The Two-Stepper could not forget the Girl from Another Town. She
pulled out next Day but he looked up the Address and sent her the
Dance Programme that he had found in his Overcoat Pocket. She wrote
back that it was Awfully Sweet of him to remember poor little Me and
then she asked one or two Questions. That gave him a Hunch, so he
bought a new kind of Writing Paper, said to be the Latest Agony, and
he wrote a nice Long Letter in which he told her that she was very
easy to look at, and that when it came to picking them up and setting
them down in the Slow and Dreamy, she made all the other Girls of his
Acquaintance look like a Set of Cripples.
She returned the Serve with one of these chummy Epistles, written on
all sides of the Paper, with the P.S. crawling up one Margin like a
Pea-Vine. She chucked in a few mushy Extracts from the Oatmeal School
of Thought and asked him the Name of his Favorite Poet.
Her Pace was a trifle Swift for Harry J., who had derived his
Education from the Sporting Section of the Daily Papers, but he bought
a Lover's Guide and a Dictionary and decided to stay in.
The size of it was that little Harry had been Harpooned all the way
through. He was the original Sweetheart à la Brochette. He carried
with him, Night and Day, a Vision of Her in the $200 Rig that she had
flashed on the Night of the Party. It never occurred to him that she
could wear any other Costume. He would close his Eyes and try to hear
once again the dulcet and mellifluous Tones of that Voice which, to
him, sounded as Good as an Æolian Harp moved by gentle Zephyrs within
a Bower of Orchids costing $7 each.
So they exchanged Photos.
Next to the Miniature painted on Ivory, the Modern Photo is the prize
Bunk of the Universe.
A successful Photographer, who has learned the Tricks and made a
slight Study of Human Nature, can take a Grass Widow of 48, who is
troubled with Wild Hairs and other Excess Ornaments, and by tampering
with the Negative, he can make her out to look something like Ethel
Barrymore. Then she can send the Picture to her Relations who live a
long way off and they will never know the Difference.
The Girl sent Harry a High Art Panel of herself, in which she was
looking at something in a Tree, and when he gazed at it, he had a
Palpitation and said, "This is better than I thought it was."
He told himself that it would be a Pleasure and a Privilege to walk
up to something like that the 1st of every Month and hand it the
Envelope.
He got a clean Shave and put on his Other Clothes and went and had
himself Taken by an Artist who charged $8 a Dozen--$4 for the Pictures
and $4 to square his Conscience.
[Illustration: _The Artist._]
This Specialist could take any Set of Misfit Features and rearrange
them into a Work of Art. He put Harry in front of the Bull's-Eye
and scrooged him around so as to blanket the White Wings as much as
possible and then he told him to think of Money and look Pleasant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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