Life — January 10, 1924 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

Lay till noon, not having slept at all during January the night. The head with too many hairpins 3rd in it lies as uneasy as the one that wears a crown, but I did not like upon retiring to disarrange the magnificent coiffure which the hairdresser had wrought me, my servant Emilie being away, and my own skill in this connection less than the dust. Nor would my husband knock me uncoliscious that I might slumber, as I besought him to do when I could find no sleeping potion in the chest, preferring to await, he said, a more reasonable occasion for such a deed. Lord! no ill that flesh is heir to troubles me more than insomnia, for in the night watches I do meditate upon the letters I have not answered, my tendencies to ex- travagance, the bores whom I should make a point of invit- ing to meals, and other matters which disturb me not at all during the light of day....To a great dinner in the evening, and at gaming thereafter, and I did mark to my astonish- ment that Samuel quitted bridge after two or three hands to join in at Mah Jong, and when I later demanded an expla- nation, he announced that a strange woman at his table had asked him at the outset if the A was a good card. This day I did begin to think about the only January resolution I have made for this year, which is to decide upon and lay in our next Christmas card before the first month is gone, so forth to consult with C, Falls, the illustrator, and he filled me with high hopes and a deal of information about costly paper. Thence to luncheon at Beth Haskins’s, and she did tell me how circum- stances had forced them to have their infant daughter at table in a hostelry and how the child had said loudly to the i “I want a glass of whisky!” to their great embar- rassment. But Lord! I can understand it, for I hear that the small children who play in Gramercy Park no longer prattle of tea parties, as in my own day, but mix and ex- change imaginary cocktayles by way of aping their elders. .--Casting up my accounts, I do find myself virtually insol- vent, and called upon to ponder my pet piece of philosophy, which is that I have apparently passed through the gate of Avernus several times, yet here I am in the upper air. Up betimes, reading that Bernard Shaw in a January speech before the Fabian Society has-ques- 5 tioned the value of civilization, and it is a subject on which’I could do a housetop circuit with zest my- self, for things have come to a fine pass when a nervous woman must alight from her motor in the middle of the street and battle her way to the pavement because of the congestion produced by an age of machinery. And when I did tell Sam that I should be willing to revert to a time of simpler tastes and slower transit, he pronounced my confes- sion interesting as emanating from one who had been known to weep when purchases were not delivered the same day. Methought his logic as poor as my own, but it were folly to have said so. Baird Leonard. “ NEWSPAPER job has its advantages.” “Yes?” A 100 PER CENT. CO-OPERATIVE APARTMENT “When people ask you why you gave it up you can always BUILT TO SUIT THE INDIVIDUAL TASTES OF THE OWNERS. explain that ‘I decided to become a free lance. comicbooks.com