TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE VANITY FAIR PUB. CO., INC. COPYRIGHT, 1920, 1921, BY THE METROPOLITAN PUBLICATIONS, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO. COPYRIGHT, 1920, 1921, BY THE SMART SET CO. Printed in the United States of America Published September, 1922 QUITE INAPPROPRIATELY TO MY MOTHER A TABLE OF CONTENTS MY LAST FLAPPERS THE JELLY-BEAN _This is a Southern story, with the scene laid in the small city of Tarleton, Georgia. I have a profound affection for Tarleton, but somehow whenever I write a story about it I receive letters from all over the South denouncing me in no uncertain terms. “The Jelly-Bean,” published in “The Metropolitan,” drew its full share of these admonitory notes._ _It was written under strange circumstances shortly after my first novel was published, and, moreover, it was the first story in which I had a collaborator. For, finding that I was unable to manage the crap-shooting episode, I turned it over to my wife, who, as a Southern girl, was presumably an expert on the technique and terminology of that great sectional pastime._ THE CAMEL’S BACK _I suppose that of all the stories I have ever written this one cost me the least travail and perhaps gave me the most amusement. As to the labor involved, it was written during one day in the city of New Orleans, with the express purpose of buying a platinum and diamond wrist watch which cost six hundred dollars. I began it at seven in the morning and finished it at two o’clock the same night. It was published in the “Saturday Evening Post” in 1920, and later included in the O. Henry Memorial Collection for the same year. I like it least of all the stories in this volume._ _My amusement was derived from the fact that the camel part of the story is literally true; in fact, I have a standing engagement with the gentleman involved to attend the next fancy-dress party to which we are mutually invited, attired as the latter part of the camel--this as a sort of atonement for being his historian._ MAY DAY _This somewhat unpleasant tale, published as a novelette in the “Smart Set” in July, 1920, relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year. Each of the three events made a great impression upon me. In life they were unrelated, except by the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz, but in my story I have tried, unsuccessfully I fear, to weave them into a pattern--a pattern which would give the effect of those months in New York as they appeared to at least one member of what was then the younger generation._ PORCELAIN AND PINK _“And do you write for any other magazines?” inquired the young lady._ _“Oh, yes,” I assured her. “I’ve had some stories and plays in the ‘Smart Set,’ for instance----”_