Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 87: what you’re looking at

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

By BEATRICE ASHTON VANDEGRIFT REAMS! They is all kinds of ’em. Dreams induced by midnight mix- tures of strawberries and shrimp, dreams that percolate from the poppy pipe, Greams drawed from the sleep-slipping fists of Dempsey. But the greatest dreams are them that lingers round loneliness. Ever since I was sixteen, when ma so lovingly done up my cinnamon mop for the first time in a Pish knot, then sighed and slept and was took on a one-way trip out to that little myrtle mound in Brooklyn where pop soon tagged after as though he didn’t want her sleeping alone—ever since then I dreamed of a Romance. It would be like Romeo and Juliet. Some day /e would come to me whilst I was dispensing shaving brushes and cologne in the basement of Saltz’s store, and I would glance up, blushing, from a “ charge and take” and call hopeful above the roar of the onrushing bargain hunters that beat against my counter like a high tide, “ Oh, Romeo. where art thou, Romeo?” And he would come rushing in on the crest of the mob and leap the dividing line what separated our two true hearts and tell me, loverlike, ‘ Wouldst I was that pencil in thy hand and that hand behind thy ear.” Then would I ignore a hundred voices volleying for attention and ask him, shy, ‘““ Dost love me, Romeo?” And he would declare, “ Ave, fair Juliet, by von moon-faced clock.” ‘Nay, Romeo,” I would chide him, “swear not by yon moon-faced clock. She is not constant, but often pointeth four when shouldst be closing time.” Then would he stand beside me and gather me in his arms, while everything around us would melt away like the mistv background in a movie fade out—screech- ing women shoppers and Levi, the floor stalker, with his sleuthy eyes, and that one awful hour till closing time—all would melt as I did in my lover’s arms. After that— I couldn’t imagine. 877 (CO) GIOok