Believe You Me!

by Nina Wilcox Putnam

IV

And during that time which has been so immortally fixed in writing by the grandest book with the same name, I was as busy as the great American cootie is supposed to be on his native hearth—only it ain't that piece of furniture but another, of course. Do you get me? I'm afraid so! Well, I was as busy as what you think. To begin with I called a committee-meeting in the privacy of my grey French enamel boudoir where I wear my boudoir cap and have the day-bed hitched and this committee meeting consisted entirely of myself and the two fool dogs. And after I had gone through all the motions, I appointed myself a sub-committee of one to carry out the meeting's resolutions and do all the work.

This is about what would of happened if I had done it the regular way and asked Ruby Roselle and Maison Rosabelle and the other girls. We would of had a mahogany table and a gavel and a pitcher of ice-water and a lot of hot-air and a wasted morning and in the end I would of been the goat anyways, so I thought why not do it single-handed in the first place and be done? I could print all their names on the leaflets and they would be perfectly satisfied.

So having got over the necessary formalities as you might say, I accepted the nomination and got to work. Fortunately I wasn't doing anything except a solo dance at the Palatial at supper-time and one picture. And so I had most of my days to myself. The Fixings on the Avenue grew and blossomed and so did my contribution to the Welcome Home Committee. I didn't get to go to any of their meetings but I don't imagine they even missed me at the time. And while the arches and other motion-picture scenery was being as completed as they ever would be, so was my list. My monument took up less space, but when you gave it the once-over it seemed maybe a little more rain-proof than the others. Apparently all there was to it was slips of paper six by eight with this printed on them. At the top it says:

"welcome home"
"howdy boys, and our heartfelt thanks!
do you need a job? here are three hundred
and twenty and a victory note
goes with every one!"

Then come the list. I will put down a part of it so you can realize what a assortment of things has to be done to keep the seive in civilization.

4 handsome juveniles for motion-picture work—stage experience unnecessary.

2 experienced camera men.

2 marcel-wavers.

6 chemists, Marie La Tour Complexion Powder Co.

2 salesmen, Marie La Tour Turkish Cigarette Co.

16 waiters, Palatial Hotel.

1 traveling man, Marie La Tour Silk Underwear Co.

2 experienced lineotypers, Motion Picture Gazette.

2 experienced pressmen, Motion Picture Gazette.

1 publicity man, experienced, Motion Picture Gazette.

3 fillum cutters.

1 stylish floorman. Must be handsome and refined, not over 30. Apply Maison Rosabelle, Hats and Gowns.

1 orchestra complete, with leader. Apply "Chez La Tour" (my old joint of parlour-dancing days).

30 chorus men.

2 sparring partners for Madame Griselda, the famous lady-boxer.

And etc, add affinities, as the Romans used to say. And every one a real genuine job paying good money. And getting them nailed was no cinch, believe you me, except, of course, I being such a prominent person I didn't have as much trouble as some would of. Especially where a firm was using my name on something, they could hardly refuse me. I seen everybody personally myself, and only the bosses and in the end nobody had turned me down except the one from which I had bought my new bear-cat roadster for Jim's welcome home present and it was some roadster, being neatly finished in pale lavender with yellow running-gear and a narrow red trim and tapestry upholstery on the seats which was so low and easy you involuntarily started to pull up the blankets after you got settled. You know, the kind of a car you have to look up from to see which way the cop is waving.

Well, anyways, you would of thought the bird which had sold it to me for cash money, him being the manager of the luxurious car-corrall himself, would offer to take on some of the boys. But no, he says there was too many auto salesmen in the world already, and that they had ought to be diverted into selling some of the new temperance drinks where their trained imagination would undoubtedly be of great value.

Well, anyways, he was the only one turned me down and I had the slips printed and stored away in a couple of cretone hat-boxes and commenced allotting the victory-note pledges. And then I tripped over the fact that I was a job short. There was the stuff all printed, and a job too short and it the night before the big parade! Well, I decided that when the time come I would make the extra job if I couldn't find it, and believe you me, I was as wore out looking for them as a Ham with his hair cut like a Greenwich village masterpiece. Not that I ever saw one and I have often wondered where the artists which drew them that way, did.

But in the meantime I had got hold of the Dahlia sisters, and Madame Broun and La Estelle, and Queenie King and a lot of other easy-lookers and had it all fixed for them to be on hand below Fourteenth Street at ten o'clock to give out the slips while the boys was mobilizing or whatever they call it. And then just as I was getting into the limousine with Musette and the two cretone hat boxes full and the two fool dogs and Ma, who would come up to me but Ruby Roselle with a new spring set of sables which it is remarkable how she does it in burlesque, still far be it from me to say a word about any person, having been in the theatrical world too long not to realize that it is seldom as red as it is painted and that the coating of black is only on the outside.

Well, anyways, up she comes from her new flat which is only two doors from mine and a awful mean look in those green eyes of hers under a sixty dollar hat that looked it, while mine cost seventy-five and looked fifteen, which is far more refined only Ruby would never believe that: which is one main difference between her and I. And she stopped me with one of those deadly sweet womanly smiles and says in a voice all milk and honey and barbed wire, she says:

"How's this, dearie, about the Theatrical Ladies Committee," she says. "I only just heard of it from Dottie Dahlia," she says. "What was it made you leave me off?"

Well, seeing that the armistice was not yet broken I felt I might let her distribute a few leaflets, although I had left her name off the signatures at the bottom on account of her never having proved she wasn't a alien enemy to anything besides dramatic art, which hadn't to be proved. So I handed her a string of talk about this being a small affair and how I had thought she would of been too busy to do anything just now, which made her mad because there is some talk on account of that she wasn't working just then. But she took a few leaflets and read the signature at the bottom. "Theatrical Ladies' Welcome Committee" and got real red in the face.

"Why, my friend Mr. Mulvaney spoke to me about this!" she says. "I was to of been treasurer, or something! Do you mean to say you spent ten thousand dollars on them!" and she pointed to the leaflets like a one-act small-time.

"Yep!" I says. "Take 'em home and try 'em on your piano!" I says. "But you will have please to pardon me now. I got to beat it!"

And with that I climbed in with the rest of the family and we was rushed down town to N. Y.'s Bohemian Quarter, where the 70th Division was about to hang around waiting to parade. Which it is certainly remarkable the places the highly moral U. S. A. Government picks out for her soldiers to wait about in say from Paris to Washington Square, and I think their wives and sweethearts have stood for a good deal of this sort of thing, to say nothing of wives and sisters being kept from going abroad. I don't know have any homes been broken up this way, but I will say that Marsailles and Harlem would of listened better to the patiently waiting homebodies.

Well, anyways, down we went to the amateur white lights, and by the time we reached Twenty-Third we begun to run into bunches of the boys. Bands was playing and all, and—oh my Gawd, what's the use trying to tell about it? There was plenty to tell, but ain't every one seen it? If not at N. Y. C., why in some town which may be more jay but with its heart in the right place, and the heart is the thing which counted this time as per usual. Believe you me, mine was in my throat and so was everybody elses when they seen them lean brown boys with their grown-up faces!

Well, we stopped down to Eleventh and Sixth and got out and commenced walking around handing out the leaflets, and at first they weren't taking 'em very seriously, but pretty soon they began to get on to who I was and of course that caught them and a good many tucked the slips inside their tin hats and all of them pretty near had seen me in "The Kaiser's Killing" and I got pretty near as big a ovation as I had tried to offer them. And as for the parade they was very good-natured, but it seemed to me that as usual the stay-at-homes in the grandstands was getting the best of it and the boys doing all the work, for parading, no more than a first-class dancing act, ain't quite the pleasure to the ones that does it, that it is to them that only stands and waits, as the saying is.