s feel as if I had wings and could
fly right away with them. There is nothing wrong with the dancing
itself, as I keep a telling Mrs. Smith. She wants me to leave it all the
time, and of course in some of the places where I have to dance, there
is a bum crowd and you do have to talk to the men and lots of the women
that you wouldn't choose for your sister. I tell you I am going to work
out of this, I am a good dancer and there ain't no reason why I
shouldn't be working in the better places where the management won't
allow the men to get fresh with the girls. If I live long enough and
don't get paralyzed in my legs, you will see at the Winter Garden "Nancy
Lane" in great big electric lights. I have been around some of them
places and if I ever get a chance, I know I can do as well as the girls
there now. Why, Kate, I would rather dance at the Winter Garden than
have a front seat in Heaven, and I got a mighty poor chance of either
one, but I am going to try for them both. You know I believe when you
want a thing real bad and just keep thinking of it night and day, you
are going to get it some way and when you come out, Kate, I think you
are going to be straight, and you won't queer me as you have so many
times, just when I was beginning to get along.

I am sending you twenty. You ought to own that boarding house you are
in, with the money I've sent you the last year. Mamie Callahan was in
yesterday, she is working in a chorus somewhere. Gee, she does look
swell! She must have cost a thousand just as she stood. She wants me to
go back to Miner's, but the restaurants pay more. One of the boys I met
the other night at Kelley's wants me to join him and go dance out West
somewhere, but I don't want to go so far away from Billy. I know he
would be all right with the Smiths, but I kinda like to see him, and I
am always planning little things about him and what he will say to me
and what I will say to him and what I am going to buy him. I kind of
feel that if I wasn't able to go out there once in two or three weeks,
and touch him and play with his hair and wash his little hands and
notice how he is growing out of his clothes, that I wouldn't care to
live. The money I could earn wouldn't mean nothing without him. I had
just as much happiness out of him when I was earning six dollars a week
and I could only take him out a ten cent jumping jack, as I would if I
was earning fifty and could buy him fur coats. Babies just love, they
do