Читать книгу A Book About Myself онлайн

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“Mr. Gissel? Mr. Gissel?” said one girl inquiringly. “Why, I don’t recall any such person——” and she retired, leaving me to make my way out as best I might.

Another exclaimed: “Harry Gissel! Has that little snip written a book? The nerve—to send you around to sell his book! Why do you do it? I will take one, because I am curious to see the kind of thing he has done, but I’ll wager right now it’s as silly as he is. He’s invented some scheme to get you to do this because he knows he couldn’t sell the book in any other way.”

Others remembered him and seemed to like him; others bought the book only because he was a member of their class. Some struck up a genial conversation with me.

In spite of my distress at having to do this work there were compensations. It gave me a last fleeting picture of that new, sunny prosperity which was the most marked characteristic of Chicagoans of that day, and contrasted so sharply with the scenes of poverty which I had recently seen. In this region, for it was June, newly fledged collegians, freshly returned from the colleges of the East and Europe, were disporting themselves about the lawns and within the open-windowed chambers of the houses. Traps and go-carts of many of the financially and socially elect filled the south side streets. The lawn tennis suit, the tennis game, the lawn party and the family croquet game were everywhere in evidence. The new-rich and those most ambitious financially at that time were peculiarly susceptible I think to the airs and manners of the older and more pretentious regions of the world. They were bent upon interpreting their new wealth in terms of luxury as they had observed it elsewhere. Hence these strutting youths in English suits with turned-up trousers, swagger sticks and flori-colored ties and socks intended to suggest the spirit of London, as they imagined it to be; hence the high-headed girls in flouncy, lacy dresses, their cheeks and eyes bright with color, who no doubt imagined themselves to be great ladies, and who carried themselves with an air of remote disdain. The whole thing had the quality of a play well staged: really the houses, the lawns, the movements of the people, their games and interests all harmonizing after the fashion of a play. They saw this as a great end in itself, which, perhaps, it is. To me in my life-hungry, love-hungry state, this new-rich prosperity with its ease, its pretty women and its effort at refinement was quite too much. It set me to riotous dreaming and longing made me ache to lounge and pose after this same fashion.