Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

ak 2 —_— ST eI Le Chas ed — lpg A mh oy iy ae Sin By BEATRICE A. VANDEGRIFT clouds and viewing us humans and our doings, seeing just why this was so and that was so, and understanding things us folks down here is too dumb to savvy, the first little stunt I’d pull off for the benefit of mortal critters would be doing away with this here pride stuff. It accounts for about half the misery in the world, to Bill Geers’s way of thinking, and I guess 1 ought to know. About two years was hacked out of my life through nothing else than that blamed feeling, pride. I guess Ul spill you the whole story of how it all come about, not that it’ll do any good—because no amount of preaching can help in a case like that—but in hopes you’ll know what an overgrown idiot I was. So when you laugh at this story and say, “ The darned fool!” I'll take it in humble spirit like the loony old Hindoos that thrashed themselves sore, calling it ‘ doing penance ” and “ mortifying the flesh.” It was this way. |: I was the good Lord sitting up in them I ambled into a big department store one night, about a week before Christmas, plow- ing my way to the handkerchief place to see if I could cop a couple for my landlady, when a piano in the back of the shop started up one of them jazz songs. “Huh,” I was saying to myself. “It ain’t nothing more or less than a revival of this here bushman music they played out in Sumatra when I was selling can openers © there eight years ago.” Plink-tin-plunk and tinkle, slithered the piano, and there come to me of a sudden the memory of a blazing hot night out there in a joint at Padang where I and a few dozen gobs was raising old Harry while the booze was oozing pretty. They was play- ing that same tune and I was dancing around like an Apache with a brass-skinned baby in pink and orange Mother Hubbard. I remember she had a mouth on her like a sunset and a cute little way of twisting in my arms like a wet seal. Yelping hyenas—but that music wailed! 722 Go VOOKS (C@