Evening Star Newspaper, November 10, 1929, Page 107

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, NOVEMBER 10, 1929. "FLOWERLAND"—/ Story by Fannic Hurst ROM the time Ruth Adlon was 15, and had “quit school,” as the saying goes among the Ruth Adlons, she had been an “instructor” in a dance hall known as “Flowerland.” It was one of those resorts where, for an entrance fee, you may pur- chase a strip of tickets; six for 25 cents. Each one of these entitles you to a partner for one dance number. There were about 15 girls and six or seven men employed in the same capacity as Ruth. They were professional partners. Ruth Adlon’s fervor for the dance was some- thing that seemed to surpass her own vitality. She was tireless. Fragile, to what seeemd a breaking point, nervous, slender, and of a wax- like pallor, her feet, even on those rare occa- sions when she sat on the sidelines, when a partner had not claimed her with his ticket, teetered. The rhythm of the jazz music seemed to run through her veins, and to keep her con- stantly excited. She was one of the best (if not the best) dancers at Flowerland. The system there was on & commission basis. Your income consisted of a percentage on the number of tickets you collected during an eve- ning. Ruth earned more than any girl on the staff. She had her regular customers, and while among them were many who excited her risi- bility, her aversion or even her repulsion, in the main Ruth enjoyed her work. She could truth- fully say of herself that she never tired dancing. (NE of the nine youths employed in a similar capacity at Flowerland was in love with Ruth. His name was Christian Cowen. Ruth used to tease him about this name of his, it seemed so incongruous, considering the environ- ment. And so it was. As a matter of fact. Christian was the son of a Methodist minister in a small Southern town. He had drifted East- ward, chiefly to escape his father's insistence that he follow in the ministerial footsteps. He too was a frail fellow, distinctly of a social class above that of his colleagues, yet strangely at home in the gay, relaxed, whirling world that was Flowerland. It was extraordinary that such an environ- ment could have turned out a girl as unworldly as Ruth Adlon. Her partners were just so many customers to her. At the close of her work-a- day, or rather her work-a-night, she forgot them as promptly as a salesman forgets the string of people to whom he has sold coffee over the counter during an afternoon. In fact, it might be said of Ruth Adlon that she was a girl's girl. She enjoyed the gossip among them. She liked to walk home with one for a companion. It was seldom that she consented to an outside engage- ment with one of the partners she met in Flowerland. Not that she had any scruples about the life of the dance hall, but Ruth was not interested. In the midst of one of the most exciting artificial and even meanacing environ- ments in the world, Ruth danced along in a way that was almost naive. That is why her affair with Christian Cowen, when it came, was one that from the very first started in to be of more sericus moment than is usually the case in such an environment. They fell in love and immediately their solemn young eyes fastened upon the goal of marriage. Ruth entertained no illusions about the ambitions or the potentialities of Christian. ‘To her he was merely a darling boy who needed her. And Ruth needed him. On the initial equipment of loving one another deeply, and about $175 betwen them, they were married, and continued their joint work at Flowerland for several months. IN the 16-months of their marriage, these two little dancing people, so curiously dependent upon one another in the vast amusement world in which they whirled, had feathered their tiny nest of an up-town flat and settled down to a happiness that was drenching and all-sufficient, except for cne fly in a smooth ointment. Christian, who loved his dancing wife with all the tenacious capacity of the frail, was branded in his make-up with a broad streak of Jjealousy. Because she was so delectable to him, WILL ROGERS BY WILL ROGERS. all I know is just what I read in the papers. Awful lot of news per- colating here and there. This Stock Market thing has spoiled more ap- petites lately than bad cooking. Some fel- low named Rogers Babson a month or two ago predicted that lightning was going to strike the margins, and because it dident do it tle day his warning come out why they all give Rogers the laugh and said, “This Country Is too big and prosperous and to have any let up in prices.” Well it looked like Roger had pulled a bone and he had to stand for a lot of kid- ding. But as the old saying “He who laughs along toward the finish, generally carries more real merriment in his tones.” So as things have turned out why it looks like the whole market has just tried to help Roger Babson make a sucker out of his detractors. Now that Stock Market is all a puzzle to me. I never did mess with it. One time in New York last year when everybody was just raking in money with a shovel, so they all told me, well Eddie Cantor the Actor of Jewish contrac- tion, I had known and been a friend of Eddies for many years and I was hearing that Eddie was piling up a fortune that Rockefeller couldent vault over. So I hcld out some dough on Mrs Rogers out of the weekly stipend and I go over to the New Amsterdam Theater one night and call on Eddie. HEN 1 was admitted I felt like a Racketeer that had finally gained admission to J. P, Morgans sanctum. Eddie thought I had come to Another of Those First-Run Short Stories by the Highest Paid Short-Story Writer in the World—and It Is a Tale of Everyday People in an Everyday orld. These two dancing people, so curiously dependent upon one another, had feathered their tiny nest of an up-town flat and settled down. it was inconceivable that she could be anything else to the hundreds who were fortunate to hold her in the dance. This tormenting quality within himself he managed to keep latent until there developed in the little home certain com- plications of most serious portent. When their baby girl was 4 months gld, a stroke of invisible lightning, as it were, smote the happy little household. ‘Whether during the dance, or in some twisted motion of which he had not been conscious, Christian after suffering some weeks of pain in silence, went to a physician who X-rayed his hurting spine and found a fracture. Overnight, as it were, it nct only became necessary, but imperative, for Ruth to take upon her slender shoulders the entire responsibili‘ies of the household. For eight months, Christian Cowen lay flat on his back in a rigid plaster cast on a hospital cot. For eight months, Ruth Cowen twinkled on her toes, to meet the expenses of that driven little household, and strangely enough, thrived doing it. And so°did her baby. It was impos- sible to employ the service of a nurse in the household, and so, to her despair at first, she was obliged to intrust the child to a nursing home for infants. But the little girl, even as her mother, seemed to bloom and blossom under what might normally be considered an adverse condition, and as Ruth beheld this take place, her heart on that score at least was light within her. It was a strenuous, nerve-racking life, darting like a frenzied messenger of sweetness, between TELLS OF HIS EXPERIENCE “IN persuade him to play a benefit for some im- provedent christians, (As I had often done with him in the past). But when I quietly whispered to him that I wanted him to make me a few dollars without telling jokes for them (or what went for jokes) I told him about the amount that I had been able by judicious scheming to nick from Mrs. Rogers. Knowing her, he wouldent believe that I had been so shrewd, and immediately he said you don't need me, just keep this thing up and grab it off from her. What does it matter whether you make it from Wall Street or her?” But I told him I wanted to get in on this skinning of Wall Street. Everybody was doing it and I wanted to be in at the killing. I dident have anything particular against Wall Street, but knowing the geographical and physical attributes of the Street, I knew that it was crooked. (You can stand at the head of it, and you can only see to the bend. It just wont let you see all of it at once as short as it is.) I just said to myself I would like to be with the bunch that has the credit of straightening this Alley out. Well, Eddie had just that day made fifty thousand according to closing odds on the last commodity. I says show me the fifty. He then explained to me that he hadent the money, that thats what he could have made if he had sold. But he hadent sold, as tomorrow he should make at least another fifty, or even if he only made 49 why it would help pay for burnt cork. Then he explained the stock mar- ket to me in a mighty sensible way, he told me who had told him this, but anyhow it had repeated well, so I will repeat it to you. The Stock market is just like a sieve, (o.ne of those pans with holes in it). Everything and everybody is put into it, and it is shaken, and through the holes go all the small stuff. Then they load it up again and maby hold it still for awhile and then they start shaking again and through the little investors go. They pick themselves up, turn bootlegger or do some- thing to get some more money, and then they crawl back in the hopper and away they go again. Well that made a mighty pretty Scenario. But I said, thats only the Boobs that go through the hole. I am going to grab a root and hang on with the big boys. He dident much want to take my money, knowing how hard I had worked for it, both from the Theater Manager and Mrs. Rogers. But on 1 went telling him I was 49 years and had never in my life made a single dollar without having to chew some gum to get it. So he says, “Well I will buy you some of my bank stock. Its selling mighty high and with this little dab you got here you wont get much of it, but its bound to go up, for banks make it whether the market goes up or down. Even if it stand still they are getting their interest while its making up its mind what to do.” Soheuldlwm:etyoumo!thh. You dont need to pay me for it, just let it go. Put it away and forget about it. Then some ;iny when you want you can send me a check or it. Well just think of that! Here I was going to break Wall Street on credit! Well I shook the dance hall, the nursing home and the hos- pital where Christian lay strapped to his cot. His recovery was tedious, slow and torturous. and et Ruth, who hcvered so lovingly over him, was never up to know the most torturous aspect of it. Lying there day after day, week after week, month after month, the pressure of the secret jealousy came to be almost unbzarable to Chris- tian. Evenings, when the ward lights were low and the patients about him had dropped off to their troubled sleep, he was forced to lie there, visicning Ruth in the arms of others. It was impossible to imagine that the men who held her did not thrill to her nearness as he did. It was impossible not to fight down the frenzy, " knowing that even as he lay there, she was de- sirable to others. It made of him, as the months wore on, a fretful, nervous, irascible patient, sharp with his nurses, critical, even cruel, in his remarks to Ruth. THERE came a time, however, when Christ—, on crutchcs, was able to leave the hospitai: was even able, of an evening, to hobble down, whezn assisted by Ruth, and sit on the sideline in the dance hall and watch the scene. It was his idea that this might ease the secret torture. On the contrary, it only seemed to inflame it. The sight of her, tireless, enthusiastic, playfu?, even with the burden of her responsibilities full* vpon her, ac‘ually seeming to delight in the act of the dance, was even more than he could bear. Poor Christian, in his sense of defeat and in his love for this girl, and in his fear and tore ment for her, he was all warped inside, and of that Ruth knew nothing. She only saw her maimed, nervous husband through the eyes of her desire to serve him and to ameliorate, if possible, the dreariness of the semi-invalidism that secmed to stretch wearily ahead. By now, the hurting jealousy of Christian’s began to take on a certain menace. He plainly de‘ected that in Ruth’s dancing there was a Jjey-of-life. There was one Spanish fellow in particular, who used to spend his entire strip of tickets in dances with Ruth, toward whom she seemed %o lift a face as dewy as a flower. Sitting on the side line with his crutches beside him, slow smoldering hat:s began to burn in the maimed husband of Ruth. ” The two things that Christian loved best in life, that small, dancing mcther and the small child, were in peril. And somehow, to the fever- ish brain of the troubled young husband, the Spanish fellow who came to the dance hall once or twice a week began to be the symbol of that peril. ‘ ¢ One evening, there occurred in that dance hall what scemed a miracle, although medically, amd in the cclder annals of science, it is known as “trauma.” In the midst of what was the routine per- formance of Ruth dancing around the floor in the arms of the young Spaniard, Christian, wl= able to bear any longer what seemed to him the amorous clasp of these two, jerked himself to his feet, and forgetful of his spine, rushed with- out his crutches out to the center of the floor, hurling them apart. . In the confusion and the unpleasant notoriety cf the moment, one outstanding fact was re- vealed to Ruth. Christian was standing erect and strong on his two feet. Christian was able to walk off that dance floor without the aid of crutches. THAT was the beginning; the beginning of & great many things in their little household. Also it revealed to Ruth the pitiful, tortured mental life that had been her husband’s throughout the months. More than that, it re- vealed to her the power of his mind over the matter of his body. 4 Christian, who walks as normally as any eme now, has a paying position with a commercial house; Ruth is now able to carry on a life she loves even over and above the life of dancirg. She is mistress of a little home and of the day-by-day destiny of two growing children. (Copyright, 1929.) THE MARKET?” hands and told him that I had always knowa and said that he was the greatest Comedian on the stage but now I knew that he was best financier we had In our profession. Wel I went back to my own dressing room a§ my Theater and I never was as funny in my life as I was that night. I had Wall Street by the tail and a down hill run. I stayed up the next night till the papers come out to see what our Bank had closed at, after reading it stayed up the rest of the night wondering if Eddie could possibly be wrong. Well one little drop brought on another, till one day I received a letter from Eddies Broker saying that my check would come in mighty handy and for me to please remit undernamed amount. Well in the meantime I had used most of the money celebrating the fact that I had Lought the stock. In fact, I had really spens most of it in advertising Eddie and his hu- manitarian qualities. Each night I begin to get unfunnier and unfunnier. This strain of being “In the Market” was telling on me. Eddie could laugh at a loss and still remain Komical. But when there was minus sign before my those present. I got out wi loss. Next day it went up big. thing is no place for a weak hea! and from now on when Eddie wants to help me. he can just give me some of old jol (Copyright, 1929.)