"Wilbur don't blame me for it. He says that the object in life of an agent and a chorus girl is to plant everything they can get their fins into whenever they can, for it don't last long, and the good people ain't healthy. And goodness knows I sure do need my health. For though I appear to be a strong, robust creature I am a frail woman. "Wilbur can moan and groan around with a hangover for a couple of days, but I have to be right on the job all the time with this smiling face and laughing eye thing, or he would seek some other place for sympathy. Why, many a morning I have spoke light and happy words of cheer to him over the 'phone with a tongue as thick as a board-walk and the inside of my nob yearning to burst loose and flop around in the cool morning air. "Do I caper up to the transmitter and sob, 'Oh, darling, I fear me that I am not long for this earth!' Never! I take a long drink of ice water, and when his 'Is this you, kid?' comes over the wire I chirrup back, real bright and gay, 'Right O, Kiddo!' and when he says he don't believe he can live through the day, do I suggest that we die together? Not I! I tell him to forget it and go downstairs and have George mix him up a mug full of the hair of the dog that bit him. That shows the love of a good woman. "Was you at the Chorus Girls' Ball last Saturday night? My, I would hate to cast any reflections on the judges, but their choice certainly was bum. Still I suppose they are old men and not up on the modern 1908 rules on osculation. "In their day when a young man imprinted a chaste salute on a dame's alabaster forehead he was supposed to go into a fit of delight, but not according to this year's book. Now they clinch with a strangle hold and stick till one or the other drops from exhaustion. I did not enter the contest, for I am not a chorus girl; I am a show girl, if you please. What's the difference? Five a week. "This kissing craze is getting to be something scandalous. Not that I object to it. But I blush to think that the time-honored customs that were once performed in the front parlor, with the gas turned low, is now used in contests and numbered as a feat of strength. "Wilbur and I went to the ball together, and as soon as he struck the hut he wanted to rush right over and run a few trial heats with the contestants, but the easy way with which I made him change his mind was a joy to the eye. He said to me as we went in the door, I think I will toddle over to the paddock and see if the fillies are in form. He was making a wild rush to check his shawl when I mentioned casual like, as if I wasn't noticing myself saying it, 'You know that I am an added starter.' Bing! Skyrockets! Wilbur goes up in the air and comes down all spraddled out.