Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Sam Klein, the veteran, was the first to greet her when she entered the
theatre at that first September rehearsal. The company was waiting for
her. She wasn't late. She had just pleasantly escaped being unpunctual.
She came in, cool, slim, electric. Then she hesitated. For the fraction
of a second she hesitated. Then Sam Klein greeted her: "Company's
waiting, Miss Fuller, if you're ready." And the leading man came
forward, a flower in his buttonhole, carefully tailored and slightly
yellow as a leading man of forty should be at 10:30 A. M. "How
wonderful you're looking, Harrietta," he said.
Sam Klein took her aside. "You're going to make the hit of your career
in this part, Miss Fuller. Yessir, dear, the hit of your career. You
mark my words."
"Don't you think," stammered Harrietta--"don't you think it will take
someone--someone--younger--to play the part?"
"Younger than what?"
"Than I."
Sam Klein stared. Then he laughed. "Younger than you! Say, listen, do
you want to get the Gerry Society after me?"
And as he turned away a Young Thing with worshipful eyes crept up to
Harrietta's side and said tremulously: "Oh, Miss Fuller, this is my
first chance on Broadway, and may I tell you how happy I am to be
playing with you? You've been my ideal ever since I was a--for a long,
long time."
HOME GIRL
Wilson avenue, Chicago, is not merely an avenue but a district; not only
a district but a state of mind; not a state of mind alone but a
condition of morals. For that matter, it is none of these things so much
as a mode of existence. If you know your Chicago--which you probably
don't--(_sotto voce_ murmur, Heaven forbid!)--you are aware that, long
ago, Wilson Avenue proper crept slyly around the corner and achieved a
clandestine alliance with big glittering Sheridan Road; which escapade
changed the demure thoroughfare into Wilson Avenue improper.
When one says "A Wilson Avenue girl," the mind--that is, the Chicago
mind--pictures immediately a slim, daring, scented, exotic creature
dressed in next week's fashions; wise-eyed; doll-faced; rapacious. When
chiffon stockings are worn Wilson Avenue's hosiery is but a film over
the flesh. Aigrettes and mink coats are its winter uniform. A feverish
district this, all plate glass windows and delicatessen dinners and
one-room-and-kitchenette apartments, where light housekeepers take
their housekeeping too lightly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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