o streets themselves, with
their perilous corners (there were no czars in blue to regulate traffic
in those days), older and more sophisticated pedestrians experienced
various emotions while negotiating the corner of State and Madison.

That buying trip lasted ten days. It was a racking business, physically
and mentally. There were the hours of tramping up one aisle and down the
other in the big wholesale lofts. But that brought bodily fatigue only.
It was the mental strain that left Mrs. Brandeis spent and limp at the
end of the day. Was she buying wisely? Was she over-buying? What did
she know about buying, anyway? She would come back to her hotel at six,
sometimes so exhausted that the dining-room and dinner were unthinkable.
At such times they would have dinner in their room another delicious
adventure for Fanny. She would try to tempt the fagged woman on the bed
with bits of this or that from one of the many dishes that dotted the
dinner tray. But Molly Brandeis, harrowed in spirit and numbed in body,
was too spent to eat.

But that was not always the case. There was that unforgettable night
when they went to see Bernhardt the divine. Fanny spent the entire
morning following standing before the bedroom mirror, with her hair
pulled out in a wild fluff in front, her mother's old marten-fur
scarf high and choky around her neck, trying to smile that slow, sad,
poignant, tear-compelling smile; but she had to give it up, clever
mimic though she was. She only succeeded in looking as though a pin were
sticking her somewhere. Besides, Fanny's own smile was a quick, broad,
flashing grin, with a generous glint of white teeth in it, and she
always forgot about being exquisitely wistful over it until it was too
late.

I wonder if the story of the china religious figures will give a wrong
impression of Mrs. Brandeis. Perhaps not, if you will only remember this
woman's white-lipped determination to wrest a livelihood from the world,
for her children and herself. They had been in Chicago a week, and she
was buying at Bauder & Peck's. Now, Bauder & Peck, importers, are known
the world over. It is doubtful if there is one of you who has not been
supplied, indirectly, with some imported bit of china or glassware, with
French opera glasses or cunning toys and dolls, from the great New York
and Chicago showrooms of that company.

Young Bauder himself was waiting on Mrs. Brandeis, and he was frowning
because he hated to sell women.