Gelett Burgess

“ Finding, however, that she could ride the harp safely, he set Angie right to work jazzing with his orchestra of Manicured Mozambique Monkeys. Angie’s luck at last had turned. But don’t get excited about it—that’s not always a good sign. Milk often turns, too, and nobody gives three cheers about it.
But it was wonderful, when she began to play, how sure-footed she was! Her harp seemed half human, half divine. As for Angie, she seemed half human, half monkey. How merrily she leaped from string to string! How her toes twinkled, as she ran from chord to chord, and vice versâ. ”

“ Now lightning may seldom strike twice in the same place, but workmen often do. And Mr. Frimp was working Angie to a finish. He struck hard next day. So hard that Angie was as tender as a rump steak after treatment with a mallet. But then Angie had always been soft. By this time she was practically liquid.
Came days of divine delight to Angela Bish, in a world of almost Coney Island beauty, with a man she could paw as much as she pleased. Came magic hours when for days her lips were not removed from his. Came Love, in all its transcontinental grandeur! ”

“ Now, to some, Love comes slowly, like a coat of tan growing ever deeper. But to others it strikes as suddenly as lightning, permeating one’s whole being like a sneeze. To Angie love came not only quickly but always ”

“ For the fact was, the sad fact, if you look at it that way, Angela Bish was insane. The shock had completely unsettled her reason.
But there is always a compensation for all misfortunes. In her present state everyone says that she is far, far more intelligent than when she was really sane. Life, now, is one long lucid interval. She has perfect peace—and so do the men. She has a fond delusion. Angie believes that she is married. She is sure of it. So much so, that every man she sees seems to be her husband, trying to escape. ”

“ That embrace was a revelation of rapture to Angie, who still had an amateur rating. How beardy his beard was!—and his hands were soft and cold and moist. At first she thought they were raw oysters. She had always loved oysters, always would. She was happier than she had been since she ate her first hair sandwich. Nevertheless, we must not leave her too long in the embrace of an imperfect stranger.
“I have found you at last!” With difficulty the words came through the thick brown beard. It was he who spoke. Angie had no beard. She was far too young. ”

“ But life, dear reader, is not always one unbroken rosary of rapture. Not at all, or seldom. Some pearls are tears. Wherefore Angela’s virtue was to remain to bore her for many, many years. Hardly had she begun rapturously to fear the worst, when came a loud rap at the door. Her hero turned pale, but, hastily and yet resolutely donning a pair of purple suspenders, he flung wide the portal. Alas, there stood there, there did, with evil in his eyes, Mr. Burleson T. Woodrow, the proprietor of the six-cent store. ”

“ They were superlatively safe, for, having water on the knees, Angie always wore rubber boots to bed.
In the twinkling of an ear she had disguised her true self in an inveterate green kimono, and she was ready to explore the fastnesses of the hall bedroom. But Angela was proud, though practical. Would she stoop to coax him forth? Not she. She lay flat on her tum. The poor girl who had had few opportunities in her life to pull a man’s leg now eagerly embraced the opportunity and a pair of brilliant trousers. ”

“ She was all covered with geese flesh; but then, Angela Bish always was a goose. Anyone is who barks in her sleep.
Nineteen is a terrible age; and the longer you’re nineteen the worse it is; neither girlitude nor yet womanability. Angie hated to think about it. To think about anything at all, in fact, was apt to produce vertigo. She had but one idea—it lived in her head alone, like a cow in a tree. Its name was Get Married.
For to Angie all men were holy. Some had money and some had mastoiditis, but she felt sure she could fit right into any man’s arms and take root. ”

“ Day by day they wandered together along the curbstones of the great city, marveling at its beautiful cesspools—at the gorgeous gutters, where the banana peel grew so luxuriantly. Or, haply, they strolled towards the East Side and reveled in the fragrant Portuguese fauna of the slums.
At night, scaling some lofty fire escape, high amongst the milk bottles they would together marvel at some heart-broken geranium, alone in the February frosts, or smile at the frozen gold fish in a neglected bowl of ice. ”

“ Ill as she could afford the luxury she would have given eight dollars any day for a husband, dead or alive. If wealthy, she would have preferred him dead. But all the matrimonial agencies had given her up as too wonderfully willing. Men, they said, kindly, liked to pursue an elusive woman, like a cake of soap in a wet bathtub—even men did who hated baths. But poor Angie began to smile when a man was blocks away, and kept it up till the cops asked her if she were looking for the Home for the Feeble Minded. ”

“ Here’s a little pathetic bit about Angie, now we’re on the subject. Timidly, in private, ofttimes she would take down a photograph of Fairas Dougblanks, and lick it lovingly. Did he respond? Nay, he did but laugh at her—that same old lithographic grin. How cruel life can be, at times, to the working girl!
Don’t you already feel, dear reader, that you know Angela Bish? Can’t you almost see her lack of any real womanliness? ”

“ Have you got the face to say you are not a monkey—and with that face?”
With a pitiful slob the proprietor of the Side Show of Freaks rushed out of the tent, leaving it there with Angie and the fly. For a moment the Fat Woman stopped eating, and even the fly turned pale. . . .
And Angie, poor Angie, so thusly duped, gazing sadly at her finger nails, so rich in real estate, realized too late that the way to a man’s heart is through the Beauty Parlor.
For no man could make a monkey of Angie; she hadn’t enough brains. And besides, monkeys, like poets, are born, not made. ”

“ Now here is another, a trap with a chain to be fastened to the wall, grand piano or anything heavy, like a mortgage, or afternoon caller. You see, little one? The mouse, when caught, can neither pull the trap into his hole, nor the hole into his trap. You will work on a commission, say a captain’s, or, if you do well, a major’s.”
But Angela Bish had a soul above mouse-traps. She would catch larger game; and the wealthy peanut-eater, whose victims strewed the floor, not to speak of shuddering peanuts yet to be eaten, pale with fear, had the makings of a he-husband. ”

“ At sight of his pale blue necktie, in Angie’s heart mortification had already set in. But Angie was brave, and the blood twinkled in her veins. After all, a husband was always a husband, even when he lisped. ”

“ Now among the faces that stared at Angie, wondering if indeed she were human, or only a gently smiling vegetable, was one so covered with whiskers that at first she could hardly tell whether it was a man or a woman. ”

“ Frimp, holding Angie off with one hand, “there is not another woman in the world with a face like that. Even one is improbable. Two were quite impossible. Then you must be, indeed you are, aren’t you, Miss Angela Bish?” ”

“ And alas, Angie, in her excitement—she had hardly known what excitemeant before—had sprung the trap, and behold, she now found herself firmly held by the left ear at the end of a long silver chain. Struggle as she might or might not, she could not escape. She couldn’t even get away. The room was filled with wails and peanuts. ”

“ CHAPTER X. THE ADVENTURE OF THE TEMPORARY HUSBAND MAN’S age is of man’s life a thing apart; ’tis woman’s whole existence.” Thus saith the poet and thus saith I. The three years that Angela Bish was twenty-three were the happiest in her life. But as this didn’t happen till she was twenty-nine we can’t tell about it now. For Angie was now much younger than she was at twenty-three. She was only twenty-four.
And still Angie was unwed. She didn’t, in fact, have a single husband. But who wants one that is single, anyway? Other girls had married again and again and again. ”

“ Angela frowned. But it wasn’t that, upon such short acquaintance, he called her by her botanical name. It wasn’t that something seemed to be stirring and moaning inside the coffin on which she sat. It wasn’t even that the undertaker was listening, as usual, for he wasn’t; he was drinking as usual—embalming fluid. No—“the Ritz”—it was something that often happened when she tried to think—a sudden rush of mud to the head.
“But what are rits?” she faltered. “Is it a breakfast food, or something like a Yonker?”
“Oh, take a taxi, and ask the engineer. Hurry!” ”

“ Angie had never thought of anything less important than marriage, if anything can be less important. But marriage had never taken Angie seriously. It had never taken her at all. It had only winked at her, like a blueheaded fireman on a hose cart, as it hurtled past.
And yet Angie wasn’t bad looking, really. Why should she be? She wasn’t really bad. Her black eyes curled naturally, and her hair was heavily plated with gold. Why then did men shun her as if she were taking
IT WAS AN UNEASY SEASICK FEELING THAT THERE WAS SOMEBODY UNDER THE BED ”

“ Isn’t human nature wonderful, Gertrude? At one moment you are in heaven waited on by pink angels, and the next, some one has tried to borrow four dollars—and succeeded. And then, when your spirits are covered with green mold and infested with crawling things, lo, a friend appears out of Nowhere and offers you a position as companion to a beautiful and wealthy young French girl at a salary of $3,000 a month and cigarettes. ”

“ Such rich food might disagree with him, thought Angie; but she didn’t really care. One gets so used to gluttony in a large city that one takes it quite easily. And strangely, too, she felt no vertigo such as usually overcame her when she found herself in the same block with a live man. ”

“ CHAPTER VI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE GRAFOLION COMPANY FOR a young girl, life in New York is hard; so hard as to he practically indigestible. There were times when Angela Bish didn’t know where her next kiss would come from. Other girls fell in love, married, were beaten and divorced. But none of these blessings were vouchsafed Angela.
Indeed, she had so often been thrown down by men that, at the Almost-Fur factory, where she glued whiskers onto blotting paper, to make sealskin coats, they called her Angie the Unbreakable. ”

“ Men, to virtuous Angela, were just a queer kind of women who wore pants and mustaches and hard hats, who smoked cigars, and, if they saw fit, married one. And yet Angie, pure as was her heart, longed wildly to be wild. Every girl does ”

“ Then, while he was absorbedly removing a wad of gum from his heel, behold, she sprang upon him, clasped him in a fond embrace—and clung.
Reader, bear in mind that I expressly reserve all emotion picture rights. The desperate girl had coated herself from hair to heel with paste! It was sour but sticky.
Alas, for him, there was now no getting away. Never had he found a woman so attractive, never one who could hold him so long. When he had tired of them, he had always cast them carelessly aside. ”

“ She was only thirteen years old, going on sixteen, and never yet had that funny face been kissed by mankind. Men had grabbed at her, of course, and even pecked at her lips; but no one yet had landed a base hit. ”

“ Lonely? Angie yearned and yawned for male society with the ravenous appetite of a man-eating shark. But men were shy of Angie; very shy, for men. They got rid of her quickly, as if she were a lead quarter. ”

“ That’s the way it goes in this world, especially with those whose brains have failed to coagulate. Listen: Opportunity knocks but once at every one’s door, and then usually goes right on and delivers the package to the wrong address. One girl for instance, will be so interested in listening to the phonograph that she fails to hear a rich Patagonian asking her to marry him, while another, a mere elevator girl, perhaps with a brass tooth will ring up the President of the First National Bank and get him to propose over the phone, thereby winning $10,000 a year alimony. ”

“ Ah, yes, there are often tragedies, dear reader, woven into the most inconspicuous portions of your geography. Little you know, when you sit down to your happy meal—but let that pass! It is too horrible. One sees so many tragedies in the movies what’s the good of having them in real life!
*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*
As the chickens were coming home to roost on Broadway, that evening, Angie was standing disconsolately on the corner of Madison Square voraciously eating the steam from a roasted peanut machine—it was all she could afford for dinner. ”

“ The trouble was that nobody seemed to like that sort of girl. They wanted one with fewer elbows, and more eyelashes—one who didn’t boil over with frenzied yearning whenever a man passed her way. No one had ever made love to Angie, no one had ever even proposed. Angie always managed to propose first. ”

“ Now Angie was, at this epoch (if it were an epoch, and not a mere spasm) , a Collector of Burnt Matches for the Unsold Spaghetti Company. She got a dollar per 10,000—when she got it. But it is hard work collecting burnt matches in Winter, so hard that many have given it up in despair the very first year, and gone in for First Editions or Sheffield Plate, instead. It’s especially hard when you haven’t any friends except old ladies who don’t smoke, and use only two or three matches a day, for lighting the gas stove. ”