Life — December 4, 1913 — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

BEVA4 LIFE Ri ge FOR A EUGENIC BOY He nodded toward the goddess of the bar in her new art frame and said to the club crony who was drinking with him: “He must be in love with the girl up there!" This was her official christening. She became known the town over in this way and ran King Cole a close race for popularity. Men in the clubs and offices desiring to invite each other out would say simply: “Let us go over and see Jimmy’s girl?” All of which used to cause Jimmy to blush behind the ears. He didn’t like it in the least but he had to grin and bear it. Jimmy was, in his way, shy as a fawn and modest as a violet-— as his love-making methods after- ward proved. And it is trusted that the reader will not be completely shocked to learn that he was also religious. It was in the church that he first saw and fell in love with Maggie McCune. Stunned and cold one day as he knelt she passed down the aisle on her way to leave the place and behold—there was the girl of the canvas—dressed as Jimmy always wished her to be,— in real clothes. There was the radiant hair bound and in order, the big pansy eyes and the sweet smiling mouth. And he haunted the church—this was one of the reasons that Jimmy be- came so religious—saw her time after time, praying, kneeling, her face lit with fine devotion, flooded with rays from the glass windows and in a week or so he was desperately and madly in love and had begun to pray that he might meet her. Heaven was with him one day and she dropped her prayer book and he went to her trembling and in fine color to return it. And Jimmy, as we have said, was good looking. And he looked particularly good just then with a love- hungry glint in his eyes that any girl can recognize in a minute. But with all his worship of the girl, there was an awe—a feeling that held him off in spite of all he ever made up his mind to say or to do when next they met. Sometimes he persuaded that he was only waiting until he had secured some other place than the one he had made so securely his own. He knew that Margaret did not exactly revel in the idea of a barkeeper for a beau. But that the girl herself, was losing sleep and getting thin be- cause of his ungallant delay as a wooer he hadn't even the ghost of an idea. Which brings us to the merry Christ- mas-tide and Maggie McCune, pale and desperate, tying the mistletoe to the gas jet. Little did she dream that the only man in the world who knew all about beverages and had invented a rickey knew nothing about mistletoe beyond that it was a Christmas green! Even the wreath of the girl over the bar, which had interested him, represented to him some sort of a flower, But traveling through the holiday-lit streets, one evening, he saw a pile of the beautiful glossy leaves with white berries shining here and there like bits of snow. And his mind leaped back to the picture girl who looked so like his own girl and at once he saw that it was with this leaf and berry that she was crowned. And a delightfully sentimental and charming idea took possession of him. He wanted to see Margaret as she would look in such a coronal. You see himself Jimmy was hopelessly in 2 dream by this time and also somewhat harassed by the distance that continued to in- tervene between him and the girl he loved. Many a man, if he would con- fess, has gone through this phase of torturing tongue-tied passion when in the presence of his adored one. And some men can never speak but go on to hopeless bachelorhood ! He entered the shop and a pleasant young lady told him they could make up such wreaths. They frequently made them for Christmas weddings. Jimmy blushed deeply all the way down his spinal column. The wreath was to be ready in a box the next evening which was his night off and he would call for it on his way to the McCune home. There Miss McCune, looking be- witching things out of her purple eyes, stood, cat-like, directly under the gas jet and smiled. And Jimmy saw noth- ing but her. He unfolded it from its tissue paper wrappings and placed it softly on her hair, standing off to admire the effect. She gave a little cry of delight and stepped to the mirror. Then she turned to him somewhat inquiringly, blushing almost as red as Jimmy only in wavering going and coming flushes. Jimmy's blush was a fine deep all-over red, “ How did you come to think of it?” she faltered. And he told her of the girl in the picture and of the wreath she wore and how she, Miss McCune, had her faded for looks. “Don’t you know what it means, Jim" ? she questioned him softly. “Christmas, I suppose,” said he; “like holly and evergreen.” His heart jumped. She had called him Jim—she had called him Jim—for the first time. His eyes lit up with a hungry glint— that wirelessed to her heart. She laughed softly but determinedly—bold- ly, She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. “That's what it means”, she whis- pered. And Jimmy suddenly came into his own with her head in the hollow of comichooks.gom