’ worth of education, and there’s no tellin’ what I might have done if I'd gone to Vassar; but after all, I don’t know that it would have shoved me right into the front ranks of society like my simple Wester accomplishment, leammed at Mother's knee, has done. You sce, my skillat mixin’ drinks an’ playin’ poker an’ faro give me an entrée right away. Why, just to show my ignorance, I was completely taken in by Dick’s line of talk, the night he come to rob my saloon. 1 offered to stake him for the sake of hearing him discourse, but when I found out that I'd give my first kiss to a road agent it nearly killed me. I was so ignorant that I didn’t know that being a road agent has its advantages. It’s good kindergarten trainin’ if you're aimin’ to be a great American financier. As I says to Dick, away back in my beautiful West, my California, No star is ever lost we once have seen; we always may be what we might have been.” An’ he replied, “I’m only a road agent; but from the first moment I touched your lips, I deter- mined to be something better.” And look what he is now President of half a dozen insurance and trust companies You see, he learned the business on the road. He says, sort of dis: contented now and then, that New York seems almost too easy Sometimes I beg him to retire, but he only answers, “ You can stop playing the game any time you want to, Girl; but J raid on!” And you really like our palace up here on upper Fifth Avenue? Simple but cosy, don’t you think? Yes, I had that bar fixed up in the corner of the drawing-room to remind me of the dear old Poky. ‘That portitre is the curtain Mr. Belasco had in the play—the sun risin’ over the mountains and the plains in front. Did I really ever tend bar in The Poky. Cer tainly, Idid. You ask any of my crowd.: ‘There ain’t a lady in the Smart Set that can mix drinks in the same day with me. That's what gave me my place in New York society, “She's so deliciously Western, and you should taste her cocktails.” A rise in the world? Oh, dear me, no, rather a descent, I call it You forget that I was mistress of The Poky. I calk this rather a come-down Now, I really am very much hurt by your asking that ques- tion. I certainly never sat on the tabl said, “He says I wung my heels, and ce of an angel—oh, hell!” I can’t imagine a lady barkcep, brought up as I have been, using such language. What I really said was, “Oh, Fudge!” The other was a little mistake of Mr. Belasco’s. Oh, so you did hear about our last game of poker? I had so hoped to keep it out of the papers. That shooting? Oh, don’t let that bother you; it’s just Dick practising on the insurance inspectors. Oh, yes, the last game of poker—that was the night Jerome raided us. He said our little palace here was just an ordinary gambling-house and had to be put out of commission Spiteful of him, wasn’t it? That same night Andrew Camegie ve the and Edwin Markham and some of the boys was here and we was havin’ the time of our lives, when suddenly there came all that racket. We didn’t pay much attention to it, for we thought it was just the policy-holders trying to get at Dick, when in walked Mr. Jerome. : : He was going to arrest the whole push right off, but I say: comicbooks.com