THE FAMILY WASH-TUB WAS DRAGGED UP BY THE FIRE.
SPRING IS HERE, WITH POEMS AND BATH TUBS
Well, there has been quite a bit happened since I last communed with you. Spring is coming; I can tell by the Poetry and the Real Estate ads. A Poet exists all year just to get his Poem published in the Spring. Then when he sees it in print he starts getting next Spring’s verse all ready. These early Spring Real Estate ads read, “This House is located on the shady banks of a Beautiful stream.” Say, if there is a beautiful stream anywhere now the Rail Road runs along it and all you have to do is to get run over by a freight train to reach this beautiful stream.
A favorite ad is, “Beautiful Home in heart of the most exclusive Residential District, 5 Master Bedrooms and 9 baths; Owner going to Europe.” Now let’s just take that ad out and dissect it and see what it is.
In a Real Estate man’s eye, the most exclusive part of the City is wherever he has a House to sell. The Dog Pound may be on one side and the City Incinerator on the other but it’s still exclusive. And it is, too, for it will be the only house in the world so situated.
Five Master Bedrooms! Now, they get that Master junk from English ads where the man may be the master. Still, I don’t know why they call all the rooms his. Over here they call them Master Bedrooms but the Wife will pick out the Poorest one for him, and keep the other 4 Good ones for Company.
Now, to the ordinary man on reading that Ad of 9 Baths, that would be an insult to his cleanliness. A Man would have to be awful Busy to support that many Baths, unless, of course, he neglected some of them. The ad might better have read, “Buy our home and live in a Bath Tub.” The biggest part of City homes nowadays have more Baths than Beds. So, while they can’t always ask their Company to stay all night as they have no place to put them, they can at least ask them to Bathe. So, when you are invited out now, you can always be assured of your private Bath, but you must leave before Bedtime.
When you visit a friend’s newly finished Home you will be shown through all the Bath rooms, but when you leave you couldn’t, to save your soul, tell where the dining room was. They seem to kinder want to camouflage or hide that nowadays. There is such little eating being done in the Homes now that a dining room is almost a lost art. Breakfast is being served in bed, Dinner at the Cabaret with dancing attached, and Lunch—no up-to-date Man would think of going anywhere but to his Clubs for lunch. Besides, didn’t he hear a funny one and must get to the Club to bore his alleged friends with it? He will talk everybody’s left ear off all day and come home and bite his Wife’s off if she asks him to tell her the news.
And then they have such an enlightening custom nowadays. Every body of men who can think of a name have a Club. And is not Congressman Blindbridle, who has just returned from a free Government trip to Bermuda, going to deliver a Message at today’s Luncheon on “Americanism, Or what we owe to the Flag?”