LETTER X
IN WHICH I TAKE A FLOP
Dear Mom:
I have your letter and also Pop’s and I dont wonder you both find it fearful exciting to get my letters telling how I have told Mr. Edgerton what to tell the Spokesman to sayto the American people and then that same day to get the newspaper and see that He has said exactly what I have said for Him to say. And just think Mom it is not only in the Camden Republican that you would read it but if you would of been in Philadelphia then you would of saw it in the Philadelphia Democrat and it would of been the same in Oshkosh or Lalipalousa wherever them places is.
Indeed Mr. Edgerton says it would be the same if you was to be in France or in Japan or any of them European countries because you see we have got more money than all of them put together and they all have to borrow from us and so they are all waiting round scared to see what we are doing and if the Spokesman has et too many pancakes for His breakfast and they have not agreed with Him then there is factories got to shut down in South America but if the Spokesman has just had a visit with a congressman from back in the hog-belt to tell Him that the hicks is happy over the increase in their bank mortgages why then the Spokesman perks up and oil promoters in the Faro Islands decides that it is all right to drill another well.
Yes it is a most wonderful thing to have happened to a poor manicure girl from the Elite Beauty Parlors and Mr. Edgerton is a good and true man and it is almost like what you might call a platonic friendship. It is extra wonderful right now because there was the greatest Man in the whole world miserable and not able to think about international affairs at all because all the papers was making fun of Him because He had got a camelephant to exercise His liver. And I was the one that fixed it up all right with my idea about the economy stories.
Of course you will of saw them by now. Mr. Edgerton and the Spokesman did not change a word of what I said. The Spokeslady is not to get no new Easter hat but is making Her old one over and the Spokesman Himself is getting one spring suit that is to cost Him only sixty-five dollars. I suppose that Mr. Edgerton and the Spokesman knows about what is the right price but it seems an awful lot of money to me I know that Pop never paid more than half that for a suit at least if he did he had the senst never to let you find it out. I think it is a little hard for great and rich folks like Mr. Edgerton and the Spokesman to remember how it is to be real poor. They have left that job to me and so I don’t worry that my underwear is all darns and patches because it reminds me that I am keeping close to the heart of the plain people all the time.
Them stories was published only yesterday but already you can see that they have changed the whole tone of the papers. In the one I get there is a very respectful editorial, saying that it is a providential thing for the country in this age of jazz and flappers to have a great Leader that is a believer in the pioneer virtue of thrift. And Florabelle her that works next to me in the Elite Beauty Parlors she says, “Well, if the Spokeslady can stand it I suppose I can so I will save the price of a new hat and I can see fifteen or twenty shows with it,” she says and so you can see what a great influence I am having even with the Floradumbelles.
P. S. Well Mom, I am very much puzzled for I have just got this afternoon’s papers and there is another story about the Spokesman and the Spokeslady and it contradicts every word of the other story because it says now that the Spokeslady has got Herself three especially beautiful new Easter hats and far from getting along with only one sixty-five dollar suit of spring clothes the fact is that the Spokesman has just bought Himself a dozen suits of spring clothes that cost a hundred and twenty-five dollars each.
And it is a story that seems to be give out from the big white house just like all the other stories that Mr. Edgerton has had charge of and I don’t see what it can mean because it will ruin everything I have done and what are the plain people going to think when they see one story one day and then exactly the opposite the next day they will stop believing anything they read in the papers and how will the Spokesman be able to instruct them in what they had ought to do?
I am terrible worried about it because what can I think except that some of them Bolshiviki fellers has got in their dirty work somewheres undermining American institutions and spoiling the work that I am doing for the Spokesman? I am on pins and needles waiting for Mr. Edgerton to call again and hope it will be soon. I am not allowed to call him because of course it would not do for him to be making dates with ladie’s voices over the telephone at the big white house where the Spokesman speaks.
P. S. Again. Well it is another day and I have not heard from Mr. Edgerton and it is a shame there had surely ought to of been some way that I could get hold of him in a time of public danger like this. It seems to me like the Reds is running away with the country and I could not sleepgood all night I dreamed that I seen twelve Spokesmen all alike riding around on twelve electric camels and each one of Them had on a hundred and twenty-five dollar suit of clothes. And there is an editorial in the paper this morning saying that of course it is necessary for the Spokesman to be clad adequate to His high Station and of course He would not be stingy to His wife at this joyous Eastertide. And Floradumbelle says she guesses she will have to have her new hat after all and she will stick some gentleman friend for her movie tickets so you can see how the whole country is getting demoralized again.
P. S. Once More. Well Mr. Edgerton called up and I met him at the restaurant but he was scared to speak to me he is being shadowed all the time by these mysterious enemies. He signed for me to follow him and I seen that something was wrong so I followed and we dodged about a while till we was sure there was nobody following and then he went to a big art gallery and we sat there and talked. He said that was a private enough place because nobody that had to do with politics in Washington would ever go into no place like an art gallery.
Well I have found about the stories and what went wrong. He says that my economy stories was the awfulest flop that ever had went out from the great white house and it has put him in the awfulest hole and most ruined him with the Spokesman. He says it was not the Bolshivikis at all but it was the business men no sooner did they see that story in the papers than they run bear-headed and wild-eyed to the nearest telegraft office and in the first two hours they had a hundred and forty-seven telegrams of protest mostly from millinery manufacturers and associations of cloak and suit dealers and they all wanted to know whether the Spokesman had gone mad or was the Bolshivikis conspiring to get Him to ruin the retail trade of the country. Here the Spokesman had promised them prosperity and they had put up I forget how many millions to elect Him, and now He goes and gives them this jab in the solar plexus.
And Mr. Edgerton says it was something awful the panic in the big white house because the Spokesman had gone out for a walk with His four secret service men that is hired to pull Him out from under automobiles and they couldn’t find Him and they begun telephoning to places on the way to look for Him and so there was a report that the Bolshivikis had blowed Him up and somebody called out all thefire-engines in the city. But at last they got hold of Him and the contradiction was sent out quick but not before eleven manufacturers in the Eastern states alone had gone into bankruptcy and that is why they had to make it a dozen suits the Spokesman had bought in the hope to save the wholesale trade.
And Mr. Edgerton says that poor Mr. Grandaddy Prows sent a heart-broken cablegram from the ship that he is sailing on to Europe because he is sure that it is an effort to ruin the department-store business and to punish him because he let the camelephant out of the stable. And Senator Buttles is furious too because he makes linings for ladies hats in one of his mills but he is glad too because he hates Mr. Edgerton because he can’t bear to have nobody but him telling the Spokesman what to say to the American people. But Mr. Edgerton says what would Senator Buttles know to say because he has got only one idea in the whole world and that is a ten percent reduction in the wages of his mill-hands.
Gee Mom it is terrible to be in a mix-up like this I had no idea that high life was so complicated and for the first time I am doubting whether I am big enough for my job. Just think of it to save the situation they have had to send out another story to say that the cost of keeping up the Spokesman’s private yacht that is really a ship of the navy is two hundred thousand dollars a year and so everybody can see that He lives like a Gentleman of His high Station had ought to do.
Well I seen that Mr. Edgerton was so blue I hated to tell him any more troubles but I thought that he should know about how I had spoke to that feller that has been following us and how he had walked home with me. I said that some time the feller would of been bound to of found out where I lived and Mr. Edgerton said that was right. And he said that he would not give a whoop about it because the truth was he was sick of his job and anybody that wanted it could have it for the price of ten cents. And he would go and get a job with some big business where a feller could do what he pleased and not have somebody snooping on him all the time. Of course I tried to cheer him up I told him how he must think about the plain people and he said something about the plain people that was not nice for a lady to hear and him sitting right in front of one of them Eyetalian madonnas in the art-gallery too.
I went home very sad and lonely and without no dinnerand gee Mom what should I run into at home? Mrs. Budd that is my landlady must of been watching for me for she come running out and of course I was scared I wonder if I will ever get so that I do not jump when I see a landlady coming at me. But it wasn’t to get her money this time but to tell me that there has been a lady here looking for me about a half an hour ago.
“A lady?” I says. “What sort of a lady?”
“A large soft lady,” she says, “a real sure enough one a swell looker.”
“And didn’t she leave no name?”
“No,” says Mrs. Budd, “she said she would come back again.”
And suddenly something hits me and I says, “How was she dressed?” She says that she had on a long squirrel-skin coat that must of cost a thousand dollars and gee Mom it most floored me for of course it must be Mr. Edgerton’s wife. And of course that is what that feller was following me home for and he has told her where I live and she has come after me. And gee I feel like I was Lydia Lovelight—do you remember how pathetic she was in “Passion’s Prey?” But do you really suppose that crazy woman can be after me with a gun because she thinks that I have took her husband away from her? I says to myself, “Mamie Riggs you have wished that you could get to Hollywood and now its seems that Hollywood is come to you!” Well, if anything happens you will see it in the papers.
Your scared daughter
Mame.