But I says, “No you dont need to worry about that,” I says, “because I
got my mother and father and my kid brothers and sisters back in the
gas-house district of Camden New Jersey and how could I forget how they
feel?”
“Well then,” says he, “it’s all right and you can go on telling me and
I will tell it to the Spokesman and He will tell it to the newspaper
reporters and they will tell it to the papers and the papers will tell
it to the gas house district of Camden New Jersey.”
“But,” says I, “What will the missus think about it your spending so
much money on a manicure girl?”
“She aint going to know about it,” he says. “I have paid cash and I
dont suppose you will tell her.”
“Trust me!” I says. “But some of your friends--”
“If my friends was to see me with you now it would be easier for me
to get away with it I could say you was the daughter of some famous
diplomat or of a senator at the very least.” And of course that made me
feel happy and just then we come to a movie parlor and he says, “We
have got to learn how to wear our good clothes,” he says, “so let’s go
in and see the latest thing in Hollywood manners.”
So in we go and there is a picture oh Mom the loveliest story about a
poor miners’ daughter in the hills that is kidnapped by a moonshiner
that is an old-fashioned name for a boot-legger and she is rescued by
the handsome young son of the mine-owner that happens to be visiting
the mine and he comes to love her in the end and they get married in
the loveliest palace all white with sunshine and roses. And if I had of
saw that yesterday I would of said it was too good to be true but now
it all seemed like it was me and I felt such thrills running over me
and I felt so warm and I whispered to Mr. Edgerton to thank him several
times and I felt just like he really was my father like he said.
But then I got scared because of course he aint my father but he’s a
man that aint happy with his wife and I am a girl that is promised to
be married some day a long ways off to a poor but honest shipping-clerk
in Camden New Jersey. And so I have got to keep telling myself that
my job with Mr. Edgerton is to educate him so that he can educate the
Spokesman that is the greatest Man in the whole world and has the job
of educating the greatest people in the whole world.
But oh Mom it is hard to be a girl and to be young and to love pretty
things and never to be able to have none unless you go without your
lunch every day for a month or two. I go up to that little box of a
room that I live in, and fry myself a frankfurter or some hamburger
on a tiny oil stove and gee I get sorry for myself and I get sorry
for poor Walter that thinks I am going to marry him some day and I am
of course but oh Mom us plain people do have to pay a lot for what we
learn!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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