Life — January 28, 1926 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

Lay late, pondering life as January i. or should be, lived, 6th and concluding that a com- bination of old-fashioned ideals and modern ideas is the best policy. Lily Dunham in to see me, and she did tell me how, after waiting all these years, she hath at last fallen in love and is to be married straightway, and how her friends do be more a-twitter than she over the proceeding forasmuch as it strikes her as both natural and in- evitable. Whereupon I did felicitate her roundly, adding that two fears of a woman who lives alone would now be banished from her psychology, those of fire and burglary in the night watches. But where one is torn away, another will succeed, as Virgil said, quoth Lily LIFE Wes Reps Diary Every moment that Larry is away from me I worry for fear he may be maimed or dead, and that’s considerably worse than thinking I smell smoke. But Lord! her fiancé is no better than she in that connection, it would appear, for now when he is in the streets his mind dwells upon respectable citizens who have been shot through mistaken iden. tity, a st 0 his vestibule to avoid imaginary bullets of misplaced revenge So forth to shop against the coming at night he does dash up the event with Lily, who, albeit I reminded her of the injunction of the old man in A Room with a View" to mistrust all enterprises which require new raiment, reminded me that, nuptials or no nu tials, one must have decent gloves and BUBBLES footgear if for nought more than to lunch in a restaurant. Walking home through the town, I did encounter Lucy Lytle, and we spoke of the high spots of the social season, the current attractions in the theatres, cte., and Lucy told how, on a trip to Chicago with her husband, she had overheard a man demanding tickets for “Abies Irish Rose” at the hotel bureau, and, being seized with a strong missionary spirit, she had ad- monished him against it, whereupon he did turn upon her brusquely, and inform her that he had scen it thrice, and that it was the best piece that ever he had seen in his life. January Greatly distressed this morning to find that my 7th new and costly bottle of scent had overturned in the night, mak- ing the third which hath gone the same way for me this year, and I do set down again that I think my sex should agitate for a law which would require parfumeurs to be practical as well as esthetic in their containers, for Lord! I had liefer have one ounce in a chemist's plain bottle than a fragrant memory of two in a colored phial which s if it should be in a cabinet ncheon at an inn with Marge Boothby, and she told me that poor Jim Mitchell is still rioting, and how, after disappearing from the club for two days, he had been found on the steps of a church at early dawn com- plaining bitterly of what he considered its architectural flaws and trying to enter in order to recommend some changes. We did make a fine meal of cream of mushroom soup, which God knows should not be eaten at midday, thin strips of sole with crushed almonds sprinkled over them, a green salad, and some Pont l'Evéque cheese, which is the most satisfactory variety that ever I ate in my life. Then to a milliner’s to search for a hat, and astonished at the high prices which the establishment demanded. When I was younger and more inexperienced, quoth Marge, I thought nought about what I laid out for my wearing apparel, but I have now reached the point where a forty-doll4r hat and a candidate for one’s hand should be regarded with the same philosophy—never take either un- less you cannot possibly live on with- out doing so. Baird Leonard. comicbooks.com