The Seattle Star Newspaper, November 19, 1921, Page 11

- e ° ° ° 4 8 eeoccccccoceccccocs - (Continued From Yesterday) r ut Tray habitually asked her about Ris window-trimming, the display of ’ The new shoes, the best music for - the ontertainment at the Bastern y ar, and (tho he was recognized as > & professional authority on what the wh of i “gents’ furnishings”) About his own clothes, She per t Psuadicd him not to wear the «mall Phew ties which made him look like v fan clongated Sunday school teacher 0 she burst out 1 “Ray, I could shake you! Do you t Ww you're too apologetic? You 7 YS appreciate other people too ch. You fuss over Carol Kennt when she has som y theory D that we all ought to turn anarchists live on figa and nuts or some: ing. And you listen when Harry laydeck tries to show off and talk pout turnovers and credits ings you know lots better does, Look folks in the eye! flare at ‘em! Talk deep! You're ihe smartest man in town, if you aly knew it, You are! i¢ could not believe it. He kept eming back to her for confirma ion. He practiced glaring and talk Ing deep, but he cireultously hinted jo Vida that when he had tried to ook Harry Haydock and than in the eye, larry had inquired. “What's the with you, Raymie? Got a But afterward Harry had ed about Kantbeatum socks in a manner which, Ray felt, was some. 4 different from his former con. They were sitting on the squat iow satin settee in the boarding ouse par! As Ray reannounced 2 he Ny wouldn't stand my more years if Harry didn’t him a partnership, his gesticu. ang band touched Vida's shoul NT “Oh, excuse me™ he pleaded. “It's all right. Well, leadache,” she said briefly. Iv Ray and she had sifpped im at Dyers for a hot chocolate on their home from the movies, ch evening. Do you know that I may not be next year? “What do you mean?” With her fragile narrow nails she hed the glass slab which formed top of the round table at which 'y sat. She peeped thru the glass looked about at shelves of red water-bottles, pale yellow ges, wash-rage with blue bor.) bt er Faessoe SEN ATEN cks. She shook her head like a/ 0 medium coming out of a ee, stared at him unhappily, de | “Why should I stay here? And I my mind. Now. Time teaching-contracts for I'D go teach in Everybody here IT might as well go. out and say . I have to decide I might as well— Oh, no Let's skip. It's I think 1! t be running up to my room./ that | Vida speculated, | the perfume-boxes of black arid| and citron in the hollow table. | » hair-brushes of polished cherry | jthe back of his hand with her yexn) } } | Before | it ‘| greeting the men with new polge, | man being sprang up, / “Vidal Wait! flabbergasted! Gee! ignoring his watt Sit down! check she got ahead. He ran her, blubbering, “Vida! Wait!’ the oS - on her shoulder. "Oh, don’t! Don’t! her shoul-|raixed this with my own hands—I| most of them frightfully annoyed by SATURDAY, NOVEMRER 19, 1991, BY SINCLAIR LEWIS Copyright, 1920, Harcourt, Brace & Howe, Inc. They were married in June They took the Ole Jenson house It's small,” said Vida, “but it's got the dearest vegetable garden, and I love having time to get near to Na ture for once ho she became Vida Wutherspoon technically, and tho she vertainty had no ideals about the independ. ence of keeping her name, she cast tinued to be Known as Vida She win, She had resigned from the school but she kept up one class in Eng lish, She bustled about on every committees of the Thanatopsta; she was always popping into the rest room to make Mrs, Nodelqtitat sweep the floor! she was appointed to the Worary-board to suceeed Carol; she taught the Senior Girls’ Class in the Episcopal Sunday ool, and tried to revive the King’s Daughters, She ed into selfconfidence and “happiness; her draining thoughts were by marriage turned into en ergy. She became daily and visibly more plump, and tho she chattered as eagerly, she was leas obviously | jadmiring of marital bliss, less senti. | mental about babies, sharper in de. manding that the entire town share | her reforms—the purchase of a park, the compulsory cleaning of back yards She penned Harry Haydock at his desk inthe Ron Ton; she interrupted his joking: she told him that it was Ray who had built up the shoe-de. | partment and men's department: she demanded thet he be made a partner. Harry could anewer she threatened that Ray and she would start a rival shop. “I'll clerk behind the counter myself, and a Certain Party i» all ready to put up the money." She rather wondered who the Cer. tain Party was, Ray was made a one-sixth partner. He became a glorified floor-walker, 1. nO longer coyly subservient to pretty women. When he was not affec tonately coercing people into buy- ing things they did not need, he stood at the back Of the store, glow. ing, abetracted, feeling masculine as he recalled the tempestuous surprises of love revealed by Vida. ‘The only remnant of Vida‘'s ident! fication of herself with Carol was & jealousy when she saw Kennicott and Ray together, and reflected that some people might suppone that Kennicott was his superior, Sh’ was sure that Carol thought so, and she wanted to shriek, “You needa’t try! to gloat! I wouldn't have your pokey old husband. He hasn't one single bit of Ray's spiritual nobility CHAPTER XXII I ‘The greatest mystery about a hu- or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It ls this which puzzles the longshoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman. It was this which puzzied Carol in re- gard to the married Vida. Carol herself had the baby, a larger house to care for, all the telephone callx | Comverted to Vida's satistnetion in| Goah{| for Kennicott when he was away; Vidar She |nd she read everything, while Vida out. While he wax paying | ¥9* Satisfied with newspaper head. linea. But after detached brown years in dm the shade of the lilacs in front! boarding-houses, Vida was hungry Gougerling house he came up| for housework, for the most potter- her, stayed her flight by a|ing detail of it, She had no maid, nor wanted one. She cooked, baked, ‘What does it «wept, washed supper-cloths, with T” she bexged. She was sob | the triumph of a chemist in a new laboratory. To her the hearth was soup, and she bought @ mop or a Just) side of bacon ax tho she were pre |; de ¢ the ees ibrarian and from which she would beside a bean sprout and crooned, “I new life into the world.” Nancy and Nick are | Mushroom, who ia @ servant of he Fairy Queen. This Fairy Queen les over nine hundred and ninety- ine kingdoms and, of course, Nancy d Nick are anxious to see every! ¢ of the mysterious places, The cal Mushroom helps them to be. ome friendly with the Fairy Queen d she in turn allows them to visit her various jands. * | . { The Magical Mushroom came to the Fairy Queen one day and made| ‘2 low bow. That meant that he wish. | @d to say something; It was the one way he could tell it to her highness. Not that he was unable to talk! My} ‘no! The Magical Mushroom was the dearest, kindest old fairy person you can imagine, and talk—well, you just yuld have heard him talk, once he started! No, that wasn't the reason why bowed and said nothing. The rea- was that no one may spenk to 4 in. not even @ fairy one, until firet speaks to him, for it ix very manners, “The Fairy Queen nodded brightly | ‘tomewhiore 4a" One of my we a fairy friend called the Mag: | doms. | to A smiled at Her dear old servant, | Queen. hat ix it, Mr. Mushroom?’ she |can find Nancy and Nic! of my| (Copyright, 1921, by Seattle Star) ney Nick, the Twins, Take a Trip to the Wonderful ; “Land of Underneath” ROBERTS BARTON “What is it, MreMushroom?” she asked twins whojnine hundred and ninety-nine king: Ie that it?” “Yes, ma‘am,” answered the Magi- | Mushroom. He should have said or “your majesty” or “your highness,” but what was the difference? avam” ia short for “madame” anyway. “It's the order you gave to your secretary, Twinkle- | Pen,” he went on, “tg give to your servant, Nimble-Toes, to give to your messenger, Silver-Wing to give Just then the Fairy Queen did a most unqueenly thing. She put her |fingers in her ears. “Oh, no, Mr. | Mushroom,” she cried, “Please don’t jkeep me waiting. What is the trouble?" “It's about Mr. Pim Pim, the king of the Brownies,” answered the Magi- cal Mushroom. “wer “When he got your order to hunt up all the glittery stuff he could find under the earth to help make the Christmas toys, the gnomes found out all about it, and they will make | trouble.” “My, my! anwwered the Fairy Go at once and see if you (To Be Continued) T FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS | “I love her for being so happy, Carol brooded. “I ought to be that way. I worship the baby, but the housework— Oh, I suppose I'm for tunate; so much better off than farm- women on a new clearing, or people in a slum, It hae not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that be is better off than others. In Carol's own twenty-four hours a day she got up, dressed the baby, had breakfast, talked to Onscarina about the day's shopping, put the baby on the porch to play, went to the butcher's to choose between steak and pork chops, bathed the baby, [nailed up a shelf, had dinner, put | the baby to bed for a nap, paid the iceman, read for an hour, took the baby out for a walk, called on Vida, had supper, put the baby to bed darned socks, listened to Kennicott's yawning comment on what a fool Dr, MeGanum was to try to use that cheap X-ray outfit of his on an epithelioma, repaired a frock, drowsily heard Kennicott stoke the furnace, tried to read a page of not his reaction to sex | Thorstela Veblen—and the day was) gone. Except when Hugh was vigorous ly naughty, or whiney, or laughin or saying “I like my chair” wii thrilling maturity, she was always enfeebied by loneliness. She no long- er felt superior about that misfor- tune. She would gladly have been Gopher Prairie and mopping ir. ™ Carol drove thru « number of books from the public Wbrary and from city shops, Ken- nicott was at first uncomfortable wer her disconcerting habit of buy- ig them. A book was a book, and if you had several thousand of them right here in the library, free, why the dickens should you spend your ¥? After worrying about the When she went! it for two or three years, he decided hugged the cans of/ that this was one of the Funny | Ideas which she had caught as never entirely recover. The authors whom she read were the Vida Sherwins. They were young American sociologists, young Engtish realists, Russian horrorists; Anatole France Rolland, Nexo, Wells, Shaw, Key, Edgar Lee Mas- ters, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Henry Mencken, and all the other subversive philosophers and artists whom women were con- sulting” everywhere, in batik-cur- tained studion in New York, In Kan- eas farmhouses, San Francisco drawing-rooms, Alabama schools for negroes. From them she got the ime confused desire whiclt the mil ion other women felt; the same de- termination to be class-conscious without discovering the class of which she was to be conscious. Certainly her reading precipitated her observations of Main Street Gopher Prairie and of the several adjacent Gopher Prairies which she had seen on drives with Kennicott. In her fluid thought cert convic- ons appeared, jaggedly, a frag- ment of an impression « time, while she was going to sleep, or manicuring her nails, or waiting for Kennicott. Vida Sherwin—Vida Wutherspoon— beside a radiator, over a bow! of not very good walnuts and pecans from Uncle Whittlet’s grocery, on an evening when both Kennicott and Raymie had gone out of town with | the other officers of the Ancient and Affiliated Order of Spartans, to in- augurate a new chapter at Waka- min, Vida had come to the house for the night. She helped in putting Hugh to bed, sputtering the while about his soft’ skin. Then they talked till midnight. What Carol said that evening, what she was passionately thinking, was also emerging in the minds of women in ten thousand Gopher Pral- ries. Her formulations were not pat solutions, but visions of a tragic futility. She did not utter them so compactly that they can be given in her words; they were roughened with “Well, you see” and “if you get what T mean” and “I don’t know that I'm making myself clear.’ But they were definite enough, and in dignant enough, mt In reading popular stories and seeing plays, asserted Carol, she had found only two traditions of the American small town. The firet tra- dition, repeated in scores of maga- zines every month, ia that the Amer. jean village remains the one sure abode of friendship, honesty, and clean, sweet, marriageable gtris. Therefore all men who succeed in painting in Paria or in finance in New York at last become weary of smart women, return to their native towns, assert that cities are vicious, |daks, phonographa, Jeather-uphol- |in California or in the cities. sweethearts |stered Morris chalra, bridge-prizcs, marry thelr ! of | These convictions she presented to! , } 1 | } | | The “There among asked. der lately, the, Indians?” ever It is.” | EVERETT TRUE A Q.ow-ourT ! Lose 4 LOT OF TIMS AND LATE FOR THOS NOGTING % NGVGR KNCW IT TO Faic — WANT TO SET SOMSWHGRGS, Ano BANG GeGS --- HONEY, DO You WANT ME TO DRY THE DISHES FOR You P ALEK AN’ SLIM ar. OL a By bel Cle nd «|| HE SEATTLE STAR NO, | DON’T WANT YOu TO DRY THE DISHES FoR ME! Now THAT MOANS SY ScoreG, SHOT SOUR TRAP ANO Sbattle Page 525 AN Ittlelady.with-white-curis stopped to smile at some memory which fitted across her mind, be fore she went on with her story, then she sighed and said, long after that my father came in one day looking very serious. is something brewing the Indians,” he “They have a sullen, furtive look, and instead of being open and friendly as they have been since our coming here, all the men feel that they are being watched and that some sort of Indian upris- ing is being planned.” “What can it be?” my mother “There has been no mur- has there? the young men had trouble with “Not said. None of “We have questioned them all, tried in every way to find out,” my father told her, “And so far we see nothing in this part of the country to arouse them, And yet it is here that they seem come with their grievance, what- to “Why don't you go straight to the Indians themselves?” mother asked, “and find out.” SS eemeniatatie’ and presumably, joyously abide in those towns until death, ‘The other tradition pignificant features of all villages is that the are whiskers, iron dogs upon lawns, ers, jars of gilded cat-talis, and shrewd comic old men gold bricks, cher trators, humor, passed forty years a in hoss-sws town thinks not who are known as “hicks” and who ejaculate “Waal I swan together admirable tradition rules the vaudeville stage, facetious illus and syndicated newspaper but out of actual This al- life it Carol's small ping IDOL, “That's it," father answered, “They slip away whenever a white man comes near; it's all very strange. And we may be threat ened with another massacre—who shall say?” “I heard that conversation, and I somehow didn’t feel a bit afraid. I knew the Indians. Who would be afraid of one's best fyiends? I thought them over in my mind and decided that when I could I would ask what the matter was, “Before very long I met the chief—his name was Siikem—and in his own language I asked him why his people were not happy, and why they no longer smiled when thelr little white friend came near. “Feart’ he said, low, “Fear is in the heart of my people, Fear and hate, “For many moons my people have come to worship on the bank of the great river where dweit their god, But now, now since the flood once more revealed our god to us and left him with his face turned to the sun, the white Man has stolen him away, and.wo know not where he is, nor what il will come to us, He is gone.” (To Be Continued) hated oil-stocks, motion-pictures, land: deals, unread sets of Mark Twain, and a chaste version of national politica, With such a small-town life a Ken- nicott or a Champ Perry is content, but there are also hundreds of thou- sands, particularly women and young men, who are not at all content. The more intelligent young people (and thé fortunate widows) flee to the cities with agility and, despite the fictional tradition, resolutely stay there, seldom returning ¢ven for hol- idays, The most protesting patriots but in cheap motor cara, telephones, ready-made clothes, silos, alfalfa, ko- 4 of the towns leave them in ‘The reasep, Carol “4 Fo Their Evening Was Snoiled DEAR ARE You MAD AT ME? wenn ZZ pick up Henry on the line? try again. her husband by phone. lay the covers. Rose's room at the time. ofa dining room. place. pid, day of acting. tention to the omission. the waiter. been ordered for only two! YES | AM AND GOOD AND MAD The table was set for two! ticed because I had lingered to look at the exquisite blossoms at each WHATS ‘THE MATTER, Confessions of a Movie Star CHAPTER XV—MOTHERDEAR TO THE RESCUE Then Rose phoned for a dinner to'|to Rose. She would remedy the mis-)serve it. I'll be right back.” be sent in from the nearest hotel. To me it seemed a feast, but Rose explained that McMasters never be- fore had been her guest and she must do something elaborate, And wasn’t it a pity she couldn't 1 agreed that it was and suggested that she To be frank, I had not/ heard her make an effort to locate | A waiter from the hotel came to IT was resting in When I returned to her wee bit of drawing Toom I had to pass thru her wee bit I Evidently the waiter had been stu- I felt sorry to have Rose bothered by a miserable detail housekeeping at the end of a hard I did not call her at- I spoke to| The dinner, he said, had Of course 1 couldn't argue his orders with him and his assurance made it impossible for me to speak BY ALLMAN WELL, WHAT 1MADE SPECIAL EFFORT ARE YOU MAD | Td BAKE THAT PUMPKINFIE FOR You AND YOU JUST SAT THERE AND ATE THREE PIECES OF IT AND NEVER | SAID HOW GOOD IT WAS: < G'WAN You BUNCH L/ WEN ELMER = OF DUMS! » HAVE HUET ME SAIEF tr aa’ See iF || YOUR FROLIC =: 1T SMELLS oF | | TH HAT cums ME ND THATS k = sf E (Copyright, 1921, Seattle Star) take in time. McMasters came, and looked rather handsome in spite of being too pink as to complexion, and too kinky as to hair. He greeted his hostess as if they had been boy and girl together. He greeted me as if I were a princess and himself an underling. He asked about Henry and didn’t wait to hear Mrs, Henry Larkin's reply. He sat’ down by my.side and picked up Rose's script of his next production, “Love Lorn.” I had not yet studied, my own script. I felt like a school girk who had neglected to get her lessons. So I told him and he laughed gayly. “Twinkle! Twinkle, little star! he said as smugly as if nobody ever had! made that trite quotation before, “Oh —you-—-littie—star! Before I get thru with your career, you'll be the of the movie universe!" u're awfully Mr. MeMas- 1 murmured, ll do my own part—I'll make—" ‘The sight of Rose, in coat and hat, de me ‘Btop abruptly, said she, “I°ll have to leave you for a few minutes, If the man comes with the dinner, let him Shé disappeared. I settled back on {the divan with a shaky feell around my heart. I wgs not at jequal to the fuss of ent McMasters alone, even for @ | minutes, But McMasters didn’t appear to think so. He picked up some stille of me—and made flattering com. ments. I Wished that Rose would hurry. k ‘The man arrived with the dinner, McMasters admitted him. I noticed — that he slipped the waiter a yellow . bill. “Why—why—such a huge tip?” I asked myself. F ‘The waiters ¢yes pasned over me slowly, insolently! I continued to grow nervous, . ‘When the doorbell rang loudly, T rushed to @pen it—expecting to let Rose in, I threw the door wide—revealing— my Motherdear! 2 And close behind her, as if she had seen her entering the building and had hurried after her, came Rose, a little natural flush showing around the edges of her rouge. (To .Be Continued) § ® no- of ® whiskered rusticity. so amusing! respectable, their restless walking. fended. chairs prickly with excellence of For race in the world, Iv eigners. exotic quality taken her, broidered with gold thread first-generation Scandinuvians; recalled the Norwegian Fair at the Lutheran Church, to which Bea had There, in the bondestue, age, | the replica of a Norse farm kitchen, if they can afford it, and go to live| pale women in scariet Forged = It is nothing It is an unimaginatively standard. ized background, a sluggixhness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the epirit by the desire to appear It is contentment . . the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for It is negation canonized as the one positive virtue. |It is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery self-sought and self.de- It is dullness made God. ‘A savorless people, gulping taste- less food, and sitting afterward, coatleas and thoughtless, in rocking inane decora- tions, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the automobiles, and viewing themselves ag the greatest She had inqutred as to the effect of this dominating dullness upon for- She remembered the feeble to be found in the iil are proud of that achievement of ig- norance which it is so easy to come by. To be “intellectual” or “artintic’® their own word, to be “high. is to be priggish and of du- bious virtue. Large experiments in politics and in co-operative distribution, ventures requiring knowledge, courage, and imagination, do originate in the Weat and Middlewest, but they are not of the towns, they are of the farmers, — If these heresies are supported by the townsmen it is only by occa. — sional teachers, doctors, lawyers, the — labor unions, and workmen like Miles Bjornstam, who are punished by being mocked as “cranks,” as “half-baked parlor socialists.” The editor and the rector preach at them, _ The cloud of serene ignorance sub- merges them in unhappiness futility, line of blue, green-striped aprons, and ridged caps very pretty to set| off 4 fresh face, had seryed romme- grod og lefve—sweet cakes and sour | milk, pudding spiced with cinnamon. |For the first time in Gopher Prairie Carol had found novelty. She had) reveled in the mild foreignness of it. } But she saw these Scandinavian women zealously exchanging their spiced puddings and red jackets for fried pork chops and congealed white blouses, trading the ancient Christmas hymns of the fjords for “She's My Jazzland Cutie,” being Americanized into uniformity, and in less than a generation losing in the grayness whatever pleasant new customs they might -have added to the life of the town, Their sons fin- ished the process. In ready-made clothes and ready-made high-school phrases they sank into propriety, and the sound American customs had absorbed without one trace of pollu. tion another alien invasion. And along with these foreigners, she felt herself being ironed into glossy mediocrity, and she rebelled, in fear, . The respectability of the Gophe Prairies, sald Carol, ta reinforced by vows of poverty and chastity in the matter of knowledge, Except : v Here Vida observed, “Yes—well—- Do you know, I've always thought — that Ray would have made @ won- derful rector, He has what I ; an essentially religious sonal, He'd have read the servige: fully!’ I suppose it's too but T tell_him, he can she