e had it pretty soft, I will admit, because all the work I
done to get where I am, is never over eight hours a day penal servitude,
locked up in my study and fighting against only such minor odds and
intrusions as please may I have a dollar and a quarter for the laundry, or
now dear you have been writing long enough, I have brought you a nice cup
of tea, just when I am going strong on a important third chapter. But my
work is of course not really work since it is done in the home, as my
relations often remind me. At least they did until I got George, that's my
pres. husband, and he never lets me be interrupted unless he wants to
interrupt me himself for a clean collar or something.

"Also besides working these short hours, four of which is generally what
us authors calls straight creative work, I have it soft in another way. I
got a pretty good market for my stuff and always had, and this of course
has got me so's I can draw checks as neat and quick as anybody in the
family and they love to see me do it.

"All kidding to one side it is the straight dope when I say that from
being merely the daughter of honest and only moderately poor parents I
have now a house of my own, the very one in our town which I most admired
as a child; and the quit-claim deed come out of my own easy money. I also
got a car or two--and a few pieces of the sort of second-hand stuff which
successful people generally commence cluttering up their house with as a
sign of outward and visible success. I mean the junk one moves in when one
moves the golden oak out....

"I never commenced going over really big until it was up to me to make
good every time I delivered, and this was not until my husband died and
left me with a small son, which I may say in passing, that I consider he
is the best thing I have ever published. Well, there I was, a widow with a
child, and no visible means of support except when I looked into the
mirror. Of course, before then I had been earning good money, but only
when I wanted something, or felt like it. Now I had to want to feel like
it three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

"I'll tell the world it was some jolt."

=ii=

_Perfect Behaviour_ is the calmly confident title of the new book by
Donald Ogden Stewart--a work which will rejoice the readers of _A Parody
Outline of History_. Behaviour is the great obstacle to happiness. One may
overcome all the ordinary complexes. One may kill his cousins and get his
nephews