Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 101: what you’re looking at

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

FATE AND EVELYN. got over it. I mean she had been a hick when she was a kid. You know what? She wanted to go back and be a hick again! Just because it was hot and we’d met a couple of fellows that was pikers she wanted to go back and be a hick again. ‘““ Deary,” I said to her, “ you ain’t feel- ing good. It’s the heat. Listen, deary. I know a couple of fellows, only they ain’t in town now, but when they get back Pll call them up, and if they ain’t doing noth- -ing they’ll take us to a roof, and it ‘ll be cool up there, and we’ll dance and have a swell time, and when you are up there dancing and having a swell time then you'll see if you want to go back and be a hick again.” And she begun to cry, and she says oh, she wanted to get away from it all. “ Oh, you don’t understand!” she says. And I says to her, no, she’s right, I don’t under- stand nobody wanting to be a hick. I says to her, “ I can understand if you’re a hick and you don’t know you're a hick, maybe you could think you was happy; but,” I says to her, ‘“‘ when you have been a hick and got over it,” I says, ““ what do you want to be a hick again for?” And she says to me: “ Oh, you never lived in the country, did you?” And I says, “‘ No, thank God, I never lived in it; but listen, deary,” I says. ‘“ Don’t think I don’t know about it. I been through the country,” I says. “I ain’t been trouping for five years and being on the road a lot without being through 4t 2 “Oh,” she says, “ but you’ve just seen it from the train window.” “ Now, deary,” I says to her, “ wait a minute. Don’t get me wrong. I ain’t only seen it from the train windows, honey. I know more about it than that. I been out in it in automobiles And once,” I says to her, “I forget where it was—but I think it was about halfway out between here and San Francisco—I don’t know for sure where it was, but it was one of those places that’s all flat and about a week and a half of one night stands going to the coast from Chicago—and I was out in it in an auto- mobile with another girl and a couple of 891 fellows, and the car upset. We went to one of them houses that they have on farms and stayed there all night. You would think,” I says to her, “‘ that you was asleep up in the Central Park zoo or maybe some place where there was one of these here animal acts. There was cows making noises all the time; and chickens and horses and frogs. My Gawd!” I says. “ One frog can make more noise than a tenor standing in the wings saying ‘ A-a-h’ to see is his voice all right. And they’re worse than ten- ors,’ I says, ‘“ because they’re more of them. And listen,” I says to her. “ You know all them animals they got on farms, like horses and chickens and cows and all such like as that, they don’t put bay rum or nothing like that on them to make them smell nice. Don’t tell me!” I says. “I been in the country.” And then she says to me she wasn’t talk- ing about farms because that wasn’t where she was raised. What she was talking about was a small town, because that’s the kind of a hick she used to be. You know, not a farm hick, but a small town hick. She thought it would: be nice if she could go back and live in one of them tanks. Can you beat it? A one night stand! And I says to her, I says: “ Listen, deary, them is just things you got on your mind, when you think like that. Like when you think for a while you would go and jump in the river if some fellow you like pretty well is mean to you. Listen,” I says—“‘ you ain’t in love with somebody, are you?” And she says no; and then I says to her: “Listen, deary, if you ain’t in love with somebody and you feel like you wanted to go back and be a hick again, you take some calomel, because there is just two things,” I says to her, “ that makes you feel foolish like that and get them funny thoughts in your mind. One of them is when you are in love,” I says, “‘ and the other is when your liver’s on the bum.” But she says to me her liver ain't got nothing to do with it, and she was kind of mad about it, because I thought maybe it did. So we went to bed, and I didn’t think no more about it until after a while the way things come out, and I remembered about it and then I felt queer. I guess Comicboooks CO