_by Lee Fairchild._
_Illustration by Wm. Van Benthuysen._
A shave and a dollar,
A shine and a collar,
Is all that you need in New York;
That is, if you’re clever
And never, oh, never
Are seen at the thing we call work.
When seated at dinner
Just for a beginner
Change waiters—a move for a bluff;
Talk “stocks” of the morrow
And then you may borrow
A crimpled crisp sign of real stuff.
Remember a story—
Quite new or quite hoary—
To quote to your host when you dine;
Be never a piker
But e’er a bold striker—
Aim high or the venture decline.
[Illustration: “_Talk ‘stocks’ of the morrow._”]
Waiting!
_by Mabel Herbert Urner._
_Illustration by Luther S. White._
“You—you will come over Wednesday evening?” She asked it
hesitatingly, timidly almost.
“I’m afraid I can’t Wednesday,” as he picked up his hat and cane.
“Then Thursday—have you an engagement for Thursday?”
“Thursday is the dinner of the Civic Club.”
“Oh, yes; of course you must go to that.” There was a slight quiver
in her voice now. “Could—could you come—Friday?”
“That’s so far ahead. I don’t like to make an engagement so far in
advance. But I’ll phone you some time during the week.”
She smiled a wan little assent. With a brief good-by he was gone.
His step down the hall—the click of the elevator—then she ran to
the window and followed him with strained eyes as he swung down the
street.
If only he would look up and wave her a good-by as he used to—but
he did not.
She threw herself on the couch, her face in the pillows—the ache in
her heart keener than any physical pain. Was it hopeless—the fight
she was making? Could she never win back the love she had lost?
[Illustration: “_There she sat, with her head bending low,
thinking, thinking, thinking._”]
And she had never known how she had lost it—unless it was because
she had grown to care too much and to show it too plainly. Could
it be that? Had he cared only for the uncertainty—the love of
pursuit? And without that—being sure of his conquest—his interest
had died?
Ah, no—no! passionately she denied that. The man she loved was
bigger, finer than that! He could not have stooped to a merely
cheap desire for conquest. If he had ceased to love her, it was
some fault of hers, some failing, some lack within herself of which
she was unconscious.
She had spent long hours of torturing self-analysis trying to find
where she had failed—what it was that in the beginning he might
have thought she possessed—and then found she did not. So great was
her love for him that she felt she could almost make of herself
what he wanted—just by the sheer strength of _willing_ it!
If only she could be with him enough! If she could but have the
_chance_ to make him care for her again! He used to come almost
every day—and now—now, sometimes many days would pass.
She knew it was a mistake to ask him when he was coming—to try to
name any particular time. He seemed to resent that now. If only
she could let him go without a word! But the thought of the long,
silent absence that might follow always terrified her. Once, for
two weeks, she had not heard from him; and the memory of those two
weeks’ suffering always weakened her to the point of trying to
make some definite engagement to escape the sickening uncertainty
of the days to come.
Oh, she was so helpless—so pitiably helpless! Wholly dependent on
him for her happiness, yet powerless to break down this wall he was
placing between them!
She slowly arose and threw herself into a chair. There she sat,
with her head bending low, thinking, thinking, thinking.
* * * * *
Then gradually there stole over her a sense of quiet—almost of
peace. It was partly the relaxation that comes after any emotional
strain, and partly because of a faint hope, a belief that sometimes
came to her and that comforted her above everything else—the
thought that because she gave of her best—because the love she
gave was a great and good love—some time he could come to know, to
understand, and to love her again, if only for her unfaltering love
of him!
If she could but wait long enough—patiently enough—in the end the
love she so wanted might be hers!