Sardines gets used to living in cans, Mr Editor; so I soonly became
acquainted with how to live in N. Y. flat without knock-off of elbow.
It were umpossible to turn around in all rooms, but I could get out of
doors by backing up.
This Mrs Jinx got a husband who are a broker, but not yet broke. He
come home nights long enough to change clothes and take his wife to
some other Roof Garden. For conversation he complain of his debts.
“Why should we live in flat we can’t afford?” he jowl, reaching across
dinning-room to get a match.
“Mr Husband!” report Hon. Mrs with spasma, “how could you forget
to remember our position? In this house live 2 families intimately
acquainted with a Trust. Also, look at our main entrance downstairs--it
are a bigger waiting room than the Grand Central Station and twice as
lonesome. This house got the brightest buttons, swiftest elevator and
crosset janitor in New York.”
Sometime Mrs Jinx have company for dinner. Her dinning-room was
sifficient for 4. Therefore she ask 10. N. Y. folks is conveniently
compressible, especially when fat. Folks wearing diamonds in front
of them would arrive to these dinners and explain why they wasn’t at
Newport.
“How nicely you are situated here,” they snuggest, looking sidewise.
“O surely yes!” obligate Hon. Mrs. “We have splandid view of the
airshaft from library window and our dinning-room overlook some of the
finest advertising signs in the city.”
“So fortunate you are with so much room!” say lady wearing diamond bib
on chest. “In our apartment we are pusitively crowded.”
No one could believe it.
“Why do you keep a canary?” ask one gentleman of one lady.
“Because I have no room for a parrot,” say one lady to one gentleman.
And so onward.
My cookery is deliciously abominable, thank you, in that 1-8 size
kitchen. Yet those N. Y. persons is so refined they can disguise any
taste by politeness.
“You have a chef, I suspect?” require one brokerish gentleman gnawing
my chicken crokets.
“Two of them,” deceive Mrs Jinx with 5th Ave expression. I arrive to
room looking proud with dishes. “This Togo are my faithful butler
inherited from my grandfather who was a lawyer and kept many retainers.”
I am alarmed to hear such large conversation in such small space. And
yet I acted very intelligent, considering my stupidity.
My life in that compartment become more and more homeless as time
relapsed. Hon. Mrs Jinx were the most stay-away lady I ever seen. She
say she go out to get the air; and I could not blame her. For 2 entire
weeks she was somewheres else all time. In early a. m. after 10 o’clock
she go down town for get hats, manicure & other jewelry. By noon she
telephone, “I shall not be home lunch, because I am too busy wasting
time with Mrs Swatts-Byng.” By night she telephone, “I shall not be
home dinner, because I am taking my Husband to eat at Astoria hotel,
afterwards we shall go see musical-comical theater.”
Lonesomeness arrived to me as much as that apartment would hold. It
were true I could breathe more with less persons taking up room; yet my
thoughts became all by themselves. I feel like Hon. Robinson Caruso on
a vacant island.
One early a. m. Hon. Mrs uprose for breakfast early at 11 o’clock. She
approach to me with tear-drop eye.
“Togo,” she say, “you have been with me 5 entire weeks. Therefore you
can be considered the oldest family servant in N. Y. I shall reward you
with bad news. My Husband has did so much brokerage in Wall Street that
he has broke. Therefore, we shall be more tight compressed than usual.”
“How could it?” I ask feelishly.
“We must move to a smaller flat,” she glub. “Will you faithfully follow
us thereto?”
“Mrs Madam,” I entrench, “I might do faithfully what you say. I might
follow you to smaller flat, but how could I squeeze in when I got
there? Excuse me while I go to Arizona where I can stand with 1000
miles on each side of me and can turn over in bed without wounding my
elbows on a washstand. Indians does not live so high as New Yorkers,
but they lives much broader.”
Hon. Mrs explode her voice from my words and attemp’ to imprison my
escape by locking front door. But she could not. With Samurai war-cry
I open umbruella and, attaching myself to handle, I make jump-out from
bedroom window and flew 9 stories like Hon. Glen Curtiss.
When I arrived to pave-walk Hon. Janitor see me and report,
“You are broken out with lunacy.”
Hoping you are the same,
Yours truly,
_Hashimura Togo_.