“Well,” explained the East Sider, “I go by auction sales, and I buy pictures cheap; then I sell ’em high. Yesterday I bought a picture for twenty-five dollars and to-day I sold it for fifty.”
“What was the subject?”
“It wasn’t no subject at all,” said the art collector—“it was a picture.”
“Sure, I know,” said the other. “But every picture has got to be a subject or it ain’t a regular picture, you understand. Was this here picture a marine, or a landscape, or a still life, or a portrait—or what?”
“How should I know?” said the puzzled ex-buttonholer. “To me a picture is a picture! This here picture now didn’t have no name. It was a picture of three fellers. One feller had a fife and one feller had a drum and one feller had a headache!”
§ 9 Protecting the Gentler Sex
A certain young lady who gives interpretative dances in rather scanty costume was engaged to go to a staid community in New England and dance before the local dramatic and literary society.
The day after her appearance the entertainment committee—all women—held a meeting to discuss the affair of the night before. Several had been heard, when one member raised her voice.
“Personally,” she said, “I enjoyed it ever so much. To me it was most artistic and symbolic and everything. But if you ask me, I must say this: It certainly was no place to take a nervous man!”