not be no crookedness. That the upper story men and the dips and the
safe blowers most always ain't got no education, and they are crooked
because they don't know nothing different. He says ignorance makes a man
not able to tell right from wrong. I told him I knew lots of dips who
were clever, and he said, "Yes, that is so, but if they had been able to
train that cleverness in the right way when they was young, they would
not be dips now. They would use their brains in building up some
business that was on the square. They ain't never had the right chance,
so they can't be blamed." That is so, part of it, Kate. Lots of people I
know, feel it in their bones that crookedness don't pay, but they don't
know nothing else, cause they got in wrong at the start. Now if it is
all true that he says and education will make a man on the level, then
me for education. Billy is going to have it if I have to pour it down
him with a spoon. Billy is going to have just as good a chance as Paul.
I am getting to be such a tight wad that I am losing all my friends. I
won't buy a drink for no one, and I even shove the girls sweet Caporals
instead of Melachrino's when they come up to my room. Why, I squeeze a
nickle till it hollers, and I wear out three dollars of shoe leather
chasing up the street to find an eating joint where they will fill me up
for a quarter. Any way, Kate, your son is going to have a lot of
letters writ after his name, if his aunt Nan don't get the cholly hoss
in her legs, and lose her thirty bucks per week that she is making now.

Good-bye, Kate, I am coming to see you soon, and I will bring you some
pictures of the kid that we took when he went in swimming. He can float
on his back and Mr. Smith nearly scares a lung out of me learning him to
dive. I am thinking of you always.

_Nan_.

XVIII

_Dear Kate_:

I went down to Miner's the other night and saw Mable Lee. I was in her
dressing room with her most two hours. She is a near star now, and don't
she put on airs! She has a dressing room of her own, and any mere chorus
girl that puts her nose in her door gets a lady-like call-down that you
can hear to 42nd Street. She forgot that she ever worked at Coney with
us, and rustled beer between acts, and that ain't the only thing that
has happened to her memory. She says she is only twenty one, and she was
twenty one when we were playing together at the Casino and I was doing a
kid act. That was ten years ago. I