 | Starving and Writing in New York |  |
Some Evaded Censors
In those days, I picked up a most precarious sort of living in New York. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and I was undaunted by the unflattering return of my manuscripts by every mail. One or two, it is true, did slip by the censors, and the thrills I then enjoyed, and the much needed checks, more than compensated for the many weeks and months of drought. Curiously enough, in spite of privations, that, looking back upon them now, seem to me appalling, when considered in connection with an extremely young and ignorant girl, my heart was always light and my head teemed with plots and ideas.
I lived with two other girls in a dingy room on the top floor of a house on East Sixteenth St., between Union Square and Third Avenue. My two roommates were as penniless and improvident as I, but we managed to exist, and even squeeze a measure of fun out of life. Our jobs were always uncertain, but each staked the other when the other was “broke.” That plan worked very well, except when we were all “broke” at the same time. Then we were sore put to make two ends meet.
Jocelyn, or “Jossy” as we called her, the oldest of our trio, was a dark-eyed girl from the sunny South. She had a voice like a mellow bell, and was studying vocal culture. At least, she studied it when she had the price and a piano to practise on. Jossy would have 䀂5 in hand, to pay for a month's rent of a piano. When the month was up, the piano people would begin to dun, and they would keep on dunning for a month, and sometimes two months; then they would take the piano away; but, you see, she would have had the piano for two or three months at the price of one.
Jocelyn was an outlaw from home, because of her operatic aspirations. She was a practical young person, who always seemed out of place in our rackety-packety room.
Anna Andison, my other room-mate, was an overwhelmingly beautiful girl of Danish birth. She had milk-white skin, as soft and smooth as a baby's, a neck and throat that were our envy and despair, and hair such as the daughter of a Viking might have possessed. It was so thick and long, that when she took it down, it fell nearly to the bottom of her skirt, and was dead gold in color. Her eyes were very large, with big, white, sleepy lids, and they were as blue as a Danish lake. Simple, trusting, empty eyes they were—the kind men— some men—plunge into.
Anna was built on a grand scale, and her feet and hands were of a size to match her great, graceful body. I had discovered Anna. She was holding down a perfectly respectable position as waitress at Bamberger's on Third Ave. when I assured her that she was destined for greater things. I knew a man who knew a stage hand who knew the stage director at Weber 怂 Fields Theatre. To this man, I piloted by willing Anna. The thing worked like a charm. Anna secured her first job in the chorus. From that moment she had but one ambition in life—to remain in said chorus. Just as she had been entirely satisfied to wait on table for the rest of her natural days, so now Anna was satisfied to remain in the chorus. Unfortunately the various managers for whom she worked did not always share Anna's ambition, and for two reasons she was invariably fired from one musical show after another. The first was the heaviness of her hand, which resented familiarity from those in authority over her; and the second was her utter inability to move with the agility peculiar to the chorus girl race.
When I first brought my big Dane home, Jossy, who was somewhat of an aristocrat, was thunderstruck over my find.
Where in the name of heaven, did you find IT!” she demanded, utterly un-
In fact Jossy's unreasonable attitude was not dissimilar from the one she had assumed when I returned home one evening with a half-frozen kitten I had found shivering in the street. She said then there was no space in our room for cats and kittens. Anna, however, was no kitten. In point of fact she resembled more a big, blonde bear.
“This is my friend, Anna Andison,” said I, defensively. “She looks to me like a picture I once saw of Queen Guinevere, and I'm going to make her famous. I know a man who knows a man who——”
“I tarnk you,” murmured Anna, with the most touching and childish gratitude.
“Where are you going to put IT in this room?” demanded Jocelyn fiercely. “I want that corner where she's standing for my piano that's coming to-day.”
“Darts all ride,” said Anna, smiling agreeably, “I yust set on dar bed.” And “set” she did, causing that rickety affair to creak alarmingly.
She proved, however, from the very first, a most valued addition to our family. Our landlady was extremely stingy about bed clothes, and the two near-woolen blankets on the bed never really kept us warm. Anna was a human furnace. She was better than any hot water bottle or hot water bag ever invented. Snuggled up against her I slept as snug as the proverbial “bug in a rug.” That first night I slept between my two friends, a sort of dividing link between them, but the next day, expatiating loudly upon the beautiful warm sleep I had enjoyed, the shivering Jocelyn (she came from Tennessee, and had never been entirely acclimated to New York's humidity and cold,) bitterly suggested that I was a pig to try and keep a good thing all to myself. So that night, Anna slept between us, and I never heard Jossy after that object to her presence in our home.
| Starving and Writing in New York | |