In the place first, I want it understood that I am a California cousin to a doughboy’s cootie.
When first I clapped my binnacle lights on the robust form of Susanna, I knew that she was my meat, vulgarly speaking. I loved her very avoirdupois, and that was going some, as she was no light article. I took her gauge one evening as we sat in the parlor and I snuggled up to her in a most friendly fashion. My advances were met with cold resentment. She did not say a word, but she jammed my head against her corset in a manner that bespoke her an amazon of no mean physical power. I thought my spinal column was broken; but when she let go, I breathed a sigh of relief and was contented to just look at her and nurse my sprained parts. I decided to use diplomacy, and waited until she had taken herself to the arbor hammock in the garden to indulge in an afternoon siesta. I watched around, and when I saw her eyelids droop and close, her breast heave in regular breathing as one asleep, I made my way to her side and bent over her fair face. How my mouth watered for a bite of her, but I almost feared that she would wake and lam me in the jaw. Temptation was too strong, however, and in an evil moment I turned my attention to her roll-down stocking that showed a goodly proportion of her nether parts. With a kind of subdued clicking of my jaws, I put my lips to her bare knee and experienced the joy of a stolen kiss. It may have been a disgraceful act, anyway the tickle of my touch awoke her, and she kicked unmercifully, like a cow that will not be milked. I ducked and escaped death, with a mouthful of her blood, the best that I had ever had, for she was my meat, and I am a California flea.
* * *
A summer night and a maid and a man has frequently caused an early fall!
* * *
Kablegram Love
She was a pretty and ambitious girl and had studied the matrimonial problem to a nicety.
“Yes, I suppose I shall wed eventually,” she said, “but the only kind of masculine nuisance that will suit me must be tall and dark, with classical features. He must be brave, yet gentle. Withal he must be strong—a lion among men, but a knight among ladies.”
That even a bow-legged, lath-framed youth, wearing checked trousers and smoking a cigarette that smelt worse than a burning boot, rattled on the back door and the girl knocked four tumblers and a cut glass fruit dish off the sideboard in her haste to get to him.