I see a piece in the paper where that ex-leading headliner of the old German Big-Time Circuit, William Hohenzollern, him that used to appear in the spiritualistic act known as "Me and God," claims he had no hand in starting those fireworks in Europe which has recently ended in a Fourth of July celebration. And although myself a good American and looking with doubt upon any statement known to be German, I am sort of inclined to believe him. At any rate, to believe that he was not the whole cheese in the matter, but only a sort of limp limberger, or swiss, and full of holes. Because it's my experience personally myself, that a strong personality with a clean-cut idea can usually get a thing done if they elect theirself boss and stick on the job until it is finished, but if they call a committee meeting and discuss the action before them, the whole idea is likely to get stalled. Why, look at Congress! Not that I, being a mere lady of the female sect, know why or how they get stalled, or on just what. But it's a cinch they do and are, and you can prove it by any editorial page in the country. And it seems that Billy the Bone-head, confessed to the reporter, which managed to get this Sunday story printed, that a committee meeting of Yonkers or something was called about the war, he, Bill the Badman, not having the bean to go to it alone, and it was them ruined the war, or so he says. Which goes to show that not alone in the theatrical and moving-picture worlds do the heads of departments alibi their flivvers, but also in the King-business, and it's a habit which may even yet ruin the former, as it pretty near has the latter, unless they quit shirking and deliver better goods. Because if the Head Has-Been had had any real thinker and had thought up the war all by his little self and forced it on his book-keeper, cashier and so forth, he might of got away with it like Napoleon and Rockefeller and Eva Tanguay and a lot of them which has thrust riches and success upon theirselves.

But no committee can ever do that sort of thing. It takes a single-handed personality, and I guess mabe the biggest bluff Germany has had to confess to is her ex-leader. He seems the A-1 example of how true it is that well-known tailors' ad, "Clothes make the man." Also it inspires me to invent a quotation to hang beside the famous one of Shakespeare's, I think it is "Do it now!" which you see so often, mine being "Do it yourself!" Well, you will if you are the able one on a committee. Everybody which has served on one knows that every committee is composed of the one which does all the work and three to six others which uses most of their vitality and imagination in thinking up excuses and offering them.

Well, anyways, the foregoing is why I simply eliminated the other members of my Theatrical Ladies' Committee of Welcome to Our Returning Heroes. And eliminating them was so simple, too. I just didn't call any committee. And why would I, what with the knowledge I had gained through former experiences? Believe you me, a lady which learns by experience is a great little time-saver, although admittedly rare, but in my line you don't fall out of a air-plane more than once, and any successful picture actress and dancer like myself will tell you the same. So as to committees, none for me, thanks just the same, as the man said to the soda clerk the morning of July first, 1919 A. D., which is Latin for Anti-Drinking. Not that I will ever again try to get into the strong-character class with the aforementioned celebrities, for a reputation for doing anything well is as good as a signed contract to do it. And my advice to young girls is, don't let it be known you can do anything well or you'll have to deliver constantly. Look as ignorant as possible whenever anything is suggested except the thing you are burning to get after, or your time will be taken up with a lot of useless side-lines that get you nowheres. There is a person for every job if you just let the job alone until the right person finds it. Did you ever notice the way simps which can't do a thing always get it done for them? You have! Well—from this on, here's where I look like a poor fish whenever anybody outside of a motion-picture magnate or a theatrical manager makes a noise like work to be done.

All the amateur stuff can be taken care of by the sweet womanly women who ain't got anybody to support except their dressmakers, and not by a mere professional earning near a hundred thousand a year like I. My final lesson on working with volunteer boards and committees is a un-wept memory, and believe you me, that Chateau Terry battle had nothing on some of the War Relief Committee board rooms I seen in executive session and keep the home fires burning is right, we done it, especially the White Kittens Belgian Relief, which it's a fact we nearly split over whether we'd print our postcard appeals on pink or yellow cards!

Well, anyways, I suppose these relief committees was a big help to them that was on them if not to any one else, and after all a lot of money somehow got left to do good with after expenses was paid. But the biggest relief I know of come from relieving ourselfs of them relief committees, and the last of all was the Welcome Home one.

I wouldn't of gone on it in the first place only I was so low in my mind. And who wouldn't be a little low even with my cheery disposition after such a morning as I went through, first commencing with the loss of Maude.

Not that I had ever liked her nor 'Frisco, her husband, either, but losing her was worse than living with her any day, and when Ma come in and broke the news I wasn't in any mood for it, struggling as I was over the joint contract which Goldringer had just sent on from Los Angeles as a nice surprise and welcome for Jim which we were expecting to hear he would be leaving France any day now. It called for seventy-five thousand per each of us for six joint pictures, our expenses to the coast, and I was holding out for a car while there and a special publicity man of our own to be paid by them, but chosen by us, meaning Rosco, which has so faithfully let the public know every time I sneezed these last five years and has a way of disguising a two column ad so's the editor thinks it's a news item.

Well, anyways, I was reading through all that foreign language portion of this contract and had waded past about a page of "to wit, viz.: party of the first part" stuff, which sounds like it didn't mean anything, but is where they sometimes slip one over on you, when in come Ma with a big home-made cruller partly in her hand and partly in her face. She was dreadfull agitated but had to get rid of the first part of the second party before she could speak, and I put in a few seconds of watchful waiting, wondering how could she do it, for Ma had put on at least thirty lbs. the last few months and believe you me, she was no slif before then, weighing some amount she would never tell just what and anybody knows what that means with a woman. But up to just recent she had gone through spells where she was making at least the faint motions of dieting, or when not that, sighing and saying she hadn't really ought to over every second helping but taking it. Do you get me? You do!

Since she had heard Jim was coming back, however, she had taken to eating everything in sight regardless. It give me real pleasure to think of any mother-in-law feeling that way about her daughter's husband and dancing partner coming back, for with many mothers it is nothing of the kind. So I made no remarks upon the cruller, and finally Ma give a gulp and gasped out the bad news.

"Maude is gone!" she says.

"Gone?" says I. "Whatter you mean, gone?"

"I can't find her no place!" says Ma. "And I looked everywheres!"

This give me a most unpleasant feeling down my back, and I got to my feet in a hurry.

"Are you sure she ain't hid?" I says, "like the last time," I says.

"Come and see for yourself!" says Ma, and I went, you can bet on that! And sure enough, she wasn't in the box. Ma lifted the wire off the top and lifted out the two old sofa cushions we had put in for comfort and only Maude's husband, 'Frisco, was there. He was as usual lying in about five coils like a boiler-heater, with his wicked-looking flat head on the top, and he stuck out his oyster fork of a tongue, and give us a little hiss, much as to say, why was we always disturbing him. But no Maude.

"Ma!" I began, catching a guilty look on her face. "Ma Gilligan, you left that snake out again! After all the times I ast you not to!"

"Well, it was just for a minute!" she says. "I was playing with her, and then I thought maybe the crullers I had made was cool by then and I went and got a few and when I come back she was gone!"

"Well, she's got to be found, that's all!" I snapped. "All this comes from you insisting on keeping in with them low circus people and boarding their acts for them!"

"But Madame Estelle had to stay with her husband when he fell offen the trapeze and they so devoted!" says Ma. "And I didn't take the big snakes—the substitute is using them—but only her own dear pets which the landlady wouldn't leave her have in her room."

"And now one of them is loose in my room!" I says, "which is the general result of charity which, as the poet says, had ought to begin at home," I says. "And you know, Ma, how I feel about snakes. There's nobody in the psycopathic ward got anything on me. If only they had even a few feet instead of so many yards, I wouldn't mind them so much."

"Well, now Mary, I'm real sorry," says Ma. "But not half so sorry as Madame Estelle will be if anything happens to Maude! I'm real fond of the little beauty myself, and if you had been with a circus all the years I was, you would understand her better!"

Well, believe you me, it wasn't a lack of understanding with me, it was a religious conviction, and why not, for hadn't them beasts made trouble beginning with the original eviction of undesirable tenants, and was I to think it likely that our own janitor would be any more lenient if Maude was to get, say, as far as the elevator? Keeping snakes never got a tenant in right yet and loose ones might set the first of May forward as many months as was necessary. Not to mention my own personal feelings in the matter, which it's a fact I once broke a contract on the Small-Time years ago because a snake-charmer come off just as I was going on and I used to meet her and them in the wings every time.

Well, anyways, I will say it for Ma, she certainly turned in and helped me make a thorough search for Maude, which was going some for a lady of her figure. Looking for a vanished snake in a apartment means considerable gymnastics, because nothing can be overlooked with safety, and I didn't want that parlor-eel slipping anything over on me—especially her cold stomach in the middle of the night across my face, for instance.

So I and Ma looked under all the furniture and in the pedalcase of the pianola and in the vases and behind the steam radiators, back of the big gold clock, inside the victrola, under the rugs, back of the pictures on the wall and every place:—but no Maude. Finally we even took a look out in the hall, although we knew nobody had opened the front door, and after that we opened the wall safe where we keep our diamonds in a stocking, this being a compromise between Ma's habits and my common-sense. And then we had a peep into the ice-box where Ma found a saucer of pudding which she had someways overlooked at supper but no snake.

And after we had felt under the bath-tub with my best lavender umbrella which what with the limousine it was the first use I ever had for it, and then taken a forlorn hope into the soiled-clothes hamper, we give it up, and sat down with ruined georgette blouses and perfectly wild looking hair and all heated up like a couple of wrestlers. Any one coming in then would of thought we had been indulging in a family discussion of some kind, and for a matter of that it's the truth. I said a few raw remarks about the kind of a home she run for me and I working as hard as cider to keep it and now she left snakes around, Gawd knows where, and how would a artist like myself get the rest to do justice to my work on the bomb-explosion scene in the last reel of "Bosh or Bolshevik?" which I was going to be shot in only the next day, and if she had to support me instead of I her, she would have a right to leave any animals or minerals around she chose, but this was my flat and although Gawd knew she was welcome, pretty soon we would have none if I was to be made a nervous wreck out of instead of the biggest nerve in pictures. Yes, I said that and a lot more pretty mean stuff as only a daughter can—for even with my refinement I am but a mere human after all, and under the glittering success of my career is several common human failings and at times I act no different from any less well-known female in the bosom of my family.

So I had the last word and Ma was in wrong and went to get lunch without a come-back out of her. Alas! Had I but canned that foolish chatter of mine! But how could I know she was going to act like she done later because of it? You can't remember forwards and if a person could, it's ten to one they'd quit before they was off the bottle and go back to Heaven whence they come, life being so full of mistakes you could of avoided if only you had done something different from what you did!

II

Well, anyways, Ma went back to the kitchen to fix up a little snack of waffles and honey and poached eggs on hash and cream-cake and strawberries with a cup of cocoa and whipped cream for a light lunch, her lunches being light about the way a "light" motor truck is, and I went back to my joint contract and was so mad I concluded to write into it not alone expenses and Rosco but a cottage or bungaloo, as it is called in Los Angeles, while out there. With which I wrote a refined but firm letter to Goldringer, saying this was my final word on the matter and spoke also for Jim. Then I enclosed the contract and Ma called out the cocoa was getting cold and so I stamped and put it in the hall-slot which I never have a feeling any letter going down it is headed for anybody except maybe the devil, and not even him unless it don't get stuck on the way. And then I ate, though not with much appetite, what with expecting any moment to see Maude crawl out from some place, and Ma being quiet to a extent not to be fully accounted for by three plates of waffles. It wasn't natural in her, that quiet, but I remembered the doughnuts and laid it to the sequence. Still I tried to get her to talk, as talking, if about herself, generally cheers her quite a lot.

"Anything ail you, Ma?" I says.

"Nothing much," says Ma, lighting into the cream-cake. "Nothing to speak of."

"Tell me about it then!" I says. But Ma wouldn't. She heaved a big sigh and handed me a substitute for what was really on her mind. It was something just as good, I credit her for that.

"You know the stuff you ordered from Schultz?" she says.

"You mean the wet goods I ordered to keep Jim from parching to death this summer?" I says, because although Jim is far from a real drinking man, he having his profession of dancing always in mind even after eleven P. M. and Gawd knows never fails to realize that sound acrobatics is the basis of all good dancing which a drunkard never yet was, or at least not for over two seasons; still, in spite of all this, Jim is a mere male and a drink or two, especially if difficult to get, is not by any means objectionable to him. And beside he had been two years in France and I didn't want him to feel it had anything on America when he come home, even if I had to go so far as to myself personally replace what Congress had taken away. Do you get me? You do! And I had done it as far as my bank account, cellarette and the liquor-dealer permitted. Which looked like it was going to postpone the drought quite sometime for us. And while here and there stuff like champagne and brandy and vermouth had to be bought, like remnants on a bargain counter—just kind of odds and ends of each—I had one satisfaction out of the buy, and that was getting a case of Old Home Rye—absolutely the last case in the city—probably the last in the whole entire U. S. A., and it was Jim's one best bet. A high-ball of this—just one—with his dinner was about his exact idea of drinking, and I had calculated that the three gallons, taking it at his rate would last him pretty near a year, and by that time some new vice would surely of been invented to take its place.

Well, anyways, I had ordered it and paid for it, and there wasn't any more of it anywheres, and it and the contract with Goldringer was two of the best surprises I had for Jim.

"Well," says Ma. "I can't say I approve of the demon Rum coming into our—your house, but once money is paid out, I like to see the goods—all the goods, delivered," she says.

"What's this leading up to?" I asked.

"To the way that man Schultz cheats you!" says Ma. "He didn't send the Old Home Rye!"

Believe you me, never have I been handed a meaner deal than that, no, not even the night Goldringer first heard of me and came to see my try-out for the big time and my pink tights didn't come.

"Ma!" says I. "Why don't you call him up and find out why didn't he?"

"I've done that!" she says. "And he claims on his oath it was sent with the rest. I spoke to the boy which brought it and then to Schultz himself. They both claim they give it to Rudie."

Rudie was the janitor but he had missed his profession. He had ought to of been a sleight-of-hand man, for he could make things disappear in a way which would of delighted a morning matinÉe audience, especially those under twelve years of age. Believe you me, though, he was never known to make anything grow where nothing had been before—not rabbits or even silk handkerchiefs, but it's the truth that he had onct or twice caused a vanished quart of cream to reappear if given a sufficiently hard call quick enough after it was missed. And the minute I heard he was cast for a part in my tragedy, I decided to hear him read his lines right off without no delay, because it was practically impossible that he could of got away with more than a quart yet and I was prepared to go through the business of believing him when he come to the description of how he had dropped it by accident and too bad but it broke.

Which was all right in theory, but Rudie did nothing of the kind. Evidently so long as he was lying he had made up his mind it was as well to be killed for a case as a quart, as the poet says, and when I sent for him and he had kept me waiting while he sifted the ashes and pounded on the steam pipes and talked to the garbage man and got a light from the cop and chatted with the elevator-girl and a few little odds and ends like that just to show me where I got off, he finally decided to come up. Well, it was seven months to Xmas, so what could I expect? Anyways, he finally made his entrance, down R. C. to footlights, in my Louis-size drawing-room, leaving tracks behind him which Ma spotted with a angry eye as fast as he laid them, and with all the well-known courtesy of the proletariat he looked me in the eye.

"Well?" he says.

"Say, Trotsky!" I says, for I had never liked this bird, as he was on one continued drunk. "Look here, Lenine," I says, glad of the chance to insult him. "A case of fine whisky at sixty dollars net seems to of been avoidably detained in your dug-out. I expect that with a little searching you can stumble on it. And as for that bottle you broke by accident, don't bother to mention it," I says, "because I am gladly doing so for you," I says. "Only kindly find the rest and we will also forget about this morning's cream."

Probably I hadn't ought to of been so generous, for Rudie sort of swayed a little and give me a pleasant childlike smile out of his unshaved doormat of a face.

"Dunno wash you mean!" he says, real pleasant.

"Jim is right about the kick in that stuff," I says, eyeing him critically. "You certainly have a swell bun!"

"Why, Mish La Tour!" says Rudie. "Don't drink a dropsh! Never toush it."

And with that he give a sigh of disappointment in me which made the place smell like a bar-room!

"But of coush I'll shee if itsh down stairsh!" he says.

Well, there was no use in arguing with him, I could see that all right, all right, but I left him know I wasn't swallowing any such a poor alibi as his own word.

"All right, you second-hand shock absorber!" I says. "Maybe I can't jolt the truth out of you, but I will hand you one small piece of information before you take your reluctant departure. You'll find that whiskey or the cops will. And if they don't get me a judgment against you, one will come from heaven, that's a cinch, for you not only got the stuff, but you took it off a returning soldier which is a bigger crime than mere patriotic stealing would be," I says. "You wait and see what'll happen to you if you don't come across! We got a long score to settle, we have, and right always wins out in the end, and that's my middle name!"

Well, he went away very proud and hurt to think I would suspect him of such a crime, he being that kind of a drunk. Do you get me? Of course! Gosh! How I do hate to see a person in liquor; really, I think prohibition will be a good thing for all of us, and was myself only storing up a little, for exceptional reasons. And when a person begins talking about federal prohibition and their constitutional rights I can't help but wonder why they don't consider it in the physical as well as the political sense.

Well, anyways, it was a blow to lose that Old Home, and awful irritating on top of Maude. And then, while pulling myself into one of these new accident-policy-destroying narrow skirts which belongs with what is through courtesy called my new walking suit, the hall-girl brought the mail and Musette give it to me in the midst of my negligee and struggles and I stopped dead when I seen the first letter, for it was marked "Soldier's Mail" and only one which has some one expected home and at the same time welcome, can know how that particular mark thrills. Musette observed me register joy so she registers it too, and I tore open the envelope forgetting the skirt which had a death-grip on my knees, and opened up the page in Jim's dear handwriting.

Did you ever come to a time in your life where you had one trouble on top of another until it seemed like nothing more could possibly happen except maybe the end of the world, and then something still worse was pulled on you? You have! Well, this letter was pretty near the end of the world to me—at least a distinct postponement of anything which could with any truth be called living. For Jim wasn't coming back with the 70th after all! As I read his words in that dear boyish handwriting of his which he never had time to learn to write better, being like myself quicker with his feet than hands, my eyes filled with tears and I stumbled to the day-bed as good as I could with the skirt, and sat down. It seemed he had been put in charge of some special work in Paris and it might be six months before he'd get sent home! Six months! And me getting all ready for a second honeymoon inside of six weeks! And instead of being out in the wholesome country with me at Saratoga or Long Beach or Niagara Falls or some place, he would be in Paris! That was what I had to face and any woman will readily understand my feelings.

Believe you me, I didn't care for Maude or the Old Home or the contract or anything for over three-quarters of a hour. And I had to wash my face and powder my nose three times after I was finally dressed on account of breaking down again when just completed.

Whenever a person has a real sorrow come to them the best way to do is control it quick before it controls you. So after I had indulged in the womanly weep which certainly was coming to me, I braced up and got into the new suit with the idea of taking as brisk a walk as it would allow of. Then I put on a new hat which I had intended for my second honeymoon but which would never see it or him, as it would undoubtedly be out of style by the time Europe had made up its mind one way or another, and I was just going to leave when the bell rung and Ma come in to say it was a caller.

"It's that Mr. Mulvaney from the Welcome Home Committee, the one that had you on the 'phone yesterday," says Ma. And after a minute I kind of caught control of myself and says well, all right, I would see him and went in.

Well, it sure is strange the birds they pick out for these deeds of synthetic patriotism. This one come from the neighborhood of Fourteenth Street and must of got his appointment of chief welcomer from the way he give the glad hand. You would of thought he was cranking a flivver that wouldn't crank the way he kept on shaking after any real need was past. And if he was to of greeted each of the boys the way he done me, the army wouldn't be demobilized in our generation! Also he had a suit on him which spoke for itself and a watch-chain which must of posed for them in the cartoons of Capital—do you get me? Sure! I and he had had a long talk on the telephone as per above, and so as soon as he left go his cinch on my hand, he got right down to business.

"Now, Miss La Tour—er—it—er—gives me great pleasure to think you will take charge of the Theatrical Women's Division," he says. "Er—I am a great admirer of yours—that picture you done, 'Cleopatria,' now—great stuff!"

Well, I let that pass, because how would such a self important bird as this know my art when he sees it, and if he enjoyed Theda, why not leave him be? I changed the subject at once for fear he would be confusing me with Caruso next.

"And so I'm to spend ten thousand of the hundred thousand iron-men raised by the Welcome Committee?" I says hastily. "How nice. What will it go for?"

"That is for you and your committee to decide," he says. "I'm sure you will think up something tasty," he says. "And go to the limit—we need ideas."

Well, anybody could see that. But I only says all right.

"I suppose you are familiar with committees?" says this human editorial-page-sketch.

"I'm never too familiar with anybody," I says stiffly. "But I have been acquainted with more than one committee."

"Well, here are the papers I promised you—the general scheme and so forth. The central committee will meet as is indicated here. See you at them. Pleased to of seen you off the screen! You certainly was fine in 'Shoulder Arms'!"

And before I could get my breath he had looked at a handsome watch no bigger than a orange, humped into his coat and was off in a shower of language that left me no come-back.

Believe you me, I was glad when he had squoze out through our typical apartment hall and the gilt elevator had snapped him up. For to hand me ten thousand to spend on welcoming a bunch of other women's husbands was, to soft pedal it, rubbing it in. I was only about as upset as that spilled milk that was cried over and no wonder at 18 cents a qt. Well, anyways, it was no light thing to face, going on with this work and Jim's letter scarcely dry from my tears. But having promised over the telephone and being given no chance to refuse in the parlour, I would keep my word if not my heart from breaking.

Because, anyways, if I was simply to do nothing to occupy myself except maybe a few thousand feet of fillum and rehearsing my special dance act for the Palatial and my morning exercises and walking my five miles a day and all that quiet home stuff which gives a person too much time to think, what would I think, except a lot of unprintable stuff about any administration which was keeping him in a town like Paris, France? And the only comfort I could see in sight was to work hard to give the boys that was coming a real welcome and remember that Jim never was a skirt-hound—that I ever saw.

III

Having reached this resolve I decided to go on the walk I had mapped out anyways, because what is home with a disappeared snake in it? And so I started, and as I come past the door in the lower hall, which its marked "Superintendent," which is Riverside-Drivese for Janitor, what would I hear but Rudie singing to himself out of the fullness of his heart or something.

I went out in wrath and the spring sun and after a while I begun to feel less sore and miserable in my heart, partially because of the fresh air and partially through irritation at the stylish trouser-leg that both of mine was in. But the day was too sweet for a person to stay mad long. Ain't it remarkable the way spring can creep into even a city and somehow make it enchanted and your heart kind of perk up and take notice—do you get me? You do, or Gawd pity you! It's the light, I guess, just the same as the audience holds hands when they turn on the ambers with a circular drop for a sunset or something.

And by the time I had walked along the Avenue and seen all the decorations which was already put up for the first regiments home, I commenced getting real fired and excited with my new job. It looked like the powdered-sugar industry was going to suffer because about all the plaster in the country seemed to be being used on arches which looked like dago-wedding cakes and you actually missed the dolls dressed like brides and grooms off the top of them. And here and there was some funny looking columns of the same white stuff and on the Public Library steps a bunch of spears and shields was thrown all over the place just as if a big Shakespearian production had suddenly give it up in despair and left their props and hoofed it back to Broadway. It certainly was imposing.

Up at 59th Street was a arch that looked like Coney Island frozen solid. It was all of little pieces of glass:—heavy glass and millions of pieces. I don't know what good they did, but they shone something grand, and must of cost a terrible lot of money. I guessed the boys would certainly feel proud to march under it provided none of it fell on their heads.

Believe you me, by the time I got home my head was full of imaginary architecture like Luna Park and Atlantic City jumbled together with a set I seen in "The Fall of Rome" when we was shooting it at Yonkers. And after I had squirmed out of my walking suit and was a free woman once more, in a negligee, which is French for kimona which is Japanese for wrapper, well, anyways, I lay in it and opened up the evening paper because I am not one to let the news get ahead on me and have acquired the habit of reading it regular the same as my daily bath.

But it was hard to keep my attention on it because Maude was still missing and also I kept thinking, when not of her, of the lovely arches and so forth my ten thousand would build. I had about settled on pink-stucco, with real American beauties strung on it and a pair of white kittens in plaster—symbol of the best known Theatrical Ladies Association in Broadway, and I expect the world—at the top, when I opened the paper again and I see something which set my mind thinking.

"70th will add thousands to ranks of unemployed."

Yes, that's just what it said. And I went on and read the piece where it said how enough men to start a real live city was being fed at soup-kitchens and bread lines, not in Russia or Berlin, but right in N. Y. C., N. Y., U. S. A.! Somehow, coming right on top of all their arches and so forth, it sort of struck me in the pit of my stomach and give me the same sinking sensation like a second helping of griddle-cakes a hour later—you know! The thought of all that money going on arches that after they was once marched under was no good to anybody but the ones which built them and the ones which carted them away, had me worried. Think of all the soup that glass and plaster would of made! Do you get me? You do or you're a simp! And it also besides struck me that while the incoming boys would undoubtedly enjoy them city frostings, them which had already marched under them and was now in the bread-line must be kind of fed up with it. Then I thought of the ten thousand intrusted to me to spend which had been gladly given in small sections by willing citizens who wanted to do some little thing to show appreciation to the boys which had went over there, and I begun to realize I had been told I could spend it anyways I wanted to.

And when I thought of that pink arch and roses I blushed, although nobody had, fortunately, heard me mention it, except the two fool dogs, aloud.

Believe you me, I then see like a bolt from the blue, as the poet says, that arches was all right in their way but they was in the traffic's way at best and made mighty poor eating. And so naturally with Ma having it continually before me, I thought of ten thousand dollars worth of eats, because while there is quite a lot of red X canteens for men in uniform, how about the poor birds which had just got out of a uniform and not yet got into a job? Besides there is something kind of un-permanent about food unless a salary to get more with follows it as a chaser.

And so I lay there in comfort all but for the thought of Maude, and figured and figured what would I do. It seemed it was a cinch to get money from people to give the boys a welcome but what to spend it on was certainly a stiff one. But after a while I commenced to get a idea. Which it's a fact I am seldom long without one when needed which together with my great natural talent is what has made me the big success I am.

Work! That was the welcome the boys needed. Work and a little something substantial to start on. So this is what I figured. Suppose we was to divide up that ten thousand, how many boys would it take care of, and how?

Say we had ten men. A thousand each. Too much, of course. Twenty men. Five hundred per ea. Still too much. Well, then forty men. Two fifty. Well, they could use it of course, but it was not a constructive idea. It was too much for a present and not enough to invest. So how about 80. Well, that was $125. per man. This was doing something pretty good by eighty men that would very likely need it, but it seemed sort of unfair not to take in more of the boys. So I split it again and had one hundred and sixty boys with $62.50 in their pockets.

Well, I felt kind of good over this idea and there was only two real troubles with it which is to say that $31.25 for three hundred and twenty boys looked nicer if there was only some way to handle it right. But how?

I put in another hard think and then I got it. The way to make that $31.25 a real present was to make it a payment on something and then with the other hand pass out a job at the same time, which would not alone keep the soldier but allow him to cover the difference.

And to get away with this all I needed now was a popular investment and 320 perfectly good steady jobs.

Well, with the Victory Loan the first part was easy enough, and I concluded to pay twenty-five dollars on each of three hundred and twenty one hundred dollar victory notes, making myself responsible for the lot the same as if I was a bank and getting a job for each note and having the giver of the job hold the note on the soldier and pay me the instalments and I would pay myself back, or if not nobody would be stung outside of me, supposing any one of them failed to come across. I was going to take a big lot for myself and another ten didn't much matter.

And then with the remaining $6.25 each, well, I would pool that for leaflets enough to go around the whole division and on the leaflet I would have printed the facts and a list of the jobs and just what they was, with how much kale per week went with them, and see that the boys got them while the parade was forming and then it would be up to them, because the home folks can only do so much and then it's up to the army their own selves just as with munitions and sugar and red X work while the big show was on. They did the work but we gave them the job—we and the Germans. And now all we could do again was to give them a job—and it's enough, judging from how they went after the first one.

And then, just as I come smack up against the awful fact of where would I get them jobs Ma come in and says the hot-dogs and liberty-cabbage which it's the truth we always translate them into American at our table, was getting cold and as long as I was paying for them I'd better eat them while they was fit. So I says all right and we went in and did so.

Believe you me, it certainly is a remarkable thing the way you start on a afternoon's work like I done, all full of vigor and strength and how your ideas and courage and everything will sort of leak away toward the time to put on the feed-bag at Evensong. And how again the ideas and pep comes back in the evening once you have eaten. There was almost perfect silence the first few minutes we sat down or would of been except for Ma taking her tea out of the saucer, which I can't learn her not to do and the only way I keep her from disgracing me at the Ritz and etc., is to make sure she don't order it. But when the first pangs was attended to I commenced to feel more conversational.

"Work," I says, thinking of what I had been thinking of. "Work is the one thing that stands by a person. Everything else in life can go bluey and their work will see them through. That's why it's been so popular all these years, and where these Bolsheviks make their big mistake. Because they don't work and not working they get bored to death and so they commence rioting. Do you remember that quotation from that well-known cowboy poet, Omaha Kiyim, "Satan will find business still for idle hands to do?" How good that applies to strikes—idle hands—ain't that perfect? And it written so long ago!"

"How long?" says Ma.

"Oh, I dunno. Maybe three hundred years," I says.

Ma laid down her knife and spoon, she being quite entirely through, and looked me in the eye.

"I will remember them words, daughter," she says very solemn.

And it's the truth I never noticed how serious she was about it until I come to look back on it nearly three weeks later.

IV

And during that time which has been so immortally fixed in writing by the grandest book with the same name, I was as busy as the great American cootie is supposed to be on his native hearth—only it ain't that piece of furniture but another, of course. Do you get me? I'm afraid so! Well, I was as busy as what you think. To begin with I called a committee-meeting in the privacy of my grey French enamel boudoir where I wear my boudoir cap and have the day-bed hitched and this committee meeting consisted entirely of myself and the two fool dogs. And after I had gone through all the motions, I appointed myself a sub-committee of one to carry out the meeting's resolutions and do all the work.

This is about what would of happened if I had done it the regular way and asked Ruby Roselle and Maison Rosabelle and the other girls. We would of had a mahogany table and a gavel and a pitcher of ice-water and a lot of hot-air and a wasted morning and in the end I would of been the goat anyways, so I thought why not do it single-handed in the first place and be done? I could print all their names on the leaflets and they would be perfectly satisfied.

So having got over the necessary formalities as you might say, I accepted the nomination and got to work. Fortunately I wasn't doing anything except a solo dance at the Palatial at supper-time and one picture. And so I had most of my days to myself. The Fixings on the Avenue grew and blossomed and so did my contribution to the Welcome Home Committee. I didn't get to go to any of their meetings but I don't imagine they even missed me at the time. And while the arches and other motion-picture scenery was being as completed as they ever would be, so was my list. My monument took up less space, but when you gave it the once-over it seemed maybe a little more rain-proof than the others. Apparently all there was to it was slips of paper six by eight with this printed on them. At the top it says:

"welcome home"
"howdy boys, and our heartfelt thanks!
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 assortment 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 nobody 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?"

Well, seeing that the armistice was not yet broken I felt I might let her distribute a few leaflets, although I had left her name off the signatures at the bottom on account of her never having proved she wasn't a alien enemy to anything besides dramatic art, which hadn't to be proved. So I handed her a string of talk about this being a small affair and how I had thought she would of been too busy to do anything just now, which made her mad because there is some talk on account of that she wasn't working just then. But she took a few leaflets and read the signature at the bottom. "Theatrical Ladies' Welcome Committee" and got real red in the face.

"Why, my friend Mr. Mulvaney spoke to me about this!" she says. "I was to of been treasurer, or something! Do you mean to say you spent ten thousand dollars on them!" and she pointed to the leaflets like a one-act small-time.

"Yep!" I says. "Take 'em home and try 'em on your piano!" I says. "But you will have please to pardon me now. I got to beat it!"

And with that I climbed in with the rest of the family and we was rushed down town to N. Y.'s Bohemian Quarter, where the 70th Division was about to hang around waiting to parade. Which it is certainly remarkable the places the highly moral U. S. A. Government picks out for her soldiers to wait about in say from Paris to Washington Square, and I think their wives and sweethearts have stood for a good deal of this sort of thing, to say nothing of wives and sisters being kept from going abroad. I don't know have any homes been broken up this way, but I will say that Marsailles and Harlem would of listened better to the patiently waiting homebodies.

Well, anyways, down we went to the amateur white lights, and by the time we reached Twenty-Third we begun to run into bunches of the boys. Bands was playing and all, and—oh my Gawd, what's the use trying to tell about it? There was plenty to tell, but ain't every one seen it? If not at N. Y. C., why in some town which may be more jay but with its heart in the right place, and the heart is the thing which counted this time as per usual. Believe you me, mine was in my throat and so was everybody elses when they seen them lean brown boys with their grown-up faces!

Well, we stopped down to Eleventh and Sixth and got out and commenced walking around handing out the leaflets, and at first they weren't taking 'em very seriously, but pretty soon they began to get on to who I was and of course that caught them and a good many tucked the slips inside their tin hats and all of them pretty near had seen me in "The Kaiser's Killing" and I got pretty near as big a ovation as I had tried to offer them. And as for the parade they was very good-natured, but it seemed to me that as usual the stay-at-homes in the grandstands was getting the best of it and the boys doing all the work, for parading, no more than a first-class dancing act, ain't quite the pleasure to the ones that does it, that it is to them that only stands and waits, as the saying is.

V

The crowds on the Avenue was something fierce, and the only ones which had the right of way, outside of officers and cops, was the motion-picture men. I seen Ted Bearson, my own camera man from the Goldringer Studios, and Rosco, my publicity man, and they was talking together. I stepped back in among the boys, because I wasn't looking for any personal publicity myself on this particular day, wishing to leave all that to the division and I knew that if Ted was to see me he would shoot me.

But ain't it the truth that the modester a public person like me is, the more attention they attract? My sweet, quiet voice, silent though snappy clothes, and retiring manner have been in Sunday spreads and motion-picture magazine articles practically all over the world and America, and my refinement is my best-known characteristic. Publicity is like men. Leave 'em alone and they simply chase you. Pretend you don't want them, and you can't lose them. And the more reluctant I am about being noticed, the wilder the papers get! Only, of course, without a good publicity man this wouldn't, perhaps, be a perfectly safe bet.

So this day, having got rid of all my leaflets, I was slowly working my way toward the Avenue, when publicity was thrust upon me.

You know this Bohemian part of New York is made up of old houses which is so picturesque through not having much plumbing and so forth and heat being furnished principally by the talk of the tenants on Bolshevism and etc. These inconveniences makes a atmosphere of freedom and all that and furnishes a district where the shoe-clerk can go and be his true self among the many wild, free spirits from Chicago and all points west. Well, this neighborhood could stand a lot of repairs, not alone in the personal sense, but in a good many of the buildings, but these are seldom made until interfered with by the police or building departments. And on the corner of the street which I was now at there was a big old house full of people who did something, I suppose, and these were mostly bursting out through the open windows or sitting on the little balconies which looked like they couldn't hold a flower pot and a pint of milk with any safety much less a human. But there they was, sitting, with all the indifference to fate, for which they are so well known. I couldn't but notice the risk they ran, but I should worry how many radicals are killed, and so I paid but little heed until I noticed that there was three little kids—all ragged children of the dear proletariat—which some of the Bohemians had hauled up on a balcony which was too frail for adults. The minute I see that balcony I was scared to death, although the short-haired girl and the long-haired man which was letting the kids out on it was laughing and care-free as you please. The kids got out all right, and then something awful happened.

Right below was a open space at the head of this particular column, where the officers and color-bearers and etc was. Rosco and Ted was getting a picture of them. But while I generally watch a camera, this time I didn't on account of watching the kids. And as I looked that rotten old balcony broke and one them, a little girl, fell through and hung there, caught by her skirt, and it a ragged one at that. Everybody screamed and yelled and sort of drew back, which is the first way people act at a horror before they begin to think. I yelled myself, but I started toward her, because the radicals couldn't reach her from above and from below the ground was fully twenty feet away and nothing but a fence with spikes and a dummy window-ledge way to one side. But I had a idea I might make it for what with two generations on the center trapeze and never a drop of liquor and not to mention what I done in pictures, I think quicker than some and act the same. But my new skirt prevented, and ahead of me dashed a soldier.

In a minute he had scaled the wall and worked his way along the spikes to that ledge, and then while the crowd watched breathlessly he had that kid under one arm and was back on the wall again. He held her close, turned around, crouched down and then jumped. And as he jumped I screamed and run forward, for Oh My Gawd, it was Jim!

I don't know how I got there, but when I come to I and that scared kid was all mixed up in his arms and the three of us crying to beat the band which had struck up and the crowd yelling like mad. And it was a peach of a stunt, believe you me.

"Didn't you get my cable?" Jim says. And I says no, and we clinched again. And then we heard a funny, purring sound right behind and broke loose and turned around and there was that devil of a Ted taking a close-up!

"Hold it! Damn you, hold it another ten feet!" yells Rosco, who was dancing around like a regulation director, just back of Ted. "Fine, Fine! Oh, boy, what a pair of smiles! Say, folks, we shot the whole scene—some News Weekly Feature. Oh say, can you see me, Rosco, the publicity man!"

Honest to Gawd you would of thought he had gone crazy! And that bone-headed crowd couldn't make out was the whole thing staged or real. Believe you me, I had to pinch myself to know was it real or not, but thank Gawd it was, it was! And after nearly two years! Do you know how that feels? Give a guess! And then, just as I thought now this cruel war and everything is over, why that roughneck of a officer give the order to fall in and of course Jim had to and left me there with that kid in my arms for Ted to make a couple of stills for the papers.

Believe you me, I couldn't tell how many he took, or when, because seeing Jim so sudden and unexpected had pretty near killed me, and I couldn't say anything much about the parade either, because something kept me from seeing it and I guess it was my own glad tears. Anyways, I had three wet handkerchiefs in my bag when I got home and one of them a perfect stranger's.

Well, of course, I expected the parade would break up when it struck Harlem and the boys would hurry right home. And did they? They did not! I hurried right home, all right, all right, but not so Jim. And for a long while I was sitting there in one of my trousseau dresses and a fearful state of mind over what had he done to get killed since I last seen him. But hours went by and still he didn't come. And I didn't know his 'phone or where he was or anything. The only clue I had that the whole business was a fact and no dream was the cable, which had come after he did, saying he would be home as arranged after all.

Believe you me, I hope never to live through another twenty-four hours like them that followed, because I couldn't eat or sleep, not knowing where he was.

Next morning I wouldn't even look at the papers which was Sunday and full of our and the division's pictures. And Monday was worse, because even although Jim might be alive none of the hospitals nor yet the morgue had him, and so I commenced to think he had gone back on me. A telegram come from the coast saying "Great Sunday story bring Rosco contract follows," but what did I care for that stuff without Jim? Ma was very silent all this time, and kept in her room a lot, with the door shut. And then late Monday afternoon the door-bell rung, and my heart leaped to my feet like it had done at every tinkle for 48 hours, and I went myself, but it was only Ruby Roselle and Mr. Mulvaney of the Welcome Home Committee with her! The men that girl knows! Well, she sees them in another light than I and it's a good thing all tastes don't run the same. But this was such a surprise I asked them in before I thought and pretty near forgot my own troubles for a minute.

Ruby cuddled down into her kolinsky wrap and give me the fish-eye, as she addressed me in her own sweet way as a woman to her best enemy.

"Dearie," she says, tucking in a imaginary curl. "Dear, Johnnie here was over to my flat and we got speaking of you by accident, and he's anxious to know where's the money he gave you, and why no decorations as was intended?"

"Yes, Miss La Tour," says the old bird, which it was plain she had made a even more perfect fool of him than he had been before. "Yes, Miss La Tour, it's a serious thing," he says. "I understand you didn't really call even one meeting and as for decorations—!! Well, what can you tell us?"

Well, I told him how I come to think of what I thought of, and the jobs which I had 319 of and the notes and all, and while I talked I could see plain enough that I was getting in worse every minute, because they had come determined to find me guilty, and no matter what I said, it would of listened queer with them two pairs of glassy eyes on me.

"I had a hunch," I wound up, "that maybe something a little substantial would be welcome," I says, "because after all a person can't live on plaster arches and paper flowers, and three hundred and nineteen jobs ought to take care of a considerable percent of the ones that need it," I says. "And so while your arches are all right," I says, "you must admit they are principally for show."

When I got through Mr. Mulvaney cleared his throat and didn't seem to know just how to go on; but Ruby give him an eye, and so he cleared his throat again and changed back to her side.

"This is all most irregular," he says very dignified. "Most irregular. You will certainly have to appear before the general committee and give them an accounting. What you have done amounts to a misuse of public-funds!"

My Gawd, I nearly fainted at that! But before I could say a word a voice spoke up from the doorway.

"Like hell it does!" says Jim, which that dear kid had left himself in with his key and listened to the whole business. "Like hell it's a misuse!" he says, coming into the room and putting his arm around me. "You just let the public and the soldiers take their choice! Give all the facts to all the newspapers and we will furnish the photographs free! Go to it! Get busy! And—get out!"

Well, they got, and what happened then I will not go into because there are things even a self-centered woman won't put on paper! Poor Jim, and him back in camp to get deloused and demobilized and his tooth-brush, and a few parting words of appreciation and etc, these past 48 hours which it seems is the rule for all soldiers, and I suppose they did need the rest after that parade before taking up domestic life once more.

Well, anyways, that afternoon late, while him and me was thoroughly enjoying our joint contract and the Sunday spreads with our pictures and all, in walks Ma with her hat and dolman on and a suit-case in one hand, and 'Frisco, the he-snake in his box, in the other hand.

"For the love of Mike, Ma Gilligan, where are you going to?" I says, looking at her idly.

"I'm leaving you forever!" says Ma, in a deep voice.

"Leaving us? Whatter you mean, leaving us?" I says, taking notice and my head off Jim's shoulder.

"I'm going back to work," says Ma. "I'm not going to be dependent on you no longer," she says, "nor a burden in my old age," she says. "And now that you got Jim back I shall only be in the way, so good-by, Gawd bless you!"

"Why, Ma Gilligan!" I yells, jumping to my feet. "How you talk! Besides what on earth do you think you could do?"

"Oh, I got a job," she flashes, proudly. "I'm going back to the circus!"

Believe you me, that pretty near had me floored.

"The circus!" I says. "What nonsense! Why a trapezer has to be half your age to say nothing of weight!"

"I'm not going on no trapeze at my years!" says Ma. "I'm going back as Fat Lady. One hundred a week and expenses!"

All of a sudden I realized the full meaning of them doughnuts and cocoa and etc she had eat these past months. She had been deliberately training and as usual was successful. I sprung to my feet and hung around Ma's neck like a ten-year-old.

"Oh Ma!" I says. "Don't! Please don't go back! Whatever would we do without you?" I says. And Jim added his entreaties.

"Why, Ma Gilligan, what bally rot!" he says, which it's quite noticeable the amount of English he's picked up over there. "What a silly ass you are, old dear!" he says. "Here we are going to California and who would cook for us if not you?" he says, "with the cook-question like it is out there?"

Well, that weakened Ma considerable, for cooking is her middle name. So she set down the suit-case.

"Ma!" I begged her. "We couldn't have too much of you, and you would never be in the way or a burden no matter what the scales say. For heaven's sake take off that hat, it's too young for you, and burden us with the first home cooking Jim has had in two years!"

Well, she give in at that, and sat down the snake and her dolman and pocket-book.

"Well, all right then!" she says. "I'll stay!" Which is about all the emotion Ma ever shows. "Whew, but it's hot in here!" she says and turns to open the window and we left her do it, because we seen she didn't want us to notice her tears. And as she opened it she gives a shriek and leans way over, grabbing at something. And hardly had she yelled than from below come a holler and a flow of language the like of which I had never heard, no, not even at the studio when something went wrong! Then Ma commenced to laugh something hysterical and pulled herself back in through the window and leaned against the side of it, hollering her head off.

"What is it?" I says.

"It's Maude!" gasps Ma. "She was shut under the winder and when I opened it she fell out and lit on Rudie's head which was sitting right underneath."

Well, we could hardly hear her for the noise in the kitchen. The dumb-waiter was buzzing like all possessed. I and Jim rushed out and there, lickety-split, come the dumb-waiter only it was more inarticulate than dumb by then, and on it the case of Old Home lacking only three quarts.

"I find your whiskey, Miss La Tour!" says Rudie's voice, very weak and shagy from below. "I chust find him and send him right away, quick!"

"Thanks old dear!" chortled Jim. "Come up and have a drink on me!"

"No tanks!" yelled Rudie. "I'm leaving this blace right now foreffer!"

Well, we should worry! I turned to Jim, a big load off my mind.

"Jim," I says solemnly. "There is the three hundred and twentieth job!"

THE END

Transcriber's note:

Varied spelling, hyphenation and dialect is as in the original.