Life — May 17, 1928 — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

TLL MRS. PEP’S DIARY April, Tals day began my new "breakfast regimen of broth 24th and biscuit, as though I were on shipboard, which God does unluckily forbid, and then reading in the publick prints that a friend of mine hath in- herited a million dollars, I was at some pains not to summon him on the tele- phone and ask what would be his first reaction, a matter of such futile conjec- ture as a rule, but I do know well what my own answer would be to such a de- mand: “Buy Sam a new soft hat,” for that in the old one to which he clings he docs look like someone who might be wanted by the police. The weather fair again after four dreary days, thank God, so off to the nurseries with Lydia Loomis to help her choose a box tree for her lawn, and when I did calmly watch her pay two thousand dollars for some- thing which will be but a bit of shrub- tery to the average beholder, I could not but think that, had my early ancestors in this country only had the wits to set out a few shoots of box, I should not be required to think twice when I come upon a bargain in rose diamonds. and I to luncheon at our favorite but there was a_ policeman standing at its entrance so that we did fear to approach, whereupon we did pace the square until one of the proprietors appeared and engaged the officer in ap- parently pleasant discourse, berating him good-naturedly later, after we had con- fessed our timorousness, for standing in front of his portal and injuring his trade. But Lyd and I are not a patch for trepidity on Amy Atkins, who leaves her membership card to the speakeasy at home when she journeys by motor for fear an officer will find it in her purse and confiscate the car. My husband, poor wretch, dismally discursive this morn- ing, deploring in especial what he considers his lack of influence over my thoughts and doings, whereupon I did my best to refute him, reminding him that I am not nearly so fond of endive and Brussels sprouts as I was be- fore hearing him talk so steadily against them, and it is true that I have ex- changed my own flattering opinion of “Do you play golf every Sunday?” “Oh, yes—religiously.” some of my cronies for his more accu- rate estimate of them, albeit I should not like him to be informed thereof. But when it comes to his annual spring drive to persiade me to visit the Blanks, mine shall be the spirit of Roderick Dhu, even “Beg pardon, sir, are you the Deck Steward?” “S-A-Y! If I'm the Deck Steward, what the bloody hell d'you suppose the Cap- tain looks like?” though he do get both Clarence Darrow and Samuel Untermyer to present his case and plead for him, for why should a fortnight of anybody's life be spent in a house where the adolescent children are all in love, where the lights go out with every clap of thunder, and where breakfast trays are all but regarded as antiquities from Sodom and Gomorrah, to say nought of the reminiscences of the old gentleman who was stroke on the Amherst crew in '76, lived through the Windsor Hotel fire and escaped from Paris in 1914? Nor does it avail aught to bid him go without me, neither, be- cause, for some reason which has never had any disturbing foundation in fact, Sam, the minute he gets away from town, does imagine that florists’ boys have be- gun to stagger to our door with lavish tributes, and that the dates which I have made with old beaux stretch out in a never-ending line equal to that of Words- worth’s daffodils. Baird Leonard DISPLAY Rus: What publication carries the most advertising? Dus: The Congressional Record. An optimist is Percy Porter. He thinks that skirts will shorter! get. much comicbooks.com