_Dear Kate_:
Well, I am back at the old work and it is all right. I have been dancing
in the best restaurants in New York, and what do you think, Kate, I am
going to dance at the Winter Garden. The manager there saw my poppy
dance the other night, and he is giving me a dance. I can still come
back and dance at twelve o'clock in the restaurant. Fred Kelly, my
dancing partner, is crazy glad. Will Henderson nearly cried. He said,
"You have got your chance, Nan, you have got your chance." I offered to
give him part of my salary because if he had not thought out all the
pretty dances, him and the artist chap, I never could have piped them
out myself. But he won't take a cent. He is dead square, and not a half
bad fellow, and I have been trying to get him to take the cure. I
offered to pay all expenses if he would go up to that dope cure joint at
White Plains, and sometimes he says he will, then again says he won't.
You can't trust a person who takes dope. Sometimes he shows up every
night and plays just beautiful, then again we don't see him for ten
days. Fred Kelly is so tickled at this chance to work in the good
places, that he has braced up and seems a different fellow. He used to
drink a lot and one time when he was tanked up, he had to throw me from
one arm to the other in the dance, and he let me fall and hurt my back
so bad, I could hardly move for a week. It gave me an awful scare and I
had a good heart to heart talk with him. I told him he either had to cut
out the booze or cut out working with me, cause you can't do the two
things and do both well. Oh, I am glad that I have left the joints and I
am proud of myself. I have worked awful hard and something inside of me
has always said I would win out, and it _is_ winning out, because there
ain't no bigger thing in my line than dancing at the Winter Garden.
They are going to advertise me, Kate, and they call me Nancy Lane.
Sounds kinda pretty, doesn't it? I got some of the nicest clothes you
ever saw. My new dancing slippers is made to order, and I got some
pretty things for my hair, though I think it looks better without
anything in it, as it is hard to match the color.
Mrs. Smith and the children came over the other afternoon to see the
toys. I bought the kids some things, then we went to a place and had ice
cream sodas and sundaes until I bet two babies went to sleep that night
with a stomach-ache.
Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. I got a funny present. Do you remember
Jenny who was sick about a year ago, and whose mother come from Iowa or
Kansas or somewhere to get her? Well, I got a package the other day
about the size of a house and when I opened it there was a bed quilt in
it made of little pieces of colored calico set around with white pieces.
Jenny's mother wrote me a beautiful letter saying she made it herself
for me out of pieces of cloth she had saved from her family's dresses. I
put it on the bed, and gee, it was the funniest looking thing you ever
saw. It didn't seem to belong to 28th Street anymore than the old lady
did. It was funny to watch the girls when they come into the room. Them
who had been born on the sidewalks like me whooped when they saw it, and
made a lot of fun of it, but the girls who had come from the country
looked at it different and a sort of change come over their faces. One
girl who is in the chorus at the Columbia, set down by the bed and run
her hand up and down the cover and then put her head on it and cried,
and Mary Crosby who comes somewhere from Pennsylvania and has only been
in the quarter about three months, looked at it straight for about five
minutes without speaking and then turned and left the room. I followed
her out into the hall and said, "What is the matter, Mary?" And she said
in a queer choked way, "Good-bye, Nan, me for that little room down in
old P-a. I've got enough." And I'll be darned if she didn't go home.
It was nice to see you, Kate, and you are looking real well. You have
got the only soft snap there, but I can trust you for getting anything
that is laying around easy. I am off to work, going to try a new dance
on to-night.
_Nan_.