on out and have something."
Does the short-story writer felicitate himself upon having discovered a
rare species in humanity's garden? The Blase Reader flips the pages
between his fingers, yawns, stretches, and remarks to his wife:
"That's a clean lift from Kipling--or is it Conan Doyle? Anyway, I've
read something just like it before. Say, kid, guess what these magazine
guys get for a full page ad.? Nix. That's just like a woman. Three
thousand straight. Fact."
To anticipate the delver into the past it may be stated that the plot of
this one originally appeared in the Eternal Best Seller, under the
heading, "He Asked You For Bread, and Ye Gave Him a Stone." There may be
those who could not have traced my plagiarism to its source.
Although the Book has had an unprecedentedly long run it is said to be
less widely read than of yore.
Even with this preparation I hesitate to confess that this is the story
of a hungry girl in a big city. Well, now, wait a minute. Conceding
that it has been done by every scribbler from tyro to best seller expert,
you will acknowledge that there is the possibility of a fresh
viewpoint--twist--what is it the sporting editors call it? Oh,
yes--slant. There is the possibility of getting a new slant on an old
idea. That may serve to deflect the line of the deadly parallel.
Just off State Street there is a fruiterer and importer who ought to be
arrested for cruelty. His window is the most fascinating and the most
heartless in Chicago. A line of open-mouthed, wide-eyed gazers is always
to be found before it. Despair, wonder, envy, and rebellion smolder in
the eyes of those gazers. No shop window show should be so diabolically
set forth as to arouse such sensations in the breast of the beholder. It
is a work of art, that window; a breeder of anarchism, a destroyer of
contentment, a second feast of Tantalus. It boasts peaches, dewy and
golden, when peaches have no right to be; plethoric, purple bunches of
English hothouse grapes are there to taunt the ten-dollar-a-week clerk
whose sick wife should be in the hospital; strawberries glow therein when
shortcake is a last summer's memory, and forced cucumbers remind us that
we are taking ours in the form of dill pickles. There is, perhaps, a
choice head of cauliflower, so exquisite in its ivory and green
perfection as to be fit for a bride's bouquet; there are apples so
flawless that if the garden of Eden grew any as perfect
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