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Show True Story of Merry Backlane. By Herpelf. I of womankind and of nineteen and thirty yc?rs will now begin to set down a frank portrayal por-trayal of myself, Merry Backlane, chorus girl. I try to forget the last thirty years when mentioning men-tioning my ago, but in this portrayal I want to tell the truth. It is hard, oh, so hard. I am a genius. Will the managers ever wake up? I've been standing in the back lane of the chorus the chorus, do you hear and those thrice cursed managers haven't come to me yet. 0, the unutterable weariness of waiting! The agony of having a scrawny thing like Marie jump over me into the sextette. Heaven alone knows what they saw in her. I don't. They say it was her beautiful hair. Mine cost $8 more. She paints beautifully. paint, too. I'm a beaut. I know myself oh, so well. I can feel. I can touch oh. so well. I am a beaut, I tell you. Along some lines I have gotten to the edge of the world. I have been on the ragged edge ever since. Oh, why didn't some kind angel push me off? Damn, fudge. Ain't I awful? Before proceeding farther with the portrayal of Merry Backlane I will write out her uninter-fl uninter-fl esting history. B My father was the bearded lady in a Coney fl Island museum. Afterward he ran a plate game fl until he was pinched. He kissed me goodby B just to see if I had been drinking again. Then fl they took him away. I It is a matter of supreme indifference to me fl whether he ever got out or not. I found out B where ho had salted his money. B The same day I took my mother, my brother fl and two sisters to a narrow strip of barren sand. fl I told them to wait there until 6 o'clock. I was H known to me that the waters would cover the H place at 4. They were nothing to me. I But they didn't wait. Ain't I awful? B They are with me yet. O, why can't I lose fl them? They do not understand me. Often they H will ask me for money. How foolish! H There is absolutely no sympathy between my immediatey family and me. They are Low Dutch. fl I am Highball Scotch. I carried my uninteresting history to Asbury flj Park. The family came with me. Will I ever, H ever be able to lose them? I pray for the time. H There are life lines even in Asbury Park. fl When I was 18 years old I pawned dear, old Q mother's silver handled toothbrush and false teeth. H I gave the money to the song and dance man H with whom I eloped. He eloped with the money. H The world was full of emptiness. x fl Then I drifted into the back lane of the chorus, fl The nothingness of it all sometimes, when fl payday came around. I often see the dreary, flj trusting faces of the girls as they crowd around Hj the manager's office at the season's close. The fl weary rows and rows of hands stretched out in HI supplication to the ghost that he might walk. H It is nearly always the same the same, do you H hear0 fl You will understand this better when I tell H you that twenty out of my thirty seasons have B clospd in this weary, dreary way. Always the fl samp B Nothing doing! Nothing, nothing, nothing. B And so now the Summer season is on. To B we it is an empty, damnable weariness. B I rise in the morning, eat a soda cracker, walk B down Broadway and see four thousand miser-B miser-B able beings like myself, eat anther soda cracker, fl read a little, smoke a cigarette, visit some friend and stay for dinner if they let me, put the landlady off for another week, pray that Johnnie's John-nie's vacation will soon be over, go to bed. Again I rise in the morning but why repeat? Such an emptiness in my line young woman's body! Will it ever be filled before this dreary, desolate season is over? Truly, an exalted, soulful life! The New Yo'k Ttlegraph. |