Part 21 (1/2)

DO YOU NEED A JOB? HERE ARE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY AND A VICTORY NOTE

GOES WITH EVERY ONE!”

Then come the list. I will put down a part of it so you can realize what a a.s.sortment of things has to be done to keep the seive in civilization.

4 handsome juveniles for motion-picture work--stage experience unnecessary.

2 experienced camera men.

2 marcel-wavers.

6 chemists, Marie La Tour Complexion Powder Co.

2 salesmen, Marie La Tour Turkish Cigarette Co.

16 waiters, Palatial Hotel.

1 traveling man, Marie La Tour Silk Underwear Co.

2 experienced lineotypers, Motion Picture Gazette.

2 experienced pressmen, Motion Picture Gazette.

1 publicity man, experienced, Motion Picture Gazette.

3 fillum cutters.

1 stylish floorman. Must be handsome and refined, not over 30.

Apply Maison Rosabelle, Hats and Gowns.

1 orchestra complete, with leader. Apply ”Chez La Tour” (my old joint of parlour-dancing days).

30 chorus men.

2 sparring partners for Madame Griselda, the famous lady-boxer.

And etc, add affinities, as the Romans used to say. And every one a real genuine job paying good money. And getting them nailed was no cinch, believe you me, except, of course, I being such a prominent person I didn't have as much trouble as some would of. Especially where a firm was using my name on something, they could hardly refuse me. I seen everybody personally myself, and only the bosses and in the end n.o.body had turned me down except the one from which I had bought my new bear-cat roadster for Jim's welcome home present and it was _some_ roadster, being neatly finished in pale lavender with yellow running-gear and a narrow red trim and tapestry upholstery on the seats which was so low and easy you involuntarily started to pull up the blankets after you got settled. You know, the kind of a car you have to look up from to see which way the cop is waving.

Well, anyways, you would of thought the bird which had sold it to me for cash money, him being the manager of the luxurious car-corrall himself, would offer to take on some of the boys. But no, he says there was too many auto salesmen in the world already, and that they had ought to be diverted into selling some of the new temperance drinks where their trained imagination would undoubtedly be of great value.

Well, anyways, he was the only one turned me down and I had the slips printed and stored away in a couple of cretone hat-boxes and commenced allotting the victory-note pledges. And then I tripped over the fact that I was a job short. There was the stuff all printed, and a job too short and it the night before the big parade! Well, I decided that when the time come I would make the extra job if I couldn't find it, and believe you me, I was as wore out looking for them as a Ham with his hair cut like a Greenwich village masterpiece. Not that I ever saw one and I have often wondered where the artists which drew them that way, did.

But in the meantime I had got hold of the Dahlia sisters, and Madame Broun and La Estelle, and Queenie King and a lot of other easy-lookers and had it all fixed for them to be on hand below Fourteenth Street at ten o'clock to give out the slips while the boys was mobilizing or whatever they call it. And then just as I was getting into the limousine with Musette and the two cretone hat boxes full and the two fool dogs and Ma, who would come up to me but Ruby Roselle with a new spring set of sables which it is remarkable how she does it in burlesque, still far be it from me to say a word about any person, having been in the theatrical world too long not to realize that it is seldom as red as it is painted and that the coating of black is only on the outside.

Well, anyways, up she comes from her new flat which is only two doors from mine and a awful mean look in those green eyes of hers under a sixty dollar hat that looked it, while mine cost seventy-five and looked fifteen, which is far more refined only Ruby would never believe that: which is one main difference between her and I. And she stopped me with one of those deadly sweet womanly smiles and says in a voice all milk and honey and barbed wire, she says:

”How's this, dearie, about the Theatrical Ladies Committee,” she says.

”I only just heard of it from Dottie Dahlia,” she says. ”What was it made you leave me off?”