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Page 9
Well, what's the trouble about running the article," asked Thacker, a
little impatiently, "if the man's well known and has got the stuff ?"
Colonel Telfair sighed.
"Mr. Thacker," said he, "for once I have been tempted. Nothing has
yet appeared in The Rose of Dixie that has not been from the pen of
one of its sons or daughters. I know little about the author of this
article except that he has acquired prominence in a section of the
country that has always been inimical to my heart and mind. But I
recognize his genius; and, as I have told you, I have instituted an
investigation of his personality. Perhaps it will be futile. But I
shall pursue the inquiry. Until that is finished, I must leave open
the question of filling the vacant space in our January number."
Thacker arose to leave.
"All right, Colonel," he said, as cordially as he could. "You use
your own judgment. If you've really got a scoop or something that
will make 'em sit up, run it instead of my stuff. I'll drop in again
in about two weeks. Good luck!"
Colonel Telfair and the magazine promoter shook hands.
Returning a fortnight later, Thacker dropped off a very rocky Pullman
at Toombs City. He found the January number of the magazine made up
and the forms closed.
The vacant space that had been yawning for type was filled by an
article that was headed thus:
SECOND MESSAGE TO CONGRESS
Written for
THE ROSE OF DIXIE
BY
A Member of the Well-known
BULLOCH FAMILY, OF GEORGIA
T. Roosevelt
THE THIRD INGREDIENT
The (so-called) Vallambrosa Apartment-House is not an apartment-house.
It is composed of two old-fashioned, brownstone-front residences
welded into one. The parlor floor of one side is gay with the wraps
and head-gear of a modiste; the other is lugubrious with the
sophistical promises and grisly display of a painless dentist. You
may have a room there for two dollars a week or you may have one for
twenty dollars. Among the Vallambrosa's roomers are stenographers,
musicians, brokers, shop-girls, space-rate writers, art students,
wire-tappers, and other people who lean far over the banister-rail
when the door-bell rings.
This treatise shall have to do with but two of the Vallambrosians--
though meaning no disrespect to the others.
At six o'clock one afternoon Hetty Pepper came back to her third-floor
rear $3.50 room in the Vallambrosa with her nose and chin more sharply
pointed than usual. To be discharged from the department store where
you have been working four years, and with only fifteen cents in your
purse, does have a tendency to make your features appear more finely
chiseled.
And now for Hetty's thumb-nail biography while she climbs the two
flights of stairs.
She walked into the Biggest Store one morning four years before with
seventy-five other girls, applying for a job behind the waist
department counter. The phalanx of wage-earners formed a bewildering
scene of beauty, carrying a total mass of blond hair sufficient to
have justified the horseback gallops of a hundred Lady Godivas.
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