Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Romantic proceeding this, but unhygienic when you consider that her rush
for the closed casement was doubtless due to the fact that her bedroom,
hermetically sealed during the night, must have grown pretty stuffy by
morning. Her complexion was probably bad.
No such idyllic course marked the matin of our heroine. Her day's
beginning differed from the above in practically every detail. Thus:
A--When Harrietta rose from her couch (cream enamel, full-sized bed
with double hair mattress and box springs) she closed her casement with
a bang, having slept in a gale that swept her two-room-and-kitchenette
apartment on the eleventh floor in Fifty-sixth Street.
B--She never leaned out except, perhaps, to flap a dust rag, because
lean as she might, defying the laws of gravity and the house
superintendent, she could have viewed nothing more than roofs and sky
and chimneys where already roofs and sky and chimneys filled the eye
(unless you consider that by screwing around and flattening one ear and
the side of your jaw against the window jamb you could almost get a
glimpse of distant green prominently mentioned in the agent's ad as
"unexcelled view of Park").
C--The morning air wasn't perfumed for purposes of breathing deep, being
New York morning air, richly laden with the smell of warm asphalt,
smoke, gas, and, when the wind was right, the glue factory on the Jersey
shore across the river.
D--She didn't pluck a rose, carolling, because even if, by some magic
Burbankian process, Jack's bean-stalk had been made rose-bearing it
would have been hard put to it to reach this skyscraper home.
E--If she had flung it, it probably would have ended its eleven-story
flight in the hand cart of Messinger's butcher boy, who usually made
his first Fifty-sixth Street delivery at about that time.
F--The white rose would not have been jewelled and sparkling with the
dews of dawn, anyway, as at Harrietta's rising hour (between 10.30 and
11.30 A. M.) the New York City dews, if any, have left for the day.
Spartans who rise regularly at the chaste hour of seven will now regard
Harrietta with disapproval. These should be told that Harrietta never
got to bed before twelve-thirty nor to sleep before two-thirty, which,
on an eight-hour sleep count, should even things up somewhat in their
minds. They must know, too, that in one corner of her white-and-blue
bathroom reposed a pair of wooden dumb-bells, their ankles neatly
crossed. She used them daily. Also she bathed, massaged, exercised, took
facial and electric treatments; worked like a slave; lived like an
athlete in training in order to preserve her hair, skin, teeth, and
figure; almost never ate what she wanted nor as much as she liked.
That earlier lady of the closed casement and the white rose probably
never even heard of a dentifrice or a cold shower.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account