Life — August 13, 1925 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

10 - LIFE - Where Will It All End? That Is the Question That Is Asked, Daringly, in Illustrated by Lauren Stout He Knew What She Needed By Henry William Hanemann Jous HORTENSE was a winsome little thing, who on her last birthday was just—— but that would be telling. Suffice it to say she was young, with wild vio- let eyes and the lithe, unconscious grace and freedom of motion of a brocket, which is a red deer two years old or my rhyming dictionary is a cock-cyed liar. At the age of eighteen months, Julia discovered herself being given a bath by her nurse. Such as it wasn't, Julia admired her bathing costume and decided with that wistful gravity which is truly a child’s that she was clad in the only ensemble which really did her the most credit, altogether in altogether. From that time on, Julia's costumes were a compromise between her conviction and convention. As we discover Julia Hortense, however, she was seated on the floor of Percy Chrisbie’s studio, where Perc was in the throcs of a crap game specifically and a cocktail party generally. Dotted about the studio, the rest of the guests amused themselves according to their tastes—Scotch, rye or gin. Some wrote — limericks on each _ other with iodine and « The rest of the guests amused themselves according to their tastes. a toothpick; others were kin- dling a fire under a huge wing chair in order to toast marsh- | « Julia Hortense mallows. Still others were making long-distance calls to the rockbound coast of Maine or the sunny slopes of—well, you know how they act when you give a studio party, yourself. Pere didn’t mind. The telephone company had disconnected the service three days before. Julia, as I said, was sitting on the floor playing “Pro- crastination Poker.” Procrastination Poker, as you might have guessed, consists in putting off things. Julia, being a splendid loser, had already put off her Deauville sandals and her moth-winged buskins—votive offerings to the God- dess of Chance. But anyway, as Julia said, she didn’t need them around a studio. It was while she was squinting at the cherry in the bot- tom of her cocktail glass that her left eye strayed slightly and she noticed the Stranger. Without the slightest provo- cation, Julia’s heart improvised a cadenza of lilting grace notes ending with a familiar variation of the “off to Buffalo” step. Or the provocation might have been that the Stranger was tall, distinguished—and middle-aged. His eyes were deep with wisdom—and I don't mean the wisdom you get from sixty inches of the world’s best literature, either. Intuitively, Julia sensed him to be an unusual beezle. “Haven't I seen you before?” inquired Julia archly. “The last time you saw me,” replied the Stranger, and his voice had an odd, familiar ring, set with three star sapphires, and a black opal, “I had queens and aces. It cost you that—those— er—er—" “Oh,” exclaimed Julia delight- edly, “you have a line!” Sho deserted the game forthwith. “Come on over to the ottoman and reel me off a couple of yards.” Ensconced on the otto- man, Julia let her tiny hand slip into his. “I feel as if I had waited all my life for this moment,” she told him, “I seem to have known you before. ..some- comicbooks.com