Isn’t life a queer problem? My, I wonder what it all means! Sometimes it seems like a continuous vaudeville show, then it changes and becomes serious, clouds and tears, and, oh, dear, I don’t understand it at all. I will try to be a good girl, but being a real Sunday girl isn’t any fun. I think I am a little related to Buster Brown, anyway, I would like to have his dog. Levey Cohen said he would get him for me, but I thought Buster would be lonesome, and I have my Pa, and automobile. Why is it that girls like their Pas so much? I have got a beautiful mother, she is too handsome and queenly for anything, but I seem to be Pap’s own girl. He says I am the light of his eyes. Pa’s as much of a boy as I am, only he’s grown up. He has beautiful brown hair; he isn’t bald on the top of his head. I have always been told when a man is bald-headed it was because his wife was a tartar and robbed his pockets while he slept, and pulled his hair out, if he noticed the loss of his money. Pa has plenty of money. Pa said he settled the money question with Ma’s Pa before they were married; he said all men making second marriages should see about the financial end of the game. I never knew just how it ended, but I do know that Pa is considered very swell, and rich, and he says Levey Cohen has his eyes on his pocketbook, but I don’t see how that is, for Pa never carries it out of the house. It’s in the safe in the billiard-room and Pa has never asked Levey to play billiards because he always calls in the late afternoon, and Pa always plays billiards at noon, or early in the day. Pa says the ice man would be as much of a gentleman as an actor, if he had the free advertising that some of them get. I like actors because they can be anything they like from a beggar to a king, and all they do is to put on different clothes. One would think it was an easy thing to be an actor, but I guess they have their ups and downs; they are not all kings, but I like some of them tip-top, say, for instance, Mr. Edmund Breese and Mr. George Coen. All the girls like them. I heard Pa say that they understood the real act of impersonating as well as any he knew of on the boards—and the women on the stage are all fine, that I have seen. I think Elsie Janis is a darling. I just love her. I would be almost willing to let her marry Levey Cohen if I didn’t think I really wanted him myself. I am pretty willing he should take her out in his car. Levey Cohen is a very handsome chap; he is four years older than I am, and Pa says he’s doing well for a kid. I don’t like to be called a kid, and I don’t think Levey does either, but it’s Pa’s way of talking. My Pa is a cousin to Bill Nye that used to write for the papers so much. Pa said he was better than he looked in the papers; I hope he was, because he looked in the papers, poor man, like a bean-pole with a rubber ball on the top of it for a head. He was a funny man, on paper, but Pa says in his home he was Mr. Edgar Nye, loved and respected by all, and that’s saying a good deal in this age of rush and tear.
Well, good-bye, little book, I have told you all my secrets for four weeks past now, and I will say good night. It’s 6 P. M. and we are going to the Touraine for dinner as the cook got dopy, Pa says, and let the fire go out in the kitchen. Ma, poor dear, can’t cook, so we are going out to dine and then to see some circus on Mars they have here. Pa says I must learn to cook if I want to keep Levey at home after we get married, and I am going to learn. I boiled some eggs for Pa the other morning when the cook went to market. I thought they would cook in three hours, most meats will, in that time, but Pa said, “Nay, nay, Pauline, make it three minutes,” so I did. My Pa can cook, but he won’t. He says it’s the cook’s work. Pa objects to doing other people’s work for them; he says they must all do it some time, and why not begin here, now, so that’s how we stand on the cook-book question.
ELSIE.
P. S. Pa says he’s from Missouri when the cook says the air is bad and the coal won’t burn. He says it’s more likely it’s her breath that stuns even the coal and that it’s 23 for ourn, as far as dinner goes, that’s why we go to a hotel.
ELSIE.
LETTER III
Well, here I am again, little book. Pa and I went to Harvard Class Day, out to Cambridge. I took him in my Franklin car. I have never had any trouble since that Brookline adventure, and was towed home. My! but I felt cheap. I would have sold that car that day for 99 cents, but she’s all right ever since—has just been making up for past bad behavin’, just like a naughty little girl I know of. Pa says of all the colleges in the land Haryard is the best. Pa graduated from Harvard and Levey Cohen is a junior, and they are worse than ten old women about the old days Pa spent at Harvard. Of course I like Harvard because Pa does; I never question Pa’s judgment because he says it’s so, and there is nothing to do but believe him, especially when Levey Cohen always backs him up. It’s two men against one little girl, and I don’t have a bit of a show if I don’t side in. Pa is a Democrat and Levey and I are both staunch Republicans—so is Ma—Pa don’t dare mention politics in the house, he goes over to South Boston or down to Salem Willows when he feels a political spell coming on. He don’t have our company then. Ma says two marriages ought to change any man from a Democrat to a Republican, but it hasn’t worked on Pa’s constitution yet. Harvard is just a dear, so many really handsome men, and fine fellows. Lots of them have automobiles and they make them hum. They say it’s lots more fun driving a car above the speed limit and being chased by a policeman than it is to steal barber poles and store signs; they all have drop numbers on their cars, so no one has ever been caught yet. I have one on my Franklin. I had to use it one day, for I run a race with Harold Hill, of Brookline, and beat him by two miles, but I also beat the policeman, and Pa said he would give me credit for being my father’s daughter. But you will laugh when I tell you Pa has been fined three times for fast speeding, but he has forgotten all about that and I haven’t the heart to refresh his memory, Pa’s such a dear. I went to a football game a year ago, and Alice Roosevelt was there, and a big crowd beside. I don’t care for football. I think it’s too much of a mush for comfort. I like golf. Pa is a cracker jack on golf; he has friends in New Jersey who are fine players. Pa won a cup one year. It’s a beauty. I like that sport. I can beat Levey Cohen every time. I rather play with him because I always get the game. Pa says Levey knows his business, but I don’t care, so long as I get the game. Pa says: “Just wait, little girl, till you are married, and you will be surprised how much faster Levey will pick up his feet in golf than he does now.” That’s about the meanest thing Pa ever said to me in all his life. He won’t get but two kisses, for saying that, this day. I usually count 80, but he will see that kisses have had a big slump since this morning, and he will be out altogether. He won’t have margin enough to cover, I’ll bet you, he’ll be taken so off his feet. Pa has dabbled in stocks enough to know all the points of loss. He says he was a hoodoo on the market; when he sold stock went up, and when he bought they slumped, so he will say it’s his regular luck. Poor, dear Pa, no one will ever know how much I love my father. He’s the dearest man on earth—except Levey Cohen—he is next best. It would be an awfully bad thing if I didn’t marry Levey Cohen, after all, but I will; he’s the only right sort. I know others are good, but—he is goodiest of all. He always lets me have my own way and any girl likes that. My Pa thinks it’s just awful to put any money on a horse, but my Uncle Smith from Buffalo is a live wire, and he took me to a race at Readville this spring and he put a thousand, 10 to 1, on Bumshell, for me, and a thousand dollars for himself. When he gave me the $10,000 I took it home and showed it to Pa and he said: “Elsie, where did you get that money?” and I said, “Off Bumshell, he won the race.” “Did your Uncle Smith back you?” “Sure he did, Pa” “Thunder! What does he mean? My daughter learning to gamble on the racetrack? Your Uncle Smith ought to know better than that.” “Well, Pa, he said if we lost it would be a gamble, but if we won, why, it was O. K., so we won.” Well, Pa put the money in the Charity box on Sunday and said he hoped it would do some poor cuss good, for I didn’t need it, neither did he. I don’t know what he will say to Uncle Smith when he sees him, but I am going to write and tell him to wait a little till Pa cools off. Ma said I had better tell Uncle Smith that Pa had suddenly gone up above par in gambling stock, and to wait till the excitement was over before he came in. Well, I telephoned him instead, and he waited two weeks and then asked me to ask Pa how the market was. That was too much for Pa. He laughed and said, “Tell Uncle Smith to come over to dinner now the cook’s breath don’t put the fire out.” So we will have a jolly dinner and go to Keith’s this evening.
So good-bye, for I hear Pa asking where his little girl is.
ELSIE.