Well, what do you think! I have been to Atlantic City for the Automobile races. Had I been older Pa says I could have entered my Franklin car for the race, but he said “no use for a girl to try,” so I just looked on. I fell in love with Miss Rogers, she is a smart woman, a real thoroughbred, Pa says. Ma don’t dare to drive a car; she is a ’fraid-cat, won’t even shoot the shoots at Coney Island. Why, they don’t make anything I wouldn’t try! I got old Deacon Weston to ride the flying horses with me at Coney Island, and the band played “There will be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night.” Deacon Weston’s coat-tails blew out behind him like the American flag in a gale of wind, and the boys nearly died to see how hard he held on. It’s jolly fun to live! I heard Pa say Mrs. Pat Campbell and her poodle had solved the joy of living, but I don’t believe she has half the fun I do. Why, I can climb a tree if I like to. Pa says I shouldn’t, else I’ll be a tomboy. I don’t see how I can be a tomboy when I am a girl, but Pa says that there are lots of things you don’t learn in school. I like school pretty well, but like most girls, I am more fond of vacations. In vacation, in summer, we go to grandpa’s in the country, out in Pennsylvania. I stepped on a bumblebee one day—that is, I tried to, but I didn’t step heavy. He saw my foot coming and it was bare, and he made me dance good, for a little. I don’t think I’ll walk in the dewy grass any more in the morning. Pa told Ma it would keep me always young, and as I don’t want to grow up I just went out to try it, but I believe I will even be willing to wear long dresses and grow up, if I have to dance to a bumblebee sting; I don’t like the music at all, too much pain in it, for harmony.

My grandma has a pet little cow. Pa says it’s a calf, and I got the pony’s harness and put it on the calf, and he didn’t like to be a pony at all. He just kicked and tipped me all over the yard. Ma screamed and Pa laughed. Pa said, “Let them alone, both those kids are just alike,” meaning me and the calf. We are better friends than when I first came here, for he would run when I came in sight, but now he runs to meet me, ’cause he expects me to give him some sugar. He likes it just as well as my pony does. I often feel sad to think that I can’t feed sugar to my automobile—don’t it seem a real shame?—but they are built to live on electricity or gasoline. I just pity them. Think of not being able to eat ice-cream and chocolates. My Uncle Smith is coming to see me from Buffalo. He is the dearest man. He has a camera and the first time I saw him he had on a brown suit and his camera slung over his shoulder, and oh, my! but he looked the professional. I was almost scared of him, but he is a mighty nice man. He has taken lots of pictures of me with my Franklin car, and he got a snap shot of Deacon Weston on the flying horses, and I nearly died myself when I saw it. He looked worse than a scotcher after a highball, Pa said. I never saw a highball, but Pa says it’s a live wire, so I shall keep in the middle of the good path. I heard a Salvation Army man say that, so it is on the level. Pa says slang forms too great a part of the present-day conversation, but I don’t think I am any joke, only I know my Pa knows all that is worth knowing. My Pa is a very wise man for his years—he’s been married twice, and he says two marriages will either make or break a man, depends on his disposition. Pa says he made a mess of his first marriage, but the second one was good. I belong to the second house. Pa says a man who is married twice can learn to manage the worst kind of an automobile. He says none of them could have more kinks than some women, and do such unexpected stunts. I guess the man I read about in the automobile magazine that never swears under any condition has been married twice. Pa says two marriages will smooth out a man’s disposition as nice as a hot iron will a shirt-bosom. They asked Pa to run for Governor of New York State; said he could govern anything, but Pa is very modest. He said his wife didn’t like society and he considered her happiness first; said all men should. Pa knows which side his bread is buttered on, Ma has all the money I I sang that song one night called “Everybody Works but Father,” and Pa nearly lost his temper. He took it personally to himself, so for the last few days he gets up at five o’clock and goes up Commonwealth Ave. with his car and blows his Gabriel horn for all he is worth all the way. Once I heard him say as he went out: “Yes, everybody works but Father, do they? Well, I guess they will think Father’s working some to-day.”

Isn’t life a queer problem? My, I wonder what it all means! Sometimes it seems like a continuous vaudeville show, then it changes and becomes serious, clouds and tears, and, oh, dear, I don’t understand it at all. I will try to be a good girl, but being a real Sunday girl isn’t any fun. I think I am a little related to Buster Brown, anyway, I would like to have his dog. Levey Cohen said he would get him for me, but I thought Buster would be lonesome, and I have my Pa, and automobile. Why is it that girls like their Pas so much? I have got a beautiful mother, she is too handsome and queenly for anything, but I seem to be Pap’s own girl. He says I am the light of his eyes. Pa’s as much of a boy as I am, only he’s grown up. He has beautiful brown hair; he isn’t bald on the top of his head. I have always been told when a man is bald-headed it was because his wife was a tartar and robbed his pockets while he slept, and pulled his hair out, if he noticed the loss of his money. Pa has plenty of money. Pa said he settled the money question with Ma’s Pa before they were married; he said all men making second marriages should see about the financial end of the game. I never knew just how it ended, but I do know that Pa is considered very swell, and rich, and he says Levey Cohen has his eyes on his pocketbook, but I don’t see how that is, for Pa never carries it out of the house. It’s in the safe in the billiard-room and Pa has never asked Levey to play billiards because he always calls in the late afternoon, and Pa always plays billiards at noon, or early in the day. Pa says the ice man would be as much of a gentleman as an actor, if he had the free advertising that some of them get. I like actors because they can be anything they like from a beggar to a king, and all they do is to put on different clothes. One would think it was an easy thing to be an actor, but I guess they have their ups and downs; they are not all kings, but I like some of them tip-top, say, for instance, Mr. Edmund Breese and Mr. George Coen. All the girls like them. I heard Pa say that they understood the real act of impersonating as well as any he knew of on the boards—and the women on the stage are all fine, that I have seen. I think Elsie Janis is a darling. I just love her. I would be almost willing to let her marry Levey Cohen if I didn’t think I really wanted him myself. I am pretty willing he should take her out in his car. Levey Cohen is a very handsome chap; he is four years older than I am, and Pa says he’s doing well for a kid. I don’t like to be called a kid, and I don’t think Levey does either, but it’s Pa’s way of talking. My Pa is a cousin to Bill Nye that used to write for the papers so much. Pa said he was better than he looked in the papers; I hope he was, because he looked in the papers, poor man, like a bean-pole with a rubber ball on the top of it for a head. He was a funny man, on paper, but Pa says in his home he was Mr. Edgar Nye, loved and respected by all, and that’s saying a good deal in this age of rush and tear.

Well, good-bye, little book, I have told you all my secrets for four weeks past now, and I will say good night. It’s 6 P. M. and we are going to the Touraine for dinner as the cook got dopy, Pa says, and let the fire go out in the kitchen. Ma, poor dear, can’t cook, so we are going out to dine and then to see some circus on Mars they have here. Pa says I must learn to cook if I want to keep Levey at home after we get married, and I am going to learn. I boiled some eggs for Pa the other morning when the cook went to market. I thought they would cook in three hours, most meats will, in that time, but Pa said, “Nay, nay, Pauline, make it three minutes,” so I did. My Pa can cook, but he won’t. He says it’s the cook’s work. Pa objects to doing other people’s work for them; he says they must all do it some time, and why not begin here, now, so that’s how we stand on the cook-book question.

ELSIE.

P. S. Pa says he’s from Missouri when the cook says the air is bad and the coal won’t burn. He says it’s more likely it’s her breath that stuns even the coal and that it’s 23 for ourn, as far as dinner goes, that’s why we go to a hotel.

ELSIE.