I want you to please explain to Pop, so that he will not have his feelings hurt that I do not like the good old-fashioned honest label of Mame that he gave me. This is not an old-fashioned beauty parlor that I work in and you can’t expect to know what is considered shiek if you spend your whole life in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey. And I know Mom how you gave up a glorious stage career for your little ones, and this little one is much obliged but I got my own career to make now and I sure don’t want no enemy to paste the label of Mame onto me. But of course I’m always the same to the home folks your affectionately.
P. S. Well, I have just got back from dinner with my new gentleman friend. I will not say much for a Greek restaurant. It seems that the way you tell Greek cooking is that everything is swimming in the juices of baby lamb only when it gets a little cold it seems like what we at home used to call mutton suet. Mr. Edgerton explains that the Greeks is a pastoral people they have only sheeps and goats. But I would of thought they would of learned the uses of beefsteak when they come to the good old U. S. A. But I suppose they have got to be different as that is called “local color” when you go out slumming or dining with a gentleman friend.
But oh Mom the conversation was the most intellectual that I ever listened to and I am so excited I can hardly make my letters good. It was just like going to Hollywood and being took in behind the scenes where you could watch Mary Pickford putting on her make-up. You that has been a stage queen can understand how it is everything is so different behind the scenes you would hardly know that it is the same show at all. I always thought I was the little wise girl and nobody could put nothing over on me but now I am behind the scenes of the political show and oh my God to think that I was ever one of the boobs that sat out in front of the curtain and laughed and cried over them old old gags!
First Mr. Edgerton put me wise to the leading gentleman that is called the Spokesman. Mr. Edgerton has to spend a lot of time with Him every day, teaching Him His role, and he told me all about it, and it was just like I was there in the great white house where He acts.
It seems that this Spokesman was born and raised in the State of Florida and that is a very cold state with a great lot of mountains that is covered with snow most of the time. It is very rocky ground and hard to raise anything on and so the people in Florida has got to work hard for a living all the time and they are very saving and apt to be stingy for which Mr. Edgerton says you can’t blame them seeing how nature has been a step-mother to them all. So this Spokesman’s one idea is to save pennies and when He was the governor of this State of Florida He used to live in one hotel room and when the bankers and the big business men thought that was not dignified enough and He wanted to show them that He could be as swell as they was He took two hotel rooms.
The Spokesman is a little Man, kind of stoop-shouldered and pinched-up like and He is very much worried because He is not imposing looking like He had ought to be to fit into that big white house that He has got to act in. Him and Mr. Edgerton had many consultations about it and Mr. Edgerton told Him to face it out and make a joke of it and tell His visitors that He was like a singed cat a lot better than He looks. At first that hurt His feelings but He must of thought it over and decided it was His best bet and now He says it to His visitors. His face is kind of wizened and some nasty woman said that He had been weaned on a pickle but Mr. Edgerton ain’t ever advised Him to say that to His visitors.
Well now He is the Spokesman and He has got the job of telling the American people what to do and what to think. And it seems a queer job for Him Mr. Edgerton says because if He had His own way He would sit for hours and never say nothing. He will listen to all Mr. Edgerton says for Him to say and then bid him good bye and never say if He is going to say it or not but He aways says it provided it’s two things—first it must be complimentary to American institutions and second it must have to do with saving money.
Mr. Edgerton explained to me about what is called the “policy” of the Spokesman and I don’t see how I could ever of been happy to be so ignorant as I used to be. I just never knew nothing Mom I would hear Pop talking about these things, and it would go right over my head but now I’m going to learn all about it. It seems that the way money is wasted is that the government takes it for taxes and pays it to a lot of office holders that sits with their feet on the top of their desks. So the Spokesman is going to stop the taxes and let the rich people keep their money then He says they will start factories to make things and there will be plenty of wages for the working people and everybody will be happy. I never would of thought of it myself but I seen it right away and how stupid I was when I felt mean about people that had a lot of money and spent it on what I thought was foolishness like monkey dinners and shampain baths and such. I see now that no matter how foolish it is it all makes work for working people and so it is all economy like the Spokesman wants it to be.
I asked Mr. Edgerton if that was one of the ideas he had taught to the Spokesman but he said no he hadn’t needed to do it because when you are in the business of running for offices it is a thing you come to understand for yourself no matter how dumb you may be that you have got to take care of the rich people because they have got to put up their money for campaign funds for you so that you can pay wages for workingmen that makes red fire and sky-rockets and campaign banners and processions and other things that educates the voters about not taxing the rich.