Volume 3 — Mirrors of Life and Love

BY PRINCESS BIBESCO Daughter of Margot Asquith

LOVE—“Isn’t that what love means, to fill ordinary, commonplace conventional things with magic and significance, not to need the moon and white scent-heavy flowers at night? * * * You talk about love. What a strange, restricted growth it is with you. You don’t know what the real thing means, you who think passion is bad taste because you are not tempted, you to whom the physical side is a degrading extra.” * * * When he was with her now he stammered. He didn’t know that a stammer is the divine eloquence of love.

PASSION—Passion is no respecter of persons. She hardly seems to select her victims. How many a would-be Juliet waits in vain for those consuming fires her heart is longing for, while they blaze in the reluctant hearts of Mr. Adrian Roses, who only ask to be left in peace, far from the ridiculous and, thank God, equally far from the sublime. Are men in love like this:

“She was the first person he had ever loved. He had trembled when he touched her. His spasms of passion had been like spasms of pain, his face contorted and his voice rough, and then there had followed intervals of wretched shyness. When he had thought of possessing her he had become a saint waiting for a divine manifestation.”

MARRIAGE—“We just are hopelessly unsuited to each other. Do you seriously think that you want a wife like me?” * * * “Marriage will modify you.” * * * “Marriage might modify me if I married the right man. Marriage to you would bring out everything you hate.” * * * “Helena, do you realize that I love you?” “You don’t know what love means.” * * * “Of course I don’t. If I did I might want to marry you.”

PROTEST AGAINST REALISM—“What is it one yearns for? It is to be able to do a thing for the first time again. And that is impossible. When I love, what do I want? I want never to have kissed, never to have given myself before. It is in vain, I say—‘Never before was I awake—I was a dummy in the hands of fate—now I am alive.’ I was shut up perhaps, but my outer petals were touched. Oh, my God, make me again the child I was—but He cannot answer.”

DISILLUSIONMENT—What are we to tell our children? How are they to know that the first accidental encounter with life may take from them a treasure they will only learn about in forty storm-tossed years? Those first gifts—those shy blossomings lovely in their unconsciousness—are surely but the squandering of something half alive, the foolish murder of a bud. Oh, youth is a wicked, cruel thing, eating miracles with its breakfast and not knowing they are not porridge.

WHAT A WOMAN WANTS—“I don’t want anything except to be wanted. I long for you to make ceaseless, impossible demands on me.”

THE GOAL OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT—“All my life I have been teased for asking not, ‘Is she beautiful?’ ‘Is she clever?’ but always ‘Is she happy?’ I think it is in many ways the most interesting thing about a person. * * * Happiness is a light, an atmosphere, an illumination. It sets a personality. I always feel it is a creation that is difficult for some and easy for others, but essentially an achievement, never an accident.”

* * *

Our Exchange

Henpecked and haggard husband asked the butcher: “What kind of meat have you this morning?”

“Some steak as tender as a woman’s heart,” said the butcher.

“I’ll take sausage,” said the customer.

* * *

Unrequited Love

By Walter Scott Haskell.

In the place first, I want it understood that I am a California cousin to a doughboy’s cootie.

When first I clapped my binnacle lights on the robust form of Susanna, I knew that she was my meat, vulgarly speaking. I loved her very avoirdupois, and that was going some, as she was no light article. I took her gauge one evening as we sat in the parlor and I snuggled up to her in a most friendly fashion. My advances were met with cold resentment. She did not say a word, but she jammed my head against her corset in a manner that bespoke her an amazon of no mean physical power. I thought my spinal column was broken; but when she let go, I breathed a sigh of relief and was contented to just look at her and nurse my sprained parts. I decided to use diplomacy, and waited until she had taken herself to the arbor hammock in the garden to indulge in an afternoon siesta. I watched around, and when I saw her eyelids droop and close, her breast heave in regular breathing as one asleep, I made my way to her side and bent over her fair face. How my mouth watered for a bite of her, but I almost feared that she would wake and lam me in the jaw. Temptation was too strong, however, and in an evil moment I turned my attention to her roll-down stocking that showed a goodly proportion of her nether parts. With a kind of subdued clicking of my jaws, I put my lips to her bare knee and experienced the joy of a stolen kiss. It may have been a disgraceful act, anyway the tickle of my touch awoke her, and she kicked unmercifully, like a cow that will not be milked. I ducked and escaped death, with a mouthful of her blood, the best that I had ever had, for she was my meat, and I am a California flea.

* * *

A summer night and a maid and a man has frequently caused an early fall!

* * *

Kablegram Love

She was a pretty and ambitious girl and had studied the matrimonial problem to a nicety.

“Yes, I suppose I shall wed eventually,” she said, “but the only kind of masculine nuisance that will suit me must be tall and dark, with classical features. He must be brave, yet gentle. Withal he must be strong—a lion among men, but a knight among ladies.”

That even a bow-legged, lath-framed youth, wearing checked trousers and smoking a cigarette that smelt worse than a burning boot, rattled on the back door and the girl knocked four tumblers and a cut glass fruit dish off the sideboard in her haste to get to him.

* * *

The New Nursery

* * *

Long, Long Ago

We like the story from Ralph Neville’s “Mayfair and Montmartre,” of the little chorus lady who, when her rich admirer had bought her some charming underclothing, said to him in the shop as they were being packed: “Now have a good look at them, for you’ll never see them again.”

This, of course, occurred in the long, long ago Victorian days.

* * *

Zup, Kid?

While in Jacksonville I chanced into a Greek restaurant and of the waiter inquired what they had for dinner.

Small Stack Medyum

Rust Baff

Hom on Eggs

Chicken Frazee

Appolis Pie

Pach Pie

Strubberry Pie

Grap Frut

Zup, Kid?

* * *

A normal woman would joyously go through life with a pirate or yeggman who would drug her with the opiate of flattery, in preference to hooking onto a nincompoop tango lizard who refreshes her with eternal, infernal, divinal criticism.

* * *

Consolation Kiddoo

“If I die,” said the sick man gloomily, “what will become of you and the children?”

“Oh, don’t worry, darling,” replied the little woman. “I’ll soon find somebody to take care of us.”

* * *

No Offense Here, Paddy

An Irishman while on his way to call upon his best girl suddenly caught sight of a beautiful parrot in a nearby tree.

He decided it would be just the present for her. Slowly he drew near the bird and upon reaching one of the highest branches, was just about to grab his prey when the parrot, who had been eyeing him sharply, suddenly squawked, “Well, what do you want?”

Pat withdrew his hand and humbly made answer, “Excuse me. Er—I thought you was a bird.”

* * *

Let’s sing it again:

* * *

Hot Stuff

They arrived home late from the party. Wife took off her hat and slammed it on the floor. Then she confronted her hubby.

“I’ll never take you to another party as long as I live!” she said.

“Why?” he calmly wanted to know.

“You asked Mrs. Jones how her husband has been standing the heat.”

“Well?”

“Well, her husband has been dead two months.”

* * *

Our Puzzle Department

Father and son were licking up moonshine.

“Father,” asked the son, “how am I to know when I’m drunk?”

The old man pointed across the street. “When those two men over there look like four,” he responded.

“But father,” interrupted the son, “I see only one man there.”

* * *

Let This One Sink In

Lion Tamer—“Step into the cage with the lion, Rastus, and let the photographer focus you.”

Rastus—“He’d better focus me before ah goes in there, boss, for he ain’t gwine hab no time to focus me when ah comes out.”

* * *

Actors are the bunk. I heard one in Minneapolis knocking St. Paul and I applauded him, and I saw the same actor in St. Paul knocking Minneapolis and I gave him the razzberry.

* * *

Our Spring Thriller

“I’ve got you at last,” he cried, “move if you dare, move! It’s taken me many years, but at last I’ve got you where I want you! Now I dare you to move!”

“Yep, you’re right,” replied his friend, “it’s the first game of checkers you ever did win from me.”