Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 119, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1915 — SEEING LIFE with JOHN HENRY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SEEING LIFE with JOHN HENRY

by Geoige V.Hobart

Coins Shopping

SAY! Did you ever take your life in your right hand and go shopping with your wife? .< I tried it the other day and I’ve been bearing voices ever since. When I say “shopping” I don’t mean that simple everyday gag of bursting suddenly in upon the sleepy floorwalker in a delicatessen parlor and with languid elbows leaning over the remnants of a once beautiful cheese while he, cruelly separates four kippered herring from the bosom of a large and loving family. Nix—l mean Big League shopping. I mean that kind of shopping that women go in training for two weeks in advance; high-class, expert shopping, where important money changes hands; * the kind of shopping that wives look forward to with dreamy eyes and live ever after on the memories; the shopping that sweeps a husband off his feet and makes him long to be a dusky-hued postmaster in No. 8 township, Samoan Islands, where the fashion in fig leaves is permanent and money is a myth. “John,” said Peaches, the , other morning, “I want you to go to the stores with me today. I have a lot of shopping to do and you can be such a help to me, because —” “Wait a minute, friend wife,” I broke in. “What have I done that you should wish such a calamity on me? Tell, me to go out and get for my personal use an attack of inflammatory rheumatism and I’ll do so; ask me to try to'catch a street car at the corner of Broadway* and Fifty-third Street and I’ll work hard at the job up to the time a murderous taxicab climbs my front elevation and maims me for life—but don’t, Oh! wife, don’t ask me to go shopping with you!” “Nonsense!” she gurgled. “I can’t go alone, can I? And, besides, you must help me select two new gowns at the Maison de Splash—l must have at least two, mustn’t I? And from there we’ll go to Glnkstein and Boobheimer’s, wtyere I want to get a hat — I must have something chic ( to take off in the theaters, mustn’t I? —And then we’ll spend an hour in Gorgonzola Brothers, where I can pick out the set of furs you promised me for Christmas, and then we’ll go to Camembert’s for some gloves I need, and then—’’ Help! Throw me anything! Don’t you see I’m sinking! The answer is I went —and live to prattle about It. You know, this shopping gag brings out more prominently than anything else the fact that the high cost of living is caused by living high at any cost. The ancient Greeks had a saying, “He spends his money like a drunken sailor,” and that goes for seventy-five out of a hundred today. The majority of the boobs give

daily imitations of the sailor and they don't even wait to get intoxicated. Whatever my neighbor does I want to do—only more so. If my neighbor saves up eight dol* lars and twenty cents and buys a red benzine buggy I immediately get together seven dollars and a quarter wilt get a blue one. In the meantime the automobile people put a white chalk mark on our houses. If your wife buys a nearly-sealskin wife has to rush and get an almostmink with possibly-ermine trimmings, and the children fill up the holes in their shoes with putty and exclaim, «Oh, doesn't Mamma look sweet in the fur mackintosh!” ~’X-s Vanity Is a worm that eats the lining out of a pocketbook. All of which is neither here , nor there, as the engineer said when the train left the track. So it's back to that shopping proposition with friend wife. Our ’first port of call was the Maison de Splash, where they trim a ptann cover with a lace curtain and call it a “creation.” It certainly was a gorgeous cozy corner, that place! The walls were decorated in soft, harmonious shades

and the floor had an Alfalfa carpet so a woman could faint wherever she happened to be standing when told the price of the particular gown she had picked to win. D’Artagnan’s grandfather met us at the front gate and swash-buckled us into the main Torture Room in the Inquisition. , Suffering Savings Banks, such gowns! Never before have I seen so many good excuses for a woman to leave home. In . the meantime D’Artagnan’s grandfather was splashing French idioms in all directions until I turned and gave him the mackerel eye. Then he switched to English—and killed it all except a few vowels. “Ah! Madame wishes a new gown, n’cest pas? Something chic, Parisian, ravissant, n’cest pas? I have here such wonders. Paquin, yes! Worth, eh! Poiret, yes! Callot Soeurs, eh? Doucet, yes!” Then he nailed me with the gimlet holes he used as eyes. "Is mat the correct batting order for today?” I inquired politely. "Batting ordaire!” he fumbled, and then Peaches ordered me to the bench. She turned and whispered a few encouraging words to D’Artagnan’s grandfather, whereupon he began to do Pavlowas hither and thither across the room until he finally disappeared. “He’s going to show us the latest creations,” Peadhes explained. “What is he?” I -worried. “A French nobleman over here under cover to pick up a bit of cake money?” “Of course not,” she pouted. “He is M’sleu Voulezvous, the Proprietor of the Maison de Splash—a recognized authority on women’s dress.” Enter M’sleu Voulezvous, alias D’Artagnan’s grandfather, at Left Second, dancingly; followed by Clara Panatella, blonde and glad of it. “Who is the ingenue?” I whispered. "Shush!” friend wife came back. “She is nothing but a manikin parading a costume. Isn’t it perfectly lovely?” “Gul, oui!" chimed in D’Artagnan’s grandfather. "You see what it is—yes! Faded gray chiffon cloth figured with ze raspberry and a small lemoncolored flower. You see double fichus of ze material edged with creamcolored Bulgarian embroidery draping ze shouldalre and crossing in ze front and back —ravissant! Ze skirt is vaire full at ze top with ze pannier effect at each side and draped into a panel of raspberry color silk in ze back, which falls down from a girdle of ze same raspberry color silk —ravissant, yes!” “Exquisite!” murmured Peaches. “How much?” “Two hundred feefty dollaire,” answered D’Artagnan’s grandfather, without a quiver. Some actor, that old boy. I choked back a couple of sobs and

began to think hard. Two hundred and fifty dollars for a dish of raspberries with cream colored trimmings—assist"How do you like it?" Peaches cooed. V “Lovely!" I answered as one inspired. “Prettiest hair I’ve ever seen. And her eyes—blue mirrors of her native Mediterranean! I've been lost in admiration ever since she floated into the room., Did you get that glad gaze she handed out to me when —” By this time the blonde Venus wrapped up in the raspberry trimmings was being led hurriedly away from there by the bewildered grandfather of D’Artagnan, and in the short, sharp silence which folio ved lightning flashed from the eyes o a certain party and storm signals were ordered up from the Capes to Bangor. Enter trippingly, from Left 2nd; Mons. Voulezvous, followed by Carisslma Maduro, walking a la Slouch. “Now we have it, yes!” spluttered the anceitct of D'Artagnan, turning the manikin around and around tor our Inspection, i “You see, Le Minaret! It is ravissant, n’cest pas! You. M'sieu, I should value your opinion of Le Minaret, yes!”

"Hoops, my dear!" I asinined, net knowing what else to say. "Le Minaret,” continued the friend of Louis the XI, "it would be to Madame’s beauty as the rose is to a lovely garden, yes!" He was there with the salve, that eld boy. Hypnotized by the harmony of colors and carried away by the up-to-dateness of the creation. Peaches breathed in. the ear of Voulezvous an eager, "How much?” “Three hundred and feefty dollaire,” he breathed back to her. Sinking for the second time, I didn’t breathe at all. Then, with a forgiving smile, Peaches turned to me and said, “Isn’t it lovely? Isn’t it wonderful?” “She is,” I answered; “she’s a quaint little package of pepper—that’s what she is! I thought I liked that blonde, but it was only a passing fancy. This brunet has me limping after her along the Road of Happiness. Did you pipe the smile she saved up for me and me alone? She must burn acetylene in both lamps, because I’m all lit up with excitement A queen, take it from an expert—a queen!” Exit Le Minaret hurriedly, while Voulezvous stood there expressing astonishment with both shoulders and the small of his back. “Does Madame prefer something else, yes?” he wigwagged, after notic-

ing how high In the air Peaches was wearing her chin. “Yes,” I butted in quickly; “bring on something nifty in a transparent skirt—’’ Curtain. When I came to I was out on the sidewalk listening to Section VL, Paragraph IV, of the Riot Act Then she pointed her nose at the North Star and left me flat Peaches will probably speak to me again some time before Christmas. She’ll have to if she believes in Santa Claus.

“She la Nothing But a Manikin Parading a Costume.”

“She Pointed Her Nose at the North Star and Left Me Flat.”