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Title: The spokesman's secretary
Being the letters of Mame to Mom
Author: Upton Sinclair
Release Date: June 23, 2023 [eBook #71030]
Language: English
Credits: Carla Foust and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPOKESMAN'S
SECRETARY ***
[Illustration]
THE SPOKESMAN’S
SECRETARY
_Being the Letters of Mame to Mom_
_By_
UPTON SINCLAIR
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA
COPYRIGHT, 1926
BY
UPTON SINCLAIR
CONTENTS
LETTER PAGE
I. In Which I Join the Higher-Ups 5
II. In Which I Go Behind the Scenes 9
III. In Which I Ring the Bell 13
IV. In Which I Guess a Riddle 18
V. In Which I Listen to Gossip 22
VI. In Which I Put on the Glad Rags 27
VII. In Which I Am Paid Compliments 32
VIII. In Which I Peek Into a Palace 37
IX. In Which I Don’t Get Wet 41
X. In Which I Take a Flop 46
XI. In Which I Play a Big Scene 51
XII. In Which I Miss Half a Dinner 57
XIII. In Which I Miss Another Half Dinner 62
XIV. In Which I Go on a Strike 67
XV. In Which I Lose My Lover 72
XVI. In Which I Am Made a Grammarian 77
XVII. In Which I Become a Syker 82
XVIII. In Which I Stick to the Job 88
LETTER I
IN WHICH I JOIN THE HIGHER-UPS
DEAR MOM:
You been complaining there ain’t enough news in my letters, well you
sure will get a load of it this trip of the postman. Your Mame has
been cast for little Cinderella in the big political show and the
fairy-coach is waiting at the door.
This is how it come about, the place was busy and every girl had
a customer but Florabelle and me, when a gentleman comes in, a
top-notcher I can see and takes us in with a glance. He don’t need but
one because Florabelle makes up her complexion in a dark room and ain’t
got the sense to look it over by daylight. So he comes to my table and
sits and says, “Go to it, lady.”
He has got good hands not soft nor flabby like many of the big fellows,
but you can see he ain’t had to skin them with hard work. I starts to
washing them and gets a look out of the corner of my eye and I see he’s
somewhere in the forties and a bit of grey in his hair. His cuffs is
new and clean and everything quiet and exactly right.
I says, “Fine weather we’re having,” and he makes the shortest kind
of a noise that means yes and I see he’s thinking about something and
would rather not be bothered--but what did he come into a manicure
parlor for? So I looks sympathetic and says in a spiritual voice,
“There’s sure a lot of troubles in the world ain’t there?”
They always shows their surprise in their fingers. He says, “How did
you find that out?” Says I, “I got my own but you needn’t worry my
business is to listen to the gentlemen’s.”
“Is that a part of the job?” says he and I tells him it’s the principal
part. “They want to tell their troubles to some other woman;” and I
looks up, and there is wrinkles of fun in the corner of his eyes.
But they don’t last long he looks serious again and says, “It may be
some other woman could give me a little advice just now.” I says, “She
can if she’s the right woman.” But still he’s kind of hesitating to
take the plunge so I give him another push. “Is it some mystery of the
female soul you can’t make out?”
“It is just that,” he says; and I asks, “She can’t make up her mind
that she loves you?” He laughs and says, “No, it ain’t anything like
that, you been reading novels. I am a married man and got three
children growing up,” he says. “Ah, me!” says I. “You should hear some
of the stories about married gentlemen!”
I looks at him again and see he’s what they call a go-getter. First I
think maybe he’s the secretary of the Hardware Dealers’ Association
that’s in town but then I guess he’s a lawyer come to lobby here in
our national capital. So I rubs away at his nails and says, “Is it the
wife?” He thinks for a minute and then all of a sudden it busts out,
“My God!” And then he waits again and says kind of solemn-like, “Tell
me this do all women have to go crazy?”
I make a guess at his age and I says, “How old is your wife--if you
know?” “She’s forty-two,” says he. “Oh, yes,” says I; and then, “She
can’t make up her mind what she wants, and she can’t sit still in one
room--”
“Good God,” says he, “it is worse than that, she is got the angina
pectoris.”
“Oh, poor soul!” I says. I hadn’t never heard of it but it sounded
serious.
“But it’s different from any sort of angina pectoris you ever heard
of,” he goes on. “It’s a travelling angina pectoris. One week it’s in
the shoulders and the next week it’s gone to the stomach and the week
after that it’s in the knee.”
“I suppose you’ve took her to the doctors?” says I.
“Doctors?” says he. “I’ve worn out four sets of tires taking her to
doctors. The ordinary doctors won’t do at all it has got to be a
specialist of the knee, or the stomach or what you will. And he tells
her there ain’t anything there but then she thinks maybe he didn’t look
careful enough or maybe I called him on the phone and told him to spare
her nervous system so she has to go to another one without telling
me--but he always tells me with a bill!”
He says it without any smile and he sits there in the bottomest pit
of the dumps so I says, “I suppose you know what is the matter with
the poor soul at her time.” “They tell me it’s the change of life,” he
says; and I says; “Some ladies in my profession have got a different
name they call it the change of wife.”
Then again I feels the start in his fingers and I know he’s looking at
my head bowed over his nails. “Is that an old gag,” says he, “or do you
make them?”
“You just seen it come out of the mint?” says I.
“Well,” says he, “I’m sorry I don’t own a gold-mine.”
Says I, “There is a plenty of gold-diggers in the manicure profession,
and you might of had some of them trimming your cuticle right now if
you had of went to some other table. But I am one that makes it plain
to a customer that he is the butter.”
“Butter?” says he, and I give him a flash out of the corner of my
eye. “Nine hours every day I earns my daily bread in the Elite Beauty
Parlors; and then if in the evening some gentleman invites me to
dinner, he’s the butter.” So then I seen that we was friends, and I
knew I would like that dairy.
But still he was kind of shy and it wasn’t till I was done that he
come right down to it, he was lonesome and would like to have me go
to dinner with him the next evening but the trouble was he couldn’t
afford to go to no swell place on account of having so many people in
this town that knew him. But I tells him that two is a company for me
and we’ll go to any quiet place that he likes. “You got to be extra
careful,” I says, “because Washington is an awful place for gossip.”
“Yes,” says he, “and the truth is I hold an especially prominent
position. And so--you see--”
“Yes, I see perfectly,” I says, “I know a gentleman when I meet one and
I hope I know how to be a lady. You may count on me to play the game
square.”
But even that don’t satisfy him he kind of hems around and he says,
“You must understand, I am in a position where you will be sure to find
out who I am right away.”
“I see,” says I, “and so you’ll have to give me your real name? You may
trust me, Mr.--er--”
“Er-Edgerton,” says he, not more than one-third sure that he wants to.
“Mr. Edgerton,” says I and he see’s I’m thinking it over. “No,” he
says, “you never heard it before, it ain’t a name that is advertised on
toilet soap, nor on the silver screen. In fact I think just now it’s
the least advertised name in the whole U. S. A.”
“In the secret service?” says I for I admit I was intreeged though I
ain’t sure how to spell it. “The most secret of all services,” says he.
“I’m the Secretary to the Spokesman.”
And there is where your Mame proved herself the prize dumbbell. “The
Spokesman?” says I. “Who is he?”
He laughs as if I had said something specially funny. “What do you read
in the newspapers?”
“Well,” says I, “I read the divorce news of course because that is what
the customers want to talk about. And I read the murders because I
like them. And I read Mme. Prinker’s beauty hints, and how to grow lean
by rolling.”
“But you don’t read what the Spokesman has to say?”
“No,” says I. “What paper does he write for?”
He laughs again, like that was an awful boner. “It’s on the front
page of all the papers,” he says. “But you haven’t missed much. The
Spokesman is a Man who lives in a great white house and He is a Strong
Silent Man and it appears that all Strong Silent Men have to talk a
great deal and this One has got no idea what to say. So I am the man
who tells Him what to say. And twice every week the reporters for all
the newspapers of the whole world gather in a room and listen to Him
say what I have told Him to say and a couple of thousand newspapers
all over the world pay a couple of hundred thousand dollars to have
it telegraphed to them and they print it and I don’t know how many
hundreds of millions of people read it and they all have to think that
it is the Spokesman who spoke it, so you see how important it is that I
should keep hid.”
Well, Mom, by that time I seen what had come to me, and I sat hardly
able to lift my eyelids, to say nothing of my tongue.
“I have got to have a session the day after tomorrow,” the gentleman
goes on, “and I have no idea what I am going to say. How can I pay any
compliments to American institutions that I haven’t paid them twenty
times before? So I’ll give you an address of a little Greek restaurant
that I know and if you’ll meet me there at seven-thirty tomorrow
evening you may be able to give me a few ideas of what the whole world
would like to have said to it the next morning.”
And so then he went out, Mom; and here is your baby Mame sitting in her
six by eight bedroom with the smoke of her pork-chop still in the air
writing to ask you if you have any ideas of what to tell the world for
God’s sake send them quick for I have got my foot on the ladder and
it’s the high altitudes for me. And Mom you dunno how grateful I am to
you for the wise training you give me, I felt his eyes running over me
but I never trembled for I had remembered what you taught me, always
to keep my dressing table by the window and put it on by daylight and
never to use no peroxide at all unless I was going to use it every
night.
Your loving
MAME.
LETTER II
IN WHICH I GO BEHIND THE SCENES
DEAR MOM:
The first thing I got to explain is that I have changed my name again.
The fashions in names changes very fast and you think you have got
a good one but you find it is a flop. But I never was altogether
pleased with Ysabel and have decided to make it Rosabelle. I think it
is much prettier because when you say Rosabelle Riggs both the words
begins with the same letter and a gentleman told me that is called
illiteration and a name is much sweller when it is illiterate; all
the movie stars are doing it they say you can’t get into the movies
at all unless you have got an illiterate name. The new girl at our
place is named Mary May Marie, and that is nice too only you have to
say the last name French fashion, “if you don’t,” I says to her, “it
sounds like a hint to the gentlemen.” It is getting to be swell to have
French names. Ada Huggins has changed hers to Adaire and then Hattie
Schoenstein she says, “What shall I make mine?” and I says, “Why not
try Hotaire?” and that is how I get into trouble being too bright
altogether.
I want you to please explain to Pop, so that he will not have his
feelings hurt that I do not like the good old-fashioned honest label
of Mame that he gave me. This is not an old-fashioned beauty parlor
that I work in and you can’t expect to know what is considered shiek
if you spend your whole life in the gas-house district of Camden New
Jersey. And I know Mom how you gave up a glorious stage career for
your little ones, and this little one is much obliged but I got my own
career to make now and I sure don’t want no enemy to paste the label of
Mame onto me. But of course I’m always the same to the home folks your
affectionately.
* * * * *
P. S. Well, I have just got back from dinner with my new gentleman
friend. I will not say much for a Greek restaurant. It seems that the
way you tell Greek cooking is that everything is swimming in the juices
of baby lamb only when it gets a little cold it seems like what we at
home used to call mutton suet. Mr. Edgerton explains that the Greeks
is a pastoral people they have only sheeps and goats. But I would of
thought they would of learned the uses of beefsteak when they come to
the good old U. S. A. But I suppose they have got to be different as
that is called “local color” when you go out slumming or dining with a
gentleman friend.
But oh Mom the conversation was the most intellectual that I ever
listened to and I am so excited I can hardly make my letters good. It
was just like going to Hollywood and being took in behind the scenes
where you could watch Mary Pickford putting on her make-up. You that
has been a stage queen can understand how it is everything is so
different behind the scenes you would hardly know that it is the same
show at all. I always thought I was the little wise girl and nobody
could put nothing over on me but now I am behind the scenes of the
political show and oh my God to think that I was ever one of the boobs
that sat out in front of the curtain and laughed and cried over them
old old gags!
First Mr. Edgerton put me wise to the leading gentleman that is called
the Spokesman. Mr. Edgerton has to spend a lot of time with Him every
day, teaching Him His role, and he told me all about it, and it was
just like I was there in the great white house where He acts.
It seems that this Spokesman was born and raised in the State of
Florida and that is a very cold state with a great lot of mountains
that is covered with snow most of the time. It is very rocky ground
and hard to raise anything on and so the people in Florida has got to
work hard for a living all the time and they are very saving and apt
to be stingy for which Mr. Edgerton says you can’t blame them seeing
how nature has been a step-mother to them all. So this Spokesman’s one
idea is to save pennies and when He was the governor of this State of
Florida He used to live in one hotel room and when the bankers and the
big business men thought that was not dignified enough and He wanted to
show them that He could be as swell as they was He took two hotel rooms.
The Spokesman is a little Man, kind of stoop-shouldered and pinched-up
like and He is very much worried because He is not imposing looking
like He had ought to be to fit into that big white house that He has
got to act in. Him and Mr. Edgerton had many consultations about it and
Mr. Edgerton told Him to face it out and make a joke of it and tell His
visitors that He was like a singed cat a lot better than He looks. At
first that hurt His feelings but He must of thought it over and decided
it was His best bet and now He says it to His visitors. His face is
kind of wizened and some nasty woman said that He had been weaned on
a pickle but Mr. Edgerton ain’t ever advised Him to say that to His
visitors.
Well now He is the Spokesman and He has got the job of telling the
American people what to do and what to think. And it seems a queer job
for Him Mr. Edgerton says because if He had His own way He would sit
for hours and never say nothing. He will listen to all Mr. Edgerton
says for Him to say and then bid him good bye and never say if He
is going to say it or not but He aways says it provided it’s two
things--first it must be complimentary to American institutions and
second it must have to do with saving money.
Mr. Edgerton explained to me about what is called the “policy” of the
Spokesman and I don’t see how I could ever of been happy to be so
ignorant as I used to be. I just never knew nothing Mom I would hear
Pop talking about these things, and it would go right over my head but
now I’m going to learn all about it. It seems that the way money is
wasted is that the government takes it for taxes and pays it to a lot
of office holders that sits with their feet on the top of their desks.
So the Spokesman is going to stop the taxes and let the rich people
keep their money then He says they will start factories to make things
and there will be plenty of wages for the working people and everybody
will be happy. I never would of thought of it myself but I seen it
right away and how stupid I was when I felt mean about people that had
a lot of money and spent it on what I thought was foolishness like
monkey dinners and shampain baths and such. I see now that no matter
how foolish it is it all makes work for working people and so it is all
economy like the Spokesman wants it to be.
I asked Mr. Edgerton if that was one of the ideas he had taught to the
Spokesman but he said no he hadn’t needed to do it because when you
are in the business of running for offices it is a thing you come to
understand for yourself no matter how dumb you may be that you have
got to take care of the rich people because they have got to put up
their money for campaign funds for you so that you can pay wages for
workingmen that makes red fire and sky-rockets and campaign banners and
processions and other things that educates the voters about not taxing
the rich.
And Mr. Edgerton says that the Spokesman went out and hired the biggest
banker in the whole country to help Him teach the people about this
policy of His. And I said gee how could He of got up nerve to pay such
a big man what He would of had to pay? But Mr. Edgerton explained that
He didn’t have to pay the big banker nothing extra because the banker
had been paying pretty close to a million dollars in taxes every year
himself and naturally it was worth something to him to get a chanst to
dump a load like that off of his own shoulders. And that is easy to see
too and I begin to see it wouldn’t be so hard to run a government as I
thought it would be because everybody would be looking to get something
and so they would all be ready to work for the government cheap. And
Mr. Edgerton says that is just how it goes because a lot of them worked
for the government all through the war for a dollar a year and they was
the most expensive men the government ever had let inside the ropes.
And Mr. Edgerton says that the way I understand everything shows that I
have a natural talent for political life.
He told me the name of this big banker that has been hired to take the
taxes off of himself. I remember it was Lemon or Melon or something
else to eat. Mr. Edgerton said I could remember it easy by the fact
that they cut him every day in Wall Street and I said “I don’t see why
they should cut him when he is doing their work for them as well as for
himself.” And Mr. Edgerton thought that was very funny so I see there
was some catch in it so I talked about something else as quick as I
could.
But Mr. Edgerton says I can be very useful to him if I will and he
showed me how. He says that he has been to college and has read a lot
of high-brow things and that has spoiled him some for the job he has
to do. He says he wants to keep close to the heart of the plain people
to know how they feel and think and I can tell him. I had a wonderful
spiel fixed up, about how I was the daughter of an old Virginia family
that had been ruined in the civil war; but when I heard what he said I
decided I had better forget my spiel so I confessed that my Pop was a
gas-house worker in Camden New Jersey and he said that was fine that
was exactly what he wanted. And so I told him the real truth about my
name being Mame and so you can forget what I wrote you in the beginning
of this letter which was wrote yesterday but I will send it to you all
the same because it is wrote and you can see how I have growed under
the influence of Mr. Edgerton.
And he says to me, “What do you think about the international
situation?” And gee I was scared out of my wits I wanted to say, “Ask
me something easy!” But I am going to learn to play my part among
these higher-ups and so I says, “I haven’t thought so much about it of
late.” And he says, “It is changing so fast, you have got to think all
of the time.”
And there I sat racking my wooden brains to think of anything I had
ever heard Pop say. And at last I thought of something and so I looked
real wise and I says, “It seems to me the American people has got so
used to having a good time they take it for granted. So the use of the
international situation is to show them what real troubles is and make
them grateful for their favors.” And Mr. Edgerton looks at me and his
eyes lights up and he says. “That’s it exactly! That’s the text for my
tomorrow morning’s interview!”
And then of course I was very much excited and I says, “You mean the
Spokesman ain’t never said that before?” And he says, “Well, if He has,
it’s been so long ago that He’s forgot it. But that sentiment is right
out of the heart of the plain people it has the true salt of homeliness
that I’m looking for and torture my poor head trying to invent.”
And so now, Mom, you can imagine how excited I am. The Spokesman is
to give that interview tomorrow morning at ten o’clock to all the
reporters of all the newspapers in the whole world and it will be in
the second edition of the afternoon papers that gets out all over the
whole world just a little before noon and make believe I won’t pounce
on a newsboy when I go out to get my glass of malted milk at the corner
drug-store! Oh Mom you can’t imagine the thrills of being a really
influential person like
Your devoted
MAME.
LETTER III
IN WHICH I RING THE BELL
DEAR MOM:
Well, I suppose you seen my ideas in the papers. I have never had
anything so wonderful happen to me in my whole life. There it was every
bit of it and all fixed up in such fine language as I could never of
thought of and sounding so very very wise. And to think that this
greatest Man in the whole world has said it, and every newspaper in
the whole world almost has published it on the front page. Why Mom He
didn’t say hardly anything else at all. He made his whole interview out
of that idea I have give to His secretary. Me poor little Mamie Riggs,
manicurist in the Elite Beauty Parlors with just one copper cent in her
pocket this night!
That is a fact! I spent three cents for that afternoon paper so I
didn’t have the price of my usual malted milk for lunch and had to
take a glass of plain milk and a doughnut. But I didn’t mind that, I
went back to the shop feeling so smart the girls all seen there was
something and they wanted to know, “What is it, Mame, you got a new
beau?” That’s all they ever think about of course.
I says, “No it ain’t that it’s something more great.” But I didn’t dare
give them no hint because it’s what Mr. Edgerton calls a state secret.
So Ada Higgins she wants you to call her Adaire now and did you ever
hear of anything so silly, being ashamed of her origin and trying to
put on side she says, “I know, it’s that swell gent that was here a few
days ago. What’s his line Mame?”
And just then the phone rung and it was Mr. Edgerton calling and he
wants me to have dinner with him again and of course then all the girls
is buzzing like a lot of bees they never heard of such a thing as my
not telling they always tell about their affairs because after all what
have they got to talk about between customers with the pitiful narrow
lives they live and no great ideas about world events and no way of
getting behind the scenes of the political show and seeing how the
actors is made up.
Well he says for me to meet him at a Chinese restaurant this time.
It is over in Z street and a long ways and gee it is drizzling and I
shall have wet feet when I get there. But I dassn’t try to borrow a
nickle from my landlady because my rent was due four days ago and I
am side-stepping because I just had to get a new scarf to hide my old
dress. It is all very well for Mr. Edgerton to talk about wanting to
keep close to the plain people, and the rough honesty of them and all
that, but no man wants to go out to dinner with a slouch you know that
Mom and it ain’t going to happen while I’m the lady. So now I’m off
and tell Pop to send me some of his ideas about politics as quick as a
postage stamp will bring them.
* * * * *
P. S. Well it was my first dinner a la Chink and we had chop suey and
it is made out of chicken and something else that should be called
guey instead of suey. But it is hot and very filling and that is the
principal thing when you are trying to pull through and go straight on
eighteen-fifty per and rents what they is in the city of Washington, D.
C. Mr. Edgerton brought me home in a taxi and now I have got my feet
in bed and I couldn’t go to sleep anyhow till they get warm, so I will
tell you what happened.
Well of course we talked international affairs since that is the most
interesting thing in the world, and what everybody talks here in high
society. Mr. Edgerton says that when he told the Spokesman the great
idea that I had give to him, He grunted, and that is eloquence from
Him. And He told Mr. Edgerton to have it wrote out for Him and He
even added a couple of sentences of His own because some of it was so
important that He wanted to say it twiced.
And of course I had to be modest so I says, “I really didn’t think it
was so remarkable as that, it is what anyone would say.”
And Mr. Edgerton says, “That’s it exactly. What I have to do is to find
out what anyone would say and say it for them.”
“But why,” I says--“when they can just as good say it for themselves?”
So he explained that people likes to have things said for them it is
less trouble and it pleases them to hear their own ideas, “it is like
looking at themselves in a mirror, if you understand what I mean,” says
he and I says that most any woman would understand that.
And Mr. Edgerton says that the Spokesman likes to say things like
the sort that I say, because it saves Him having to talk about other
things that ain’t so easy for Him to think about. The reporters asks
Him questions and He don’t know what to answer and then there is always
people trying to get Him to do this and that and to say yes or no and
He don’t like to say either nor to do neither. The Spokesman’s other
name is Cautious, and He never does nothing He don’t have to and He
seldom does. He says that most problems solve themselves if you let
them alone.
Says I, “What that generally means is that somebody else solves them.”
And Mr. Edgerton laughs and says, “Well, yes, but then if they solve
them wrong it ain’t your funeral.”
And he showed me how it goes. There will be two big fellows fighting
over some juicy bit of graft and they come to Washington and pull all
the strings they know of each of them trying to get the Spokesman to
give it to his gang. And the Spokesman listens polite to both of them
and tells both of them He’ll do the best he can and then He don’t do
nothing and both of them hates Him like poison and calls Him all the
names they can think of. But bye and bye they get tired of quarreling
and patch up some sort of agreement to divide the graft and then they
go off and think it over and say to themselves by golly that Guy is a
slick one, He knows how to take care of Himself and that’s the Sort we
need to run the country.
Well just about that time a couple comes into the Chink restaurant a
pair of swell lookers and I see they knows Mr. Edgerton. The gentleman
gives him a bow and the lady too but then she gets a glimpse of me and
she freezes up like she was hit by an artic cyclone and she goes by
with her nose high up like an aeroplane. And I see that Mr. Edgerton
is a bit flustered and don’t know what to talk about next and I says,
“It seems your lady friend don’t like the way I look perhaps she thinks
my hair is too decorative or some thing.” And he smiles, kind of
sickish like and I says, “Let me tell you how it is if you want to have
anything pretty in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey, you
have got to carry it along with you.” And he says, “Yes, I suppose so.”
I see he is badly rattled so I says, “I want you to know that I know
exactly how it is and you don’t have to try to fool me or yourself.
Everything is pure and sweet between us like we was the two babes
in the woods but I know too you ain’t going to get Washington smart
society to believe it. And I can guess how it’ll be if anybody tips off
Mrs. Edgerton to the fact that her husband is doing research work among
the plain people. By the way how’s the poor soul getting along?”
“Well,” he says, “just now the angina pectoris has moved on to one of
her toes.”
“Well,” says I, “at least it’s getting as far away from her mind as it
can and maybe it’ll move out altogether. But what I started to say is
this if you think you better not see me any more--”
“No, no!” he says real anxious. “No, Miss Riggs, please don’t desert me
in this crisis.”
“Crisis?” I says.
“Yes,” says he. “You see, the Elks’ convention is coming to our
national capital next week and the Spokesman has got to deliver a full
hour’s speech to them and you just can’t imagine how I shall be put
to it to invent something different to say. Only think of it I’ve got
to work up some new compliment to pay to the Constitution! And every
Fourth of July for a hundred and fifty years some twenty thousand
orators have been warming up this old soup and putting in new flavors.
Miss Riggs the great heart of the plain people has got to save me! You
must tell me what to say--you and none other!”
So there I am up against it again and I wishing I could get home so as
to see if a letter has come from Pop. “America,” I says, “is a great
country.”
“Yes, I know,” he says, “but why? And how? What makes it that way?
What--”
“Hold on,” I says, “one question at a time. It is very simple you get
yourself mixed up by thinking too hard. Anybody can see that what makes
America a great country is because there is so much of it. Ain’t that
so?”
“Yes,” he says but kind of doubtful.
“And because there is so many people in it. Ain’t that so?”
“I suppose so,” he says but still like he didn’t.
“You take these here Elks that is coming to Washington,” I says.
“Everybody knows the Elks is a great order and why? Because there is
so many of them and they’ve got a pile of money and they come here and
spend it and raise a hurrah and they own the town. Ain’t that so?”
Yes of course he can’t deny that is so. But still there is something
eating him. “Surely Miss Riggs there must be something else--some
ideas--”
“Ideas?” I says. “Don’t you worry about ideas the people will tend to
that, there is enough of them. If there is one person and he has got an
idea,” I says, “that is something but when there is a hundred million
has got it, that’s a hundred million times as much and if you don’t
think that’s so you just go and ask Kayser Bill,” I says.
And say, Mom, it was like a light begun to shine in his eyes. “Miss
Riggs,” he says, “do the people really believe that?”
“Of course they believe it,” I says. “Who’s going to stop them?”
And Mom, I thought he was going to reach across the table and grab my
hand in spite of his lady friend across the way shooting eye-daggers
at him. “Miss Riggs,” he says, “you have saved me! You have restored
my faith in the sublime principles of democracy! You have given me the
theme of an immortal address a real piece of Elkoquence if you will
pardon the pun. Upon these wings the Spokesman will soar to heights
never before attained even by Him!”
And Mom, he is so pleased, he invites me to go home in a taxi; and how
can I tell him that my feet is wet and froze, and I would of rather of
walked?
Your happy
MAME.
LETTER IV
IN WHICH I GUESS A RIDDLE
DEAR MOM:
Well the Elks is come to town and they own it just like I said they
would. My it is wonderful to see so many fine redblooded gentlemen on
the streets all looking like their pockets couldn’t hold their money.
For the manicure business it is heaven there just ain’t enough lady
operators to go round a couple of gents is waiting their turn at each
chair and a girl can have all the dinners and other dates she can take
care of. But I have turned them all down their compliments don’t go
with me at all because of this work that I have got to do with Mr.
Edgerton that is so very important as you will understand. It seems
hard to believe that such a chanced could happen to a girl out of the
gas-house district of Camden New Jersey but it really is true, and
Mr. Edgerton says I can do just as much guiding the destinies of the
American people as I want to.
I suppose you read the great address which the Spokesman delivered to
the Elks’ convention and you seen every word I had said to Mr. Edgerton
for the Spokesman to say. Of course Mr. Edgerton fixed it up again so
that it sounded fine and Elkoquent--he keeps calling it that, it is a
sort of joke on account of having been said to the Elks. It sure did
thrill me to read it and I was more prouder than ever to live in such a
rich country with so much wonderful prosperity all around me.
I must say there is times when I wish I could have just a little more
of it for myself. It is kind of hard on a girl that has been brought
up right and is trying to earn everything not just her clothes. Right
now I have got to put another darn in my best pair of skin-colored
stockings and it will be very disfiguring right where the gentlemen
look at them most. But I could not keep my landlady waiting no longer,
and I have cut down on my meals all I dare I can’t afford to be too
starved when I go out with Mr. Edgerton because it ain’t refined to hog
your dinner.
Well Mom this noon going out for my lunch I run into what I think is
his wife--anyhow I hope it is because I would be sorry to think there
was a third lady in this case. She was in a car with him, one of these
kind that is called coops like glass show cases rolling round on big
rubber tires. They had just drawed up by the curb and she was getting
out.
I have told him that I will play the game so of course I didn’t give
no sign that I had ever saw him before. But I got a good look at her
and she is sure something elegant you can bet there ain’t any holes in
her silk stockings nor in the squirrel-skin coat that she had on. She
is a large soft lady and they went into an office building so I guess
he was taking her to another of them fancy-priced specialists to see
if they can find that angina pectoris. I went off thinking what would
of happened to me if I would of took the notion that I had the angina
pectoris. Would all them specialists be hunting it or would I just come
home and get Pop to show me the trap-door where you crawl into the
gas-tank? But I realize that I can’t have everything in this world--I
can’t have electric coops and squirrel-skin coats and at the same time
know the great heart of the plain people and be able to teach the
Spokesman how to talk to them.
* * * * *
P. S. Well I had another call from Mr. Edgerton and we went out to
dinner again and it is his wife like I guessed and he says the corn
specialists says it is not angina pectoris of the toe, but only
her tight slippers. And he started to apologize because he didn’t
speak to me but I told him to quit his kidding and let us talk about
international affairs. So we went to another restaurant it was a cheap
hash-house this time where you get a coarse dinner for sixty cents and
Mr. Edgerton apologized for it but it was the only kind of a place
where he would be sure not to meet no friends. We had a little booth
where we could sit and talk and Mr. Edgerton tipped the waiter some and
we sat there a couple of hours and he brought us some coffee a couple
of times and something else that was supposed to be coffee because it
was in coffee-cups but seeing ain’t always believing.
Well the international situation is like this just now. All them Dago
nations over in Europe wanted a lot of money from us so they could
buy the guns and things while they was canning Kayser Bill. They come
over here and borrowed billions and billions of dollars and now of
course the Kayser is chopping firewood in Holland and we got the job
of collecting the money and we don’t know how to start. They are an
unprincipled lot these fellers in Europe says Mr. Edgerton.
“Yes, I know,” I says. “I read all about them. The papers call them
Bolshivikis.”
“No,” says Mr. Edgerton, “I don’t mean that crowd they are
revolutionists and they say they won’t pay. What I mean are the French
and Eyetalians and Poles and all them--they say they’re willing to pay
of course but then they don’t.”
“But then,” says I, “what is the difference whether you say you will or
say you won’t if you don’t?”
“Oh, there’s a lot of difference,” he explains. “If you say you will
then you’re recognized.”
“What difference does that make?” I says.
“If you are recognized,” says he, “then you can borrow as much more as
you want.”
“My God,” I says, “I wished somebody would recognize me!” And then
I felt kind of mean, for fear he’d think I meant about him not
recognizing me on the street!
He goes on to tell me that the Spokesman is worried all the time about
these debts He lies awake at night and thinks about them it’s the only
question He can’t seem to leave alone to settle itself. The reason for
that is because He was born and raised in that cold and rocky state--by
the way I made a mistake because I said the name of that state was
Florida but I was a dumb-bell because Florida is another place. I
know now because today there was a feller come in to try to sell us
some lots there it seems there is a boom and he had some extra-fine
land-front lots that could be had this week only; he explained that
they are called land-front lots because they are in the bay but they
front on the land and they will be on the land when the bottom of the
bay has been moved underneath them.
But the Spokesman was raised in a state that is rocky and cold, I have
forget it again but I think maybe it is North Carolina because it is
far up North. And you see the worst a man can do in that state is
not to pay his debts and collecting debts is the one thing that the
Spokesman can be sure of knowing how, He has done it all His life. But
He never had so big a debt to collect in his home state in fact Mr.
Edgerton says there has never been such a big debt in the world. He
says that the Statesman has nightmares about it and imagines that the
debt has broke loose and is rolling down over Him like it was one of
them mountains of North Carolina. He wakes up all in a sweat and He
sends for Mr. Edgerton in a hurry and insists He has got to know how He
can collect more money than there is in the world.
That sounds like a joke but it’s really so because it is supposed to be
paid in gold and it is twiced as much gold as there is. Mr. Edgerton
says there is a professor in Germany that is trying to find out how to
make more but he has not got it paying yet and besides they couldn’t
get it away from the professor without another war and that would
mean we would have to lend more money again. But something has got to
be done, else the Spokesman won’t ever be able to get a good night’s
sleep, and it is undermining His health something fierce.
So you see Mom there was another job loaded onto my poor shoulders that
was never trained to carry such loads. But I told you I was going to
see it through and I sat there and thought real hard and I says, “Them
Dagoes got goods from us with that money, didn’t they?” And he says
they did, so I says, “Then the way to pay the debts is for them to send
us back some goods, whatever kind they can make that we need.”
But he says, “No, Miss Riggs that would never do at all,” he says, “and
the reason is that we have got factories over here to make all the
goods for ourselves.”
“Well,” says I, “but we can have twiced as many goods.”
“No,” he says, “our people haven’t got the money to buy so much, and so
it would shut our factories down, and all our people that works in the
factories would starve.”
Well Mom it shows you how dumb and ignorant us poor working people is.
I would never of thought of that would you? But it is plain as day--why
we have even got what is called tariff laws to tax the things that is
brought into the country so as to keep them Dagoes from dumping their
cheap goods off on us and putting all our working people out of their
jobs.
I seen then why the Spokesman was so unhappy because if we couldn’t
take money and we couldn’t take goods what could we do about the debts?
If they wasn’t paid at all you can see what a bad example it would be
for nobody would want to play the business game at all if they would
never get paid their money if they made too much.
Well I must say I was scared because if all these greatest minds in
the world hadn’t been able to guess the answer what chanced was there
for poor little Mamie Riggs of the Elite Beauty Parlors? But I thought
and thought and Mr. Edgerton set and watched me with an anxious look
knowing how much there was at stake. And at last--will you believe it
Mom?--I got it! Yes I did and all the world is going to know it in a
day or two. That is, of course they aint going to know that I got it
but they will be told the answer by the Spokesman in the big white
house where He lives and tells them answers.
Says I, “Mr. Edgerton, them Dagoes has got a lot of pictures and
cathedrals and things over there ain’t they?”
“Yes,” he says, “they have that.”
“And people travel over there to see them all the time dont they?”
“Oh yes.”
“And it’s what they call culture?”
“Yes of course the very fanciest there is.”
“Well,” I says, “there’s nothing in the world too good for us so let’s
us go over there and get their culture in exchange for the debts. We
can build a lot of fine steamships, and send a million or two of our
people over, and the Dagoes can put them up at good hotels and feed
them and wait on them and show them round and explain things to them.
And for them that don’t care for art and high-brow things, there’ll be
girl-shows and stuff that will surely be better than paying bootleggers
for what they give us in these here coffee-cups.”
Well Mom that broke up our party. Mr. Edgerton was so excited that he
got up and rushed right off to tell the Spokesman. He left me to walk
home alone in the cold and it was only then that I begun to think about
one thing I had forgot and that is who is to get the chanced to collect
them debts in Europe? I would sure like a trip to Paris myself and I
know my folks could stand a lot more culture than they’ll ever pick up
in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey. But I guess Mom we had
better not be greedy I’ve a notion it will be with the trips to Europe
like it is with the electric coops and the squirrel-skin coats--the
people that gets them will be them that has already got more than they
can use.
Your dutiful
MAME.
LETTER V
IN WHICH I LISTEN TO GOSSIP
DEAR MOM:
Well, I have had my first failure in my new job of telling the
Spokesman what to say to the American people. I went out to-day and
bought the afternoon paper and He hadn’t said a word of what I had
told Mr. Edgerton to tell Him to say. He had talked about the money
them Dago nations owes us but all He said was that the debts was a
sacred obligation and the American people would exact a settlement.
But Mom you can see that aint saying nothing when there aint enough
money in the whole world to pay them and we couldn’t let them send us
goods without ruining all our industries. How can they pay except like
I said by our sending over tourists for them to feed? I am greatly
disappointed in the Spokesman.
Tell Pop I got his letter and I thank him for all the ideas on politics
he has sent. Some of them seems to me very good and I shall be pleased
to make use of them. Mr. Edgerton says it is the opinions of the
plain people that he wants, and I am sure Pop is plain enough to suit
anybody. Tell him that I don’t wonder he can’t hardly believe this good
fortune that is come to me. But it is God’s truth just as I have wrote
it.
And you can tell Pop he dont need to worry about his baby girl,
because I am taking the best of care of myself. Mr. Edgerton aint
tried to get fresh and I dont think he is that sort at all. He never
says nothing about how I have such nice long brown lashes over my
china-blue eyes. I dont think he even saw that darn I had put in my
stocking though I forgot and put my foot up on a chair right where he
could see. The truth is I think he loves his wife: only he dont know
quite what to make of her just now and he’s lonesome for a little
female cheerfulness. If he buys me a dinner it aint going to break
him and he’s getting his money’s worth and more being educated about
how the plain people feels about politics and international affairs.
And besides, Mom, dont forget that I have got a feller by the name
of Walter that I am someday going to marry even if he is only a poor
shipping-clerk in Camden and that ought to be enough for my Pop to fret
over.
* * * * *
P. S. Well, I have just got home from another dinner and Mr. Edgerton
has told me how I come to lose out with the Spokesman. He wouldnt have
nothing to do with my ideas for the debt settlement because He says it
aint a way to collect the money but only to spend it and the Spokesman
dont believe in spending no money that you dont have to. He says most
of the plain people dont care nothing about art and they wouldnt
approve of people gadding about Europe and as for drinking their wines
the Spokesman jumps a yard any time anybody tries to get him to say
anything about prohibition one way or the other excepting only that
laws is laws and all good Americans should obey them.
Mr. Edgerton says that if I am going to be useful to him I have got
to learn the rules of this game and one of them is that the Spokesman
will never take sides in no dispute. It is His business to be popular
and you can never get Him to say nothing that is going to get a lot of
people down on Him. Ever since He has been in politics which is since
he was a boy He has spent all his time dodging the tricks of people
that was trying to get Him to put His foot into something and He has
got to be the most cautious Side-stepper they have ever had in the game.
Well Mom we got to gossiping about how things is there in the great
white house where the Spokesman lives and gee it is comical it is so
much like the Elite Beauty Parlors with everybody watching everybody
else and pulling and hauling and intreeging against them. The Spokesman
you see is just like a King; and all of the courtiers wants to keep his
favor and if He gives three minutes more of His time to one of them the
other one retires into the corner and has a fit of the weeps or else he
goes off and tries to find something bad about the first one, that he
can have his great aunt whisper to the Spokesman’s second cousin.
Mr. Edgerton says that this great man got into office by a fluke
because he wasnt never meant to get in but only to be Vice-Spokesman to
keep him on the shelf. The Vice-Spokesman it seems dont have nothing
to say or if he does nobody listens to him. But now He’s got in, and
He’s brought a little bunch of people along that used to be his angels
back in the State of North Carolina or wherever it is up in the icy
North where he comes from. These are rich men that used to pay the
fare of this Spokesman when he was a little Feller, and was a sort of
Office-boy for them in politics, to run the state like they wanted it.
But now He is got to be the greatest Man in the whole world and gee
they cant quite bring themselves to believe it and they dont know quite
how to take it. They cant get used to the idea of taking orders from
what used to be their Office-boy and the Spokesman He cant get used to
giving no orders because of course He always feels respectful to these
gentlemen because they have got so much money and always have paid His
way. And at the same time they are scared to death for fear He might
get the big head and take the notion to be the Boss. And each of them
hates all the others like poison because each of them is trying to
shove the others away from the Spokesman’s elbow.
So that is how it goes, and Mr. Edgerton says I am not to get
discouraged if I dont always have my way about what the Spokesman says.
I can be sure that I will win out in the end because I represent the
plain people and they have got the votes and everybody knows they are
the real boss. And Mr. Edgerton says that just now what the Spokesman
is worried about is what to do about the Reds that seem to be making an
awful lot of fuss and what would I think he had ought to tell the world
about it?
And gee Mom you can imagine how fine that was because it was one of the
things that Pop has wrote to me about. So I says, “Them fellers had
everyone ought to be sent to jail.”
“Yes,” says Mr. Edgerton, “but the trouble is that dont seem to work
out right because then they have a trial and it puts their ideas on the
front page of the papers instead of the ideas of the Spokesman. It’s
kind of provoking but it works just the opposite of how it had ought
to.”
“Well,” says I, “This much is plain if them fellers dont like the way
this country is run they had ought to get out of it.”
“Yes,” says Mr. Edgerton, “I have said that and we sent a couple of
hundred of them off to Roossia a few years ago. But you see there is an
awful lot of them and you’ve no idea what it costs or how it hurts the
Spokesman to have to pay travelling expenses for a lot of Bolshivikis.”
“Well,” says I, “if I had my way I’d cut their journey short they
should be sent to sea in ships of stone with sails of lead.”
Mom you must tell Pop not to send me no old ones because that sounded
fine to me but it seems that it is a wheeze in fact Mr. Edgerton was
the man that had wrote it several years back he explained. “You see,”
he said, “before I come to the Spokesman I was shirt-stuffer for a big
admiral and that was the sentence that made his reputation.”
“A shirt-stuffer?” says I.
Says he, “That is what we call ourselves us fellows that make the big
stuffed shirts that the public admires.” It didnt seem to me that was
a very respectful way to talk about an admiral but I didnt say nothing
because I was trying to remember the rest of what Pop had wrote.
“Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “I wish you would tell me how anybody that has
got sense enough to make a speech can be such a fool as to believe in
dividing up because can’t they see that if you was to do it it wouldnt
be a week before the smart ones like you and me would have it all
again?”
“Well,” he says, “the fact is that a lot of these Reds dont want to
divide up their idea is just the opposite they want to concentrate the
ownership and have the government run things.”
“Yes,” I says, “and wouldnt that be great?” I says. “Imagine the Elite
Beauty Parlors being run by the government and all us girls setting
with our feet up on the top of the tables instead of doing our work!”
“Well,” says he, “as a matter of fact wouldnt there be a lot of
customers come in to see that sight?”
But the subject is too serious for kidding so I says, “How much liberty
would us girls have left, if we all had to be government help? And who
would give us our jobs would we have to go to some politician from
North Carolina that has got the Spokesman’s ear? No, Mr. Edgerton, the
prosperity of this country is based on individual effort and freedom
of everybody to make his own way in the world. Just compare our wealth
with what they have got over in them bureaucratic and Socialistic lands
overseas.”
Mom, that was an awful mouthful, but I had learned it word for word out
of Pop’s letter, I got it off without a slip and Mr. Edgerton was very
much impressed he stopped joking and sat and thought it over and he
says, “Yes, Miss Riggs, I am inclined to think that is sound doctrine
and a good illustration. I think that will serve admirably for the talk
which the Spokesman is to give to the reporters in the morning. They
have asked Him several embarrassing questions about the big banker in
his cabinet who has been let off a lot of his income taxes, and these
ideas of yours I am sure He will consider much more suitable for public
discussion. I think I had better run over and see Him at once and make
the suggestion.”
So then we gets up to go and then oh Mom a most dreadful embarrassing
thing happens. Mr. Edgerton goes for to pay the bill for our dinner
and the coffee and the other things in coffee cups that we has had
and he takes out his leather wallet and finds that the least he has
is a hundred dollar bill. He takes it out and gee it most burns my
eyesight it is more money than I ever seen all at once in my whole life
before--just a little bit more than I earn in a month only I get it
by the week and it has started to go before it comes. Well the waiter
looks at it and says somethink about not thinking they’d have change
for that at the desk and Mr. Edgerton says to me, “Do you happen to
have a smaller bill with you Miss Riggs?”
And gee there I am knowing that I have got just exactly seventeen cents
in my purse! So I have to think quick and I says that I dont think I
have anything smaller than a ten-spot myself. And then the boob waiter
busts in and says they wont have no trouble in changing that at the
desk! So then I have to open my purse and play the game of being very
much surprised that I have left my ten-spot at home and of course I
am turned red all the way down into my blouse because how will Mr.
Edgerton have any respect for my opinions about world finance if he
knows that I have to go round the day before payday with only a few
coppers to buy my lunch with?
Your worried
MAME.
LETTER VI
IN WHICH I PUT ON THE GLAD RAGS
DEAR MOM:
Well I am glad the family finds my letters interesting these things
is sure different from anything that ever happened to me before and I
guess to any girl from Camden New Jersey.
Well, I am having a funny time right now in the Elite Beauty Parlors.
The girls is just ate up with curiosity they know I have got some big
fellow on my string somebody seen me with him somewhere and they cant
make out why I wont tell. They say I’m a boob to think I can hide him
they will sure track him down but I just laugh at them. There is an
extension phone in Madame Lafferty’s private office and whenever I am
asked to the phone she is always listening in but all she hears is that
a gentleman named Mr. Brown says for me to meet him at the usual place
and that dont tell her much. Sometimes I write these little notes to
you in between customers, and of course that intreegs the girls a lot
too and Ada Huggins--her that has changed her name to Adaire the silly
fool--she says, “What is it Mame are you writing your mamewars?” That
is supposed to be smart but it aint so very.
Well just now the phone rung and it was Mr. Edgerton, and he asked me
if I could get off at five this afternoon and meet him and of course
that wasnt easy because it is our busiest hour but he said it was a
very urgent matter so I said I would try my best to be there. And
then I went to ask the Madame and gee she was sour she says, “What is
this that I am running a beauty parlor or a date ranch?” You see she
pretends the girls aint supposed to meet the customers outside but gee
what a howl there would be if I was to ask for enough wages to buy my
own dinners! And we all know she goes out herself and meets a gent with
a glass in one eye and his hair plastered over his bald head, he calls
himself Count Skrimsky but I’m telling you he’s no count in any way you
mean it. Well I says she can dock my pay or I’ll stay two hours of my
afternoon off and then she tries to find out who is the gentleman and
I tell her it is a government matter and I have been forbid to say and
you can imagine how much pleased that makes her!
* * * * *
P. S. Oh Mom I have just had the most wonderful adventure that ever
happened to a girl. Mr. Edgerton knew just what he had in mind when he
got me to meet him at five o’clock it was to get to some store before
it shut up! Oh Mom he must of saw that my purse was empty the last time
we went out and he must of got sorry about it. Anyhow we strolled down
the street and there was the Bon Ton Store with all the lovely things
in the windows and he kind of led me over to look and he says, “They
make lots of pretty things now-a-days dont they.” And I says, “Yes,
they do,” but kind of feeble because I wouldnt have him think I was
thinking I would ever like to own such things. But he says, “Let’s us
go in and have a look at them.”
So we went in and he went to the suit department and he says to the
clerk, “My daughter finds the winters in Washington more severe than
she expected and she wants to get something nice and warm,” he says,
just like that and gee I nearly faints at the nerve of him. But of
course I have got to go through with it so I says, “Oh, no, Papa, not
now!” but he says, “Yes, right now, I insist.”
So the girl takes one look at him and starts to bringing out the
expensive things and I gasps, “Oh, that will cost too much!” But he
says, “You let me tend to this daughter,” and so of course all I can
do is to stand there. And so he gets me a tailored suit brown like I
had on but oh what a difference there can be in clothes! It is soft and
fuzzy and warm like it was an overcoat and yet it is lighter than my
old suit!
And then he says, “We shall have to have a hat and things to match
this suit,” and then I starts to argue that my old hat will do but he
says it wont and before I get through he takes me round to the shoe
department and the glove counter--it is after the hours and the place
is closed and the clerks is tired and looking cross but he cheers them
up with a tip and so we finish the rounds. And I keep them all on and
when I am going out you would not know it is the same girl that come
in. The clerk wants to know where they shall send the old things and
I don’t dare to give the address because you see it had ought to be
the name of some swell hotel so I says I am moving and I will send for
them; and of course I will send myself tomorrow.
Well, Mom, I am so rattled I can hardly talk and I says, “Mr. Edgerton,
this aint right I hadnt ought to of let you do it.” But he says real
serious that the ideas I have give him is worth what he has paid and
there wasnt no other way he could of got them. “But I didnt expect to
be paid for them,” I says and he says, “Well I am paid for them myself
and why should you work for nothing?” he says. “I have got to keep
close to the great heart of the plain people,” he says, “and to know
how they feel and talk and how else am I to do it? The only thing you
got to be sure is that getting fixed up swell dont spoil you so that
you forget how the plain people feel.”
But I says, “No you dont need to worry about that,” I says, “because I
got my mother and father and my kid brothers and sisters back in the
gas-house district of Camden New Jersey and how could I forget how they
feel?”
“Well then,” says he, “it’s all right and you can go on telling me and
I will tell it to the Spokesman and He will tell it to the newspaper
reporters and they will tell it to the papers and the papers will tell
it to the gas house district of Camden New Jersey.”
“But,” says I, “What will the missus think about it your spending so
much money on a manicure girl?”
“She aint going to know about it,” he says. “I have paid cash and I
dont suppose you will tell her.”
“Trust me!” I says. “But some of your friends--”
“If my friends was to see me with you now it would be easier for me
to get away with it I could say you was the daughter of some famous
diplomat or of a senator at the very least.” And of course that made me
feel happy and just then we come to a movie parlor and he says, “We
have got to learn how to wear our good clothes,” he says, “so let’s go
in and see the latest thing in Hollywood manners.”
So in we go and there is a picture oh Mom the loveliest story about a
poor miners’ daughter in the hills that is kidnapped by a moonshiner
that is an old-fashioned name for a boot-legger and she is rescued by
the handsome young son of the mine-owner that happens to be visiting
the mine and he comes to love her in the end and they get married in
the loveliest palace all white with sunshine and roses. And if I had of
saw that yesterday I would of said it was too good to be true but now
it all seemed like it was me and I felt such thrills running over me
and I felt so warm and I whispered to Mr. Edgerton to thank him several
times and I felt just like he really was my father like he said.
But then I got scared because of course he aint my father but he’s a
man that aint happy with his wife and I am a girl that is promised to
be married some day a long ways off to a poor but honest shipping-clerk
in Camden New Jersey. And so I have got to keep telling myself that
my job with Mr. Edgerton is to educate him so that he can educate the
Spokesman that is the greatest Man in the whole world and has the job
of educating the greatest people in the whole world.
But oh Mom it is hard to be a girl and to be young and to love pretty
things and never to be able to have none unless you go without your
lunch every day for a month or two. I go up to that little box of a
room that I live in, and fry myself a frankfurter or some hamburger
on a tiny oil stove and gee I get sorry for myself and I get sorry
for poor Walter that thinks I am going to marry him some day and I am
of course but oh Mom us plain people do have to pay a lot for what we
learn!
Well we went into a restaurant and as soon as Mr Edgerton had ordered
some dinner I says real determined, “We have got to get down to
business now because I will not feel happy unless I give you some real
good ideas to pay for all this money you have spent.” So he says that
the Spokesman likes my ideas about the Reds and how to hold them down,
but He thinks that just now it would be better not to hammer them too
hard because this country has got a lot of machinery and things that it
has got to sell and them Bolshivikis has got a lot of gold and crown
jewels that they want to exchange for ten thousand tractors that is
made by a friend of the Spokesman that helped him a lot to get elected.
“Gee,” I says, “I thought them Roossian fellers had got all them gold
and jewels by stealing them!”
And Mr. Edgerton says that is so and perhaps we hadnt ought to take it
but the trouble is if we dont sell the tractors the tractor factory
will have to shut down and that will leave a lot of good honest
American working people to starve in the middle of the winter. “And so
you see,” says he, “how complicated these here international affairs
is.”
And I says, “My God I hardly know how to think my way around in such
a mix-up. That is almost worse than the problem about getting the
debts paid,” I says, “for I was going to say that to make up with them
Bolshivikis would be like shaking hands with murder.” And Mr. Edgerton
says, “Yes, it was Lord George that said that a few years ago over in
England.” And gee Mom you have sure got to keep Pop from sending me old
ones else I’ll have to stop using his ideas and think them all up for
myself.
Well I done the best I could in a hurry. He said the Spokesman was very
unhappy because of the way the prohibitionists was fussing because the
boot-leggers wasnt stopped the dries didnt like it because the job of
enforcing the law was left to that banker that is in the cabinet--I
never can remember his name but I keep thinking of Cantelope though
that dont sound right. Well anyhow this Mr. Cantelope is the biggest
manufacturer of whiskey in the country and the prohibitionists dont
seem to think that he is the best one to catch the bootleggers and I
says, “Well, you have heard the old saying about setting a thief to
catch a thief.” And Mr. Edgerton thought that was clever but he didnt
think it was just the way the Spokesman would want to defend His friend
the great banker in the cabinet.
And so there it was Mom I couldnt think of nothing else so I have
fell down complete and Mr. Edgerton will think that getting these
new clothes has made me stop being able to feel with the plain
people. So please ask Pop to see if he can think of any reason why
a great whisky-maker should be hired by the government to stop the
whisky-business, and if he can, to write it to me quick. But please
dont let him send nothing that he has read in the papers about it
because Mr. Edgerton is sure to say that is old stuff.
* * * * *
P. S. Again I been thinking it over and this idea has hit me that maybe
Pop aint really got any ideas at all except what he gets out of the
papers and if so I have got to do this job all alone. I am going to
talk it over with the girls in the beauty parlor because I am sure they
dont read nothing in the papers except the divorces and the crimes and
the beauty hints the same as what I done before I was invited to help
the Spokesman with his speeches.
Your anxious
MAME.
LETTER VII
IN WHICH I AM PAID COMPLIMENTS
DEAR MOM:
You should of been in the Elite Beauty Parlors this a. m. to see what
happened when I walked in with my new costume. I have got to wear it
to work you see because I never know when Mr. Edgerton will give me a
ring on the phone. You would of thought the girls had never seen no
real swell clothes in their lives before they just let out one yell,
and then of course they wanted the whole story when and where and how
and especially how much. And when I wouldnt tell them I was a cat and
Hattie Schoenstein--she has had a mad on me ever since I told her that
the French way of her name would be Hotaire--well she says, “How much
did you pay the gentleman for that?”
I says, “I paid him some valuable ideas,” and of course they all
thought that was the funniest joke they ever heard for how could the
poor sillies imagine that I was being consulted about what the greatest
Man in the whole world was to say twiced a week to the newspaper
reporters of the whole world? If I had of told them that they would of
busted with laughing.
But say Mom it is sure wonderful to be dressed right up to the minute
you may say what you please but there aint any feeling like it. Already
today three gentlemen have asked me will I go out to dinner with them
and I have had to tell them that I have a steady which is the easiest
way of getting out of it as I have to be here whenever Mr. Edgerton
needs me.
Well I have got the afternoon paper, and I see the Spokesman has not
said what I advised Him to say about the Reds. What He did say was so
much wiser I could never of thought of it myself and it made me have a
great reverence for Him. He says that the Roossians should be allowed
to buy our tractors because we have got to preserve freedom of trade
because that is the great principle upon which American prosperity is
based. And of course I can see that for if I had of went into that Bon
Ton Store with Mr. Edgerton and the clerk had of told me that they
wouldnt sell me no suit because maybe they didnt like the looks of me
or something why where would I of been then? And so the Spokesman said
we would not stop the people that come over here from Roossia to buy
things but only them that had come to teach us ideas that was dangerous.
I will tell you something funny that will show you what a wonderful
thing it is that the Spokesman is doing in educating all the people
in ideas that is safe. I got some of the girls to talking about
international affairs this morning because you see I want to find out
what it is that the plain people think so that I can tell Mr. Edgerton
and he can tell the Spokesman. I asked them about this business about
letting the Roossians come over here to buy things and they all got mad
and they says no we don’t want none of them dirty Bolshivikis over here
they has went and nationalized all the women in Roossia and we dont
want none of that in America.
“Then you dont believe in freedom of trade?” I says and Florabelle
McGinnis she flares up, “I believe in every girl having a right to
choose her own feller,” she says, “and if that aint freedom of trade
then what is?”
Well when I come home from lunch I had the paper with that interview
that the Spokesman had give and I hands it to Florabelle and I says,
“See here, the Spokesman has been talking about what you said.” And so
she read it and a little later I hears her talking with Ada Huggins and
she says, “Well if them Roossians has got the money and its good money
why let them come in I say and buy what they want because after all
freedom of trade is the great principle upon which American prosperity
is based.” Just like that she said it Mom as if it was her own idea
but she had just took it up because she seen it in the paper the poor
silly. But you can see how very important it is that I should study
these questions and get them right so that I can know what to tell Mr.
Edgerton to tell the Spokesman to tell the Floradumbelles.
Another idea was in that interview and a very important and wise idea
as I can see. The Spokesman says there is another great principle upon
which American prosperity is based and that is freedom of opinion;
everybody has got the right to say what they think and so we will have
a chance to find out what ideas is the best. I read that to some of
the girls so as to see what they would say and Hotaire--she is always
looking to say something different from me, so as to put me into a
hole--she says, “Well, if he thinks that, why is he scared to let them
Roossians come in and say their ideas?”
And did you ever hear anything so silly as that letting them
Bolshivikis come in and shoot off their faces! “Well but why not?” she
says persistent like.
I says, “Why you poor simp dont you know them fellers brings in a lot
of money to try to tear down our government?”
“Well,” she says, “and can they do it?”
And I says, “No of course they cant do it.”
And then says she, “Then why do we have to be so scared of them?”
“Scared?” I says. “Who’s talking about being scared?”
“Well then,” she keeps on, “why not let them shoot their faces off?”
“But you simp,” I says, “them fellers would come in here and buy
printing presses and stir up our foreign labor.”
And she says, “Well if their money is good to buy tractors why shouldnt
it be good to buy presses?”
And so I gets hot under the collar and I says, “You talk like you was
one of them Bolshivikis yourself,” I says, “and you had ought to be
shut up and not allowed to talk no such rotten ideas.”
“Oh so that’s all you believe in free speech!” she says.
And just then the Madame comes along and she sees we are having a row
and she gives a “Shush!” and looks a few daggers at us as she goes to
welcome a customer. And that is the way it goes with we girls we are
just supposed to sit here and shine people’s fingers and never open
our mouths at all. We have got no more rights than if we was so many
polishing machines and I tell you Mom I sometimes think it is more than
I can stand. Some day when the Madame gets off one of her shushes at me
I’m going to bust loose and tell her what I think of her and her ideas
that she can dictate to free Americans the way we talk and the way we
dress and the way we do our hair.
If that ever happens I’m telling you that Lafferty lady will get the
jolt of her sweet life because I have been talking to the other girls
and they all feel like I do and I’ll bet if I was to give a little
time to it I could get them all to stand together and win some rights
for ourselves. Gee Mom if I could only get a few dollars ahead some
time so that I could have a little nerve! But it’s the same with all
of we girls our last nickle is gone before the end of the week. We had
ought to have somebody to stake us so that we could afford to strike
and not be starved into giving up! But of course there aint anybody
interested in helping poor working girls to get their rights.
* * * * *
P. S. Well I have just come back from having dinner with Mr. Edgerton.
We went to a pretty swell place because he says I am looking so nice
now that no other sort of place would do for me. And he says I dont
never need to worry about what it costs because my ideas is worth it
to him he has never saw the Spokesman so pleased as with the ideas I
have give to Him lately; he says the Spokesman almost smiled He was so
pleased and once He made a remark that He didnt have to make and that
is something that does not happen once in a month.
Of course I wanted to know so I says, “What was the remark?”
And he says, “Why, he says, ‘I went to church yesterday.’” And Mr.
Edgerton of course wanted to be polite so he says, “Who preached?” And
the Spokesman says, “Dr. Wringum.” And Mr. Edgerton says, “Was it a
good sermon?” And the Spokesman says, “Yes.” And Mr. Edgerton says,
“What did he preach about?” And the Spokesman says, “Sin.” And Mr.
Edgerton says, “What did he say about it?” And the Spokesman says, “He
didnt approve of it.” And Mr. Edgerton says to me, “That was the end of
the conversation.”
Mr. Edgerton laughed like he thought there was something funny about
that but I didnt see nothing funny and I says, “Well, but that is right
ain’t it? You wouldnt of expected a preacher would of approved of sin?”
And then Mr. Edgerton looks at me like he was studying my face and he
says, “It is wonderful how exactly your mind is like the Spokesman’s.”
And of course that was a tremendous compliment and I felt all flustered
and says, “Just how is that?” and he says, “You have a serious mind,”
he says. “You have never wasted your time on foolishness.”
“No,” I says, “that aint quite so but when it comes to serious things
like teaching the whole American people about sin,” I says, “nobody
would want to make a joke about that.”
And he says, “There is some evil people that might, but you wouldn’t,
and that is why you understand the mind of the Spokesman and He almost
always likes your ideas when I tell them to Him.” So Mom you can
imagine how near to Heaven I felt.
Well then we talked about what the Spokesman had said about freedom of
trade and of speech and Mr. Edgerton says that one of them Bolshiviki
fellers has just sent the Spokesman a telegram saying that since He
has come to believe in free speech wont He please let out some of the
fellers that is in jail for practicing it. So there it is you see just
like I said to Hotaire, how dangerous them fellers is. I says something
that Pop had wrote me, “Liberty dont mean license.” But Mr. Edgerton
says that is an old one too it seems that all Pop’s ideas is old.
So I says right out of my own ideas I says, “Well I’ll say this that
if a government aint got the right to protect itself, then what is it
for?” And Mr. Edgerton went up into the air again and he says that
is one of the proofs that I have got a mind just like the Spokesman,
I would sure see that in His answer to the Bolshiviki feller only of
course He wont answer the feller.
Well there we was chatting away as happy as you please and having such
a good dinner too when all of a sudden I notices there is a feller
sitting at the next table all by himself and he dont seem to have a
thing to do but listen to what we are saying. I gets him out of the
corner of my eye and then I writes a note on the menu and shoves it
over to Mr. Edgerton, “We are being listened to.” So then he begins to
talk about the unusual severe winter we have been having and by and by
he gets a chance to look at the other feller who is attending to what
is in his own plate real hard. And after that we dont talk no more
international affairs.
Well when we get up to go we have hardly got out of the door before I
see the other feller getting up and when we are walking down the street
there he is following us. So we stop to look in a shop-window and I see
him stop too and I says to Mr. Edgerton, “We are being shadowed. I must
get on a street-car right quick and you get on another going the other
way and we will see what happens.”
So we shook hands and I run and caught a car going my way home and that
is all I know about it for I didnt see the feller on my car. But oh Mom
do you suppose that Mr. Edgerton’s wife can of heard how he is taking
out a manicurist to dinner? Or do you suppose it can be some of them
Bolshivikis that is trying to undermine the government by keeping me
from helping the Spokesman keep close to the great heart of the plain
people?
Your scared
MAME.
LETTER VIII
IN WHICH I PEEK INTO A PALACE
DEAR MOM:
If you have got the same habit that I have got of reading everything
in the papers that the Spokesman says you will of saw how many times
He says the things I have said for Him to say. The last time was that
about the government having the right to protect itself against fellers
that wants to talk about over-throwing it. It come out in the papers
just like I said it to Mr. Edgerton.
Yesterday there wasnt so much news only a story about how the Spokesman
had been delayed for a full minute after He had got into His automobile
by the Spokeslady having to coax Her dog to get in too. It made a sweet
story for I like to think of Them having a pet that They love.
Today there is another story very interesting. It seems that the
Spokesman has got to have exercise but He is too busy to go and get it
so up there in the great white house where He stays they have set up an
electric camelephant, that works by machinery and every morning He gets
up on top of it and gives Him a nice ride and shakes Him up and starts
everything inside Him. I think that is a wonderful idea but I should
think it would be rather tiresome riding on a camelephant and not
getting nowhere or any change of scenery like on a real camelephant.
But I suppose the Spokesman would be too busy to look at the scenery
anyhow, He has got to be thinking all the time about what He is going
to say to the reporters when they come to listen to Him again.
There was a customer left a magazine in the Elite Beauty Parlors and
in it I see a picture of the Spokesman. Of course it is not a picture
of Him riding the camelephant but it just shows His face. But I cut it
out and took it home and pasted it on a piece of cardboard and I have
set it up on my bureau so that I can look at Him while I am thinking
up things that I can tell Mr. Edgerton to tell Him to say to the
reporters. I wish that Mr. Edgerton had not told me one thing about Him
that I find myself always thinking while I look at the picture that He
is like a singed cat because He is better than He looks. Of course I
know there is movie actors that is more sheiks but they have not got
the great ideas of the Spokesman.
* * * * *
P. S. Well I have went to dinner with Mr. Edgerton again and it had to
be a cheap place because of that scare that we got from seeing a man
that we thought was following us. Mr. Edgerton says that he does not
know any more about it because the man did not follow him on the street
car. It might be that his wife is having him shadowed because she is
jealous about him giving so much time to trying to understand the plain
people. He says that she is now certain that a wart which she has got
on her shoulder is turning into angina pectoris and when he tries to
persuade her that it is not so she cries and becomes very excited and
says that he no longer loves her and that she knows he is only waiting
for her to die so that he can run off with some peroxide blonde. I asks
him if that means me and he says that my guess about it is better than
any man’s.
The other thing that it might be he says some of his enemies might be
having him watched so as to get something on him. I says, “Have you
got enemies?” And he says, “Up there at the great white house I have
not got anything else and neither has anybody else because everyone is
hating everyone else and watching for a chance to lift his scalp off.”
There is a dozen secretaries up there it seems but Mr. Edgerton is
the special one indeed he is really not a secretary at all he is just
that on the payroll but they dont pay him very much and the greater
part of his pay comes to him on the side out of funds which is put up
by business men that want to have the say about things. And what Mr.
Edgerton is paid for is to be a kind of guardian to the Spokesman to
tell Him what to say that He wouldn’t know if He wasnt told. And of
course Mr. Edgerton has got the right to come into the big white house
at all hours of the day or night and it is not many that have got that
right and them that have not got it are intreeging and trying to pull
down they that have.
He said again that it is just like a palace with a king and his
courtiers but as I was never in a palace I could not tell. And he told
me about the people he has to deal with up there in the big white house
and of course I listened very eager not because I like to gossip but
because I have got to understand about these people if I am going to be
one that has got the job of teaching the Spokesman.
Mr. Edgerton says there is an old gentleman by the name of Mr. Prows
that is a sort of grandaddy to the great Man. He owns a big department
store back in the home town and it runs itself and all the old
gentleman has got to do is to play around in the big white house and
enjoy the thrills of power. People come to him that wants this and
that and he listens and looks wise and says that he will see what can
be done and he toddles round and ask questions of this and that and by
and by he whispers into the Spokesman’s ear that the welfare of the
party depends upon Pete Whizzle being made deputy collector of customs
at Skunk Center Montana and if the Spokesman does it then the old
gentleman is proud and happy for a week.
And there is another guy that is a big mill-owner by the name of
Senator Buttles and he has been the Spokesman’s real boss and now is
the political manager and he is supposed to run the machine and all the
other politicians and the other senators. But he is a flop at the job
because you see he is one of these hard-boiled guys that is used to
running a factory and to say for things to be done just so and if you
dont like it you can get the hell out of here. But the other senators
aint used to the job being done that way they is mostly old guys of
the sporting sort that buy their bootleg liquor right in the lobby and
they dont like the Spokesman and His blue-nose cheese-paring crowd that
He has brought along from the artic regions and there is war between
them and Mr. Edgerton has to work hard to keep it from busting into the
papers some day.
And Mr. Edgerton says the Spokesman is very worried about that story
about the camelephant. He thinks maybe the people will think it is
not dignified for the greatest Man in the world to be riding on a
camelephant in His pajamas in His bedroom. And I says, “Well I should
of thought that is just where they would think He should ride,” I says.
“The undignified part would be if He was to ride a camelephant on the
street in His pajamas.” And Mr. Edgerton says that is quite true and I
always think of things in just the right way and if I am sure that the
plain people will see it that way the Spokesman will be less unhappy.
Mr. Edgerton says there is nothing in the whole world that worries
the Spokesman so much as being made fun of because He is very serious
about His job and wants people to be serious about Him. And I says, “Of
course He would have to be,” I says, “for it is no joke to know that
a hundred millions of people is waiting for you to teach them what to
think and a Man that has got to talk to all the reporters of all the
newspapers of the whole world has got a job that will keep Him looking
serious.”
“Well that is just what it does,” says Mr. Edgerton and he says, “You
feel quite sure that it wont hurt Him about the camelephant?”
I says, “Anybody that laughs about such a thing will be no good
American,” I says. “The plain people like I know back in the gas-house
district of Camden New Jersey,” I says, “will think that a Man that has
to teach them and govern them and manage their international affairs
should be a sober Man and a moral Man with no time for foolishness,” I
says. “I dont suppose He rides that camelephant for fun,” I says.
And Mr. Edgerton says, “No it is for His liver.”
And I says, “Exactly He has got to take care of His liver of course,” I
says. “And while He rides He will have His mind on the government and
He will not let Himself be worried by no laughing jackasses along the
roadside.”
Mr. Edgerton says that when the Spokesman saw the story in print He
was fearful peeved and could not talk about nothing else all day He
demanded to know who had give that camelephant away to the reporters
and He told Mr. Edgerton to go and find out. And Mr. Edgerton went
first to Mr. Grandaddy Prows and the old gentleman said he was not at
liberty to say but in strict confidence he had an idea that it was
Senator Buttles that had give it out. And then Mr. Edgerton went to
Senator Buttles and asked him who had give it out and Senator Buttles
said that he was not at liberty to say but in strict confidence he had
an idea that it was Mr. Prows that had give it out. And gee Mom would
you think that a palace would be so much like the Elite Beauty Parlors?
Well Mom I could of listened all day to international affairs like
this but I had got nervous about all this intreeging and I looks about
and there at one of the tables is sitting the same feller that I seen
at the table the other night trying to listen in on our talk. “Mr.
Edgerton,” I says, “we are being shadowed again.” And after that he was
so uneasy that his mind was not on what I was saying. And he says,
“When we go out you must let me put you into a taxi because it will not
be so easy for him to follow you and I will go another way and lose him
in the crowd,” he says.
So he gives me money for the fare and we goes out and he puts me into a
cab and away I go and pretty soon I look back and there is the lights
of another car behind us and so I watches and that car follows us all
the time so I tell my driver not to take me no farther but to let me
out and I will save most of my fare. And when I get out I see that
the other car stops too and waits to see where I am going and then it
follows slow.
I says to myself, “I will block that little game,” so I slips into
a big hotel right quick. I can do that all right because I have got
on my swell new clothes that Mr. Edgerton give me so I look like I
belonged in one of them places. I goes into an elevator and slips off
at the mezzanine floor and sits there a while in one of the soft plush
seats and a gentleman comes along and spreads his feathers in front
of me--you know they calls them places “Peacock Alley”--but I goes on
staring straight in front of me and he sees that I am not his pea-hen
and so he goes away. This is not the man that is following Mr. Edgerton
and I you understand but just some feller that is intreeged by my swell
new clothes.
I dont see any more of the one that was following us so I go out by
another entrance and get home all right. But gee Mom we are really
being spied on and I wonder how it is they can find us whether they
have got the telephone wires tapped at the Elite Beauty Parlors or
whether they have got one of the girls hired to tip them off to my
dates. You never can tell when you are living in the great world and
have the job of deciding what is to be taught to the whole American
people. Gee Mom it is more thrilling than any movie that I ever was at!
Your excited
MAME.
LETTER IX
IN WHICH I DON’T GET WET
DEAR MOM:
Well, I suppose you have saw in the papers how they are making a lot of
fun of the Spokesman because of the story that He has got a camelephant
in His room, so that He can get His exercise by riding on it every
morning in His pajamas. It is like Mr. Edgerton said He was afraid it
would be they are getting smart about it and not taking Him respectful
like a great Man like Him had ought to be took.
This a. m. there was a girl in the Elite Beauty Parlors that had a
paper and there was no customers so she was reading about it and then
she begun telling it and they was all chuckling. It seems this smart
aleck in the paper was saying that this camelephant went about the room
with the Spokesman on the top of it and that it had got unruly and had
bumped Him against the chandelier and the aleck said the camelephant
was built so the electric contact was got through spurs and that you
stopped it by pulling on a pair of rains and saying, “Ho!” And he
said that why He had got a camelephant not a zebray was because a
camelephant don’t have to be watered more than onced in three weeks and
also because it was the emblem of the dries and so on a lot of silly
stuff that it is a shame to write about a great Man that has got the
hard job of governing and teaching the whole country.
Well it made me hot to listen to them sillies giggling there and I
says, “That is all a bunch of nonsense,” I says, “that camelephant
does not travel but it stays on one place and it goes when you press a
button and the reason it is a camelephant not a zebray is got nothing
to do with prohibition,” I says, “but because it is ordered for His
liver and the camelephant is a beast that has got a very bumpy gate and
it shakes you a lot when you ride on him.”
Well and of course that got the lot of them peeved and Ada Huggins the
silly that wants me to call her Adaire only I won’t fool with such
nonsense she says, “What do you know about it?” And I says, “Never you
mind what I know,” I says, “but I know a lot more than you think I
know.” “Maybe you have been invited up to that big white house to visit
Him,” she says and I says, “Maybe I have been and maybe I will be I
aint telling it to you.”
Well of course that intreegs them a lot, for they have saw there is
something mysterious in my life and they would give a day’s pay to know
but I dont say nothing because it is a state secret as Mr. Edgerton
says and my power to educate him and the Spokesman would be gone if
anybody knowed that I was doing it he says the newspapers would not
respect the ideas that I give them if it was knowed that they come from
a manicure girl in the Elite Beauty Parlors.
* * * * *
P. S. Well Mom I have saw Mr. Edgerton again and it is getting to be
very exciting because there is sure some enemy that is shadowing us
and trying to find out what we are doing. Mr. Edgerton says whenever
he comes out of the big white house there is somebody following him
but he managed to shook him off and we had another dinner in the Greek
restaurant where they cook things with mutton suet and he told me all
what is happening. And it seems that it is very dreadful because the
papers all over the country is laughing about that camelephant and
telling all kinds of silly things like that it makes an awful racket
while it runs or that the Spokesman has got a secretary riding with him
and dictates his male while he goes out for a camelephant gallop.
Mr. Edgerton says he give positive orders to the reporters of all
the newspapers of the country that nothing more was to be sent out
on that camelephant but it done no good because the editors was all
telegraphing for more and even cabling from South Africa and China and
if the editors didnt get no more they would make it up anyhow. And
the Spokesman is so worried that He has not been able to think about
governing the country for the past few days but only scolding about who
let the camelephant out of the stable.
And at last it was found out who done it and it was Mr. Grandaddy Prows
that done it and they had an awful scene and the old gentleman wept
tears and he said that he hadn’t meant no harm but he only thought
that the plain people would want to know all about the homelife of
their great Man and would like to read about His camelephant just as
they liked to read about the Spokeslady’s pet dog and how the family
automobile had been held up a whole minute after the Spokesman had got
into it while the Spokeslady was coaxing Her dog to get in.
And the Spokesman said it was not the same at all because when He was
in the automobile with His wife and Her dog He had something more than
His pajamas on, and so it was proper for the public to think about
Him then. He said that Grandaddy Prows had proved himself without
discretion and that his usefulness to the Spokesman was ended and
the poor old gentleman went off with his heart broken and now it is
announced that him and his wife is starting on a European tour that he
is doing some highly secret diplomatical errands for the Spokesman.
And of course that is very sad and I am upset too because Mr. Edgerton
says he cannot get the Spokesman to think about international affairs
at all no more. The reason for the worry he says is that the Spokesman
got into this great office by accident and He knows that He is wearing
shoes that is many times too big for Him and He is scared to death that
some day the people may get onto the real size of His feet. And I says,
“Oh that explains it then because I could not see why He was so afraid
of being saw in His pajamas. Because after all I have saw lots of
pictures of screen actors in their pajamas and I have thought they was
lovely. And when you see the pictures of defendants and corespondents
and other people in divorce actions they do not look so bad at all in
pajamas,” I says.
Well the big white house is a mean place to live right now Mr. Edgerton
says with everybody in the dumps or scared and anybody can get rich
quick that can find out a way to get the American people to talk about
any other animal in the zoo but the camelephant. I says, “Mr. Edgerton,
it’s not that I want money,” I says, “because I am willing to serve my
country for the love of it and I think it had ought to be possible for
the Spokesman to do His great work without being bothered,” I says, “so
let’s you and me figure out a way to get the people to appreciate and
love Him again.”
So then he looks relieved because he has come to have great confidence
in me because the training I got in the gas-house district of Camden
New Jersey has been better for this job than what he got when he was in
college. So he says, “All right Miss Riggs let us do it. What do you
suggest?”
And I says, “Any good woman would of been able to of told you. The
Spokesman has got virtues that the plain people love and what we have
got to do is to pick out one of them and get the people to think about
that.”
“Which one do you suggest?”
“You say that His great love is for economy and you take it from me
they may pay a lot of money to boot-leggers and jazz-bands but deep
down in their hearts the American people aint forgot that the real way
to make money is to save it.”
“Yes I suppose so,” he says but kind of half-hearted.
“Listen to me,” I says. “It is coming on to be springtime and every man
in this country is worried because he knows he has got to pay a bill
for his wife’s new Easter hat. Now suppose you was to fix it that the
Spokeslady was not to buy no Easter hat and you give out to all the
newspapers of the world a story that She is making over Her old hat for
this season don’t you know that would warm the heart of every man in
the country?”
Well he thinks it over but then he says, “Miss Riggs what about all the
women that want to have their new hats?”
“Take it from me,” I says, “The woman is fretting because her husband
is spending too much on his new spring suit so let there be another
story that the Spokesman is getting only a very cheap spring suit say
twenty-five dollars.”
“No,” he says, “that would be too cheap they would not believe that it
would sound like a shipping-clerk or something.”
“Well,” says I, “it happens that back in Camden New Jersey I have got
a fyansay that is a shipping-clerk and it is nothing to be ashamed
of,” I says. “But make it thirty-five or forty-five or fifty-five or
sixty-five whatever seems right--”
“Sixty-five would be about right,” he says. “And come to think of it
Miss Riggs I shouldn’t wonder if you have saved the day.”
“Let us hope that it is not too late,” I says.
“How do you mean too late?”
“I mean that He has not got His spring suit already and paid too much
for it.”
“But what harm would that do?”
“Well,” I says, “but if it aint a true story it would be no good.”
“That can be fixed up,” he says. “If the Spokesman has got a suit that
is not economical enough it can be for a present to His chef up there
at the big white house or maybe for the captain of His yacht,” he
says. And then he rushes away right off because he thinks that if the
Spokesman knows about this He may be able to get some sleep tonight
which is something He needs even worse than exercise for His liver.
And so then I start out for home and gee Mom it is awful because it has
started to rain. There I am with my new suit and my new hat and shoes
and gloves and I haven’t got my umbrella and besides it is busted and
if I was to buy a new one I should not have no lunch for the rest of
this week and the next. And so I stand in the doorway of the restaurant
waiting for the rain to stop but it gets worse and I stand till my legs
is ready to give away and the tears is running down my cheeks as bad as
the rain and gee Mom it is sure awful to be a poor girl and have only
one chance to look decent in your whole life-time and then see you got
to lose that chance.
Well I look around and standing under the awning of the next store who
do you think I see--the feller that has been shadowing Mr. Edgerton
and me! And suddenly I gets red hot and I goes over to him and I says,
“What are you following me round for?”
Well of course he is rattled and he stammers, “I aint been following
you lady I am waiting for the rain to stop.”
“You husky brute with an umbrella and rubber shoes on?” I says. “Go and
tell that to the judge,” I says. “What is it you want out of me?”
Of course he don’t know what to say but suddenly I make a guess and I
says, “Do you want to know where I live?” I says. “Are you trying to
follow me home? If so,” I says, “I’ll make you a bargain you lend me
them rubbers to put over my new shoes and you put that there umbrella
over my new hat and dress and you can walk home with me as straight as
the streets run.”
And gee Mom he is tickled so that he busts out laughing. It seems that
he is a good sport because he says “All right Miss if you really mean
it I’ll take you up.” And he reaches down and takes off his rubbers.
But before I stoop to put them on I gives him a good look in the eye
and I says, “Look here Mr. Man I want you to understand that I’m a lady
and if you try to get fresh with me I’ll poke you in the mug with your
own umbrella,” I says.
And he says, “Oh no ma’am it aint anything like that,” he says. “I
am a respectable married man and you are quite safe with me.” And so
he escorts me home and bids me good-night at the door as polite as
if I was the daughter of an admiral or of some famous diplomat like
Mr. Edgerton says that I look. And what it is that he’s after well I
suppose I’ll know about it someday when it has happened.
Your uncertain daughter
MAME.
LETTER X
IN WHICH I TAKE A FLOP
DEAR MOM:
I have your letter and also Pop’s and I dont wonder you both find it
fearful exciting to get my letters telling how I have told Mr. Edgerton
what to tell the Spokesman to say to the American people and then
that same day to get the newspaper and see that He has said exactly
what I have said for Him to say. And just think Mom it is not only in
the Camden Republican that you would read it but if you would of been
in Philadelphia then you would of saw it in the Philadelphia Democrat
and it would of been the same in Oshkosh or Lalipalousa wherever them
places is.
Indeed Mr. Edgerton says it would be the same if you was to be in
France or in Japan or any of them European countries because you see
we have got more money than all of them put together and they all have
to borrow from us and so they are all waiting round scared to see what
we are doing and if the Spokesman has et too many pancakes for His
breakfast and they have not agreed with Him then there is factories
got to shut down in South America but if the Spokesman has just had a
visit with a congressman from back in the hog-belt to tell Him that the
hicks is happy over the increase in their bank mortgages why then the
Spokesman perks up and oil promoters in the Faro Islands decides that
it is all right to drill another well.
Yes it is a most wonderful thing to have happened to a poor manicure
girl from the Elite Beauty Parlors and Mr. Edgerton is a good and true
man and it is almost like what you might call a platonic friendship. It
is extra wonderful right now because there was the greatest Man in the
whole world miserable and not able to think about international affairs
at all because all the papers was making fun of Him because He had got
a camelephant to exercise His liver. And I was the one that fixed it up
all right with my idea about the economy stories.
Of course you will of saw them by now. Mr. Edgerton and the Spokesman
did not change a word of what I said. The Spokeslady is not to get no
new Easter hat but is making Her old one over and the Spokesman Himself
is getting one spring suit that is to cost Him only sixty-five dollars.
I suppose that Mr. Edgerton and the Spokesman knows about what is the
right price but it seems an awful lot of money to me I know that Pop
never paid more than half that for a suit at least if he did he had the
senst never to let you find it out. I think it is a little hard for
great and rich folks like Mr. Edgerton and the Spokesman to remember
how it is to be real poor. They have left that job to me and so I don’t
worry that my underwear is all darns and patches because it reminds me
that I am keeping close to the heart of the plain people all the time.
Them stories was published only yesterday but already you can see that
they have changed the whole tone of the papers. In the one I get there
is a very respectful editorial, saying that it is a providential thing
for the country in this age of jazz and flappers to have a great Leader
that is a believer in the pioneer virtue of thrift. And Florabelle her
that works next to me in the Elite Beauty Parlors she says, “Well, if
the Spokeslady can stand it I suppose I can so I will save the price
of a new hat and I can see fifteen or twenty shows with it,” she says
and so you can see what a great influence I am having even with the
Floradumbelles.
* * * * *
P. S. Well Mom, I am very much puzzled for I have just got this
afternoon’s papers and there is another story about the Spokesman and
the Spokeslady and it contradicts every word of the other story because
it says now that the Spokeslady has got Herself three especially
beautiful new Easter hats and far from getting along with only one
sixty-five dollar suit of spring clothes the fact is that the Spokesman
has just bought Himself a dozen suits of spring clothes that cost a
hundred and twenty-five dollars each.
And it is a story that seems to be give out from the big white house
just like all the other stories that Mr. Edgerton has had charge of and
I don’t see what it can mean because it will ruin everything I have
done and what are the plain people going to think when they see one
story one day and then exactly the opposite the next day they will stop
believing anything they read in the papers and how will the Spokesman
be able to instruct them in what they had ought to do?
I am terrible worried about it because what can I think except that
some of them Bolshiviki fellers has got in their dirty work somewheres
undermining American institutions and spoiling the work that I am doing
for the Spokesman? I am on pins and needles waiting for Mr. Edgerton
to call again and hope it will be soon. I am not allowed to call him
because of course it would not do for him to be making dates with
ladie’s voices over the telephone at the big white house where the
Spokesman speaks.
* * * * *
P. S. Again. Well it is another day and I have not heard from Mr.
Edgerton and it is a shame there had surely ought to of been some way
that I could get hold of him in a time of public danger like this. It
seems to me like the Reds is running away with the country and I could
not sleep good all night I dreamed that I seen twelve Spokesmen all
alike riding around on twelve electric camels and each one of Them
had on a hundred and twenty-five dollar suit of clothes. And there is
an editorial in the paper this morning saying that of course it is
necessary for the Spokesman to be clad adequate to His high Station and
of course He would not be stingy to His wife at this joyous Eastertide.
And Floradumbelle says she guesses she will have to have her new hat
after all and she will stick some gentleman friend for her movie
tickets so you can see how the whole country is getting demoralized
again.
* * * * *
P. S. Once More. Well Mr. Edgerton called up and I met him at the
restaurant but he was scared to speak to me he is being shadowed all
the time by these mysterious enemies. He signed for me to follow him
and I seen that something was wrong so I followed and we dodged about a
while till we was sure there was nobody following and then he went to a
big art gallery and we sat there and talked. He said that was a private
enough place because nobody that had to do with politics in Washington
would ever go into no place like an art gallery.
Well I have found about the stories and what went wrong. He says that
my economy stories was the awfulest flop that ever had went out from
the great white house and it has put him in the awfulest hole and most
ruined him with the Spokesman. He says it was not the Bolshivikis at
all but it was the business men no sooner did they see that story in
the papers than they run bear-headed and wild-eyed to the nearest
telegraft office and in the first two hours they had a hundred and
forty-seven telegrams of protest mostly from millinery manufacturers
and associations of cloak and suit dealers and they all wanted to know
whether the Spokesman had gone mad or was the Bolshivikis conspiring to
get Him to ruin the retail trade of the country. Here the Spokesman had
promised them prosperity and they had put up I forget how many millions
to elect Him, and now He goes and gives them this jab in the solar
plexus.
And Mr. Edgerton says it was something awful the panic in the big white
house because the Spokesman had gone out for a walk with His four
secret service men that is hired to pull Him out from under automobiles
and they couldn’t find Him and they begun telephoning to places on the
way to look for Him and so there was a report that the Bolshivikis had
blowed Him up and somebody called out all the fire-engines in the
city. But at last they got hold of Him and the contradiction was sent
out quick but not before eleven manufacturers in the Eastern states
alone had gone into bankruptcy and that is why they had to make it a
dozen suits the Spokesman had bought in the hope to save the wholesale
trade.
And Mr. Edgerton says that poor Mr. Grandaddy Prows sent a heart-broken
cablegram from the ship that he is sailing on to Europe because he is
sure that it is an effort to ruin the department-store business and
to punish him because he let the camelephant out of the stable. And
Senator Buttles is furious too because he makes linings for ladies hats
in one of his mills but he is glad too because he hates Mr. Edgerton
because he can’t bear to have nobody but him telling the Spokesman what
to say to the American people. But Mr. Edgerton says what would Senator
Buttles know to say because he has got only one idea in the whole world
and that is a ten percent reduction in the wages of his mill-hands.
Gee Mom it is terrible to be in a mix-up like this I had no idea that
high life was so complicated and for the first time I am doubting
whether I am big enough for my job. Just think of it to save the
situation they have had to send out another story to say that the cost
of keeping up the Spokesman’s private yacht that is really a ship of
the navy is two hundred thousand dollars a year and so everybody can
see that He lives like a Gentleman of His high Station had ought to do.
Well I seen that Mr. Edgerton was so blue I hated to tell him any more
troubles but I thought that he should know about how I had spoke to
that feller that has been following us and how he had walked home with
me. I said that some time the feller would of been bound to of found
out where I lived and Mr. Edgerton said that was right. And he said
that he would not give a whoop about it because the truth was he was
sick of his job and anybody that wanted it could have it for the price
of ten cents. And he would go and get a job with some big business
where a feller could do what he pleased and not have somebody snooping
on him all the time. Of course I tried to cheer him up I told him how
he must think about the plain people and he said something about the
plain people that was not nice for a lady to hear and him sitting right
in front of one of them Eyetalian madonnas in the art-gallery too.
I went home very sad and lonely and without no dinner and gee Mom what
should I run into at home? Mrs. Budd that is my landlady must of been
watching for me for she come running out and of course I was scared I
wonder if I will ever get so that I do not jump when I see a landlady
coming at me. But it wasn’t to get her money this time but to tell me
that there has been a lady here looking for me about a half an hour ago.
“A lady?” I says. “What sort of a lady?”
“A large soft lady,” she says, “a real sure enough one a swell looker.”
“And didn’t she leave no name?”
“No,” says Mrs. Budd, “she said she would come back again.”
And suddenly something hits me and I says, “How was she dressed?” She
says that she had on a long squirrel-skin coat that must of cost a
thousand dollars and gee Mom it most floored me for of course it must
be Mr. Edgerton’s wife. And of course that is what that feller was
following me home for and he has told her where I live and she has come
after me. And gee I feel like I was Lydia Lovelight--do you remember
how pathetic she was in “Passion’s Prey?” But do you really suppose
that crazy woman can be after me with a gun because she thinks that I
have took her husband away from her? I says to myself, “Mamie Riggs
you have wished that you could get to Hollywood and now its seems that
Hollywood is come to you!” Well, if anything happens you will see it in
the papers.
Your scared daughter
MAME.
LETTER XI
IN WHICH I PLAY A BIG SCENE
DEAR MOM:
Well I hate to be writing you blue letters and you having such a hard
time what with the baby having the croup and Pop not sure of his job.
Tell him I thank him for his fine ideas but the truth is just now I
have not got no heart for the work I have been trying to do it seems to
me like I had better just be a plain manicure girl like I used to be
and not try to understand these great world affairs that is too much
for my poor head.
The reason is because it don’t seem to me like people was honest like I
thought they was. When I told Mr. Edgerton to have the Spokesman give
out to the newspapers all them stories about Him and the Spokeslady
being so economical and not buying no new clothes I thought They was
really going to not do it and it was all going to be straight. But the
way Mr. Edgerton talked They just didn’t bother about the truth at all
and it has made me sort of ashamed. If They are going to do things that
way I just aint interested in helping Them at all because They are
really not doing the plain people no good.
Of course I aint had no chance to ask Mr. Edgerton about it because he
aint called me up again so I am just waiting. The girls in the Elite
Beauty Parlors they seen I had something on my mind and Ada Huggins,
she says, “What’s the matter Mame you seem sort of deestraight.” You
see since she has changed her name to Adaire she is always trying to
use French words and I do sure hate affected people.
I says, “I have got important matters to occupy my mind and I have not
got no time for idle chatter,” I says. And she says, “Well now will you
listen to that, of all the airs! Who do you think you are the Spokesman
up in the big white house?” “You are getting warm,” I says but of
course I didn’t say no more because it is what Mr. Edgerton calls a
state secret that I am helping him.
* * * * *
P. S. Well, I went home thinking about that mysterious lady that has
been to call on me and that I am pretty sure is Mrs. Edgerton. And Mrs.
Budd my landlady says she aint come again. She is awful curious about
such a great lady coming to see a girl that has got the cheapest room
in her house and she says, “Is it some lost aunt of yours dearie?” But
I says, “It is just a friend I think.”
She says, “You could talk to her in my parlor if you like.” And of
course I know that is just so that she can listen in but what can I do
can I expect a visitor to climb four flights of stairs and where could
I put her in this room that is only six by eight and I have to shove
the oil stove and what is left of my dinner under the bed before I can
get to the door. So I says, “Thank you very kindly.” And she says, “I
will call you if she comes and you can come down.” I says, “Do please
and keep her entertained while I am getting my curl-papers off.”
You see I wanted to fix myself as decent as I could so as not to shame
Mr. Edgerton too much for knowing me. So I wash my face and put my hair
up to curl and I get my supper of potato chips and pickles in a hurry
and I am just in the middle of getting it down with my new dress I have
took off all over the bed when I hear a step in the hall and there
comes a knock on the door and I think of course it is Mrs. Budd and I
says, “Come in,” and the door opens and my God there she is!
Well Mom you could of knocked me over with an orange stick. I just
stand there with half a dill pickle in my mouth and the other half in
my hand and stare at her like a boob. It is the same lady that I seen
getting out of the electric coop with Mr. Edgerton and she has got on
the same squirrel-skin coat and all. She wouldn’t have to be a very
big lady to seem awful big standing in the doorway and she is red from
climbing the stairs and there is red in her eyes too she gives me the
glare and holds herself stiff and straight and gee Mom I feel like a
worm must feel when it is going to be stepped on.
“Are you Miss Mamie Riggs?” she says and I gives a gulp at the pickle.
“And so you are the woman that is going with my husband!” she says.
So then I see it is going to be a war and I thinks what kind? She has
got me penned in a corner and there is just a window and no fire-escape
and a long ways to the ground and she has got a big squirrel-skin muff
that she holds in her left hand with her hand inside it and I thinks
to myself there is your death Mamie Riggs because of course she must
have a gun in that hand and gee Mom it sure makes your hair rise up to
watch that muff and wonder what is going to happen will she let the
muff fall and show the gun or will she shoot through the muff? But no
she won’t be apt to do that because she won’t think no manicure girl
worth spoiling a fine muff over. It is exactly like the big scene in a
play you know how it is Mom only you really don’t because it is another
thing altogether when it is real.
Well I have got the pickle out of the way and so I say real careful
like, “I have the honor to be a friend of Mr. Edgerton,” I says. And
then I have a sudden bright idea and I raise my voice and call, “Come
in Mrs. Budd.” Then I listen and I say again louder yet, “Please come
in Mrs. Budd.” For of course I know that she is not going to lose her
chance to find out what is going on but will be at the door listening
and sure enough the door opens kind of timid and I hear her voice
behind the big lady, “Did you call me Miss Riggs?”
“You might come in,” I says. “I have a lady caller she is the wife of
a gentleman friend of mine. Meet Mrs. Edgerton,” I says, “Mrs. Budd.”
And Mrs. Budd gives a courtsey that is not answered being that she is
behind and aint saw and so I sweep my clothes into a heap and I says,
“Come and sit on the bed,” I says. And so of course Mrs. Edgerton has
to let her get by and sit down and then I feel a little better because
my landlady is between us and I think maybe if there should trouble
start she might shove her hand up or rattle her and spoil her aim.
But I have made a bum guess from seeing too many movies I guess for it
aint anything like that. All of a sudden the lady lets her muff drop
and puts her two hands up to her face white kid gloves and all and
busts into tears! And there she stands shaking and sobbing and says to
herself, “Oh the shame of it, the shame of it!”
So then of course I remember that she is supposed to be a sick woman
and what she is going through and I am sorry and I says, “Look here
Mrs. Edgerton you have got this all wrong things between your husband
and me aint at all what you think,” I says.
So then she flares all hot again and drops her hands. “Do you mean to
say you have not been going to dinners with my husband all the time?”
“It would be very silly of me to deny that,” I says, “seeing that your
detective has been sitting at the next table to us most of the times
but what is the harm of dinners?”
“And him with a wife at home!” she says with the tears running down her
cheeks again. “And the dinner on the table getting cold!”
“Well that is too bad,” I says, “it was a shame to waste so many
dinners but I didn’t know about that Mrs. Edgerton,” I says. “A
gentleman asked me to dinner and being hungry why shouldn’t I go?”
Well I see she is human after all and I am still more sorry so I goes
on real friendly like. “I guess Mrs. Edgerton you have not knowed many
working girls in your life,” I says, “and you aint realized how it
feels when a gentleman offers you a dinner free of charge. They pay
me eighteen-fifty a week at the Elite Beauty Parlors and I have got
to live on that till the next Saturday night and if I have not got
anything left on Friday night I do not have any dinner,” I says. “Mrs.
Budd here will tell you that I have to give her six dollars a week that
is what a girl has to pay to keep the rain off her in Washington D. C.
And if I spend a dollar a day for my food then I have five dollars and
a half a week to dress myself like my profession requires and all the
luxuries that you see in this room,” I says kind of sarcastic, “and
for tooth-paste and what laundry I can’t do in the bath-tub downstairs
without Mrs. Budd finding it out and for music and books and art,” I
says, “and for doctor’s bills if I should--” I am just about to say,
“If I should take up the notion that I have got the angina pectoris of
the toe,” but I realize that would be nasty so I end kind of meek-like,
“if I should be sick.”
She is staring and has got a kind of agonized curiosity in her face
like she would like to know what sort of terrible animal I am. The
tears is still there so I says, “What is it you believe, Mrs. Edgerton?
Do you think I have been paying the woman’s price for my dinners?” I
says. “Well it has been winter time and cold outside and where do you
think I could of took him to? Would I bring him to this room?” I says.
“If you think that just you ask Mrs. Budd here and she will show you
down the stairs quick,” I says. And of course Mrs. Budd gives a snort
and I says, “Do you run that sort of a house Mrs. Budd?” And she says,
“Not that I know of!”
So there is a little pause and the lady still weeping silent so I goes
on, “Has that dick been telling you lies so as to keep his job lady?
If he has told you the truth it is this that I have et maybe a dozen
dinners at your husband’s expense and I have walked a little ways on
the street with him and sat once talking in an art-gallery and that is
all. I have not even been into a taxi-cab with him and he left his own
car at home for his wife or that is what he told me and if it aint true
it is not my fault. And if it is the cost of the dinners that worries
you it would of been easier to of saved all the money you must of paid
to that there dick,” I says. “It was mostly in cheap places that we et
because he was scared he would be saw.”
“And if you are so innocent why do you have to hide?” she cries.
“He said he had to Mrs. Edgerton and when a gentleman asks you to
dinner at a cheap place you can’t hint for a better place at least not
if you are a lady. I shouldn’t wonder if the reason was because he had
a wife that he thought wasn’t reasonable and wouldn’t believe the truth
if he told it to her.”
“But why does my husband have to dine with a woman I do not meet?”
“You will not like it,” I says, “if I tell you that you and your lady
friends can’t give your husband what he has to have in his political
life. But you had ought to see it because you would scorn to know the
things that his job requires him to know.”
“What things?”
“Things about the way the plain people of this country feel and what
they want.”
“A manicure girl!” she kind of snorts.
“There is a lot of us,” I says, “and it aint only that we have got
votes but we do a lot of talking and can be a political force if you
get us real mad,” I says. “And then there’s Pop,” I says, “a gas-house
worker in Camden New Jersey and if anybody was to ask you what such a
man would say about the League of Nations for instance would you have
any idea what to answer? No Mrs. Edgerton you wouldn’t but right there
on my dressing table underneath the cold cream jar is a letter about it
that I was intending to read to Mr. Edgerton the next time I meet him.”
Well she looks me over some more and then she says in what is meant to
be icy tones of voice, “Why could his wife not attend these political
conferences?”
“Indeed she could so far as I am concerned Mrs. Edgerton I have never
had a word to tell to your husband that you might not of listened in
on.”
So she thinks again and says, “It is a shame that there should be two
dinners and one should wait and get cold,” she says.
“Yes ma’am,” I says. “I can see that is a waste.”
But her next one floors me. “Will you come to dine at my home Miss
Riggs?” she says real sweet.
So then I have to think in a hurry. “What is that Mrs. Edgerton?” I
says. “Are you expecting to make a boob out of me?”
“You have political information to give my husband,” she says, “and
when a woman’s husband is in political life it is the custom for her to
give dinner-parties to help his career. I invite you to dine with us.”
And so I gives a gulp like I had another pickle in my throat and I
says, “Very well ma’am I will come.”
“And when?” says she. “The sooner the better will you come tomorrow
evening?”
“I have no other date,” I says.
So she stoops down and picks up her muff and in it she has got not a
pistol but a vanity case. Her fingers is trembling so that she can
hardly open it but she does and there is a gold pencil and a little
note-book and she puts it against the wall and writes the address 2349
Alexander Hamilton Place Thursday at 7.30 and she hands it to me.
“There it is and I hope you will not disappoint us.”
“Mrs. Edgerton,” I says, “you must understand I have not got no good
clothes for such a party--”
“Pray,” she says, “don’t give a thought to that. This is to be an
intellectual and political occasion and you may wear your street dress
that my husband has bought you,” she says, “and I will wear the same
kind that he has bought me.”
And so then she sweeps out and leaves Mrs. Budd and I to spend the
rest of the night talking it over. And gee Mom when I thought about
her I had made up my mind that I would count it a victory if I got off
without a bullet in me and here now I have got another free dinner
coming!
Your delighted
MAME.
LETTER XII
IN WHICH I MISS HALF A DINNER
DEAR MOM:
I have just got back from Mrs. Edgerton’s party and I have sure got
some news now.
How I did wished I could of had you here to advise with. The best guess
I could make was that Mrs. Edgerton was figuring to show her husband
the difference between a real lady and a manicure girl but Mrs. Budd
she says “Maybe she really wants to know you because why,” she says,
“if a woman’s husband is got to talk about politics with manicure girls
any wife would rather it was where she could be around.” But I think
Mrs. Budd must of been impressed by that squirrel-skin coat for of
course any landlady will trust you more if you have got a thing like
that on.
Well anyhow I says that I am going there and do the best I know how and
talk with Mr. Edgerton just the same as all the other times. Because
after all the main thing is that he has got this great work to do to
tell the Spokesman what to say to the whole American people. He has ast
me to advise him and I am not going to let no jealous wife scare me off.
I have not got time to get home to fix myself up after work so I give
myself a lick and a promise in the beauty parlors and pile myself into
a street car and get pretty much mussed up in the crowd and I ride
until I get to Alexander Hamilton Place. But then it is too early and
I have read in the etiquette book that it is not good form to arrive
for dinners ahead of time so I take a little walk though I don’t mind
admitting to my dear old Mom that my knees is kind of weak for walking.
But I am not scared in the head and I think up some good conversation
and remember some ideas in Pop’s letters and so I go back to the house.
It is one of these gosh-almighty swell apartment-houses made out of
pink and green marble and red plush curtains and palm trees and colored
boys with brass buttons. But I have got my new clothes and I am not
going to worry even if Mrs. Edgerton does know that her husband bought
them for me. I am announced by the telephone and I ride up in the
elevator and there comes a maid with a white apron and a cap and I am
took into a dressing room and then a room with a piano and some books
and lights that is dim and mysterious.
Well I have had the hope that I might see Mr. Edgerton first so as to
get a line on what is coming but she don’t mean to give me no such
advantage she comes sweeping in. “Good evening Miss Riggs,” she says
and I remember that the etiquette books says that some ladies shake
hands and some do not and she is one of them that does not. She is very
polite but a little too gushy and I says to myself right off Mamie
Riggs she is worse scared than you are.
Well she starts to tell about the late winter we are having and of
course I know as much about the weather as anybody and after we have
finished with winter in Washington D. C. I tell her about winter in
Camden New Jersey.
Then Mr. Edgerton comes in and he is the same old friend and we do
shake hands and like we meant it and then I see that he is going to
play the game like there wasn’t nothing wrong. So I says, “Well Mr.
Edgerton and how goes the economy program with the Spokesman?”
He says, “Well it is not going so good as it might because you know
how it is with economy it is a fine word for the campaign but when you
come to put it into practice you find that it means letting somebody
out of a job and it always turns out to be the third cousin of some
congressman or maybe of a district leader.”
“Yes,” I says, “some of them fellers that is setting with their feet up
on their desks smoking long cigars.”
“Exactly,” he says, “and there is nothing that worries the Spokesman
so much as thinking about them fellers. You see how it is when it comes
to election time they are all busy rustling out the vote for Him and
after that He has got to find something for them to do.”
Well I had thought I must be careful not to leave Mrs. Edgerton out
of this conversation so I says, “A little while ago, Mrs. Edgerton I
thought I understood about this here economy business but now I find
it is complicated and there is something that Mr. Edgerton or maybe
yourself might explain.”
“And what is that?” she says.
“Well it is this business that you can never economize in nothing
without turning somebody out of work. But it is a terrible thing for
working people to be out of jobs,” I says, “right now my Pop is scared
that he may lose his job at the gas-works and him with a half a dozen
kids growing up and why should them kids have to starve just because
some people is took it into their heads to economize on gas-bills?”
“Perhaps we had better go in to the table,” says Mrs. Edgerton and so
there is the dining room and gee Mom if you could see how them people
live they are surely making jobs for the poor. The table is all got a
solid piece of glass over the whole top and there is a centre-piece
that is hand-embroidered lace and you have got a hand-embroidered doily
in front of your place and there is real silver and what I guess is
cut-glass and there is little electric candles at each place and there
is two sorts of wine glasses well Mom all I can say is that I am glad
I have took your advice and studied the etiquette books and practiced
them so that now I do not have to be rattled but can give my thoughts
to being intellectual.
Well we have got started on some oyster cocktails and I says, “Have you
thought up any way to undo them blunders of ours and get the people to
liking the Spokesman again?” And he says, “No I have not.”
And so I says, “I have been thinking hard about it and I have been
looking at the pictures of the Spokesman that I see in the papers and
it seems to me they are wrong. Have you ever thought about them?” “No,”
he says, “I can’t say that I have what is it?”
And so I tell him, “They are all pictures that is took in regular
clothes like a business Man with a white collar and one of them hundred
and twenty-five dollars suits on. But the most of the people in this
country don’t look like a fashion model,” I says, “and they don’t wear
white collars except on Sunday and the Fourth of July. It seems to me
they would be a lot more interested in listening to the Spokesman’s
advice about how to live their lives if they thought He lived the same
kind of lives that they do.”
So he sits very thoughtful and he says, “That might be a worthwhile
idea,” he says. “What would you suggest Miss Riggs?”
“Well,” I says, “what was it that the Spokesman done when He was young
back there in the State of North Carolina?”
“North Carolina?” says he. “You mean Vermont, don’t you?”
“Well I can never keep them states straight,” I says. “I knew it was up
in the North somewhere, but what was it He done?”
“Well He was raised on a farm.”
“All right then that is fine there is still lots of farmers in this
country I guess. So why don’t He go up there to the old homestead and
get some pictures took while He is pitching the hay?”
“You are a little ahead of time,” says Mr. Edgerton. “I am afraid they
have still got snow on that homestead up there.”
“Well then let Him go shovel the snow it will do just as good.”
“He is hardly a husky enough Man for snow-shovelling,” says Mr.
Edgerton.
“That is all right,” I says, “it don’t take long to get a picture not
even a movie,” I says. “The point is that the plain people can see the
Spokesman with His coat and collar off and looking like them. I know
how it is with my own Pop if he was to see a picture of the Spokesman
in a pair of blue overalls and a big wrench in His hand and it was
headed the Spokesman mends His own gas pipe up there at the big white
house why I know that Pop would vote for Him till the water-pipes bust
in hell,” I says.
And so then Mr. Edgerton is excited and he says he believes that is
the solution of the problem the way for him to get back into favor
and put Senator Buttles into the discard. And we go on talking about
what is to be in these pictures I can’t remember all we said but it
was like that and I may be awful dumb but I honestly thought it was an
intellectual conversation. But I have got so interested that I guess I
must of forgot to bring Mrs. Edgerton in. Anyhow we have et some soup
and we are eating some fish and I am talking hard when suddenly I hears
the wife give a sniff and I looks and she is sitting very straight and
her face is got bright and it seems she is hopping mad and all of a
sudden up she hops with her napkin in her hand and cries, “Oh this is
intolerable!”
Of course I stares and I says, “Why Mrs. Edgerton!”
She says, “You are making a fool of me both of you!”
I says bewildered like, “Why ma’am what do you mean?”
“You really expect me to believe such rubbish?” she cries.
“Well ma’am,” I says. “It may be rubbish but it seems like good
political business to me. I don’t understand you at all.”
But she only gets redder and madder so that she can hardly talk but
only sort of gasp and she says looking at her husband, “To bring her
into my home to mock at me! The shame of it!”
Says Mr. Edgerton very cold, “You invited her here and you undertook to
behave yourself.”
“Oh,” she says, “I can’t stand it I can’t stand it!” And suddenly she
busts into tears and clasps her napkin to her eyes and rushes out of
the room and there the two of us is left staring at each other.
“Well Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “I am very much puzzled about this because
what have I done?”
“You have not done nothing,” he says.
“Is it that she thinks I have been too familiar talking about the
Spokesman like He was one of us plain people?”
But he says no that is not it. “The truth is Miss Riggs I have not been
able to persuade my wife that you and I are seriously interested in
public questions and so when you sit and talk about helping me it seems
to her that we are playing a game to make her ridiculous.”
“Oh that is it!” I says. “But does she not know that this is a free
country and that I have got a vote the same as she has?”
“You are perfectly right,” he says, “and let us go on with our
conversation and our dinner.”
But of course I am not hungry no more I have got some self-respect for
all my needing a meal and I says, “No Mr. Edgerton it will have to be
some other time because I don’t think I had ought to stay in this house
it would only be making your wife angrier than ever.”
First he tries to stop me but then he says that he will drive me
home--imagine him taking me in that electric coop that he drives her
in! I says, “No Mr. Edgerton it will not be the first time that I have
gone home in a street car and I will do it once more,” I says.
“But Miss Riggs,” he says, “am I to lose your political counsel?”
“No,” I says, “you can phone me tomorrow but right now I want you to
go in and see your wife and try to fix it up with her,” I says, “and
not make her no madder by taking me home alone.” And so I make him get
my things and I walk home and gee Mom all the way I am thinking I will
never know what was going to be the rest of that dinner!
LETTER XIII
IN WHICH I MISS ANOTHER HALF DINNER
DEAR MOM:
Of course I was on pins and needles all day waiting for Mr. Edgerton
to call me so as I could find out what had happened between him and
his wife. And just when I was done work and ready to go out of the
beauty parlor he phoned and gee then I had to break a date with Adaire
Huggins to go to a show with her and all the girls is getting more and
more sorer because I am so up-stage with them having an affair with a
gentleman and not telling them nothing.
Well Mr. Edgerton took me to the Chink place again and we et some more
chop-guey and there was no detective watching us and we had a good
chat. And he says that Mrs. Edgerton is so angry she says she will
never speak to him again, and then she tells him that she is going
to write to the Spokesman about how her husband is taking a manicure
girl to dinners with him and pretending that this girl gives him the
ideas that the Spokesman has to say to all the newspaper reporters of
the whole world. And of course if she does that it will mean that Mr.
Edgerton will be out of his job because of course the Spokesman is
a very moral man and therefore somewhat suspicious and it would not
be possible to persuade Him that it was just for my ideas that Mr.
Edgerton was taking me to dinner and anyhow if it was true it would be
worse because it would insult Him to know where His ideas comes from.
And so Mr. Edgerton is very much worried and I says to him, “Do you
really think that she will do such a mean thing?”
He says, “I do not know for is it possible to say what a woman will do
when she is very angry?”
I says, “Yes it is possible,” I says, “if you do not mind answering me
a very personal question.”
“What is that Miss Riggs?”
“Will you tell me whether Mrs. Edgerton has got any money of her own?”
“No she has not.”
“Then Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “you may rest quite easy for she is not
going to say a word to the Spokesman nor to anyone else that will tell
because don’t you see that if she done that she would be throwing her
bread and butter in the mud?” I says.
“But she is frightfully angry Miss Riggs almost hysterical.”
“That is all right,” I says. “But when a woman gets hysterical she
always keeps one corner of her brains that knows what she is doing and
why. Mrs. Edgerton has got a swell apartment and an electric coop and a
squirrel-skin coat and all them things is very nice and what is making
her angry is the idea that I am getting a part of them away from her.
But that is not going to make her give up the rest,” I says.
“Really now,” he says, “you are too cynical about women.”
“No,” I says, “but women have had to get what they have got from men
and they have had to learn how. But maybe these is things that it is
not right for women to tell to men so if you do not mind I will talk to
you about the Spokesman and what He thinks about my idea that He should
have a lot of pictures took showing Himself as a farmer’s Boy back on
the old homestead.”
Well he tells me that he has talked about the idea with the Spokesman
who is very much enthused about it and thinks it will be a great
publicity stunt. And He is going to send up word for them to water
the hay on the old place and grow it just as quick as they can and
when it is high enough He will take His private train with about a
hundred newspaper reporters up there and they can take pictures of the
great Man riding a hayrake and that will surely be better than riding
a camelephant. And Mr. Edgerton says he has spoke to the reporters
also and they are keen about it and one of them has got the promise
of a picture of the Spokesman with His arm about His favorite cow
that He milked when He was a boy and when the general manager of the
Amalgamated Press Association or something like that got wind about
what they was planning he telegraphed for a life-size picture of the
Spokesman leading old Dobbin home from the pasture.
Mr. Edgerton says it is a shame that hay grows so late in them artic
regions and there is no way you can imitate it in a motion picture
studio. And then I says, “Look-a-here Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “I have
got a crow to pick with you and now is the time.”
“Did you get it out of the chop-guey?” he says because of course he is
feeling jolly over that idea I have give him and what a blow it will be
to Senator Buttles that grew up in a town and went to a college and is
no good at all for the old homestead stuff.
“But this is no joke,” I says. “I have had it in mind ever since you
sent out that story about the Spokesman buying a dozen spring suits
to help the wholesale clothing trade. What I want to know is has He
honestly bought them?”
“Well Miss Riggs,” he says, “I think we can feel reasonably certain
that He has because he is fifty-three years old and He surely must of
bought a spring suit every four years of His life.”
“That may be,” I says, kind of shocked, “but that is not what anybody
is going to make out of that story Mr. Edgerton it was meant to be
took that He had bought all them suits this year. And what I have got
to say to you is I have always been brought up to tell the truth and I
thought that I was helping to get the truth told to the plain people
and if them that is in charge is all cynical about it then I could not
be happy and I would rather have nothing to do with it.”
Well Mom he sees that I am serious and he says again that I am just
like the Spokesman I have a natural deep reverence for great ideals and
that is why I am able to understand Him so good. I says, “Yes but then
why does He let you give out stories about Him that is not true?”
He thinks for a while and then he says, “Miss Riggs I am going to
explain something to you that at first you may find hard to understand.
There is a difference between public life and other life and there is
a kind of truth for each. I think maybe it will be easier for you to
understand because you tell me that your mother was once an actress.”
“Yes,” I says, “she was a great actress she played Eliza in Uncle Tom’s
Cabin for many years.”
“Well,” he says, “then you must of been to plays and maybe behind
the scenes and you know that a play can be true as a play and yet it
don’t have to be true in other ways. For instance suppose your mother
is playing the part of a young girl well she makes up that way and she
pretends to be happy and the audience is all delighted and they get a
truth out of that play. But it may be that really your mother is older
and has got children at home and one of them has got the croup--I
believe you told me one of them had--and your mother is not feeling
happy that night at all yet she has got to play that she is happy
because that is the play-truth but if she was to act the real truth and
cry on the stage why she would spoil the show and the audience would
not get the truth of the play at all and they would go home sore.”
Of course I can see that. But I says, “This that we are talking about
is real life--”
“But are you sure?” he says. “Suppose you was to get behind the scenes
and discover that this game of politics is another kind of a play and
that everybody in it has got to pretend that they are different from
their real selves.”
Well of course I am kind of stunned and he can see it in my face and he
says, “Does that shock you so much?” he says. “Don’t you see that the
people have got to have ideals they have got to believe in great men?”
“Yes,” I says, “but aren’t there no real great men?”
“There is now and then a great man,” he says, “but he is very scarce
and most generally you will find that he is not available for
Spokesman. There can be a thousand different reasons maybe he is not
acceptable to the Knights of Columbus or maybe he was born in Kishineff
or maybe he believes in evolution or maybe his wife has divorced him
or maybe none of the big bankers is ever met him. So you have got to
take somebody that has been careful and not made no enemies and then
when you have got him you have got to do the best you can by him and
the daughter of a famous actress should ought to understand how much
a skillful make-up and the right costumes can do to say nothing of a
highly skilled press agent and a good lady assistant,” he says with a
bow.
But his little compliment don’t help him for I says, “Then you are all
the time fooling the plain people!” I says.
“Miss Riggs,” he says, “you are a serious young lady and I want you to
stop and think what would happen to this country if the people was to
lose their reverence for the Spokesman that lives up in the big white
house and tells them what to think and what to do?”
Well of course I cant think what would happen but Mr. Edgerton he says,
“Look here I have got a piece out of a paper from a town in the middle
west and there was a man from that town that come to Washington and he
shook the hand of the Spokesman and then he went back home and when
the word got out that he had actually shook the hand of the Spokesman
the members of his lodge passed a resolution and they stood him up by
the door and every one of the seventy-five men in the lodge filed by
him and shook the hand that had shook the hand of the Spokesman. And
that is what you call Faith Miss Riggs that is having an ideal and if
all them seventy-five men was to lose it what would happen to them the
whole seventy-five would get drunk and go home and beat their wives.”
And he goes on, “Yes Miss Riggs,” he says, “it would mean riot and
red revolution. You can go and ask any of them Bolshivikis if there
is anything they would like better than to have the American people
get the idea that the Man they have got for Spokesman is a poor
little Feller with carroty hair and a sallow skin that suffers from
constitutional timidity and has got where He is by always waiting for
His mind to be made up for Him--just you ask them Bolshivikis and hear
them whoop with delight.”
“Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “you must know I have never met no Bolshivikis
and don’t never expect to.”
“There is a plenty of them,” he says, “right here in Washington D.
C. some of them is in the Senate and I tell you it puts a grave
responsibility on you and me and other loyal Americans. Because this
is what has happened Miss Riggs right in the middle of the show the
leading Gentleman has went and died and the Understudy has took
His place and it is the most awful job that has ever fell onto a
theatrical management in the entire history of the American drama,”
he says. “Because in this here political play there is no way that
the Understudy can ever have a chance to rehearse with the rest of
the company, one minute He is just a sort of callboy sitting out on a
cracker-box and the next minute He must put on full regimentals and
walk out into the spotlight and make a speech. And that means Miss
Riggs a most dreadful problem for the rest of the cast that has got
to get behind and support Him and for the stage-directors and the
scene-shifters and worst of all the critics that has got to write up
the show next morning. And that is the God’s truth about my job and
why I have got to have help so bad and you as a good loyal citizen and
the daughter of a great actress has got to understand me and help with
your great experience.”
Well Mom of course I am floored. All I can do is to sit there and at
last I says, “Mr. Edgerton I have heard what you tell me and I suppose
it is right but I hope you won’t mind it has shocked me so that I do
not think I can eat no more Chinese dinner,” I says, “but I will go
home and think it over and decide what I can do to help my country.”
Your bewildered daughter
MAME.
LETTER XIV
IN WHICH I GO ON A STRIKE
DEAR MOM:
I have not saw Mr. Edgerton for three days and I am just as glad
because it has give me time to think things over and get your letter.
You are right I suppose if we cannot get what we want in this world we
have got to make out with what we have. I know that you would not of
chose to live in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey if you
could of had your own way nor would I maybe of had so many brothers and
sisters.
Well Mr. Edgerton did not call up. I have noticed that gentlemen likes
to have you pretty and cheerful and if you take things too serious and
worry them with questions they do not call up so often. But all the
same I had to get over my shock of hearing him say that the work he
does for the Spokesman up there in the big white house is only a sort
of a play and that I have got to get used to the idea of not telling
the truth about the Spokesman. And then too I am wondering what Mr.
Edgerton’s wife is doing and if she is going to tell on him and me and
I am sore because she should think that because I am a manicure girl I
cannot be fit to know her husband and help him with his politics.
* * * * *
P. S. Well he has called again and we have went to dinner and a movie
and it was a lovely sweet story called “Heart’s Athrob” and Mr.
Edgerton says to me, “There now you see Miss Riggs are we not better
and purer and sweeter for having saw such a lovely story about great
souls and pitiful sufferings?” And of course I cannot deny that we are
for I have got tears in my eyes and he says, “Just such a beautful
picture as that I wish to make for the American people to look upon and
I have got to make it out of that poor little Man that lives up there
in the big white house and you have got to help me,” he says, “and we
will be the greatest pair of showmen in the whole of creation.”
I says, “Mr. Edgerton I am going to try my best but it seems to me that
all the inspiration goes out of me when I have been told that it is not
the truth. I don’t understand how it can of happened and I want you to
tell me more about this game of politics how it come about that a Man
like what you say the Spokesman is can of got in such a high office.”
He says, “It was a series of strange accidents Miss Riggs like what
you would see in a melodrama. To begin with this little Man was a sort
of political Office-boy for the rich men in his state that put him
into office because He would always do what they said. It is a state
with a lot of Catholics in it and so if you are going to get elected
to anything you have got to learn to walk like you had broken bottles
under your feet and He was the best bottle-walker of them all so He
come to be Governor but then He had a crisis to deal with there was a
strike in the city of the policemen--”
“Policemen?” I says. “But I thought that policemen was to put down
strikes!”
“So it is supposed to be but this time the policemen went on a strike
themselves.”
“Well,” I says, “but that must of been the Reds!”
“So the papers said but the policemen said it was because they couldn’t
live on their wages. You know that policemen is mostly Irish Catholics
that don’t usually go Bolshiviki but always vote the Democratic ticket
and it happened that the mayor of the city was a Democrat and he
fixed it up with them to give them a raise in wages and the strike
was to be called off. But the bankers and the business men don’t like
no wage-raises because it sets a bad example and so they went to
the Governor and they says, ‘Governor you was elected on a program
of strict economy and law and order and here this Irish Catholic
Democratic son-of-a-sea-cook is going to get all the votes away from
you.’ So they say for the Governor to break up the settlement and He
does it because the Governor is bigger than the mayor you see. He goes
to the city and Him and the mayor has a meeting in a hotel-room and the
mayor pastes Him one in the eye and knocks Him down.”
“But I thought you said the Governor was bigger!” I says.
“I mean bigger legally. He has got more power.”
“Well then but why didn’t he put the mayor in jail?”
“Well Miss Riggs I will tell you the Spokesman, that was the Governor
He has always been a deeply religious man you have perhaps noticed in
His speeches He tells the people that the solution of their problems
must be found in spirituality.”
“Yes I have saw that,” I says, “and I think it is very beautiful of Him
to say.”
“Well just so Miss Riggs and so when the mayor pastes Him one in the
eye He turns the other eye to him and so through the rest of the
strike He is shut up in His hotel room. But that don’t matter because
the bankers and the business men take charge and they gets out the
college-boys and smashes the strike with clubs and brick-bats and law
and order is safe. And when the Governor sees that it is all over He
gets out a rousing proclamation in which He says that He is determined
to put down law-breakers and of course that tickles the newspapers they
spread it all over the front page and the public that don’t know it is
over they goes wild because you know how it was Miss Riggs a few years
ago we was in the middle of smashing the Reds and shipping them back to
the country where they come from seeing they don’t like this one. And
of course the plain people was scared out of their wits to realize that
the Bolshivikis had been so clever because if Irish Catholic policemen
goes Red who would there be left to stay white?”
“I remember reading about it,” I says, “now that you tell me and I know
I was scared myself.”
“Exactly and this Strong Silent Man He was the One that had put down
the revolution so when the next party convention come off and the
politicians was looking round for somebody for Vice-Spokesman why here
He was and the convention goes wild and He is nominated in a whirlwind.
And how is anybody going to know that the Old Spokesman is going to die
and leave this scared little Office-boy the job of telling the American
people what to think?”
“Well Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “I see how it is now of course and I am
very much obliged to you for explaining and of course I will do the
best I can,” I says, “because whatever happens we have got to hold them
Reds down. Of course I have got no use for labor unions that is just a
bunch of leaders looking for a chance to wear white collars and what
do they care if they call a strike and the wives and children has got
to go hungry at home?”
“That is it exactly,” he says, “your sound common sense as usual and it
looks as if there was some more strikes coming and they will try to put
them off on the Spokesman, and you will be the little girl that will
know what to tell Him to say about it.”
Well we are walking home and I am nearly there and I tell him he had
better not go no farther because we don’t know what his wife may be
doing and we have got to be careful so we shakes hands and parts and I
climb up to my hall-bedroom and I forgot to tell you Mom my landlady
has give me an embroidered splasher that has got a red lily on it to
hang on my wall and it is a lovely decoration she done that because we
have got to be friends since she was there when Mrs. Edgerton come to
see me and insulted me. Well it is a good thing to be friends with your
landlady because some time when I get stuck for my rent for a few days
she will be more polite with me.
* * * * *
P. S. Well Mom it is the next day and I have just got back from the
Elite Beauty Parlors and my God I have sure had a time I don’t know if
I will ever go back because we have had a strike and who do you think
was the leader of it of all people in this world your own Mamie Riggs
and what do you know about that? I will tell you the story right off.
It was Florabelle that begun it I call her Floradumbelle but she is got
good business sense all the same and she says to Hattie Schoenstein,
“My landlady has raised the rent on me a dollar a week and what am
I going to do must I go without my lunches?” And Hattie that I have
called Hotaire she says, “And the madame has raised the price of a
manicuring twenty-five cents but what good does that do us?” And that
is no hot air either Mom.
And then Adaire Huggins she says, “Why shouldn’t we get a raise when
everything else is being boosted?” And I says, “I am with you girls,”
and they asks me will I be the one to do the talking because they seem
to think I am good at it because of my political experience which they
suspect I have had though of course I have not told them and they have
not found out who Mr. Edgerton is.
Well so we go to the private office but it is not so private because
Madame Lafferty lets out a yell and she says, “What you ask me for more
money and when I am on the verge of bankruptcy because the landlord is
holding me to this lease that was made in war-time?”
“Us girls is got to live too,” I says, “it is war-time for us right
now.”
“I can get a plenty to do your work for less,” she says. “And they will
be girls that will fix their hair like I tell them to and they will
behave like ladies and not be having the telephone ringing all day so
that my customers do not know whether I am running a beauty-parlor or a
date-ranch.”
Well of course I know that is a slam at me and I am hot and I says,
“All right ma’am,” I says, “and you go and find them slave-girls right
off because I am a free-born American citizen and I am through,” I
says, “and come on girls let’s get out.” And with that we turns into
the parlors and there is the customers with their fingers half done and
their hair half waved and we shouts to the girls, “It is a strike we’ll
have a dollar extra a week or we quit!”
And they all puts down their things and they shout, “Strike! Strike!”
And the madame she yells, “Out with you you bunch of hussies!” And we
grabs our things and out we troop and there is a customer coming in and
we says to him it is a gentleman, “This place is closed but two blocks
down the street you will find a beauty parlor where they pays a living
wage to their hands,” we says.
And of course he don’t go in so I says, “We will picket the old
she-devil,” and we begin walking up and down and out she comes rushing
without her hat on and she gets the copper on the corner and brings
him up and she says, “Drive these hussies away from my door they are
ruining my trade,” she says.
Well the copper he grins kind of good-natured and says, “Move along now
girls.” And I ups I and says, “Officer this here is a strike,” I says,
“and we are picketing this place.”
“Well you will have to move on because you are drawing a crowd and that
is disturbing the peace.”
But I says, “Officer do you mean to tell me that it is the business
of the police to break strikes?” I says. “Is this a free country or
is it Roossia?” But all he says is, “Move along girls move along,”
and he pushes us down the street and when we try to come back he says
he will call a patrol-wagon and so there we are it is tyranny and
injustice, such as our ancestors rose against but what can we do there
is nobody to take the part of poor working-girls on strike and so now I
am sitting at home and I don’t know if I have got a job or not and I
shall soon find out whether my landlady is as much friends with me as
my splasher seems to show.
Your worried
MAME.
LETTER XV
IN WHICH I LOSE MY LOVER
DEAR MOM:
I do hate to write such bad news but you made me promise I would tell
you everything so here it is.
I have not got no job today and the worst of it is I am the only
one that is not. I went back to the Elite Beauty Parlors this a. m.
thinking I was to go on leading the strike but what do I see but
everyone of them girls come up one by one and try to sneak into the
place. I says, “What are you doing are you going to desert your union
and your class?” And Adaire Huggins she says, “Mame, I am sorry but
I have made a fool out of myself,” and Hotaire Schoenstein she says,
“Mame I have got to eat,” and in they goes and back to work without no
raise in wages and I am left standing on the sidewalk.
I would not go in if I was to die for it and anyhow I would only
get kicked out because the madame she thinks I am the cause of that
strike. But gee Mom aint it awful to think how the working-class will
throw each other down and all they would have to do would be to stand
together and they could get anything they want!
Well I go down the street to the La Princesse Beauty Shoppe but they
have got no need for a manicurist, and then I go to the Betty Blue
Rooms and then to the Rosamonde and the La Belle and the La Coquette
and the La Charme and all the other ones that I have heard of but I
think they must of heard about what I done because they have none of
them got nothing. And gee Mom it is begun to rain and I am wetting my
new clothes and my best shoes is in the slop and is getting wore down
at the heel and I am so blue I could be made into paint. At last I am
clean done up and come home and flop down on my bed and cry. I have got
only three dollars in my pocket and here I was hoping to save up so as
I could send a little to you!
The worst is I have lost Mr. Edgerton too because he will go to the
Elite and that old she-devil will not tell him where to find me and I
have never let him come to this house on account of his wife being so
mad and all and I do not think he even knows my number and if I write
to his home his wife will get it and he has told me never to ring him
up nor to write to him to the big white house for fear the Spokesman or
somebody might get in. What I am to do I cannot think but tomorrow I
will have to look for a job in some barber-shop.
* * * * *
P. S. Well has been another rainy day and I have tried the barber-shops
and gee Mom there was some awful holes where a decent girl would not
work if it was to save her life but even so I did not find nothing.
There was one feller that said he would give me a table for half what I
earned but I would have to of had my own set and I have not got no set
and no money to buy one. And gee Mom I see I should of saved some of my
money but what it is I should of gone without I cannot see. And some
fellers was rude to me and some called me sweet-heart and I would of
liked to of batted both kinds on the jaw.
But please do not say anything to Pop about my troubles because it
would only worry him and I am going to find some way out. My rent is
not due till two days, and I guess I have got a few days credit with
Mrs. Budd seeing that she had such a fine lot of gossip out of that
time that Mrs. Edgerton come to bawl me out for going to dinner with
her husband.
* * * * *
P. S. Again. Well I have went to about fifty hotels big and little and
to a lot more barber-shops but nothing doing. And I have only et some
milk and crackers because I am scared of spending my last money. But
I had to buy a paper of course for I must not get out of touch with
international affairs. And I see there is a great coal strike being
threatened and the whole country will be without coal and nobody knows
what to do about it and it says the Spokesman announced that He has
took the matter under advisement and of course I know what that means
He does not know what to say about it and He is waiting for me to tell
Mr. Edgerton to tell Him what to say. I picture Mr. Edgerton rushing
around frantic trying to find out where I am and maybe having to call
in the secret service and so I am desperate and tonight I have wrote
him a letter to the big white house and I have wrote it like this, Dear
Sir, My father Mr. James Riggs wishes me to advise you that he has
changed his address, and then I give the address of this room and I
think that is not suspicious and I will come home early tomorrow and
see if he has sent me a telegram or maybe a special delivery letter.
* * * * *
P. S. Another. Well Mom I have had an awful grief and you sure do get
troubles when you go into public life it is more dangerous than any
Western I have ever saw. I have been trying to get a job as a waitress
or anything and about five o’clock I come home tired as a dog and who
should I see going up the steps of the house but Walter. He is just
about to ring the bell when I hollers and he turns round and in about
three seconds more he is got me in his arms and gee Mom it is awful
what muscles that boy is got packing crates all day and throwing them
onto trucks. And there he makes a show of me in the street and pulls me
to pieces and I am so excited that I am crying. And he tells me that
the warehouse shut up for a day on account of the boss’s wife having
died and it is Saturday and so he is got two days off and has throwed
away all this money for a trip to Washington just to see me.
He wants me to go to dinner of course and I tell him to hold his horses
while I run upstairs and powder my nose and so I go and when I come
down again what do I see? Walter is still standing down on the sidewalk
and up at the top of the step is Mr. Edgerton just about to ring the
bell! You see how it is they do not know each other of course and Mr.
Edgerton is come right at that inconvenient moment and there he is.
When he sees me of course he lifts his hat and he says, “How do you do
Miss Riggs?” he says. “Well I am sure glad to get in touch with you I
have not had nobody to go to dinner with and I am so lonesome I do not
know where to go.” He says that kind of jolly like he always is you
know but he is got a pretty loud voice and there is Walter listening
to every word of it and then looking at the taxi-cab that is brought
Mr. Edgerton and his face is as black as the thunderstorm we had this
morning.
Well a women that is trained to social life like me had ought to know
what to do but I don’t and all I can say is, “Mr. Edgerton I have a
friend that is just come to see me.” And Mr. Edgerton is rattled too
because of course he don’t want to meet nobody. But there is nothing to
do but go down the steps and I says, “Mr. Edgerton meet Mr. Rigley,”
I says and Walter is not got sense to shake hands but just growls
how-de-do and I am thinking as fast as a runaway express train.
Walter he says, “Well I see you have a previous engagement,” and he
turns on his heel and starts to walk off but of course I grabs him by
the arm and makes him turn round and I says, “Look here Walter this
is not what you think this is a business matter and this gentleman is
a government official and I am doing important work for him,” I says.
“What sort of work?” says Walter and you know that kind of pug-nose
face that he has got it is already made up for a fight.
And of course I can’t answer him because Mr. Edgerton has forbid me to.
So what can I do but put it up to Mr. Edgerton? I says, “Mr. Edgerton,
Walter Rigley is my fyansay,” I says. And Mr. Edgerton says, “Oh I did
not know you was engaged,” and I says, “I have never had occasion to
tell you. But now Walter is got two days off from the job of packing
goods in a warehouse and he has come to see me as a surprise party. And
I think I have got to explain matters to him if you will please let
me because he is a very good boy and a one hundred percent American
and when he knows that this is government work that we are doing and
that it is because we have got to educate the people and keep the
Bolshivikis from getting a hold of them he will keep the secret and you
can trust him the same as me.”
So Mr. Edgerton can’t do nothing else but say, “All right Miss Riggs I
will take your word for Mr. Rigley.” And I turns to Walter and says,
“There is nobody in the world but my mom and my pop that I have trusted
with this but it is all straight and it will be explained to you.”
And then Mr. Edgerton says for Walter to go to dinner with us but
Walter he says, “Not on your life I ast her first,” he says, “and if
there is any dinner you will go with me.” So I says, “It will have to
be that way Mr. Edgerton because I know this boy and he is only got one
fault and that is that he is a mule.”
So Mr. Edgerton says all right and we gets into the taxi and Walter’s
shoulders is so broad that there is no room for mine in the seat but he
puts me on his knees and you can see he is not going to let me be in
Mr. Edgerton’s way. And I am telling Walter about who Mr. Edgerton is
and what we are doing and gee you can see that it is a hard lump for
Walter to swallow he don’t know what to make of it whether I am kidding
him or not but Walter is like the Spokesman in one way when he don’t
know what to say it don’t hurt him none to say nothing.
Well the Greek restaurant is nearest and so we are pretty soon eating
some more dinner cooked in mutton suet but gee Mom I could eat it if it
was axel-grease I am so hungry. But I have got to play the social game
and keep these two male animals from biting each other so I says, “Mr.
Edgerton I have not had no chance to ask you but I can see that the
Spokesman is in trouble because He does not know what to say about this
here coal strike.”
And he says, “That is right it is a very great worry to Him, and what
do you think about it?” And I says, “Well Pop says you can’t make no
gas without coal and what would I do if I come home to my room in the
evening and there was no light in it?” And Mr. Edgerton says, “That is
true, coal is a necessity of modern civilization.” “Well then,” I says,
“is a lot of Hunkies and Dagoes to be allowed to get together and hold
a pistol at people’s heads and get any price they please for work? No
Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “it is the duty of the Spokesman to take a firm
stand and say that there will not be no such strike allowed.”
And he says, “I guess you are right and we will work it out on that
basis.”
But I says, “Mr. Edgerton He must not go and say that unless He means
to act on it.”
And he says, “But why not?” and I says, “Because it will not do.” And
he says, “Well Miss Riggs but you cannot do business with the Spokesman
that way because you would never be able to say nothing because He will
never do nothing.”
But I says, “If He says He won’t allow the strike and then He does
allow it, what will people think of Him?” And he says, “It will be like
it has always been and when the time comes people will of forgot it.”
“But that is nonsense,” I says, “it will be quoted against Him what
He said at the beginning.” And Mr. Edgerton says, “By who? A bunch of
cranks here and there? The newspapers will not say nothing because we
have got them and what else does it matter?”
Well of course I don’t like that but I have learned that it is what you
have got to do with the Spokesman so I says “All right.” But I have
forgot about Walter and my God all of a sudden what do I see his face
is got red and he is rose up and he says, “Do the pair of you really
think I am going to stand for this?” “Why Walter what do you mean?” I
says, and he says, “You are playing me for a sucker,” he says, “but you
have got the wrong one.”
“Why Walter,” I says, “what on earth? You think this is not the
Spokesman’s Secretary?” “I don’t know who it is,” he says, “but you
cannot make me believe that the Spokesman is no such poor fish as
this.” “But,” I says “look at the papers to-morrow afternoon,” I says,
“and you will see it all just as I have said it.”
And says Walter, “You want me to think that the American people is a
bunch of boobs that you can string along like this?” I says, “Walter,
I have told Mr. Edgerton that you are a patriot and a lover of your
country and that you can be trusted with these great state secrets,” I
says, “And now are you going to throw me down?”
But he looks at me and his eyes is flashing and his fists is clenched
and I think he is going to hit me or Mr. Edgerton I aint sure which and
he says with his voice trembling furious, “Mamie Riggs,” he says, “I
thought you was a decent girl but I see you have took the easy road,”
he says. “But it was enough to insult our love,” he says, “you needn’t
of insulted my brains too. I leave you to your new gentleman and I hope
he keeps you good and that’s all.” And with that he turns and walks off
quick and I lets out a yell that scares the whole dining room and I
runs to grab him but he is gone out the door and lost in the crowd and
there I am standing and crying like Lucy Lonesome in “The Broken Love.”
Your miserable
MAME.
LETTER XVI
IN WHICH I AM MADE A GRAMMARIAN
DEAR MOM:
Well here it is a Sunday morning and I have got no job and I have got
no lover and I am sure in the dumps. But Mom you have got to see Walter
for me quick as you can and explain to him how foolish he is been
to quarrel with me because it is all true like I told him. You must
make him understand that Mr. Edgerton really is the Secretary to the
Spokesman and that the great Man up at the big white house does really
say everything that me and Mr. Edgerton says for Him to say. And if it
is not always true what He says well I know how shocked I was when I
first found it out but you that have been a great actress can explain
to that poor kid Walter how it is that you have got to play the play
the way it is wrote and not the way you think it had ought to be.
And if you can fix it up with Walter you do not have to worry about
me Mom for I will sure get some job even if I have to go to work in a
factory. And I am going to go straight for your sake and Pop’s even if
Walter does believe all them hateful things about me that he said to me
and right before Mr. Edgerton. Well I am going to rest my tired feet
today and tomorrow I will start out looking for a job in a department
store.
* * * * *
P. S. Oh Mom I have had the most wonderful good fortune! I told you
onst that I am Cinderella and that the fairy coach was waiting for me
and now it is going to take me right almost into the palace!
Well Monday a. m. I start out hunting a job and the sun is come out hot
and it is like summer and I have got on my winter suit and I am nearly
fainting so I have to go home and change it and gee all that I have got
is a shirtwaist that is got a darn in the elbow and my old blue skirt
that is all faded and it sure does make me miserable to look like that
when I have been such a real lady all winter. But I put it on and am
starting out again when my landlady calls me she is got a telegram that
is come for me it is got no name signed but it says for me to come to
lunch at the little cheap place where we have et when we was scared of
Mrs. Edgerton. And of course I know it is Mr. Edgerton and I want to
run back and get my good clothes on but I am late already and have got
to hustle for the street car.
Well there is Mr. Edgerton waiting for me and he has been there
quite a while and he says there is a serious emergency in the
government and he needs my advice and it is very inconvenient not to be
able to get me quick when he needs me. And I says, “I am so sorry but I
was out hunting for a job.”
“What?” he says. “A job? Why is that?”
“Did you not understand that I am no more at the Elite Beauty Parlors?”
I says.
“Yes,” he says, “but I thought you must of got something better.”
“I have not got nothing,” I says. “I left that place because I am a
free American citizen,” I says, “and I would not stand for having that
old she-devil bossing me about. And all them girls is a pack of sheep
but I am one that is got some spirit.”
“Of course,” he says. “And what are your plans?”
“I am trying to get into a department store.”
“Oh Miss Riggs,” he says, “but do not do that because you had ought to
have some job that will leave you time to get off now and then when
your country needs you,” he says.
“That is all very well,” I says, “but my country has never showed me no
such job,” I says.
“But why did you not tell me about it?” he says.
“I did not have a chanced,” I says, “what with the way that crazy boy
Walter behaved and made me so ashamed and anyhow I am not going to put
my troubles off on you,” I says.
“Troubles?” he says. “But that is absurd Miss Riggs. What is an
Administration for if it is not to have jobs?”
“You mean that you can find me one?” I says and my heart is give a jump
with excitement.
“Why of course,” he says. “I am the Grand Mogul of Jobs,” he says. “I
carry lists of them around with me I sometimes have more jobs than I
can find people,” he says.
And sure enough he pulls out some papers from his pocket and there is
a long printed list and he says these is civil service jobs for which
there is to be examinations. “And let us see now,” and he studies it
and he reads, “Geographer,” and he says, “Do you think you would like
to be a Geographer?” And I says, “My God what does that do?” And then
he reads, “Geologist,” and he says, “That might sound pretty good.”
But I says, “How can I pass an examination for such jobs as them?” and
he says, “You do not have to worry about that we can pay somebody to do
that for you,” he says, and then he reads, “Grammarian,” and he says,
“There now I think that would be a fine job for you there is something
cultured about being a Grammarian.”
“But dear me,” I says, “what would I have to do?” And he says, “You
will not have to do nothing,” he says, “there is always an assistant
that does the work for half as much,” he says. And I says, “Is that
what they call economy?” and he says, “It is a system,” he says.
“How could you keep politics going unless people had jobs in between
elections? But it is common sense you can see that politicians do not
have no time to learn to be geographers and geologists and grammarians
and so there have got to be assistants that know that sort of work and
keep the assistants’ jobs all the time no matter who gets elected,” he
says.
And then he says, “You will be Grammarian to the Bureau of Indian
Affairs of the Department of the Interior,” he says. And I says, “Can
they put somebody off on a department like that?” And he says, “Oh
sure it is done all the time there is the private secretary to the
Spokeslady there was no provision for such but She wanted one so they
put it off on the Interstate Trade Commission,” he says.
And he goes on to study the list and he says, “This is not a very good
job for the salary is only $26 per week.” “Man alive,” I says, “that
is more money than I have ever had all at once in my life I think!” He
says, “You will find your tastes grow and in a year you will be wanting
your own car,” he says.
And then he thinks a bit and he says, “Maybe we can get you an
allowance for travelling expenses.” I says, “Does a Grammarian have
to travel?” and he says, “We will have you made a Field Grammarian
and then you will be able to go wherever you want to and that will
be necessary anyhow because you see if it stays hot like this very
long the Spokesman will be moving to His summer home and I will have
to go there and so will you and it will be much better if you have a
government position then because it will not look so bad if we are saw
together in a small town.”
And then he looks at me a moment and he says kind of hesitating, “Miss
Riggs, will you pardon me if I am extremely personal for a moment?”
And I says, “Go to it,” and then he tells me that the fashion in the
present Administration is for a different shade of ladies’ hair from
what I have got. “The old Administration was what you might call a
peroxide one,” he says, “but the present one runs to pastel shades and
I think it would be easier for both of us if you was to tone yours
down. I don’t know much about it, but I suppose there is ways.”
“Oh sure,” I says, “what have I been in a beauty parlors for? I can cut
most of it off and wear some sort of a turban effect till the new color
grows out,” I says. “Or I can cut it real short and say that I have had
the typhoid fever or something.” And he says, “All right typhoid is
more respectable than peroxide and when you have got that done we can
go to better restaurants for our dinners.”
Well so then I says, “How is the missus getting along these days and
has she said anything more about me?”
And he tells me that she has got something new to occupy her mind she
is being syked--I don’t know if that quite the right word but it is the
way it sounds and he explained to me the way to be syked there is a man
and you pay him ten dollars an hour to listen to you tell him all your
troubles and about your soul and he says that it is got to be the most
fashionable thing for ladies to be syked. And I says, “It is a pretty
expensive fashion it seems to me,” but he says, “My God no not at all
this town is full of husbands that would pay a man ten dollars an hour
to listen to their wife’s troubles all day long and the night too,” he
says. “And it is a great relief to their friends as well.” And I says,
“Then while she is being syked you and me can go to dinner,” and he
says, “Exactly.”
Well then he tells me what it is that he wants to ask me about and it
seems there is an international problem because there is a Hungarian
count that wants to come into this country because his wife is here and
she is sick but he is not being let to come because they say he is a
Bolshiviki but there is an awful fuss being made about it.
And I says, “But why I thought we had regular laws to keep them Dagos
and Hunkies and Wops out of this country.” And he says, “Yes, but this
one is a sure enough count and is a rich man too and the laws is not
meant for that sort. And besides,” he says “the state department is not
got very much nerve just now the old gentleman that is in charge of it
is called by the name of Scared Sally and he is even more scared than
the Spokesman Himself. He was a senator from his home state but that
state kicked him out and so the Spokesman is give him a home in the
cabinet; and he is scared of this Bolshiviki count to let him in and
he is scared to not let him in and they are all in a terrible stew up
at the big white house and this evening there is got to be a statement
give out about why he is not let in and they can’t think of no reasons
except some that they cannot give out.”
“And what is them?” I says and he tells me a funny story, gee it is
complicated these international affairs!
It seems that some of the young fellers in this state department
is gone and got themselves wives out of this here foreign nobility
thinking it was something extra swell you know but now there is come
revolutions and all these Dago counts and Hunky princes and Wop grand
dukes is kicked out or is about to get kicked out and the young men in
the state department finds themselves stuck with second-hand wives as
you might say that is to say they is badly faded and passay and not
noble or swell no more. In this here country of Hungary they have got
back but only for a little while because this Bolshiviki count is going
to kick them out again and so they hate him and that is why our state
department is fighting so hard to help them and keep the secretarie’s
wives noble as long as it can be done. And that is why our government
lends loans to these countries and why they dassn’t allow that nobody
shall come in from them countries and tell what is going on there.
And I says, “But Mr. Edgerton it seems to me that in a case like that
it is very plain what to do.” “And what is it?” he says. And I says,
“I would say that it is a situation that the least said about it the
better.” And he says, “Yes of course.” And I says, “Then why not say
the least?” And he says, “What is the least?” And I says, “The least is
nothing.”
Well he looks at me like I was prophet come down from heaven or
something and he says, “My God Miss Riggs you are a wonder!” “No,” I
says, “I am only a field Grammarian,” I says, “but even so I can see
that when there is nothing you can say the thing to do is to hold your
mouth. And I have heard so much in the papers about this Spokesman
being a Strong Silent Man and it is seems to me that this is just the
time for Him to be Strong in His Silence and Silent in His Strength,”
I says, “and you had better just make up your mind that this here
Bolshiviki count stays out and that nobody says a word about it from
the first to the last,” I says, “and that is the way I would play the
game of politics if I was Him.”
And he says, “Miss Riggs you _are_ Him, I believe! You are Him in the
Female Incarnation!” And so I am
Your very flattered
MAME.
LETTER XVII
IN WHICH I BECOME A SYKER
DEAR MOM:
I have your letter in which you send me two dollars and it is sure good
of you and Pop to think of me with all the troubles of your own you
have got. It come at just the right moment for I had got down to only
nine cents, and I did not dare to buy the morning paper to see what the
Spokesman has been saying. Mr. Edgerton has got it fixed that I have
been appointed Emergency Field Grammarian but I do not get the salary
until Saturday and these two dollars will save my life.
And oh Mom I am glad that you will talk to Walter for me. I know
that you and Pop are not keen about having me in love with a poor
shipping-clerk but all the same that is what is kept me good through
all the temptations of a great city and so you must help me and make
Walter understand that I really am helping Mr. Edgerton like I say and
telling him what he is to tell the Spokesman to tell to the American
people.
Well Mr. Edgerton is been so good I have saw him again and he seen that
I had on that poor old shirtwaist and he says, “Why where is your fine
good clothes?” he says. And so I have to tell him that it is got so hot
that I cannot wear a winter suit no more and he says, “Come along now
you have got to be dressed like a Grammarian,” he says and so he takes
me into a department store and buys me everything all new a pearl grey
suit with a hat and shoes and all and so I can be a summer lady as well
as a winter one.
But he tells me some very bad news that the secretary of state that
they call Scared Sally has decided that he will let that Bolshiviki
count come into the country provided that he does not do no propaganda
about politics while he is here but will only see his wife that is
sick. And I says, “My God Mr. Edgerton that is a mistake because them
fellers is not to be trusted and anybody can see that it is propaganda
for a feller like that just to be alive.”
And he says, “That is exactly right Miss Riggs it is what I have said
to them.”
And I says, “But why does the Spokesman allow such things?” and he says
that He is leaving it all to that Scared Sally.
And I says, “But Mr. Edgerton they have already give out a statement
that he will not be let to come in. The Spokesman has said it Himself.”
“Yes,” he says, “but the Spokesman can always take back what He has
said.”
“But Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “how can He when He is said it to a hundred
newspaper reporters and they have wrote it down?”
“He just says that He didn’t say it and they all have to say they made
a mistake.”
“But my God don’t none of them ever kick?”
“Two of them done it onst but all they got was they was not allowed to
no more interviews which put them out of business and taught the others
better.”
“Well,” I says, “if a Man has got all the newspapers where you can
walk on their faces like that,” I says, “why does He want an electric
camelephant to ride?”
He says it has always been that way there used to be what was called
an Ananias Club in Washington and that was for people that had objected
to the Spokesman changing his mind. He says that now they don’t allow
no stenographic notes of the Spokesman’s interviews so that it will not
be possible to prove what He has said. “And so you see,” he says, “how
easy it is to be a Great Man.”
“Well,” I says, “they will see that Hunkie count will make a fool out
of them all,” and he says, “That is exactly what will happen and it
will give the Spokesman a black eye worse than the one that He got up
there when He had the police-strike,” he says. “The truth is I am sick
of telling Him what to do and not having it done and if somebody was to
offer me a good position in private life I would take it tomorrow.”
I says, “Oh Mr. Edgerton do not desert your country and do not desert
me.”
“Don’t you worry Mamie Riggs,” he says and that is the first time
he has ever called me Mamie. “I am not agoing to desert you and you
will have a friend in me for the rest of your life for you have got
more sense than any male politician in the business,” he says and of
course that is a sweet thing to say and he gives my arm a squeeze as we
are walking on the street but then I am scared because I have got to
remember that he is a married man and all.
So to remind him I says, “And how is the wife getting on?”
He says, “Oh she is having the time of her life because this getting
syked is the best thing that is ever come along so she says.”
And then he goes on to tell me about this and it seems that a lady pays
this syking man ten dollars an hour to listen to her troubles and about
her soul and she gets to be more and more interested in that syker and
that is a regular part of the treatment it seems and it is called by a
long name it is a Transference.
And I says, “Well Mr. Edgerton they are always getting new names for
old things,” I says, “for when you go to a moving picture that thing is
what is called a Triangle.”
He laughs and says that is so but I can see that he is kind of sore
about it and he says, “That feller is got Mrs. Edgerton running there
to see him every day and telling him her fusses with me and he is
calling her up on the phone and making dates with her and I have made
up my mind that I am not going to stand it much longer and I have told
her so in plain words.”
And I says, “But look here Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “how is this that
you are calling me up on the phone and making dates with me and you do
not want her to object to that,” I says.
“Oh,” he says, “but that is different.”
And I says, “But why is it different?” and he says, “Because it is a
matter of business with you and me.”
And I says, “Yes, but it is a matter of business with him also and if
he is getting ten dollars an hour for it it is a matter of very good
business indeed.”
He is kind of embarrassed and says, “She has not failed to point that
out to me.” And I says, “She naturally would not fail because we women
are good at seeing things that is right in front of our eyes,” I says,
“and what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander though not
meaning to speak disrespectful of you and Mrs. Edgerton,” I says. “Now
you have got to give her a square deal and you may be sure that I am
not going to help you do nothing else.”
And he laughs and says that I have become his syker and I says, “Well
at least I have cost you less than ten dollars an hour,” I says.
Well we go to a restaurant a swell one because I have got my swell new
clothes now and I have got my bright hair all cut off and my head fixed
with a veil and I am a respectable Emergency Field Grammarian so that
a member of the Administration can buy me a dinner without its being a
scandal. And Mom in this place they are so respectable that they bring
the cocktails to you in a soup-tureen and you eat them out of a dish
with a spoon and gee Mom it is so funny!
And we are talking all about international affairs and Mr. Edgerton
tells me the most interesting things it seems that the police has just
arrested a way high-up bootlegger and how they come to do such a thing
he cannot say but the police is getting more and more higher handed
all the time. I shall never forget my indignation while that one was
shooing me away from the Elite Beauty Parlors while I was leading the
strike.
Well anyhow they have got this bootlegger and he is got a notebook on
him with all the addresses of his customers and how much they have
bought and all and gee Mom it is the most awful thing because there is
senators and judges and some Persons the most sacred so that I would
not dare to put it into a letter except to say that a very very special
friend of mine is one of them and had just got a case of genuine
Scotch that very week and now it seems that some of them dry fellers
in Congress is got a hold of the story and is threatening to make
speeches about it and of course none of the papers is saying a word but
still everybody is scared because something might bust open. He says
that is always the way in political life you can never be really safe
because there is always some Bolshiviki senators that makes speeches
and there is Bolshiviki papers that will print what they say.
And he told me all about how it was when this new Spokesman first come
into office there was the most dreadful lot of scandals because it was
found that some of the brass kings had been buying up the government.
He explained to me how it is these brass fellers is very rich and great
sports and is used to getting what they want and paying what it costs
even if it is a member of the cabinet. And it seems that the government
owned a huge brass teapot somewhere in the West and it was the brass
reserve for the navy so that if ever there was to be a war we would
be able to make all the brass buttons that would be needed for the
sailors’ uniforms. But it seems that one of the brass kings paid a
hundred thousand dollars in a black bag to a member of the cabinet and
got away with this brass teapot.
I says, “Look ahere Mr. Edgerton what is this that you are telling me
the plot of a movie that you seen last night?” And he says, “Upon my
word no it is exactly what happened and I would rather of had to enlist
and sit for four years with German big Berthas dropping bomb-shells
onto me than go through with all that trouble again.”
I says, “What did you have to do with it?” and he says, “I was the
Spokesman’s Secretary all through it the same as I am now and my God
you could not think of anything so awful in a nightmare. You would
spend hours thinking up a story and then hold a session of the cabinet
and get everybody to agree and learn it by heart and then early next
morning you would get a call from the chief of the secret service
that in the night they had raided the rooms of one of them Bolshiviki
senators that was doing the exposures and they had found out that these
senators had got evidence that would knock your story into a cocked
hat. And then you would have to begin telephoning to all the members of
the cabinet to get them to change the story and a few hours later the
secret service would bring you word that the Bolshiviki senators had
tapped your telephone lines and heard what your new story was to be.
It went on like that for weeks,” he says, “and the Spokesman was just
about paralyzed with fright.”
“Well,” I says, “Mr. Edgerton does it not suggest that maybe there is
something in my idea of just telling the plane truth all the time?” But
he will not hear to no such Sunday school talk as he calls it because
he says, “How can you tell the truth when the truth is that everybody
you know has been helping himself to everything he could get his hands
on?”
I says, “Mr. Edgerton there is a lot about this political game that is
hard for an outsider to understand and one of the things is how it can
be called patriotism and economy and all that when people that holds
high office is busy robbing the government?” I says. “It seems to me
we are giving the Bolshivikis too easy an argument if that is the ways
things is.”
“Yes,” he says, “I know it seems like that and it is complicated and
hard for the plain people to understand but I have heard the Spokesman
Himself explain it and it is quite all right when you get His ideas.
You see there is all kinds of wealth that the government is got but is
not able to make use of it because the government is got no business
being in business which it cannot run economical or efficient. The
right people to own all these resources is the big business men that is
got the money and brains and everything and so it is a real advantage
to the people when the business men get these things away from the
government.”
“You mean even when they have got to steal them?” I says.
“Yes,” he says, “that is what the Spokesman thinks and in the long run
He is right because for example take this here teapot and you will see
that while the government owned it it was not doing nothing but now
that the brass kings have got it they have set it on the fire and it is
boiling away and making tea for people to drink.”
“Well that sounds all right,” I says, “but I would want to know which
people is drinking the tea and is it the brass kings?”
“Well yes,” he says, “I suppose it is them that gets the most of the
tea but then if they hadn’t of stole the teapot there wouldn’t nobody
of got no tea at all.”
So you see again Mom how complicated these international affairs is and
what a tremendous job I have got to understand them. But you tell Pop
that he does not ever need to worry that I will get a swelled head even
though I am getting to understand them better than him.
Your devoted daughter
MAME.
LETTER XVIII
IN WHICH I STICK TO THE JOB
DEAR MOM:
I have got my first week’s salary as Emergency Field Grammarian and
gee it is wonderful. All that I have to do is to go to the department
and sign my name three times and I get what is called a warrant that
anybody will give me the money for. And I felt so rich and fine with
that $26 in my purse the first thing I did was to buy this money order
to pay you back your two spots and three spots extra.
And then I remembered what Mr. Edgerton said that I must not lose touch
with the plain people but remember how they feel so that I will be able
to tell him so that he can tell the Spokesman up at the big white house
what to say to all the newspaper reporters. So I decided that I would
meet some plain people right away so what should I do but pay a call on
the Elite Beauty Parlors? It is lovely warm spring weather and I have
got on my fine new clothes and I walk in as cool as a pineapple sundae
and look round and see that Floradumbelle has no customer so I walk to
her table and sit myself down and I says, “Well good afternoon and how
is things going in the old shop?”
Well there is the madame and she glares at me like the old she-devil
that she is, and Floradumbelle she stares with her mouth open and all
the other girls is stopping their work to stare and I am taking off
my pearl grey gloves in no hurry and I says, “I would like to have a
manicuring if this shop aint raised its prices too many times since I
was here.”
So of course what can she do but start work and the madame what can she
do but hold her mouth and me what am I there for but to talk? So I says
in a good loud voice, “Oh Flora dear I am having such a wonderful time
and rising so fast in the world I am an Emergency Field Grammarian to
the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior and it
is a most responsible position and I do not have to do a thing except
what I please and I can travel and have an allowance for expenses and
I am going to Camden New Jersey the first time I can be spared from
the government and see my Mom and my Pop and my fyansay. And hello
Adair,” I says, “and hello Hotaire and hello Mary May Marie,” I says,
“I thought I would drop in for the sake of old times because you see
I have got to keep in touch with the plain people and not forget how
it is that they feel and what they think about international affairs.
And what do you say to this idea of the secretary of state that they
call Scared Sally letting in this Bolshiviki count to be with his sick
wife?” I says.
Well it costs me two-fifty to have that splurge but there is nothing
that has made me feel so good since I come to Washington, D. C. And
then I have a stroll down the street and look at all the pretty things
in the shop windows and think that I am going to have seven-fifty more
each week to spend like I want to only for what I send to you Mom and I
sure do think this is a wonderful government and the greatest country
in the whole world. And then I have got a date to have dinner with Mr.
Edgerton in that same Imperial Cafay where you get the cocktails in a
soup-tureen and I tell him about how I been to the Elite and show him
what was the expression on Madame Lafferty’s face and he says, “Mame,”
he says, “you might of been a great actress like your Mom.”
Well then I tell him what the girls is said about that there Bolshiviki
count that is to be let into the country and what a mistake it is and
he says, “You can see the mistake for already the news has been cabled
to that there Hungry country and there is a lot of stuff cabled back
about what it is that the count would of said if he had not of pledged
that he would not say nothing.” And I says, “Yes I have read it and it
is terrible stuff and I do not understand because it says this here
Bolshiviki count is charging that the people that is opposing him is
killing and shooting people and torturing them in dungeons and all that
and all the time I have been told that it is the Bolshivikis that does
that and here it seems to be the other side that is doing it.”
And he says, “So you see just how the propaganda works,” he says, “that
is the whole purpose to get you to asking questions like that.”
But I says, “Is it true?”
And he says, “There it is,” he says, “you can see how he has sewed
some doubts into a mind that had never before had none but had always
believed the right thing.”
“Yes but look here Mr. Edgerton stop kidding me I want to know what is
the truth.”
“Yes but my dear Mamie I want to show you how this poison spreads
because here you are pushing me for an answer and if it had not of been
for this here count you would never of thought about it at all.”
And then he stops kidding and explains how it is that on one side is
ladies and gentlemen what is doing the killing and on the other side
it is just common dirty workingmen and of course our country is got
to see to it that the side of refinement is victorious and that the
wives of the young sectaries in the state department is not stopped
from being noble and rich. It would be breaking up the home he says
if it was to be any other way for what would become of the foreign
matrimonial market if our young men of fashion was to pay for a peach
and find they have got a lemon?
Well I guess I am being a dumbell again but I do not know exactly
whether he is joking but it seems that he is real angry because his
advice is not took and the Spokesman is not got the sense to stay as
the Strong Silent Man which is what Mr. Edgerton made Him and the only
thing that any man can be when He does not know enough to be nothing
else.
And by and by we got out of the restaurant and are walking in the park
and it is moonlight and soft and sweet and romantic and Mr. Edgerton
he says, “Well I have got some news for you my dear Mamie that I fear
will make you very sad I am going to quit this job as the Spokesman’s
Secretary.” And I says, “My God!” and my knees is like to give away.
“Yes,” he says, “what is happened is that some of the brass kings is
come to me with a proposition it seems they are planning a great new
brass trust that is to include all the brass mines and mills of the
entire country and they are scared the public may not like it and may
make a fuss and force the Spokesman to do something about it and so
they have asked will I come and be their head press agent and fix the
stories that they will tell to all the newspapers and they have offered
me just about three times what I am getting now not only from the
government but from the private funds of them that is put me here to
manage the Spokesman for them. And so I am going to take this new job.”
Well I am so weak that I have to set on a bench and I says, “Oh Mr.
Edgerton I will be so lonely!”
And he says, “That is just what I want to say that you are to come with
me.”
“With you Mr. Edgerton but where?”
“To Chicago for that is where the brass trust is to have its offices.”
“But oh,” I says, “what would I do in Chicago?”
“You will be free,” he says, “and so will I because why,” he says,
“when you are in private business you can have some fun and you do not
have to worry about a lot of meddlesome Matties and old women in pants
that is watching everything you do. And you and me can have a little
apartment and be as jolly as two turtle-doves.” And while he says that
he is put his arm about me and he says, “Oh Mame I am sure fond of you
for you are the gamest kid I ever got to know and wouldn’t you like to
have a nice little love-nest and with nobody to look out for but just
me?”
Well Mom I am trembling all over because it is all so sudden and after
all I do think that Mr. Edgerton is a mighty fine man and I have never
had nothing so lovely as an apartment and he is holding me close and
I can hardly think straight but I says, “Oh Mr. Edgerton do not tempt
me,” I says, “for I have always been a good girl and always gone
straight.”
“Yes,” he says, “but there is nothing wrong with this for we are real
friends.”
“But you have got a wife!” I says.
“But she does not care for me she is interested in that syker now.”
“But that is only for a moment,” I says, “and she does love you I know
for I have saw it in her face and what is more I know that you love her
because else why should you of been jealous of the syker? And then too
I have got a fyansay and you know he is a good boy--”
“But my God Mamie will you go and throw yourself away on a
shipping-clerk what kind of a life is that for an intellectual girl
like you that is learned to understand all about international
affairs?” he says. “Why you will go and live in some hole with him and
you will have eleven babies and spend your life over a washtub and it
is a crime.”
“I know it is hard,” I says, “but you talk about the plain people and
what they think--”
“Oh to hell with the plain people!” he says. “That is all bunk and you
know it”--just like that he says it and of course I am shocked and I do
not want him to keep his arm around me then.
I says, “Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “you are going now to be a
shirt-stuffer or whatever you call it for the brass kings and so I
suppose you have got to feel like that about the plain people and
trample them beneath your heel,” I says, “but I am going to stay one of
them like I have always been because there is my Mom and my Pop and my
kid brothers and sisters and a good honest boy that I have promised to
wait for. And I am very much obliged to you and I like you very much
as I have always done but it makes me sad to see that you are going to
be cynical and lose all your ideals,” I says.
And so then he sees it is no use and he says, “Then you are going to
stay a Field Grammarian Mame?”
I says, “About that I cannot tell,” I says. “Would it be right for me
to keep the job if I am not doing no work for you and the Spokesman?”
“Oh Mame,” he says, “you are too fine a patriot to be living in these
degenerate times. Of course you can keep the job for you have earned
a hundred times the salary and if that poor little Shrimp in the big
white house had the sense to of took your advice you would of saved Him
for another term. But now I don’t know what will happen to Him.”
I says, “Is He going to have somebody to write His speeches for Him?”
“My God of course,” he says, “that poor Fish He could not write a
speech for an Epsom Salts convention.”
“And then who is to do it?” I says and he tells me that Mr. Grandaddy
Prows is got back from Europe and him and Senator Buttles is had a row
as to which is to name the new Secretary and so they have left it to
Mr. Edgerton as usual and he has picked out a newspaper friend of his
and he says, “Mame you will have to stand by him and help him because
when I look back on my past then I am sorry for this one’s future.”
And I says, “Let me meet him at once Mr. Edgerton,” and he says, “So
that is all you care about me!” and I says, “I am thinking about my
duty to the plain people of this great country,” and he says, “Mamie
Riggs when they have the first Woman Spokesman of this great country
you have got to be Her.”
So then we make a date to meet the new Secretary for lunch tomorrow and
I come home and there Mom I get your letter telling me that you have
saw Walter and he has agreed to believe that I am good and pure and
that he still loves me and oh Mom I am so glad I did not yield to that
fearful temptation out there on the park bench in the moonlight!
* * * * *
P. S. Well Mom I have just got back from having lunch with the new
Secretary and gee it is so wonderful I am more happy than I know how to
write. For he is a good man and very serious and I do not think he will
ever be cynical like I fear Mr. Edgerton is got to be. And he is very
polite and respectful and says how he has heard what fine ideas I have
give to Mr. Edgerton and he wants me to help him because he knows what
a hard time he is going to have especially at the beginning.
And I says, “Yes Mr. Porkin,” for that is his name, “you will find it
hard because there is many questions that people is trying to trap
the Spokesman into talking about and He is not being able to keep so
quiet as He used to, and it will mean His ruin because there is just
nothing He can say and why does He not say it? For example,” I says,
“there is this business about the Bolshiviki count when he comes here
there will be no end of a row to know why he can’t talk what he wants
to and then maybe when his wife gets well she will want to know if
she can talk and you know how much harder it is to shut up a woman,”
I says. “And then there is this business about the big banker that is
in the cabinet Mr. Lemon or Melon or whatever fruit he is and why he
does not stop the bootlegging business while he is making the whiskey
and why he is got all the income taxes refunded for his companies and
why he is allowed to charge as high as he wants for all the aluminum
that us women is got to have in our kitchens. You can just see there is
nothing the Spokesman can say about all that and you have got to see
that He says it. And there is this business about our lending money to
all these here Dago countries where the young secretaries of the state
department is got noble wives,” I says, “and about the Spokesman having
hid the reports of the commission or what ever it is called that wanted
to have the price of sugar cut down and ruin all them sugar kings that
is keeping up our prosperity. I tell you Mr. Porkin,” I says, “I have
been studying hard and if there was time I could tell you a hundred
different things that if anybody can ever get the Spokesman talking
about then He is done for the rest of His life,” I says, “and your job
is just one and that is to hammer into His Head day and night that when
you have got nothing you can say then you must say it and nothing else.”
And he is listening to every word and it is plain he is impressed and
right in the middle of it he reaches over the table and he says, “Miss
Riggs, shake hands with me,” he says, “for in you I have a political
counsellor and you must promise to stand by me and together we will
save Him.”
Then I says, “Mr. Porkin, we will shake hands but what I am trying to
do is not so much to save Him as to save the American people from the
great pain of finding out about Him.”
And so Mom we are friends even better than I have been with Mr.
Edgerton and you need have no more worry about the future of
Your high-up daughter
MAME.
THE END
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Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Spelling
has been retained as published. The following Printer errors have been
changed.
=CHANGED= =FROM= =TO=
Page 18: “I must a say there” “I must say there”
Page 25: “idea what is costs” “idea what it costs”
Page 28: “have go to go through” “have got to go through”
Page 32: “then I was a cat” “them I was a cat”
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