Dear Mom:
Well the Elks is come to town and they own it just like I said they would. My it is wonderful to see so many fine redblooded gentlemen on the streets all looking like their pockets couldn’t hold their money. For the manicure business it is heaven there just ain’t enough lady operators to go round a couple of gents is waiting their turn at each chair and a girl can have all the dinners and other dates she can take care of. But I have turned them all down their compliments don’t go with me at all because of this work that I have got to do with Mr. Edgerton that is so very important as you will understand. It seems hard to believe that such a chanced could happen to a girl out of the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey but it really is true, and Mr. Edgerton says I can do just as much guiding the destinies of the American people as I want to.
I suppose you read the great address which the Spokesman delivered to the Elks’ convention and you seen every word I had said to Mr. Edgerton for the Spokesman to say. Of course Mr. Edgerton fixed it up again so that it sounded fine and Elkoquent—he keeps calling it that, it is a sort of joke on account of having been said to the Elks. It sure did thrill me to read it and I was more prouder than ever to live in such a rich country with so much wonderful prosperity all around me.
I must say there is times when I wish I could have just a little more of it for myself. It is kind of hard on a girl that has been brought up right and is trying to earn everything not just her clothes. Right now I have got to put another darn in my best pair of skin-colored stockings and it will be very disfiguring right where the gentlemen look at them most. But I could not keep my landlady waiting no longer, and I have cut down on my meals all I dare I can’t afford to be too starved when I go out with Mr. Edgerton because it ain’t refined to hog your dinner.
Well Mom this noon going out for my lunch I run into what I think is his wife—anyhow I hope it is because I would be sorry to think there was a third lady in this case. She was in a car with him, one of these kind that is called coops like glass show cases rolling round on big rubber tires. They had just drawed up by the curb and she was getting out.
I have told him that I will play the game so of course I didn’t give no sign that I had ever saw him before. But I got a good look at her and she is sure something elegant you can bet there ain’t any holes in her silk stockings nor in the squirrel-skin coat that she had on. She is a large soft lady and they went into an office building so I guess he was taking her to another of them fancy-priced specialists to see if they can find that angina pectoris. I went off thinking what would of happened to me if I would of took the notion that I had the angina pectoris. Would all them specialists be hunting it or would I just come home and get Pop to show me the trap-door where you crawl into the gas-tank? But I realize that I can’t have everything in this world—I can’t have electric coops and squirrel-skin coats and at the same time know the great heart of the plain people and be able to teach the Spokesman how to talk to them.
P. S. Well I had another call from Mr. Edgerton and we went out to dinner again and it is his wife like I guessed and he says the corn specialists says it is not angina pectoris of the toe, but only her tight slippers. And he started to apologize because he didn’t speak to me but I told him to quit his kidding and let us talk about international affairs. So we went to another restaurant it was a cheap hash-house this time where you get a coarse dinner for sixty cents and Mr. Edgerton apologized for it but it was the only kind of a place where he would be sure not to meet no friends. We had a little booth where we could sit and talk and Mr. Edgerton tipped the waiter some and we sat there a couple of hours and he brought us some coffee a couple of times and something else that was supposed to be coffee because it was in coffee-cups but seeing ain’t always believing.
Well the international situation is like this just now. All them Dago nations over in Europe wanted a lot of money from us so they could buy the guns and things while they was canning Kayser Bill. They come over here and borrowed billions and billions of dollars and now of course the Kayser is chopping firewood in Holland and we got the job of collecting the money and we don’t know how to start. They are an unprincipled lot these fellers in Europe says Mr. Edgerton.
“Yes, I know,” I says. “I read all about them. The papers call them Bolshivikis.”