Life — December 3, 1925 — page 43: what you’re looking at

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

November Awake betimes, but with such a feeling of exhaustion that I was loath to quit my couch, Ist and bawled loudly for service and stimulants from those about me, whereupon my husband, poor wretch, did say, Why do you not stop at home, for a change, and cease treating every invitation you receive as though it were a court command? So, there being somewhat in his words, I did telephone Marge Boothby not to expect me at the Madison, for Lord! better a luncheon of herbs in ease and contentment than to be getting into one’s raiment three or four times a day as a fire horse leaps into his harness. This is the day of all the saints, on which I do usually go +) church, but my fatigue so great that I did content my- sei with singing as much as I could remember of Hymn 176, and then fell a-pondering on what I should give my iriends for Christmas, being strongly minded this year to dispense practical, desirable benevolences, for I had liefer self be given a jar of pickles or conserve which adds to the pleasure of a repast than a tray or door-stop of un- certain wsthetic value. Helen Meacham in to see me, full of the opera's opening on the morrow, but I cannot sum- mon the enthusiasm which once was mine, when the clothes Melanie Kurt wore as Sieglinde fairly kept me awake at night because of their unsuitability, and I doubt if I should ever step inside the Metropolitan again were it not for Elizabeth Rethberg, her voice thrilling me more than any I have heard since the days of Emmy Destinn, Helen has a beau, it seems, and when I did ask her to tell me about him, she elaborated upon his distinction, which made me suspicious, so I said, Come now! What is wrong with him? and she responded, Oh; well! He has all sorts of letters after his name, but I rather wish his handkerchiefs and neckties were different, if you get what I mean, which 1 did, perfectly. Aroused my- self by evening, and forth to supper at Larry Searles’s, where all sorts of rag, tag and bobtail, some of them exceed- ingly stupid, too, and after atiending at length to dis- course which did not amuse me, I have concluded that there are two things in life of which I never wish to hear again, i, ., the details of a fire, and why an account was closed at any given shop. November A-talking with my husband at this and that, I did ask him if there were anything in his life 10th which he truly regretted, and he did respond, after some reflection, that it pained him to realize he had never had a real New Orleans silver fizz, nor was ever likely to have one. And then we spoke, more seriously, of our Cousin Elsie, who always seems to get more out of life than is actually in it, the reason therefor being that if she cannot get a thing on which she has set her heart, she stops longing for’ it, and convinces herself that its achievement would have made her unhappy. Does not Bernard Shaw say that those who do not get their heart's desire are better off than those who do? He does indeed, and yet I cannot, in simple candor, see how a chinchilla cloak could work me any harm....Out this morning to market, buying, through the sheer vision of the foodstuffs, more than we shall need for a v plunging recklessly on alligator pears because their price was so much less than it is in our neighborhood, and remembering Ruth Roberts's tale of her introduction to them, how, visiting as a flapper in Honolulu, she could not get enough of them at table, and would purloin them from the console at night and eat them in her room with a shoe horn. Then to Mr. Hickman’s, to sce about my watch, which he tells me he can make go, thank God, and afterwards for a fitting on a gown of garnet velvet which I have ordered for evening wear, somewhat astonished to find that they had cut it down to my waist in the back, but they tell me that is the fashion now....To dinner with Ethel Grant at a Russian place called Samarkand, finding there Irvin Cobb and Laura, Hewitt and Manie Howland amongst many others, also a Mrs. Barney with the loveliest profile that ever I saw in my life, and Sam so gay that it would not have surprised me had they put him out on the pavement, yet all, including myself, much amused with his antics. .+.I set down, as a matter of record, that I am probably the only woman in New York who does not use a lipstick. Baird Leonard. comicbooks.com