The first thing I got to explain is that I have changed my name again.
The fashions in names changes very fast and you think you have got
a good one but you find it is a flop. But I never was altogether
pleased with Ysabel and have decided to make it Rosabelle. I think it
is much prettier because when you say Rosabelle Riggs both the words
begins with the same letter and a gentleman told me that is called
illiteration and a name is much sweller when it is illiterate; all
the movie stars are doing it they say you can’t get into the movies
at all unless you have got an illiterate name. The new girl at our
place is named Mary May Marie, and that is nice too only you have to
say the last name French fashion, “if you don’t,” I says to her, “it
sounds like a hint to the gentlemen.” It is getting to be swell to have
French names. Ada Huggins has changed hers to Adaire and then Hattie
Schoenstein she says, “What shall I make mine?” and I says, “Why not
try Hotaire?” and that is how I get into trouble being too bright
altogether.
I want you to please explain to Pop, so that he will not have his
feelings hurt that I do not like the good old-fashioned honest label
of Mame that he gave me. This is not an old-fashioned beauty parlor
that I work in and you can’t expect to know what is considered shiek
if you spend your whole life in the gas-house district of Camden New
Jersey. And I know Mom how you gave up a glorious stage career for
your little ones, and this little one is much obliged but I got my own
career to make now and I sure don’t want no enemy to paste the label of
Mame onto me. But of course I’m always the same to the home folks your
affectionately.
* * * * *
P. S. Well, I have just got back from dinner with my new gentleman
friend. I will not say much for a Greek restaurant. It seems that the
way you tell Greek cooking is that everything is swimming in the juices
of baby lamb only when it gets a little cold it seems like what we at
home used to call mutton suet. Mr. Edgerton explains that the Greeks
is a pastoral people they have only sheeps and goats. But I would of
thought they would of learned the uses of beefsteak when they come to
the good old U. S. A. But I suppose they have got to be different as
that is called “local color” when you go out slumming or dining with a
gentleman friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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