Life — August 23, 1928 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

LIFE MRS. PEP’S DIAR Wakenep with a wonderment July as to where I was, which was 3° in a room at the Nelson House in Poughkeepsie, where we stopped last night on our travels, and the Bible placed on my bedtable by the Gideons was so attractive in format that I fell areading it, and felt great virtue in not carrying it off, since it was not chained, as usual. Up and did on my green etamine and off again by motor, feeling a strange and oiteronable, but wifely, resentment against Sam if we did strike a bit of rough going or come upon a road worker with a red flag, and I do surely wish that Jane Bausman would found her projected Society for the Reconstruction of the Detour Before Work Is Begun on the Main Road. Suddenly opening my bag, I did discover missing from it the diamond and platinum brooch which I had pinned firmly to its lining with a safety clasp, and my distress thereat was so great that I was at some pains to com- myself, nor was my state of mind helped, neither, by Sam's reiterating that Uhad probably left it in New York, when the punctures which it had made in the silk were before his very eyes, as a very pretty and kind Miss Catherine Van Steenburgh pointed out when we stopped in Red Hook to telephone back to Poughkeepsie. So we were forced to pro- ceed with nothing gained on my loss save the reporting of it, and it was cold comfort to reflect that finders are usually keepers. My irritation also increased by Sam's pointing out this and that along the way and remarking on the beauty of the weather, until I could have slapped him, as I could all motoring companions who thus take for granted that there is some- thing wrong with my five senses. Coming to a refreshment stand, the pleasant woman in charge of it cheered me some- what by telling me that her husband was an Indian and that she knew a patent nostrum which would cure my malady, etc., but I do wish she had not included the news that she was going to modernize for commercial purposes the fine old house, aged 156, which stood before me. So on, coming finally to Cooperstown after I had abandoned all hope of ever reaching it, and there was a great com- pany already gathered for dinner so that I must needs emulate a fire horse in changing my raiment. Sate between Granger Gaither and Mr. Thomas Has- tings, the great architect, and G, said that were he sufficiently funded to make his Alma Mater a handsome present, he would pass up chapel organs, sun dials and chairs in English History, giving instead an ideal barroom, and Mr. Has- tings thought it might be fun to design such a place, so we fell to discussing details, and I suggested Lazy Susans for the free lunch, and Granger a telephone that answered all calls automatically, “He’s not here!” After dinner by horse- carts up a high hill, and to the tower's top for coffee and liqueurs under the stars, and Mistress Hastings so diverted me that I nearly fell over the battlements from laughter, a calamity which would at least have put me out of my many current miseries. Home and to bed, reading in a book called “The Cheerful Cherub,” a collection of quatrains which is exactly e Tue Currrrt WHo Moves Out oF a House aNp Leaves 4 Lot or Ou Sarety Razor BLapes Orchestra Leaver: I want you to come in on that trill softly—tenderly—like a sweet little bird call. the thing to find on one’s night table, the two I liked best being: “God made the star-hung skies for us, And singing trees and hills and lakes. Of course he made mosquitoes, too— But everybody makes mistakes." And: “*Be kind to all dumb animals And give small birds a crumb. Be kind to human beings, too— They're sometimes pretty dumb," and when I had finished, I did have the misfortune to break my spectacles, thereby spoiling my morrow’s plan of lifting up mine eyes unto the hill, of which there are such splendid specimens in this vicinity. But at least when I have the lenses reset, I can take the precaution of ordering them in rose color. Baird Leonard, Dictionary of Modern Domesticity Father: A moron who would have had a lot of money to leave you, if he had only had half your brains. Companionate Marriage: One that lasts as long as you can agree on the tint of the bathroom tiling. Home: The place you have to go when the padlock squad has been busy. Love: A word sometimes occurring in~ songs and in the tides of movies. Mother: A distant relative, memory is kept alive by florists. Family: The people you try to live on. Divorce: Exasperating red tape. Children: What immigrants have. whose Wrtn the farm leaders and the novelists and the business men going over to Al Smith, soon Hoover will have nothing left but the voters. comicbooks.com