DOM PEDRO AND HIS MANY FANS
In Petropolis we went through the Palace of Dom Pedro. I'll not try to tell you just who Dom Pedro was, and how he came to be, because I don't know. I should, after all the Dom Pedroing I went through that afternoon, but I got confused. But Dom Pedro had to be some boy. Between him and his wife or wives and his sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters, and their activities, there wasn't much left to say about anybody else.
At the front door pious looking attendants slip felt slippers, open at the heel, over your shoes, and from there on through the palace you slide your way along the highly polished wooden floors (original). Dom Pedro, his wife (let's give him credit for only one) and their get were everywhere, in oil, bronze and marble, horseback and on foot. But Dom himself seemed to take pretty much to horses for the big pictures the big scenes. We saw the throne room, bed rooms, dining hall, nursery and its cradles, uniforms, swords, state dresses, black-hair combs a foot high, old china and glassware and ladies fans.
Let me tell you about the fans. My Aunt Jennie Black was a fan fan—the kind that folded up—and the art was to fold and unfold them gracefully. Remember? In a way, cigarettes are to our coeds what fans were to Aunt Jennie and her era. Well, don't think Dom Pedro's queen and women folk weren't in there fanning hard with their fans, and long, long before Aunt Jennie and hers. A room the size of Crawley's pool room was full of them in glass cases. Hundreds, yes almost thousands of them: Wood, bone, ivory, tortoise shell, amber and whatever else that could be made into fans. Delicate filigree, gold, silver, mother of pearl, inlay of superb workmanship and so fine it should be magnified to show it is really hand work. Yes, they had fans in Dom's day, and just as many as Brooklyn has now.
And away back behind was a small cubby hole room where Dom and his Senators, or Cabinet, or advisers, or whatever it was he had, met and considered matters of state. Then Dom, after being duly advised, would go out and make his own laws. Up home you had Huey Long and some others I mustn't name out loud do about the same thing, so you see, we are pretty much . . .