THE SPOKESMAN’S SECRETARY

Being the Letters of Mame to Mom

By

UPTON SINCLAIR

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR

Pasadena, California

Copyright, 1926

BY

UPTON SINCLAIR

CONTENTS

LETTER I

IN WHICH I JOIN THE HIGHER-UPS

Dear Mom:

You been complaining there ain’t enough news in my letters, well you sure will get a load of it this trip of the postman. Your Mame has been cast for little Cinderella in the big political show and the fairy-coach is waiting at the door.

This is how it come about, the place was busy and every girl had a customer but Florabelle and me, when a gentleman comes in, a top-notcher I can see and takes us in with a glance. He don’t need but one because Florabelle makes up her complexion in a dark room and ain’t got the sense to look it over by daylight. So he comes to my table and sits and says, “Go to it, lady.”

He has got good hands not soft nor flabby like many of the big fellows, but you can see he ain’t had to skin them with hard work. I starts to washing them and gets a look out of the corner of my eye and I see he’s somewhere in the forties and a bit of grey in his hair. His cuffs is new and clean and everything quiet and exactly right.

I says, “Fine weather we’re having,” and he makes the shortest kind of a noise that means yes and I see he’s thinking about something and would rather not be bothered—but what did he come into a manicure parlor for? So I looks sympathetic and says in a spiritual voice, “There’s sure a lot of troubles in the world ain’t there?”

They always shows their surprise in their fingers. He says, “How did you find that out?” Says I, “I got my own but you needn’t worry my business is to listen to the gentlemen’s.”

“Is that a part of the job?” says he and I tells him it’s the principal part. “They want to tell their troubles to some other woman;” and I looks up, and there is wrinkles of fun in the corner of his eyes.

But they don’t last long he looks serious again and says, “It may be some other woman could give me a little advice just now.” I says, “She can if she’s the right woman.” But still he’s kind of hesitating to take the plunge so I give him another push. “Is it some mystery of the female soul you can’t make out?”

“It is just that,” he says; and I asks, “She can’t make up her mind that she loves you?” He laughs and says, “No, it ain’t anything like that, you been reading novels. I am a married man and got three children growing up,” he says. “Ah, me!” says I. “You should hear some of the stories about married gentlemen!”

I looks at him again and see he’s what they call a go-getter. First I think maybe he’s the secretary of the Hardware Dealers’ Association that’s in town but then I guess he’s a lawyer come to lobby here in our national capital. So I rubs away at his nails and says, “Is it the wife?” He thinks for a minute and then all of a sudden it busts out, “My God!” And then he waits again and says kind of solemn-like, “Tell me this do all women have to go crazy?”

I make a guess at his age and I says, “How old is your wife—if you know?” “She’s forty-two,” says he. “Oh, yes,” says I; and then, “She can’t make up her mind what she wants, and she can’t sit still in one room—”

“Good God,” says he, “it is worse than that, she is got the angina pectoris.”

“Oh, poor soul!” I says. I hadn’t never heard of it but it sounded serious.

“But it’s different from any sort of angina pectoris you ever heard of,” he goes on. “It’s a travelling angina pectoris. One week it’s in the shoulders and the next week it’s gone to the stomach and the week after that it’s in the knee.”

“I suppose you’ve took her to the doctors?” says I.

“Doctors?” says he. “I’ve worn out four sets of tires taking her to doctors. The ordinary doctors won’t do at all it has got to be a specialist of the knee, or the stomach or what you will. And he tells her there ain’t anything there but then she thinks maybe he didn’t look careful enough or maybe I called him on the phone and told him to spare her nervous system so she has to go to another one without telling me—but he always tells me with a bill!”

He says it without any smile and he sits there in the bottomest pit of the dumps so I says, “I suppose you know what is the matter with the poor soul at her time.” “They tell me it’s the change of life,” he says; and I says; “Some ladies in my profession have got a different name they call it the change of wife.”

Then again I feels the start in his fingers and I know he’s looking at my head bowed over his nails. “Is that an old gag,” says he, “or do you make them?”

“You just seen it come out of the mint?” says I.

“Well,” says he, “I’m sorry I don’t own a gold-mine.”

Says I, “There is a plenty of gold-diggers in the manicure profession, and you might of had some of them trimming your cuticle right now if you had of went to some other table. But I am one that makes it plain to a customer that he is the butter.”

“Butter?” says he, and I give him a flash out of the corner of my eye. “Nine hours every day I earns my daily bread in the Elite Beauty Parlors; and then if in the evening some gentleman invites me to dinner, he’s the butter.” So then I seen that we was friends, and I knew I would like that dairy.

But still he was kind of shy and it wasn’t till I was done that he come right down to it, he was lonesome and would like to have me go to dinner with him the next evening but the trouble was he couldn’t afford to go to no swell place on account of having so many people in this town that knew him. But I tells him that two is a company for me and we’ll go to any quiet place that he likes. “You got to be extra careful,” I says, “because Washington is an awful place for gossip.”

“Yes,” says he, “and the truth is I hold an especially prominent position. And so—you see—”

“Yes, I see perfectly,” I says, “I know a gentleman when I meet one and I hope I know how to be a lady. You may count on me to play the game square.”

But even that don’t satisfy him he kind of hems around and he says, “You must understand, I am in a position where you will be sure to find out who I am right away.”

“I see,” says I, “and so you’ll have to give me your real name? You may trust me, Mr.—er—”

“Er-Edgerton,” says he, not more than one-third sure that he wants to.

“Mr. Edgerton,” says I and he see’s I’m thinking it over. “No,” he says, “you never heard it before, it ain’t a name that is advertised on toilet soap, nor on the silver screen. In fact I think just now it’s the least advertised name in the whole U. S. A.”

“In the secret service?” says I for I admit I was intreeged though I ain’t sure how to spell it. “The most secret of all services,” says he. “I’m the Secretary to the Spokesman.”

And there is where your Mame proved herself the prize dumbbell. “The Spokesman?” says I. “Who is he?”

He laughs as if I had said something specially funny. “What do you read in the newspapers?”

“Well,” says I, “I read the divorce news of course because that is what the customers want to talk about. And I read the murders because I like them. And I read Mme. Prinker’s beauty hints, and how to grow lean by rolling.”

“But you don’t read what the Spokesman has to say?”

“No,” says I. “What paper does he write for?”

He laughs again, like that was an awful boner. “It’s on the front page of all the papers,” he says. “But you haven’t missed much. The Spokesman is a Man who lives in a great white house and He is a Strong Silent Man and it appears that all Strong Silent Men have to talk a great deal and this One has got no idea what to say. So I am the man who tells Him what to say. And twice every week the reporters for all the newspapers of the whole world gather in a room and listen to Him say what I have told Him to say and a couple of thousand newspapers all over the world pay a couple of hundred thousand dollars to have it telegraphed to them and they print it and I don’t know how many hundreds of millions of people read it and they all have to think that it is the Spokesman who spoke it, so you see how important it is that I should keep hid.”

Well, Mom, by that time I seen what had come to me, and I sat hardly able to lift my eyelids, to say nothing of my tongue.

“I have got to have a session the day after tomorrow,” the gentleman goes on, “and I have no idea what I am going to say. How can I pay any compliments to American institutions that I haven’t paid them twenty times before? So I’ll give you an address of a little Greek restaurant that I know and if you’ll meet me there at seven-thirty tomorrow evening you may be able to give me a few ideas of what the whole world would like to have said to it the next morning.”

And so then he went out, Mom; and here is your baby Mame sitting in her six by eight bedroom with the smoke of her pork-chop still in the air writing to ask you if you have any ideas of what to tell the world for God’s sake send them quick for I have got my foot on the ladder and it’s the high altitudes for me. And Mom you dunno how grateful I am to you for the wise training you give me, I felt his eyes running over me but I never trembled for I had remembered what you taught me, always to keep my dressing table by the window and put it on by daylight and never to use no peroxide at all unless I was going to use it every night.

Your loving

Mame.

LETTER II

IN WHICH I GO BEHIND THE SCENES

Dear Mom:

The first thing I got to explain is that I have changed my name again. The fashions in names changes very fast and you think you have got a good one but you find it is a flop. But I never was altogether pleased with Ysabel and have decided to make it Rosabelle. I think it is much prettier because when you say Rosabelle Riggs both the words begins with the same letter and a gentleman told me that is called illiteration and a name is much sweller when it is illiterate; all the movie stars are doing it they say you can’t get into the movies at all unless you have got an illiterate name. The new girl at our place is named Mary May Marie, and that is nice too only you have to say the last name French fashion, “if you don’t,” I says to her, “it sounds like a hint to the gentlemen.” It is getting to be swell to have French names. Ada Huggins has changed hers to Adaire and then Hattie Schoenstein she says, “What shall I make mine?” and I says, “Why not try Hotaire?” and that is how I get into trouble being too bright altogether.

I want you to please explain to Pop, so that he will not have his feelings hurt that I do not like the good old-fashioned honest label of Mame that he gave me. This is not an old-fashioned beauty parlor that I work in and you can’t expect to know what is considered shiek if you spend your whole life in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey. And I know Mom how you gave up a glorious stage career for your little ones, and this little one is much obliged but I got my own career to make now and I sure don’t want no enemy to paste the label of Mame onto me. But of course I’m always the same to the home folks your affectionately.

P. S. Well, I have just got back from dinner with my new gentleman friend. I will not say much for a Greek restaurant. It seems that the way you tell Greek cooking is that everything is swimming in the juices of baby lamb only when it gets a little cold it seems like what we at home used to call mutton suet. Mr. Edgerton explains that the Greeks is a pastoral people they have only sheeps and goats. But I would of thought they would of learned the uses of beefsteak when they come to the good old U. S. A. But I suppose they have got to be different as that is called “local color” when you go out slumming or dining with a gentleman friend.

But oh Mom the conversation was the most intellectual that I ever listened to and I am so excited I can hardly make my letters good. It was just like going to Hollywood and being took in behind the scenes where you could watch Mary Pickford putting on her make-up. You that has been a stage queen can understand how it is everything is so different behind the scenes you would hardly know that it is the same show at all. I always thought I was the little wise girl and nobody could put nothing over on me but now I am behind the scenes of the political show and oh my God to think that I was ever one of the boobs that sat out in front of the curtain and laughed and cried over them old old gags!

First Mr. Edgerton put me wise to the leading gentleman that is called the Spokesman. Mr. Edgerton has to spend a lot of time with Him every day, teaching Him His role, and he told me all about it, and it was just like I was there in the great white house where He acts.

It seems that this Spokesman was born and raised in the State of Florida and that is a very cold state with a great lot of mountains that is covered with snow most of the time. It is very rocky ground and hard to raise anything on and so the people in Florida has got to work hard for a living all the time and they are very saving and apt to be stingy for which Mr. Edgerton says you can’t blame them seeing how nature has been a step-mother to them all. So this Spokesman’s one idea is to save pennies and when He was the governor of this State of Florida He used to live in one hotel room and when the bankers and the big business men thought that was not dignified enough and He wanted to show them that He could be as swell as they was He took two hotel rooms.

The Spokesman is a little Man, kind of stoop-shouldered and pinched-up like and He is very much worried because He is not imposing looking like He had ought to be to fit into that big white house that He has got to act in. Him and Mr. Edgerton had many consultations about it and Mr. Edgerton told Him to face it out and make a joke of it and tell His visitors that He was like a singed cat a lot better than He looks. At first that hurt His feelings but He must of thought it over and decided it was His best bet and now He says it to His visitors. His face is kind of wizened and some nasty woman said that He had been weaned on a pickle but Mr. Edgerton ain’t ever advised Him to say that to His visitors.

Well now He is the Spokesman and He has got the job of telling the American people what to do and what to think. And it seems a queer job for Him Mr. Edgerton says because if He had His own way He would sit for hours and never say nothing. He will listen to all Mr. Edgerton says for Him to say and then bid him good bye and never say if He is going to say it or not but He aways says it provided it’s two things—first it must be complimentary to American institutions and second it must have to do with saving money.

Mr. Edgerton explained to me about what is called the “policy” of the Spokesman and I don’t see how I could ever of been happy to be so ignorant as I used to be. I just never knew nothing Mom I would hear Pop talking about these things, and it would go right over my head but now I’m going to learn all about it. It seems that the way money is wasted is that the government takes it for taxes and pays it to a lot of office holders that sits with their feet on the top of their desks. So the Spokesman is going to stop the taxes and let the rich people keep their money then He says they will start factories to make things and there will be plenty of wages for the working people and everybody will be happy. I never would of thought of it myself but I seen it right away and how stupid I was when I felt mean about people that had a lot of money and spent it on what I thought was foolishness like monkey dinners and shampain baths and such. I see now that no matter how foolish it is it all makes work for working people and so it is all economy like the Spokesman wants it to be.

I asked Mr. Edgerton if that was one of the ideas he had taught to the Spokesman but he said no he hadn’t needed to do it because when you are in the business of running for offices it is a thing you come to understand for yourself no matter how dumb you may be that you have got to take care of the rich people because they have got to put up their money for campaign funds for you so that you can pay wages for workingmen that makes red fire and sky-rockets and campaign banners and processions and other things that educates the voters about not taxing the rich.

And Mr. Edgerton says that the Spokesman went out and hired the biggest banker in the whole country to help Him teach the people about this policy of His. And I said gee how could He of got up nerve to pay such a big man what He would of had to pay? But Mr. Edgerton explained that He didn’t have to pay the big banker nothing extra because the banker had been paying pretty close to a million dollars in taxes every year himself and naturally it was worth something to him to get a chanst to dump a load like that off of his own shoulders. And that is easy to see too and I begin to see it wouldn’t be so hard to run a government as I thought it would be because everybody would be looking to get something and so they would all be ready to work for the government cheap. And Mr. Edgerton says that is just how it goes because a lot of them worked for the government all through the war for a dollar a year and they was the most expensive men the government ever had let inside the ropes. And Mr. Edgerton says that the way I understand everything shows that I have a natural talent for political life.

He told me the name of this big banker that has been hired to take the taxes off of himself. I remember it was Lemon or Melon or something else to eat. Mr. Edgerton said I could remember it easy by the fact that they cut him every day in Wall Street and I said “I don’t see why they should cut him when he is doing their work for them as well as for himself.” And Mr. Edgerton thought that was very funny so I see there was some catch in it so I talked about something else as quick as I could.

But Mr. Edgerton says I can be very useful to him if I will and he showed me how. He says that he has been to college and has read a lot of high-brow things and that has spoiled him some for the job he has to do. He says he wants to keep close to the heart of the plain people to know how they feel and think and I can tell him. I had a wonderful spiel fixed up, about how I was the daughter of an old Virginia family that had been ruined in the civil war; but when I heard what he said I decided I had better forget my spiel so I confessed that my Pop was a gas-house worker in Camden New Jersey and he said that was fine that was exactly what he wanted. And so I told him the real truth about my name being Mame and so you can forget what I wrote you in the beginning of this letter which was wrote yesterday but I will send it to you all the same because it is wrote and you can see how I have growed under the influence of Mr. Edgerton.

And he says to me, “What do you think about the international situation?” And gee I was scared out of my wits I wanted to say, “Ask me something easy!” But I am going to learn to play my part among these higher-ups and so I says, “I haven’t thought so much about it of late.” And he says, “It is changing so fast, you have got to think all of the time.”

And there I sat racking my wooden brains to think of anything I had ever heard Pop say. And at last I thought of something and so I looked real wise and I says, “It seems to me the American people has got so used to having a good time they take it for granted. So the use of the international situation is to show them what real troubles is and make them grateful for their favors.” And Mr. Edgerton looks at me and his eyes lights up and he says. “That’s it exactly! That’s the text for my tomorrow morning’s interview!”

And then of course I was very much excited and I says, “You mean the Spokesman ain’t never said that before?” And he says, “Well, if He has, it’s been so long ago that He’s forgot it. But that sentiment is right out of the heart of the plain people it has the true salt of homeliness that I’m looking for and torture my poor head trying to invent.”

And so now, Mom, you can imagine how excited I am. The Spokesman is to give that interview tomorrow morning at ten o’clock to all the reporters of all the newspapers in the whole world and it will be in the second edition of the afternoon papers that gets out all over the whole world just a little before noon and make believe I won’t pounce on a newsboy when I go out to get my glass of malted milk at the corner drug-store! Oh Mom you can’t imagine the thrills of being a really influential person like

Your devoted

Mame.

LETTER III

IN WHICH I RING THE BELL

Dear Mom:

Well, I suppose you seen my ideas in the papers. I have never had anything so wonderful happen to me in my whole life. There it was every bit of it and all fixed up in such fine language as I could never of thought of and sounding so very very wise. And to think that this greatest Man in the whole world has said it, and every newspaper in the whole world almost has published it on the front page. Why Mom He didn’t say hardly anything else at all. He made his whole interview out of that idea I have give to His secretary. Me poor little Mamie Riggs, manicurist in the Elite Beauty Parlors with just one copper cent in her pocket this night!

That is a fact! I spent three cents for that afternoon paper so I didn’t have the price of my usual malted milk for lunch and had to take a glass of plain milk and a doughnut. But I didn’t mind that, I went back to the shop feeling so smart the girls all seen there was something and they wanted to know, “What is it, Mame, you got a new beau?” That’s all they ever think about of course.

I says, “No it ain’t that it’s something more great.” But I didn’t dare give them no hint because it’s what Mr. Edgerton calls a state secret. So Ada Higgins she wants you to call her Adaire now and did you ever hear of anything so silly, being ashamed of her origin and trying to put on side she says, “I know, it’s that swell gent that was here a few days ago. What’s his line Mame?”

And just then the phone rung and it was Mr. Edgerton calling and he wants me to have dinner with him again and of course then all the girls is buzzing like a lot of bees they never heard of such a thing as my not telling they always tell about their affairs because after all what have they got to talk about between customers with the pitiful narrow lives they live and no great ideas about world events and no way of getting behind the scenes of the political show and seeing how the actors is made up.

Well he says for me to meet him at a Chinese restaurant this time. It is over in Z street and a long ways and gee it is drizzling and I shall have wet feet when I get there. But I dassn’t try to borrow a nickle from my landlady because my rent was due four days ago and I am side-stepping because I just had to get a new scarf to hide my old dress. It is all very well for Mr. Edgerton to talk about wanting to keep close to the plain people, and the rough honesty of them and all that, but no man wants to go out to dinner with a slouch you know that Mom and it ain’t going to happen while I’m the lady. So now I’m off and tell Pop to send me some of his ideas about politics as quick as a postage stamp will bring them.

P. S. Well it was my first dinner a la Chink and we had chop suey and it is made out of chicken and something else that should be called guey instead of suey. But it is hot and very filling and that is the principal thing when you are trying to pull through and go straight on eighteen-fifty per and rents what they is in the city of Washington, D. C. Mr. Edgerton brought me home in a taxi and now I have got my feet in bed and I couldn’t go to sleep anyhow till they get warm, so I will tell you what happened.

Well of course we talked international affairs since that is the most interesting thing in the world, and what everybody talks here in high society. Mr. Edgerton says that when he told the Spokesman the great idea that I had give to him, He grunted, and that is eloquence from Him. And He told Mr. Edgerton to have it wrote out for Him and He even added a couple of sentences of His own because some of it was so important that He wanted to say it twiced.

And of course I had to be modest so I says, “I really didn’t think it was so remarkable as that, it is what anyone would say.”

And Mr. Edgerton says, “That’s it exactly. What I have to do is to find out what anyone would say and say it for them.”

“But why,” I says—“when they can just as good say it for themselves?” So he explained that people likes to have things said for them it is less trouble and it pleases them to hear their own ideas, “it is like looking at themselves in a mirror, if you understand what I mean,” says he and I says that most any woman would understand that.

And Mr. Edgerton says that the Spokesman likes to say things like the sort that I say, because it saves Him having to talk about other things that ain’t so easy for Him to think about. The reporters asks Him questions and He don’t know what to answer and then there is always people trying to get Him to do this and that and to say yes or no and He don’t like to say either nor to do neither. The Spokesman’s other name is Cautious, and He never does nothing He don’t have to and He seldom does. He says that most problems solve themselves if you let them alone.

Says I, “What that generally means is that somebody else solves them.” And Mr. Edgerton laughs and says, “Well, yes, but then if they solve them wrong it ain’t your funeral.”

And he showed me how it goes. There will be two big fellows fighting over some juicy bit of graft and they come to Washington and pull all the strings they know of each of them trying to get the Spokesman to give it to his gang. And the Spokesman listens polite to both of them and tells both of them He’ll do the best he can and then He don’t do nothing and both of them hates Him like poison and calls Him all the names they can think of. But bye and bye they get tired of quarreling and patch up some sort of agreement to divide the graft and then they go off and think it over and say to themselves by golly that Guy is a slick one, He knows how to take care of Himself and that’s the Sort we need to run the country.

Well just about that time a couple comes into the Chink restaurant a pair of swell lookers and I see they knows Mr. Edgerton. The gentleman gives him a bow and the lady too but then she gets a glimpse of me and she freezes up like she was hit by an artic cyclone and she goes by with her nose high up like an aeroplane. And I see that Mr. Edgerton is a bit flustered and don’t know what to talk about next and I says, “It seems your lady friend don’t like the way I look perhaps she thinks my hair is too decorative or some thing.” And he smiles, kind of sickish like and I says, “Let me tell you how it is if you want to have anything pretty in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey, you have got to carry it along with you.” And he says, “Yes, I suppose so.”

I see he is badly rattled so I says, “I want you to know that I know exactly how it is and you don’t have to try to fool me or yourself. Everything is pure and sweet between us like we was the two babes in the woods but I know too you ain’t going to get Washington smart society to believe it. And I can guess how it’ll be if anybody tips off Mrs. Edgerton to the fact that her husband is doing research work among the plain people. By the way how’s the poor soul getting along?”

“Well,” he says, “just now the angina pectoris has moved on to one of her toes.”

“Well,” says I, “at least it’s getting as far away from her mind as it can and maybe it’ll move out altogether. But what I started to say is this if you think you better not see me any more—”

“No, no!” he says real anxious. “No, Miss Riggs, please don’t desert me in this crisis.”

“Crisis?” I says.

“Yes,” says he. “You see, the Elks’ convention is coming to our national capital next week and the Spokesman has got to deliver a full hour’s speech to them and you just can’t imagine how I shall be put to it to invent something different to say. Only think of it I’ve got to work up some new compliment to pay to the Constitution! And every Fourth of July for a hundred and fifty years some twenty thousand orators have been warming up this old soup and putting in new flavors. Miss Riggs the great heart of the plain people has got to save me! You must tell me what to say—you and none other!”

So there I am up against it again and I wishing I could get home so as to see if a letter has come from Pop. “America,” I says, “is a great country.”

“Yes, I know,” he says, “but why? And how? What makes it that way? What—”

“Hold on,” I says, “one question at a time. It is very simple you get yourself mixed up by thinking too hard. Anybody can see that what makes America a great country is because there is so much of it. Ain’t that so?”

“Yes,” he says but kind of doubtful.

“And because there is so many people in it. Ain’t that so?”

“I suppose so,” he says but still like he didn’t.

“You take these here Elks that is coming to Washington,” I says. “Everybody knows the Elks is a great order and why? Because there is so many of them and they’ve got a pile of money and they come here and spend it and raise a hurrah and they own the town. Ain’t that so?”

Yes of course he can’t deny that is so. But still there is something eating him. “Surely Miss Riggs there must be something else—some ideas—”

“Ideas?” I says. “Don’t you worry about ideas the people will tend to that, there is enough of them. If there is one person and he has got an idea,” I says, “that is something but when there is a hundred million has got it, that’s a hundred million times as much and if you don’t think that’s so you just go and ask Kayser Bill,” I says.

And say, Mom, it was like a light begun to shine in his eyes. “Miss Riggs,” he says, “do the people really believe that?”

“Of course they believe it,” I says. “Who’s going to stop them?”

And Mom, I thought he was going to reach across the table and grab my hand in spite of his lady friend across the way shooting eye-daggers at him. “Miss Riggs,” he says, “you have saved me! You have restored my faith in the sublime principles of democracy! You have given me the theme of an immortal address a real piece of Elkoquence if you will pardon the pun. Upon these wings the Spokesman will soar to heights never before attained even by Him!”

And Mom, he is so pleased, he invites me to go home in a taxi; and how can I tell him that my feet is wet and froze, and I would of rather of walked?

Your happy

Mame.

LETTER IV

IN WHICH I GUESS A RIDDLE

Dear Mom:

Well the Elks is come to town and they own it just like I said they would. My it is wonderful to see so many fine redblooded gentlemen on the streets all looking like their pockets couldn’t hold their money. For the manicure business it is heaven there just ain’t enough lady operators to go round a couple of gents is waiting their turn at each chair and a girl can have all the dinners and other dates she can take care of. But I have turned them all down their compliments don’t go with me at all because of this work that I have got to do with Mr. Edgerton that is so very important as you will understand. It seems hard to believe that such a chanced could happen to a girl out of the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey but it really is true, and Mr. Edgerton says I can do just as much guiding the destinies of the American people as I want to.

I suppose you read the great address which the Spokesman delivered to the Elks’ convention and you seen every word I had said to Mr. Edgerton for the Spokesman to say. Of course Mr. Edgerton fixed it up again so that it sounded fine and Elkoquent—he keeps calling it that, it is a sort of joke on account of having been said to the Elks. It sure did thrill me to read it and I was more prouder than ever to live in such a rich country with so much wonderful prosperity all around me.

I must say there is times when I wish I could have just a little more of it for myself. It is kind of hard on a girl that has been brought up right and is trying to earn everything not just her clothes. Right now I have got to put another darn in my best pair of skin-colored stockings and it will be very disfiguring right where the gentlemen look at them most. But I could not keep my landlady waiting no longer, and I have cut down on my meals all I dare I can’t afford to be too starved when I go out with Mr. Edgerton because it ain’t refined to hog your dinner.

Well Mom this noon going out for my lunch I run into what I think is his wife—anyhow I hope it is because I would be sorry to think there was a third lady in this case. She was in a car with him, one of these kind that is called coops like glass show cases rolling round on big rubber tires. They had just drawed up by the curb and she was getting out.

I have told him that I will play the game so of course I didn’t give no sign that I had ever saw him before. But I got a good look at her and she is sure something elegant you can bet there ain’t any holes in her silk stockings nor in the squirrel-skin coat that she had on. She is a large soft lady and they went into an office building so I guess he was taking her to another of them fancy-priced specialists to see if they can find that angina pectoris. I went off thinking what would of happened to me if I would of took the notion that I had the angina pectoris. Would all them specialists be hunting it or would I just come home and get Pop to show me the trap-door where you crawl into the gas-tank? But I realize that I can’t have everything in this world—I can’t have electric coops and squirrel-skin coats and at the same time know the great heart of the plain people and be able to teach the Spokesman how to talk to them.

P. S. Well I had another call from Mr. Edgerton and we went out to dinner again and it is his wife like I guessed and he says the corn specialists says it is not angina pectoris of the toe, but only her tight slippers. And he started to apologize because he didn’t speak to me but I told him to quit his kidding and let us talk about international affairs. So we went to another restaurant it was a cheap hash-house this time where you get a coarse dinner for sixty cents and Mr. Edgerton apologized for it but it was the only kind of a place where he would be sure not to meet no friends. We had a little booth where we could sit and talk and Mr. Edgerton tipped the waiter some and we sat there a couple of hours and he brought us some coffee a couple of times and something else that was supposed to be coffee because it was in coffee-cups but seeing ain’t always believing.

Well the international situation is like this just now. All them Dago nations over in Europe wanted a lot of money from us so they could buy the guns and things while they was canning Kayser Bill. They come over here and borrowed billions and billions of dollars and now of course the Kayser is chopping firewood in Holland and we got the job of collecting the money and we don’t know how to start. They are an unprincipled lot these fellers in Europe says Mr. Edgerton.

“Yes, I know,” I says. “I read all about them. The papers call them Bolshivikis.”

“No,” says Mr. Edgerton, “I don’t mean that crowd they are revolutionists and they say they won’t pay. What I mean are the French and Eyetalians and Poles and all them—they say they’re willing to pay of course but then they don’t.”

“But then,” says I, “what is the difference whether you say you will or say you won’t if you don’t?”

“Oh, there’s a lot of difference,” he explains. “If you say you will then you’re recognized.”

“What difference does that make?” I says.

“If you are recognized,” says he, “then you can borrow as much more as you want.”

“My God,” I says, “I wished somebody would recognize me!” And then I felt kind of mean, for fear he’d think I meant about him not recognizing me on the street!

He goes on to tell me that the Spokesman is worried all the time about these debts He lies awake at night and thinks about them it’s the only question He can’t seem to leave alone to settle itself. The reason for that is because He was born and raised in that cold and rocky state—by the way I made a mistake because I said the name of that state was Florida but I was a dumb-bell because Florida is another place. I know now because today there was a feller come in to try to sell us some lots there it seems there is a boom and he had some extra-fine land-front lots that could be had this week only; he explained that they are called land-front lots because they are in the bay but they front on the land and they will be on the land when the bottom of the bay has been moved underneath them.

But the Spokesman was raised in a state that is rocky and cold, I have forget it again but I think maybe it is North Carolina because it is far up North. And you see the worst a man can do in that state is not to pay his debts and collecting debts is the one thing that the Spokesman can be sure of knowing how, He has done it all His life. But He never had so big a debt to collect in his home state in fact Mr. Edgerton says there has never been such a big debt in the world. He says that the Statesman has nightmares about it and imagines that the debt has broke loose and is rolling down over Him like it was one of them mountains of North Carolina. He wakes up all in a sweat and He sends for Mr. Edgerton in a hurry and insists He has got to know how He can collect more money than there is in the world.

That sounds like a joke but it’s really so because it is supposed to be paid in gold and it is twiced as much gold as there is. Mr. Edgerton says there is a professor in Germany that is trying to find out how to make more but he has not got it paying yet and besides they couldn’t get it away from the professor without another war and that would mean we would have to lend more money again. But something has got to be done, else the Spokesman won’t ever be able to get a good night’s sleep, and it is undermining His health something fierce.

So you see Mom there was another job loaded onto my poor shoulders that was never trained to carry such loads. But I told you I was going to see it through and I sat there and thought real hard and I says, “Them Dagoes got goods from us with that money, didn’t they?” And he says they did, so I says, “Then the way to pay the debts is for them to send us back some goods, whatever kind they can make that we need.”

But he says, “No, Miss Riggs that would never do at all,” he says, “and the reason is that we have got factories over here to make all the goods for ourselves.”

“Well,” says I, “but we can have twiced as many goods.”

“No,” he says, “our people haven’t got the money to buy so much, and so it would shut our factories down, and all our people that works in the factories would starve.”

Well Mom it shows you how dumb and ignorant us poor working people is. I would never of thought of that would you? But it is plain as day—why we have even got what is called tariff laws to tax the things that is brought into the country so as to keep them Dagoes from dumping their cheap goods off on us and putting all our working people out of their jobs.

I seen then why the Spokesman was so unhappy because if we couldn’t take money and we couldn’t take goods what could we do about the debts? If they wasn’t paid at all you can see what a bad example it would be for nobody would want to play the business game at all if they would never get paid their money if they made too much.

Well I must say I was scared because if all these greatest minds in the world hadn’t been able to guess the answer what chanced was there for poor little Mamie Riggs of the Elite Beauty Parlors? But I thought and thought and Mr. Edgerton set and watched me with an anxious look knowing how much there was at stake. And at last—will you believe it Mom?—I got it! Yes I did and all the world is going to know it in a day or two. That is, of course they aint going to know that I got it but they will be told the answer by the Spokesman in the big white house where He lives and tells them answers.

Says I, “Mr. Edgerton, them Dagoes has got a lot of pictures and cathedrals and things over there ain’t they?”

“Yes,” he says, “they have that.”

“And people travel over there to see them all the time dont they?”

“Oh yes.”

“And it’s what they call culture?”

“Yes of course the very fanciest there is.”

“Well,” I says, “there’s nothing in the world too good for us so let’s us go over there and get their culture in exchange for the debts. We can build a lot of fine steamships, and send a million or two of our people over, and the Dagoes can put them up at good hotels and feed them and wait on them and show them round and explain things to them. And for them that don’t care for art and high-brow things, there’ll be girl-shows and stuff that will surely be better than paying bootleggers for what they give us in these here coffee-cups.”

Well Mom that broke up our party. Mr. Edgerton was so excited that he got up and rushed right off to tell the Spokesman. He left me to walk home alone in the cold and it was only then that I begun to think about one thing I had forgot and that is who is to get the chanced to collect them debts in Europe? I would sure like a trip to Paris myself and I know my folks could stand a lot more culture than they’ll ever pick up in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey. But I guess Mom we had better not be greedy I’ve a notion it will be with the trips to Europe like it is with the electric coops and the squirrel-skin coats—the people that gets them will be them that has already got more than they can use.

Your dutiful

Mame.

LETTER V

IN WHICH I LISTEN TO GOSSIP

Dear Mom:

Well, I have had my first failure in my new job of telling the Spokesman what to say to the American people. I went out to-day and bought the afternoon paper and He hadn’t said a word of what I had told Mr. Edgerton to tell Him to say. He had talked about the money them Dago nations owes us but all He said was that the debts was a sacred obligation and the American people would exact a settlement. But Mom you can see that aint saying nothing when there aint enough money in the whole world to pay them and we couldn’t let them send us goods without ruining all our industries. How can they pay except like I said by our sending over tourists for them to feed? I am greatly disappointed in the Spokesman.

Tell Pop I got his letter and I thank him for all the ideas on politics he has sent. Some of them seems to me very good and I shall be pleased to make use of them. Mr. Edgerton says it is the opinions of the plain people that he wants, and I am sure Pop is plain enough to suit anybody. Tell him that I don’t wonder he can’t hardly believe this good fortune that is come to me. But it is God’s truth just as I have wrote it.

And you can tell Pop he dont need to worry about his baby girl, because I am taking the best of care of myself. Mr. Edgerton aint tried to get fresh and I dont think he is that sort at all. He never says nothing about how I have such nice long brown lashes over my china-blue eyes. I dont think he even saw that darn I had put in my stocking though I forgot and put my foot up on a chair right where he could see. The truth is I think he loves his wife: only he dont know quite what to make of her just now and he’s lonesome for a little female cheerfulness. If he buys me a dinner it aint going to break him and he’s getting his money’s worth and more being educated about how the plain people feels about politics and international affairs. And besides, Mom, dont forget that I have got a feller by the name of Walter that I am someday going to marry even if he is only a poor shipping-clerk in Camden and that ought to be enough for my Pop to fret over.

P. S. Well, I have just got home from another dinner and Mr. Edgerton has told me how I come to lose out with the Spokesman. He wouldnt have nothing to do with my ideas for the debt settlement because He says it aint a way to collect the money but only to spend it and the Spokesman dont believe in spending no money that you dont have to. He says most of the plain people dont care nothing about art and they wouldnt approve of people gadding about Europe and as for drinking their wines the Spokesman jumps a yard any time anybody tries to get him to say anything about prohibition one way or the other excepting only that laws is laws and all good Americans should obey them.

Mr. Edgerton says that if I am going to be useful to him I have got to learn the rules of this game and one of them is that the Spokesman will never take sides in no dispute. It is His business to be popular and you can never get Him to say nothing that is going to get a lot of people down on Him. Ever since He has been in politics which is since he was a boy He has spent all his time dodging the tricks of people that was trying to get Him to put His foot into something and He has got to be the most cautious Side-stepper they have ever had in the game.

Well Mom we got to gossiping about how things is there in the great white house where the Spokesman lives and gee it is comical it is so much like the Elite Beauty Parlors with everybody watching everybody else and pulling and hauling and intreeging against them. The Spokesman you see is just like a King; and all of the courtiers wants to keep his favor and if He gives three minutes more of His time to one of them the other one retires into the corner and has a fit of the weeps or else he goes off and tries to find something bad about the first one, that he can have his great aunt whisper to the Spokesman’s second cousin.

Mr. Edgerton says that this great man got into office by a fluke because he wasnt never meant to get in but only to be Vice-Spokesman to keep him on the shelf. The Vice-Spokesman it seems dont have nothing to say or if he does nobody listens to him. But now He’s got in, and He’s brought a little bunch of people along that used to be his angels back in the State of North Carolina or wherever it is up in the icy North where he comes from. These are rich men that used to pay the fare of this Spokesman when he was a little Feller, and was a sort of Office-boy for them in politics, to run the state like they wanted it.

But now He is got to be the greatest Man in the whole world and gee they cant quite bring themselves to believe it and they dont know quite how to take it. They cant get used to the idea of taking orders from what used to be their Office-boy and the Spokesman He cant get used to giving no orders because of course He always feels respectful to these gentlemen because they have got so much money and always have paid His way. And at the same time they are scared to death for fear He might get the big head and take the notion to be the Boss. And each of them hates all the others like poison because each of them is trying to shove the others away from the Spokesman’s elbow.

So that is how it goes, and Mr. Edgerton says I am not to get discouraged if I dont always have my way about what the Spokesman says. I can be sure that I will win out in the end because I represent the plain people and they have got the votes and everybody knows they are the real boss. And Mr. Edgerton says that just now what the Spokesman is worried about is what to do about the Reds that seem to be making an awful lot of fuss and what would I think he had ought to tell the world about it?

And gee Mom you can imagine how fine that was because it was one of the things that Pop has wrote to me about. So I says, “Them fellers had everyone ought to be sent to jail.”

“Yes,” says Mr. Edgerton, “but the trouble is that dont seem to work out right because then they have a trial and it puts their ideas on the front page of the papers instead of the ideas of the Spokesman. It’s kind of provoking but it works just the opposite of how it had ought to.”

“Well,” says I, “This much is plain if them fellers dont like the way this country is run they had ought to get out of it.”

“Yes,” says Mr. Edgerton, “I have said that and we sent a couple of hundred of them off to Roossia a few years ago. But you see there is an awful lot of them and you’ve no idea what it costs or how it hurts the Spokesman to have to pay travelling expenses for a lot of Bolshivikis.”

“Well,” says I, “if I had my way I’d cut their journey short they should be sent to sea in ships of stone with sails of lead.”

Mom you must tell Pop not to send me no old ones because that sounded fine to me but it seems that it is a wheeze in fact Mr. Edgerton was the man that had wrote it several years back he explained. “You see,” he said, “before I come to the Spokesman I was shirt-stuffer for a big admiral and that was the sentence that made his reputation.”

“A shirt-stuffer?” says I.

Says he, “That is what we call ourselves us fellows that make the big stuffed shirts that the public admires.” It didnt seem to me that was a very respectful way to talk about an admiral but I didnt say nothing because I was trying to remember the rest of what Pop had wrote.

“Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “I wish you would tell me how anybody that has got sense enough to make a speech can be such a fool as to believe in dividing up because can’t they see that if you was to do it it wouldnt be a week before the smart ones like you and me would have it all again?”

“Well,” he says, “the fact is that a lot of these Reds dont want to divide up their idea is just the opposite they want to concentrate the ownership and have the government run things.”

“Yes,” I says, “and wouldnt that be great?” I says. “Imagine the Elite Beauty Parlors being run by the government and all us girls setting with our feet up on the top of the tables instead of doing our work!”

“Well,” says he, “as a matter of fact wouldnt there be a lot of customers come in to see that sight?”

But the subject is too serious for kidding so I says, “How much liberty would us girls have left, if we all had to be government help? And who would give us our jobs would we have to go to some politician from North Carolina that has got the Spokesman’s ear? No, Mr. Edgerton, the prosperity of this country is based on individual effort and freedom of everybody to make his own way in the world. Just compare our wealth with what they have got over in them bureaucratic and Socialistic lands overseas.”

Mom, that was an awful mouthful, but I had learned it word for word out of Pop’s letter, I got it off without a slip and Mr. Edgerton was very much impressed he stopped joking and sat and thought it over and he says, “Yes, Miss Riggs, I am inclined to think that is sound doctrine and a good illustration. I think that will serve admirably for the talk which the Spokesman is to give to the reporters in the morning. They have asked Him several embarrassing questions about the big banker in his cabinet who has been let off a lot of his income taxes, and these ideas of yours I am sure He will consider much more suitable for public discussion. I think I had better run over and see Him at once and make the suggestion.”

So then we gets up to go and then oh Mom a most dreadful embarrassing thing happens. Mr. Edgerton goes for to pay the bill for our dinner and the coffee and the other things in coffee cups that we has had and he takes out his leather wallet and finds that the least he has is a hundred dollar bill. He takes it out and gee it most burns my eyesight it is more money than I ever seen all at once in my whole life before—just a little bit more than I earn in a month only I get it by the week and it has started to go before it comes. Well the waiter looks at it and says somethink about not thinking they’d have change for that at the desk and Mr. Edgerton says to me, “Do you happen to have a smaller bill with you Miss Riggs?”

And gee there I am knowing that I have got just exactly seventeen cents in my purse! So I have to think quick and I says that I dont think I have anything smaller than a ten-spot myself. And then the boob waiter busts in and says they wont have no trouble in changing that at the desk! So then I have to open my purse and play the game of being very much surprised that I have left my ten-spot at home and of course I am turned red all the way down into my blouse because how will Mr. Edgerton have any respect for my opinions about world finance if he knows that I have to go round the day before payday with only a few coppers to buy my lunch with?

Your worried

Mame.

LETTER VI

IN WHICH I PUT ON THE GLAD RAGS

Dear Mom:

Well I am glad the family finds my letters interesting these things is sure different from anything that ever happened to me before and I guess to any girl from Camden New Jersey.

Well, I am having a funny time right now in the Elite Beauty Parlors. The girls is just ate up with curiosity they know I have got some big fellow on my string somebody seen me with him somewhere and they cant make out why I wont tell. They say I’m a boob to think I can hide him they will sure track him down but I just laugh at them. There is an extension phone in Madame Lafferty’s private office and whenever I am asked to the phone she is always listening in but all she hears is that a gentleman named Mr. Brown says for me to meet him at the usual place and that dont tell her much. Sometimes I write these little notes to you in between customers, and of course that intreegs the girls a lot too and Ada Huggins—her that has changed her name to Adaire the silly fool—she says, “What is it Mame are you writing your mamewars?” That is supposed to be smart but it aint so very.

Well just now the phone rung and it was Mr. Edgerton, and he asked me if I could get off at five this afternoon and meet him and of course that wasnt easy because it is our busiest hour but he said it was a very urgent matter so I said I would try my best to be there. And then I went to ask the Madame and gee she was sour she says, “What is this that I am running a beauty parlor or a date ranch?” You see she pretends the girls aint supposed to meet the customers outside but gee what a howl there would be if I was to ask for enough wages to buy my own dinners! And we all know she goes out herself and meets a gent with a glass in one eye and his hair plastered over his bald head, he calls himself Count Skrimsky but I’m telling you he’s no count in any way you mean it. Well I says she can dock my pay or I’ll stay two hours of my afternoon off and then she tries to find out who is the gentleman and I tell her it is a government matter and I have been forbid to say and you can imagine how much pleased that makes her!

P. S. Oh Mom I have just had the most wonderful adventure that ever happened to a girl. Mr. Edgerton knew just what he had in mind when he got me to meet him at five o’clock it was to get to some store before it shut up! Oh Mom he must of saw that my purse was empty the last time we went out and he must of got sorry about it. Anyhow we strolled down the street and there was the Bon Ton Store with all the lovely things in the windows and he kind of led me over to look and he says, “They make lots of pretty things now-a-days dont they.” And I says, “Yes, they do,” but kind of feeble because I wouldnt have him think I was thinking I would ever like to own such things. But he says, “Let’s us go in and have a look at them.”

So we went in and he went to the suit department and he says to the clerk, “My daughter finds the winters in Washington more severe than she expected and she wants to get something nice and warm,” he says, just like that and gee I nearly faints at the nerve of him. But of course I have got to go through with it so I says, “Oh, no, Papa, not now!” but he says, “Yes, right now, I insist.”

So the girl takes one look at him and starts to bringing out the expensive things and I gasps, “Oh, that will cost too much!” But he says, “You let me tend to this daughter,” and so of course all I can do is to stand there. And so he gets me a tailored suit brown like I had on but oh what a difference there can be in clothes! It is soft and fuzzy and warm like it was an overcoat and yet it is lighter than my old suit!

And then he says, “We shall have to have a hat and things to match this suit,” and then I starts to argue that my old hat will do but he says it wont and before I get through he takes me round to the shoe department and the glove counter—it is after the hours and the place is closed and the clerks is tired and looking cross but he cheers them up with a tip and so we finish the rounds. And I keep them all on and when I am going out you would not know it is the same girl that come in. The clerk wants to know where they shall send the old things and I don’t dare to give the address because you see it had ought to be the name of some swell hotel so I says I am moving and I will send for them; and of course I will send myself tomorrow.

Well, Mom, I am so rattled I can hardly talk and I says, “Mr. Edgerton, this aint right I hadnt ought to of let you do it.” But he says real serious that the ideas I have give him is worth what he has paid and there wasnt no other way he could of got them. “But I didnt expect to be paid for them,” I says and he says, “Well I am paid for them myself and why should you work for nothing?” he says. “I have got to keep close to the great heart of the plain people,” he says, “and to know how they feel and talk and how else am I to do it? The only thing you got to be sure is that getting fixed up swell dont spoil you so that you forget how the plain people feel.”

But I says, “No you dont need to worry about that,” I says, “because I got my mother and father and my kid brothers and sisters back in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey and how could I forget how they feel?”

“Well then,” says he, “it’s all right and you can go on telling me and I will tell it to the Spokesman and He will tell it to the newspaper reporters and they will tell it to the papers and the papers will tell it to the gas house district of Camden New Jersey.”

“But,” says I, “What will the missus think about it your spending so much money on a manicure girl?”

“She aint going to know about it,” he says. “I have paid cash and I dont suppose you will tell her.”

“Trust me!” I says. “But some of your friends—”

“If my friends was to see me with you now it would be easier for me to get away with it I could say you was the daughter of some famous diplomat or of a senator at the very least.” And of course that made me feel happy and just then we come to a movie parlor and he says, “We have got to learn how to wear our good clothes,” he says, “so let’s go in and see the latest thing in Hollywood manners.”

So in we go and there is a picture oh Mom the loveliest story about a poor miners’ daughter in the hills that is kidnapped by a moonshiner that is an old-fashioned name for a boot-legger and she is rescued by the handsome young son of the mine-owner that happens to be visiting the mine and he comes to love her in the end and they get married in the loveliest palace all white with sunshine and roses. And if I had of saw that yesterday I would of said it was too good to be true but now it all seemed like it was me and I felt such thrills running over me and I felt so warm and I whispered to Mr. Edgerton to thank him several times and I felt just like he really was my father like he said.

But then I got scared because of course he aint my father but he’s a man that aint happy with his wife and I am a girl that is promised to be married some day a long ways off to a poor but honest shipping-clerk in Camden New Jersey. And so I have got to keep telling myself that my job with Mr. Edgerton is to educate him so that he can educate the Spokesman that is the greatest Man in the whole world and has the job of educating the greatest people in the whole world.

But oh Mom it is hard to be a girl and to be young and to love pretty things and never to be able to have none unless you go without your lunch every day for a month or two. I go up to that little box of a room that I live in, and fry myself a frankfurter or some hamburger on a tiny oil stove and gee I get sorry for myself and I get sorry for poor Walter that thinks I am going to marry him some day and I am of course but oh Mom us plain people do have to pay a lot for what we learn!

Well we went into a restaurant and as soon as Mr Edgerton had ordered some dinner I says real determined, “We have got to get down to business now because I will not feel happy unless I give you some real good ideas to pay for all this money you have spent.” So he says that the Spokesman likes my ideas about the Reds and how to hold them down, but He thinks that just now it would be better not to hammer them too hard because this country has got a lot of machinery and things that it has got to sell and them Bolshivikis has got a lot of gold and crown jewels that they want to exchange for ten thousand tractors that is made by a friend of the Spokesman that helped him a lot to get elected.

“Gee,” I says, “I thought them Roossian fellers had got all them gold and jewels by stealing them!”

And Mr. Edgerton says that is so and perhaps we hadnt ought to take it but the trouble is if we dont sell the tractors the tractor factory will have to shut down and that will leave a lot of good honest American working people to starve in the middle of the winter. “And so you see,” says he, “how complicated these here international affairs is.”

And I says, “My God I hardly know how to think my way around in such a mix-up. That is almost worse than the problem about getting the debts paid,” I says, “for I was going to say that to make up with them Bolshivikis would be like shaking hands with murder.” And Mr. Edgerton says, “Yes, it was Lord George that said that a few years ago over in England.” And gee Mom you have sure got to keep Pop from sending me old ones else I’ll have to stop using his ideas and think them all up for myself.

Well I done the best I could in a hurry. He said the Spokesman was very unhappy because of the way the prohibitionists was fussing because the boot-leggers wasnt stopped the dries didnt like it because the job of enforcing the law was left to that banker that is in the cabinet—I never can remember his name but I keep thinking of Cantelope though that dont sound right. Well anyhow this Mr. Cantelope is the biggest manufacturer of whiskey in the country and the prohibitionists dont seem to think that he is the best one to catch the bootleggers and I says, “Well, you have heard the old saying about setting a thief to catch a thief.” And Mr. Edgerton thought that was clever but he didnt think it was just the way the Spokesman would want to defend His friend the great banker in the cabinet.

And so there it was Mom I couldnt think of nothing else so I have fell down complete and Mr. Edgerton will think that getting these new clothes has made me stop being able to feel with the plain people. So please ask Pop to see if he can think of any reason why a great whisky-maker should be hired by the government to stop the whisky-business, and if he can, to write it to me quick. But please dont let him send nothing that he has read in the papers about it because Mr. Edgerton is sure to say that is old stuff.

P. S. Again I been thinking it over and this idea has hit me that maybe Pop aint really got any ideas at all except what he gets out of the papers and if so I have got to do this job all alone. I am going to talk it over with the girls in the beauty parlor because I am sure they dont read nothing in the papers except the divorces and the crimes and the beauty hints the same as what I done before I was invited to help the Spokesman with his speeches.

Your anxious

Mame.

LETTER VII

IN WHICH I AM PAID COMPLIMENTS

Dear Mom:

You should of been in the Elite Beauty Parlors this a. m. to see what happened when I walked in with my new costume. I have got to wear it to work you see because I never know when Mr. Edgerton will give me a ring on the phone. You would of thought the girls had never seen no real swell clothes in their lives before they just let out one yell, and then of course they wanted the whole story when and where and how and especially how much. And when I wouldnt tell them I was a cat and Hattie Schoenstein—she has had a mad on me ever since I told her that the French way of her name would be Hotaire—well she says, “How much did you pay the gentleman for that?”

I says, “I paid him some valuable ideas,” and of course they all thought that was the funniest joke they ever heard for how could the poor sillies imagine that I was being consulted about what the greatest Man in the whole world was to say twiced a week to the newspaper reporters of the whole world? If I had of told them that they would of busted with laughing.

But say Mom it is sure wonderful to be dressed right up to the minute you may say what you please but there aint any feeling like it. Already today three gentlemen have asked me will I go out to dinner with them and I have had to tell them that I have a steady which is the easiest way of getting out of it as I have to be here whenever Mr. Edgerton needs me.

Well I have got the afternoon paper, and I see the Spokesman has not said what I advised Him to say about the Reds. What He did say was so much wiser I could never of thought of it myself and it made me have a great reverence for Him. He says that the Roossians should be allowed to buy our tractors because we have got to preserve freedom of trade because that is the great principle upon which American prosperity is based. And of course I can see that for if I had of went into that Bon Ton Store with Mr. Edgerton and the clerk had of told me that they wouldnt sell me no suit because maybe they didnt like the looks of me or something why where would I of been then? And so the Spokesman said we would not stop the people that come over here from Roossia to buy things but only them that had come to teach us ideas that was dangerous.

I will tell you something funny that will show you what a wonderful thing it is that the Spokesman is doing in educating all the people in ideas that is safe. I got some of the girls to talking about international affairs this morning because you see I want to find out what it is that the plain people think so that I can tell Mr. Edgerton and he can tell the Spokesman. I asked them about this business about letting the Roossians come over here to buy things and they all got mad and they says no we don’t want none of them dirty Bolshivikis over here they has went and nationalized all the women in Roossia and we dont want none of that in America.

“Then you dont believe in freedom of trade?” I says and Florabelle McGinnis she flares up, “I believe in every girl having a right to choose her own feller,” she says, “and if that aint freedom of trade then what is?”

Well when I come home from lunch I had the paper with that interview that the Spokesman had give and I hands it to Florabelle and I says, “See here, the Spokesman has been talking about what you said.” And so she read it and a little later I hears her talking with Ada Huggins and she says, “Well if them Roossians has got the money and its good money why let them come in I say and buy what they want because after all freedom of trade is the great principle upon which American prosperity is based.” Just like that she said it Mom as if it was her own idea but she had just took it up because she seen it in the paper the poor silly. But you can see how very important it is that I should study these questions and get them right so that I can know what to tell Mr. Edgerton to tell the Spokesman to tell the Floradumbelles.

Another idea was in that interview and a very important and wise idea as I can see. The Spokesman says there is another great principle upon which American prosperity is based and that is freedom of opinion; everybody has got the right to say what they think and so we will have a chance to find out what ideas is the best. I read that to some of the girls so as to see what they would say and Hotaire—she is always looking to say something different from me, so as to put me into a hole—she says, “Well, if he thinks that, why is he scared to let them Roossians come in and say their ideas?”

And did you ever hear anything so silly as that letting them Bolshivikis come in and shoot off their faces! “Well but why not?” she says persistent like.

I says, “Why you poor simp dont you know them fellers brings in a lot of money to try to tear down our government?”

“Well,” she says, “and can they do it?”

And I says, “No of course they cant do it.”

And then says she, “Then why do we have to be so scared of them?”

“Scared?” I says. “Who’s talking about being scared?”

“Well then,” she keeps on, “why not let them shoot their faces off?”

“But you simp,” I says, “them fellers would come in here and buy printing presses and stir up our foreign labor.”

And she says, “Well if their money is good to buy tractors why shouldnt it be good to buy presses?”

And so I gets hot under the collar and I says, “You talk like you was one of them Bolshivikis yourself,” I says, “and you had ought to be shut up and not allowed to talk no such rotten ideas.”

“Oh so that’s all you believe in free speech!” she says.

And just then the Madame comes along and she sees we are having a row and she gives a “Shush!” and looks a few daggers at us as she goes to welcome a customer. And that is the way it goes with we girls we are just supposed to sit here and shine people’s fingers and never open our mouths at all. We have got no more rights than if we was so many polishing machines and I tell you Mom I sometimes think it is more than I can stand. Some day when the Madame gets off one of her shushes at me I’m going to bust loose and tell her what I think of her and her ideas that she can dictate to free Americans the way we talk and the way we dress and the way we do our hair.

If that ever happens I’m telling you that Lafferty lady will get the jolt of her sweet life because I have been talking to the other girls and they all feel like I do and I’ll bet if I was to give a little time to it I could get them all to stand together and win some rights for ourselves. Gee Mom if I could only get a few dollars ahead some time so that I could have a little nerve! But it’s the same with all of we girls our last nickle is gone before the end of the week. We had ought to have somebody to stake us so that we could afford to strike and not be starved into giving up! But of course there aint anybody interested in helping poor working girls to get their rights.

P. S. Well I have just come back from having dinner with Mr. Edgerton. We went to a pretty swell place because he says I am looking so nice now that no other sort of place would do for me. And he says I dont never need to worry about what it costs because my ideas is worth it to him he has never saw the Spokesman so pleased as with the ideas I have give to Him lately; he says the Spokesman almost smiled He was so pleased and once He made a remark that He didnt have to make and that is something that does not happen once in a month.

Of course I wanted to know so I says, “What was the remark?”

And he says, “Why, he says, ‘I went to church yesterday.’” And Mr. Edgerton of course wanted to be polite so he says, “Who preached?” And the Spokesman says, “Dr. Wringum.” And Mr. Edgerton says, “Was it a good sermon?” And the Spokesman says, “Yes.” And Mr. Edgerton says, “What did he preach about?” And the Spokesman says, “Sin.” And Mr. Edgerton says, “What did he say about it?” And the Spokesman says, “He didnt approve of it.” And Mr. Edgerton says to me, “That was the end of the conversation.”

Mr. Edgerton laughed like he thought there was something funny about that but I didnt see nothing funny and I says, “Well, but that is right ain’t it? You wouldnt of expected a preacher would of approved of sin?”

And then Mr. Edgerton looks at me like he was studying my face and he says, “It is wonderful how exactly your mind is like the Spokesman’s.” And of course that was a tremendous compliment and I felt all flustered and says, “Just how is that?” and he says, “You have a serious mind,” he says. “You have never wasted your time on foolishness.”

“No,” I says, “that aint quite so but when it comes to serious things like teaching the whole American people about sin,” I says, “nobody would want to make a joke about that.”

And he says, “There is some evil people that might, but you wouldn’t, and that is why you understand the mind of the Spokesman and He almost always likes your ideas when I tell them to Him.” So Mom you can imagine how near to Heaven I felt.

Well then we talked about what the Spokesman had said about freedom of trade and of speech and Mr. Edgerton says that one of them Bolshiviki fellers has just sent the Spokesman a telegram saying that since He has come to believe in free speech wont He please let out some of the fellers that is in jail for practicing it. So there it is you see just like I said to Hotaire, how dangerous them fellers is. I says something that Pop had wrote me, “Liberty dont mean license.” But Mr. Edgerton says that is an old one too it seems that all Pop’s ideas is old.

So I says right out of my own ideas I says, “Well I’ll say this that if a government aint got the right to protect itself, then what is it for?” And Mr. Edgerton went up into the air again and he says that is one of the proofs that I have got a mind just like the Spokesman, I would sure see that in His answer to the Bolshiviki feller only of course He wont answer the feller.

Well there we was chatting away as happy as you please and having such a good dinner too when all of a sudden I notices there is a feller sitting at the next table all by himself and he dont seem to have a thing to do but listen to what we are saying. I gets him out of the corner of my eye and then I writes a note on the menu and shoves it over to Mr. Edgerton, “We are being listened to.” So then he begins to talk about the unusual severe winter we have been having and by and by he gets a chance to look at the other feller who is attending to what is in his own plate real hard. And after that we dont talk no more international affairs.

Well when we get up to go we have hardly got out of the door before I see the other feller getting up and when we are walking down the street there he is following us. So we stop to look in a shop-window and I see him stop too and I says to Mr. Edgerton, “We are being shadowed. I must get on a street-car right quick and you get on another going the other way and we will see what happens.”

So we shook hands and I run and caught a car going my way home and that is all I know about it for I didnt see the feller on my car. But oh Mom do you suppose that Mr. Edgerton’s wife can of heard how he is taking out a manicurist to dinner? Or do you suppose it can be some of them Bolshivikis that is trying to undermine the government by keeping me from helping the Spokesman keep close to the great heart of the plain people?

Your scared

Mame.

LETTER VIII

IN WHICH I PEEK INTO A PALACE

Dear Mom:

If you have got the same habit that I have got of reading everything in the papers that the Spokesman says you will of saw how many times He says the things I have said for Him to say. The last time was that about the government having the right to protect itself against fellers that wants to talk about over-throwing it. It come out in the papers just like I said it to Mr. Edgerton.

Yesterday there wasnt so much news only a story about how the Spokesman had been delayed for a full minute after He had got into His automobile by the Spokeslady having to coax Her dog to get in too. It made a sweet story for I like to think of Them having a pet that They love.

Today there is another story very interesting. It seems that the Spokesman has got to have exercise but He is too busy to go and get it so up there in the great white house where He stays they have set up an electric camelephant, that works by machinery and every morning He gets up on top of it and gives Him a nice ride and shakes Him up and starts everything inside Him. I think that is a wonderful idea but I should think it would be rather tiresome riding on a camelephant and not getting nowhere or any change of scenery like on a real camelephant. But I suppose the Spokesman would be too busy to look at the scenery anyhow, He has got to be thinking all the time about what He is going to say to the reporters when they come to listen to Him again.

There was a customer left a magazine in the Elite Beauty Parlors and in it I see a picture of the Spokesman. Of course it is not a picture of Him riding the camelephant but it just shows His face. But I cut it out and took it home and pasted it on a piece of cardboard and I have set it up on my bureau so that I can look at Him while I am thinking up things that I can tell Mr. Edgerton to tell Him to say to the reporters. I wish that Mr. Edgerton had not told me one thing about Him that I find myself always thinking while I look at the picture that He is like a singed cat because He is better than He looks. Of course I know there is movie actors that is more sheiks but they have not got the great ideas of the Spokesman.

P. S. Well I have went to dinner with Mr. Edgerton again and it had to be a cheap place because of that scare that we got from seeing a man that we thought was following us. Mr. Edgerton says that he does not know any more about it because the man did not follow him on the street car. It might be that his wife is having him shadowed because she is jealous about him giving so much time to trying to understand the plain people. He says that she is now certain that a wart which she has got on her shoulder is turning into angina pectoris and when he tries to persuade her that it is not so she cries and becomes very excited and says that he no longer loves her and that she knows he is only waiting for her to die so that he can run off with some peroxide blonde. I asks him if that means me and he says that my guess about it is better than any man’s.

The other thing that it might be he says some of his enemies might be having him watched so as to get something on him. I says, “Have you got enemies?” And he says, “Up there at the great white house I have not got anything else and neither has anybody else because everyone is hating everyone else and watching for a chance to lift his scalp off.”

There is a dozen secretaries up there it seems but Mr. Edgerton is the special one indeed he is really not a secretary at all he is just that on the payroll but they dont pay him very much and the greater part of his pay comes to him on the side out of funds which is put up by business men that want to have the say about things. And what Mr. Edgerton is paid for is to be a kind of guardian to the Spokesman to tell Him what to say that He wouldn’t know if He wasnt told. And of course Mr. Edgerton has got the right to come into the big white house at all hours of the day or night and it is not many that have got that right and them that have not got it are intreeging and trying to pull down they that have.

He said again that it is just like a palace with a king and his courtiers but as I was never in a palace I could not tell. And he told me about the people he has to deal with up there in the big white house and of course I listened very eager not because I like to gossip but because I have got to understand about these people if I am going to be one that has got the job of teaching the Spokesman.

Mr. Edgerton says there is an old gentleman by the name of Mr. Prows that is a sort of grandaddy to the great Man. He owns a big department store back in the home town and it runs itself and all the old gentleman has got to do is to play around in the big white house and enjoy the thrills of power. People come to him that wants this and that and he listens and looks wise and says that he will see what can be done and he toddles round and ask questions of this and that and by and by he whispers into the Spokesman’s ear that the welfare of the party depends upon Pete Whizzle being made deputy collector of customs at Skunk Center Montana and if the Spokesman does it then the old gentleman is proud and happy for a week.

And there is another guy that is a big mill-owner by the name of Senator Buttles and he has been the Spokesman’s real boss and now is the political manager and he is supposed to run the machine and all the other politicians and the other senators. But he is a flop at the job because you see he is one of these hard-boiled guys that is used to running a factory and to say for things to be done just so and if you dont like it you can get the hell out of here. But the other senators aint used to the job being done that way they is mostly old guys of the sporting sort that buy their bootleg liquor right in the lobby and they dont like the Spokesman and His blue-nose cheese-paring crowd that He has brought along from the artic regions and there is war between them and Mr. Edgerton has to work hard to keep it from busting into the papers some day.

And Mr. Edgerton says the Spokesman is very worried about that story about the camelephant. He thinks maybe the people will think it is not dignified for the greatest Man in the world to be riding on a camelephant in His pajamas in His bedroom. And I says, “Well I should of thought that is just where they would think He should ride,” I says. “The undignified part would be if He was to ride a camelephant on the street in His pajamas.” And Mr. Edgerton says that is quite true and I always think of things in just the right way and if I am sure that the plain people will see it that way the Spokesman will be less unhappy.

Mr. Edgerton says there is nothing in the whole world that worries the Spokesman so much as being made fun of because He is very serious about His job and wants people to be serious about Him. And I says, “Of course He would have to be,” I says, “for it is no joke to know that a hundred millions of people is waiting for you to teach them what to think and a Man that has got to talk to all the reporters of all the newspapers of the whole world has got a job that will keep Him looking serious.”

“Well that is just what it does,” says Mr. Edgerton and he says, “You feel quite sure that it wont hurt Him about the camelephant?”

I says, “Anybody that laughs about such a thing will be no good American,” I says. “The plain people like I know back in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey,” I says, “will think that a Man that has to teach them and govern them and manage their international affairs should be a sober Man and a moral Man with no time for foolishness,” I says. “I dont suppose He rides that camelephant for fun,” I says.

And Mr. Edgerton says, “No it is for His liver.”

And I says, “Exactly He has got to take care of His liver of course,” I says. “And while He rides He will have His mind on the government and He will not let Himself be worried by no laughing jackasses along the roadside.”

Mr. Edgerton says that when the Spokesman saw the story in print He was fearful peeved and could not talk about nothing else all day He demanded to know who had give that camelephant away to the reporters and He told Mr. Edgerton to go and find out. And Mr. Edgerton went first to Mr. Grandaddy Prows and the old gentleman said he was not at liberty to say but in strict confidence he had an idea that it was Senator Buttles that had give it out. And then Mr. Edgerton went to Senator Buttles and asked him who had give it out and Senator Buttles said that he was not at liberty to say but in strict confidence he had an idea that it was Mr. Prows that had give it out. And gee Mom would you think that a palace would be so much like the Elite Beauty Parlors?

Well Mom I could of listened all day to international affairs like this but I had got nervous about all this intreeging and I looks about and there at one of the tables is sitting the same feller that I seen at the table the other night trying to listen in on our talk. “Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “we are being shadowed again.” And after that he was so uneasy that his mind was not on what I was saying. And he says, “When we go out you must let me put you into a taxi because it will not be so easy for him to follow you and I will go another way and lose him in the crowd,” he says.

So he gives me money for the fare and we goes out and he puts me into a cab and away I go and pretty soon I look back and there is the lights of another car behind us and so I watches and that car follows us all the time so I tell my driver not to take me no farther but to let me out and I will save most of my fare. And when I get out I see that the other car stops too and waits to see where I am going and then it follows slow.

I says to myself, “I will block that little game,” so I slips into a big hotel right quick. I can do that all right because I have got on my swell new clothes that Mr. Edgerton give me so I look like I belonged in one of them places. I goes into an elevator and slips off at the mezzanine floor and sits there a while in one of the soft plush seats and a gentleman comes along and spreads his feathers in front of me—you know they calls them places “Peacock Alley”—but I goes on staring straight in front of me and he sees that I am not his pea-hen and so he goes away. This is not the man that is following Mr. Edgerton and I you understand but just some feller that is intreeged by my swell new clothes.

I dont see any more of the one that was following us so I go out by another entrance and get home all right. But gee Mom we are really being spied on and I wonder how it is they can find us whether they have got the telephone wires tapped at the Elite Beauty Parlors or whether they have got one of the girls hired to tip them off to my dates. You never can tell when you are living in the great world and have the job of deciding what is to be taught to the whole American people. Gee Mom it is more thrilling than any movie that I ever was at!

Your excited

Mame.

LETTER IX

IN WHICH I DON’T GET WET

Dear Mom:

Well, I suppose you have saw in the papers how they are making a lot of fun of the Spokesman because of the story that He has got a camelephant in His room, so that He can get His exercise by riding on it every morning in His pajamas. It is like Mr. Edgerton said He was afraid it would be they are getting smart about it and not taking Him respectful like a great Man like Him had ought to be took.

This a. m. there was a girl in the Elite Beauty Parlors that had a paper and there was no customers so she was reading about it and then she begun telling it and they was all chuckling. It seems this smart aleck in the paper was saying that this camelephant went about the room with the Spokesman on the top of it and that it had got unruly and had bumped Him against the chandelier and the aleck said the camelephant was built so the electric contact was got through spurs and that you stopped it by pulling on a pair of rains and saying, “Ho!” And he said that why He had got a camelephant not a zebray was because a camelephant don’t have to be watered more than onced in three weeks and also because it was the emblem of the dries and so on a lot of silly stuff that it is a shame to write about a great Man that has got the hard job of governing and teaching the whole country.

Well it made me hot to listen to them sillies giggling there and I says, “That is all a bunch of nonsense,” I says, “that camelephant does not travel but it stays on one place and it goes when you press a button and the reason it is a camelephant not a zebray is got nothing to do with prohibition,” I says, “but because it is ordered for His liver and the camelephant is a beast that has got a very bumpy gate and it shakes you a lot when you ride on him.”

Well and of course that got the lot of them peeved and Ada Huggins the silly that wants me to call her Adaire only I won’t fool with such nonsense she says, “What do you know about it?” And I says, “Never you mind what I know,” I says, “but I know a lot more than you think I know.” “Maybe you have been invited up to that big white house to visit Him,” she says and I says, “Maybe I have been and maybe I will be I aint telling it to you.”

Well of course that intreegs them a lot, for they have saw there is something mysterious in my life and they would give a day’s pay to know but I dont say nothing because it is a state secret as Mr. Edgerton says and my power to educate him and the Spokesman would be gone if anybody knowed that I was doing it he says the newspapers would not respect the ideas that I give them if it was knowed that they come from a manicure girl in the Elite Beauty Parlors.

P. S. Well Mom I have saw Mr. Edgerton again and it is getting to be very exciting because there is sure some enemy that is shadowing us and trying to find out what we are doing. Mr. Edgerton says whenever he comes out of the big white house there is somebody following him but he managed to shook him off and we had another dinner in the Greek restaurant where they cook things with mutton suet and he told me all what is happening. And it seems that it is very dreadful because the papers all over the country is laughing about that camelephant and telling all kinds of silly things like that it makes an awful racket while it runs or that the Spokesman has got a secretary riding with him and dictates his male while he goes out for a camelephant gallop.

Mr. Edgerton says he give positive orders to the reporters of all the newspapers of the country that nothing more was to be sent out on that camelephant but it done no good because the editors was all telegraphing for more and even cabling from South Africa and China and if the editors didnt get no more they would make it up anyhow. And the Spokesman is so worried that He has not been able to think about governing the country for the past few days but only scolding about who let the camelephant out of the stable.

And at last it was found out who done it and it was Mr. Grandaddy Prows that done it and they had an awful scene and the old gentleman wept tears and he said that he hadn’t meant no harm but he only thought that the plain people would want to know all about the homelife of their great Man and would like to read about His camelephant just as they liked to read about the Spokeslady’s pet dog and how the family automobile had been held up a whole minute after the Spokesman had got into it while the Spokeslady was coaxing Her dog to get in.

And the Spokesman said it was not the same at all because when He was in the automobile with His wife and Her dog He had something more than His pajamas on, and so it was proper for the public to think about Him then. He said that Grandaddy Prows had proved himself without discretion and that his usefulness to the Spokesman was ended and the poor old gentleman went off with his heart broken and now it is announced that him and his wife is starting on a European tour that he is doing some highly secret diplomatical errands for the Spokesman.

And of course that is very sad and I am upset too because Mr. Edgerton says he cannot get the Spokesman to think about international affairs at all no more. The reason for the worry he says is that the Spokesman got into this great office by accident and He knows that He is wearing shoes that is many times too big for Him and He is scared to death that some day the people may get onto the real size of His feet. And I says, “Oh that explains it then because I could not see why He was so afraid of being saw in His pajamas. Because after all I have saw lots of pictures of screen actors in their pajamas and I have thought they was lovely. And when you see the pictures of defendants and corespondents and other people in divorce actions they do not look so bad at all in pajamas,” I says.

Well the big white house is a mean place to live right now Mr. Edgerton says with everybody in the dumps or scared and anybody can get rich quick that can find out a way to get the American people to talk about any other animal in the zoo but the camelephant. I says, “Mr. Edgerton, it’s not that I want money,” I says, “because I am willing to serve my country for the love of it and I think it had ought to be possible for the Spokesman to do His great work without being bothered,” I says, “so let’s you and me figure out a way to get the people to appreciate and love Him again.”

So then he looks relieved because he has come to have great confidence in me because the training I got in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey has been better for this job than what he got when he was in college. So he says, “All right Miss Riggs let us do it. What do you suggest?”