He laughs again, like that was an awful boner. “It’s on the front page of all the papers,” he says. “But you haven’t missed much. The Spokesman is a Man who lives in a great white house and He is a Strong Silent Man and it appears that all Strong Silent Men have to talk a great deal and this One has got no idea what to say. So I am the man who tells Him what to say. And twice every week the reporters for all the newspapers of the whole world gather in a room and listen to Him say what I have told Him to say and a couple of thousand newspapers all over the world pay a couple of hundred thousand dollars to have it telegraphed to them and they print it and I don’t know how many hundreds of millions of people read it and they all have to think that it is the Spokesman who spoke it, so you see how important it is that I should keep hid.”
Well, Mom, by that time I seen what had come to me, and I sat hardly able to lift my eyelids, to say nothing of my tongue.
“I have got to have a session the day after tomorrow,” the gentleman goes on, “and I have no idea what I am going to say. How can I pay any compliments to American institutions that I haven’t paid them twenty times before? So I’ll give you an address of a little Greek restaurant that I know and if you’ll meet me there at seven-thirty tomorrow evening you may be able to give me a few ideas of what the whole world would like to have said to it the next morning.”
And so then he went out, Mom; and here is your baby Mame sitting in her six by eight bedroom with the smoke of her pork-chop still in the air writing to ask you if you have any ideas of what to tell the world for God’s sake send them quick for I have got my foot on the ladder and it’s the high altitudes for me. And Mom you dunno how grateful I am to you for the wise training you give me, I felt his eyes running over me but I never trembled for I had remembered what you taught me, always to keep my dressing table by the window and put it on by daylight and never to use no peroxide at all unless I was going to use it every night.
Your loving
Mame.
LETTER II
IN WHICH I GO BEHIND THE SCENES
Dear Mom:
The first thing I got to explain is that I have changed my name again. The fashions in names changes very fast and you think you have got a good one but you find it is a flop. But I never was altogether pleased with Ysabel and have decided to make it Rosabelle. I think it is much prettier because when you say Rosabelle Riggs both the words begins with the same letter and a gentleman told me that is called illiteration and a name is much sweller when it is illiterate; all the movie stars are doing it they say you can’t get into the movies at all unless you have got an illiterate name. The new girl at our place is named Mary May Marie, and that is nice too only you have to say the last name French fashion, “if you don’t,” I says to her, “it sounds like a hint to the gentlemen.” It is getting to be swell to have French names. Ada Huggins has changed hers to Adaire and then Hattie Schoenstein she says, “What shall I make mine?” and I says, “Why not try Hotaire?” and that is how I get into trouble being too bright altogether.