Life — September 16, 1926 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

WHY JACK 18 SUCII A DULL BOY, wish I I was I'd gone on the stage. I didn’t have to work at all. made for love, anyway. WISH I could write something that would make a lot of money. This is a fine thing to be doing, at my age, sitting here making up sissy verses about broken hearts and that tripe. A dollar a line, and like it. Fat you'll get doing t The way I'd like to get money is in chunks, not drips. It isn’t as if I’d make a fool of myself. Just some decent clothes, and maybe a string of pearls. Oh, God, those pearls in Cartier’s window! Silky and not quite pink. It wouldn't matter what you had on, if you had them. A string of pearls like that would be an economy. Even that brown dress would look all right with them. That’s the worst dress anybody ever had. May- be I could have the skirt fixed and something done to the neck. If you had money, you'd never have to have anything fixed over. Just give it to the chambermaid. Oh, that’s all right, I hope you have a good time in it. I bet chambermaids have a swell time. I wish I was a chamber- maid. You wouldn't catch a chambermaid spending the best years of her life sitting at a desk working like a steve- dore. They don’t write. Maybe some of them do. Maybe they write plays, nights. I wish I could write a play. I wish I had a play all written. I wish it was a good play. I wish it was the best play anybody ever Life wrote. Ever. Better than “Hamlet.” That’s a good play. A*P a lot a person can do about writing a play, without any pen- cil. I'd like to see Eugene O'Neill, even, write a play without a pencil. I wish I was Eugene O'Neill and had a pencil. I bet nobody takes his pen- cils. Just a common, ordinary, wooden pencil—that’s the lowest thing I ever heard of in my life, taking a thing like that. A little, cheap pencil, like blind men sell; you'd have to be pretty mean to steal that. The Meanest Thief. Meanest Thief Robs Blind Pencil-Seller. You know what a thing like that makes you? Sick at heart, that’s what it makes you. And this is civil ion, Civi- lization, my eye. Taking a pencil away from a poor woman that has to make her living with it — that’s nice. Not even an eraser on it. You could buy a cord of them for. a dollar and a half. Thirty-five and you could corner the et. If I had thirty-five dol- I could have that blue hat with the cornflowers. That's my hat. Out of all the world that’s my hat. I love that hat. I love it bet- ter than anything on earth. Prob- ably some woman has bought it by now; some woman with nose-glasses and an interesting case of rosacea. I bet she’s wearing it right now, while I sit here slaving. I hope she chokes, I hope she’s choking this minute. Oh, there’s the pencil! Right there beside the pad—not even un- derneath. You would show up, wouldn't you, sweetheart? Couldn't let me have a minute off, away from this rotten desk, to go out and get a new box of pencils, could you, pet? Couldn't let me go down to the stationer’s, and get a little bit of fresh air. Oh, no. Not you. A lot you care about my health, And all sharpened niceand pretty, too, aren’t you? Couldn't give Mother just a moment's “T HOPE SHE respite, to find a knife and sharpen u. “No blessed leisure for hope nd love, but only time for grief.” That's “The Song of the Shirt.” used to know the whole damn thing. Look at that nice sharp pencil and that nice new pad just waiting for Mother, Isn’t that dandy? All right, you snakes, I'll show you. Al: the sun’s coming out! It's going to be a lovely day, after all, Isn't that the meanest thing you ever saw in your life? Every- body else out in God's blessed sun- light storing up health and happi- s, and here [am ed to this desk, working my fingers to the bone. Prob- ably the only decent we'll have fora month, and I have to spend it like this. And [ll never be any younger, cither. I’m just about at my best, right now. And here I sit. All those rotten little birds, bellow- ing their lungs out. I wish they'd keep their yaps shut. A person can’t be expected to write, in that din. Din, Din, Din, here’s a beggar with a bullet through his spleen. Deen, you have to s: I bet Kipling — doesn’t have to stay chained up to desk a day like CHOKES.”” (Please turn to page Ne TO SHARPEN A PENCIL. comicbooks.com