"Chappie," the Englishman, has started a society paper—sort of six months gestation of Town Topics, so Carlton and I are batting around after midnight, so "we won't become saw." There are all sorts of ways to make a bee buzz. Do keep Bern from wearing red ties while I'm gone and give him a shove along the straight and narrow, once and so often.
After a month and a half of drinking Sioux Falls water, I would bring a higher price as a lime kiln than I would in the woman market. One's pelt gets wind tanned and such a thing as a daintily flushed face is as unlooked for out here as consideration from the natives.
My head ached so yesterday that I called on a doctor, "Visit including all medicine, one dollar." Isn't it "patetic?" He raved about the climate and said he brought his wife here with T. B., and she improved so much. Naturally I asked, "How is she now?" He said, "O, she's dead." Don't blame him for raving about the climate, do you?
My dear it is worth a trip out here to see a whist party "let out." No, not "bridge,"—they haven't heard of it yet—just plain whist; but as I was saying, to see one turn out with its white alpaca skirt and blue satin ribbon belt. I've paid two dollars at Hammerstein's to see things not half so funny. O, for a sip of Fleischman's coffee—there are grounds for divorce in every cup out here. The butter we eat, walks in from the country alone, and at every meal we get smashed potatoes piled as high as the snow on the Alps. I can't look a potato in the eye any more.
There is a couple here on business from Michigan,—a Mr. and Mrs. Jones, odd name that. Isn't it sad that they are so happily married, they might both be getting divorces, but as it is they are simply wasting a year out here for nothing. I passed the Judge on the street this morning and I was so nervous that I walked bow-legged. But thanks to skirts et cetera-et cetera.
I have sampled all the churches and have finally landed at the Christian Science house of worship, as I would rather any day hear a pianola grind out its papier mache music than listen to a poor performer.
If I had Carnegie's millions, I'd go straight to Chicago, buy a big, fat, thick, beef steak, step into the middle of it and eat my way out. I'm hungry, hungry. I worry down the "dope" that they deal out in the dining room, then go back to my sanctum and finish on limey water and crack-nells—you know what they are, a powdery sort of counterfeit cake that chokes you to death if you happen to breathe while you're chewing it.
Last night while trying to cut some stringy roast beef and still retain my dignity, the man with the red tie said: "Put your other foot on it." I'm afraid if I don't eat potatoes again, my stomach will shrivel so that I will never be able to sit through a course dinner when I get back. Potatoes distend it all right—I feel like I have swallowed one wing of Fleischman's yeast factory whenever I eat them. You have to come down on the meat with such force to make any impression on it, that more gets pushed up between your teeth than goes down your alimentary canal; then you spend the balance of the night squandering Japanese dental floss. I unconsciously finish my prayers with "Lord preserve us from the holy trinity of roast beef, roast mutton and roast pork."
You can recognise one of the clan in a moment by what is known as the "Divorsay jaw." No feek and weeble expression on our faces but "Do or die" is the look we have in our optics.
Every time I go to church I vow I'll never go again. The organ is asthmatic and the wheezing gets on my gray matter.