If I were a young actress, I would rather be noted for acting than for originating a new style of garment; but it is a free country, thank God, and a big one, with
room for all of us, whatever our preferences. And though the young actress has the clothes question heavy on her mind now, and finds it hard to keep up with others and at the same time out of debt, she has the right to hope that by and by she will be so good an actress, and so valuable to the theatre, that a fat salary will make the clothes matter play second fiddle, as is right and proper it should, to the question of fine acting.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MASHER, AND WHY HE EXISTS
Thousands of persons who do not themselves use slang understand and even appreciate it. The American brand is generally pithy, compact, and expressive, and not always vulgar. Slang is at its worst in contemptuous epithets, and of those the one that is lowest and most offensive seems likely to become a permanent, recognized addition to the language. No more vulgar term exists than "masher," and it is a distinct comfort to find Webster ascribing the
origin of the word to England's reckless fun-maker,—Punch.
Beaux, bucks, lady-killers, Johnnies,—all these terms have been applied at different periods to the self-proclaimed fascinator of women, and to-day we will use some one, any of them, rather than that abomination,—masher. Nor am I "puttin' on scallops and frills," as the boys say. I know a good thing when I hear it, as when a very much overdressed woman entered a car, and its first sudden jerk broke her gorgeous parasol, while its second flung her into the arms of the ugliest, fattest man present and whirled her pocket-book out of the window, I knew that the voice of conviction that slowly said, "Well, she is up against it," slangily expressed the unfortunate woman's exact predicament. Oh, no, I'm not "puttin' on frills," I am only objecting with all my might and main to a term, as well as to the contemptible creature indicated by it,—masher.
In a certain school, long ago, there was a very gentle, tender-hearted teacher, who was also the comforter and peacemaker of her flock. Whenever there was trouble at recess, and some one pushed or some one else had their gathers torn out, or, in actual war, names were called, and "mean thing" and "tattle-tale" brought sobbing little maids to the teacher's arms, or when loss and disaster in the way of missing blocks of rubber, broken slate pencils, or ink-stained reader covers sent floods of tears down small faces, this teacher always came to the rescue and soothed and patted and invariably wound up with these exact words, "There, there, don't let us say anything more about it, and then we'll all be quite happy." I am sure we all thought that it was the eleventh commandment, "Not to say anything more about it."
Now every one of us suffered more or less from our encounters with the multiplication table. Of course fives and tens were at a