Blank Verse
EMIL ASKED CLARA
TO TAKE
A WALK WITH HIM
AND PICK FLOWERS,
BUT
CLARA’S BROTHER
CAME ALONG,
AND SO
THEY PICKED FLOWERS.
* * *
Mrs. Bloolaw laid down her newspaper with an angry snort. “I see where they are talking about reviving the ‘Passion Play’; another of those disgraceful shows, I suppose.”
* * *
“How much,” asked John Burroughs in his daily Nature column, “does it cost to set a tree out in the street?”
Some festive friends of ours set a bartender out in the street in the days B. P. and if memory is correct it cost them $10 and costs.
* * *
“People Who Ride in Our Car Never Have to Walk Back Home” advertises a St. Louis automobile agency. The girl in the house next door says a hat pin gives her the same assurance.
* * *
If there’s one secluded spot
That I would like to own
And fence about, ’tis that small plot
Where my wild oats were sown.
* * *
She asked him if he’d take a seat,
But he, his blushes hiding,
Replied that he preferred to stand,
For he’d been horseback riding.
* * *
The porcupine may have his quills,
The elephant his trunk,
But when it comes to common scents
My money’s on the skunk.
Film Feast Fights
Ah! Now the dainty damsels of the screen have the excitement for which their artistic temperaments crave! For the edification of the filmland folk, Los Angeles hotels have introduced the prize fight as a dinner attraction, partly supplanting the dinner dansant, and here we have diminutive Bebe Daniels cavorting at one of these film fight feasts, rubbing elbows with effete Kid McCoy, whose barefoot partner, as Richmond states, put on her shoes and walked out.
Society prize fights are the latest in Los Angeles and Pasadena. The winter tourists, society people and so on have fallen. Didn’t Anne Morgan set the example in New York? Main dining rooms have been turned into prize rings, where, during a lull in the supper dance, the fighters, their seconds, water bottles, cuspidors and other necessary adjuncts are led forth.
No, prizefighters don’t generally have cuspidors; they generally spit in the water bucket or on the floor; anyhow, they spit. They can’t help it.
The swell hotels of Pasadena and Los Angeles already have staged their preliminary fistic functions. There is no bunc about the fights, at least so far as appearance and appurtenances are concerned. The men wear regulation ring clothes and, as everyone knows, this means they can’t wear much more than most of the women present, who shriek with delight and false alarm at the thud of brawny fists on hairy breasts and bloody noses.
Whiz Bang is not long-haired, consequently can’t be against a good boxing contest or a fight, whatever it is they call them. But one may entertain an opinion that some things were meant for men and if there is anything a man is better fitted for, or can do better, than women, for heaven’s sake let him do it.
The Alexandria-Alec, as it popularly is known, initiated the fad in this burg. The society editors must have been there for one thing, judging from elite galaxy of names which appeared next day.
Kid McCoy also was there, appearing somewhat better in his tux than most of the non-athletic looking gentlemen present. The Kid emerged recently from his ninth (or was it his fifteenth?) matrimonial experiment. He married a dancer of the films, a bare-footed one. But evidently she put on her shoes and walked out.
The literary lights were somewhat in evidence. Guy Price, Eddie Moriarity and H. M. Walker, with the assumed or naturally bored air that seems to mark the popular newspaper sporting writers, were taking in the innovation or being innovated in the taking in, whichever it was. Moriarity and Walker said who won the fights and from their dour looks one would never judge they write funny titles for Semon and Lloyd.
Tom Mix jumped into the ring as referee. Those who watched paid well for it. But there was dinner, of course, and a dance, thrown in.
Bebe Daniels was one of the first on the floor. Not that Bebe seemed overly excited about it. But the proud looking young man who trotted her out seemed not without fear that his appearance with the fair Bebe might be overlooked if he didn’t get an early start upon the ball room boards.
But Bebe was worth looking at; incidentally, one of the few modest looking women on the floor. They say she is stuck up. They say that about most of the really stellar female attractions of the screen. But the insider opines that Bebe’s bored look combines a sense of humor and the common sense of a young girl who finds that the glitter and night adulation are mostly 18 carat bunc. Yet Bebe danced and danced.
As we have said before, society doesn’t know what to do about the picture stars, especially if they are starettes. But to miss seeing them, so one can talk about what they wore and whom they were with, that would be ultra ignoramus, as one might aptly say. Just what a bunch of supposedly high bred society women, Miss Morgan to the contrary, can see in the spectacle of two men slamming each other around the ring passeth, no doubt, some portion of the male element.
Sounds like we are getting sermony. Far be it from us. There are worse things than women in evening garb gushing over mostly naked men fighting in the main dining room of our swell hotels.
One thing about Mary and Doug.; they are fairly exclusive. Some of the younger stars might do well to emulate them. Yet, perhaps before a star becomes a luminous planet it must do its sparkle; cast its lesser light, until the fact that it does not glow at every gay party can cause more comment than the mere presence, thereat, would cause.
Mary and Doug. are becoming more talked of because they stay home than because they step out. Of course, Mary and Doug. have something to chat of among themselves again, now that Nevada is talking marriage annulment again.
We still remain firm in our predictions of months ago that Nevada has more talk than annulment in her system, so far as the Fairbanks family is concerned.
* * *