Newspaper Page Text
Copyright, 1913. by the Star Company. Great Britain Rights Reserved.
3
Mr,.
Austen
Grey,
Who.e
Hu.band
Hat
Had
to
Drop
Hi.
Role
Cotillon
Leader
to Taka
Position
in a
Mr*- Little in
Her Favorite
Opera, "Manon.”
* Why
It Is Better
to Drop
Out of Mew port
Than It Is to
Keep on Going Up
'CHpb
,jCEO_a^
Newport, May 20.
HAT,” ask
ed Kather
ine Elkins.
of the Duke of the Abruzzi during the
heyday of their frost-nipped romance,
"what impresses you most about New
port ?”
"It is the city of exciting and peril
ous pyrotechnics,” said the Prince.
"And what do ycu mean by that?”
asked she.
"Everybody is going up all the time
like rockets, and more or less of them
keep coming down like sticks,” answer
ed he.
"There is something in what you
say,” said Miss Elkins, "but the
metaphor is faulty. People can't keep
on going up like rockets all the time—
I and there are scores here and there
/ who have never fallen."
/ “Ah,” replied Abruzzi. "But every
one of them runs the risk of falling.
How else could it been in a societv
which is based primarily upon wealth
and frivolity. A society that has no
real traditions, no real caste; where
everything is make-believe. It will
take centuries to evolve a real aristoracy."
"You don’t admire the pyrotechnics, then,” said
Miss Katherine, rather piqued.
“I admire the sticks,” said the Duke. “I think
they have all the best of it. They get down to
real earth and actually get a chance to -'become
something real.”
All of which is apropos of the fact that Newport,
taking stock now that the season is opening, of what
pyrotechnic displays will be missing this year, has
already marked off three that threw out clouds of
golden sparks in their rush upward. And the first of
these id Mrs. Julian Little, the most striking and spec
tacular blonde in the circus set. Miss Little began life
as Fanny Jones, the fascinating daughter of the Lewis
Quentin Joneses, of New York. She married Henry
Spies Kip, a young millionaire whose family was as
old as it was wealthy.
As Mrs. Kip she sparkled and sparked with the
showiest rockets of Newport. Then she decided to
take a trip to Reno, and out she went There she got
rid of one husbaivl and her six-year-old son, but ac
quired speedily the present Mr. Little. Mrs. Kip-Little
received no alimony from Mr. Kip and Mr. Little isn't
overburdened with wealth. Nevertheless the Littles
reappeared at Newport and coruscated again with the
mightiest. They’ve done it for the last three years,
and now
Bump!
“But I think you’re unjust,” said Miss Elkins
to the Duke of the Abruzzi. “There are hosts
of nice folk in Newport who haven't any money
at all and yet they go everywhere.”
"Shining by the light of the other rockets—and
all their own powder gone,” said the Duke. "I
haven’t a bit of respect for them. They’re only
real when they come down like a stick, bump—
and become something real.”
Mr. Little has gone into the Harlem Opera House
Stock Company in New York. What will Mrs. Littl
do now they have sublet their Newport palace? Even
if she has used all her power she doesn’t have to leave
Newport. She has two choices—to go on the New York
stage with her husband or go to Paris and prepare to go
on the stage this Winter in one of the light opera com
panies. The latter is what society thinks she will do
“What do you think of the stage girls who have
married rich men and are what you call rockets
at Newport?” asked Mss Elkins of the Duke.
“I’ve a lot greater liking for the
women who married rich men, lost
it and then go on the stage,” said
the Duke. “They’re being real at
last, you know."
"Nevertheless,” said Miss Elkins.
"it’s much harder to give up what
you have not. It’s one thing to sigh
and say: ‘I can’t buy a fifth motor
car this season,’ and it is quite an
other to say: ‘I must sell my one
motor car this season.”
“It is indeed,” said the Duke; “it
is the difference between Sparta and
Sybaris. Between intelligent will
and pulling luxuriousness!”
It is six-thirty in the apartment where
the young Austen Grays are living. Mr
Gray is a son of Judge and Mrs. Clin
ton Gray, of Newport and New York.
Mrs. Gray is the daughter of the very
wealthy Charles Burnhams, of Rhode
Island. They ran away and married
against the will of the Burnhams six
years ago Mr. Gray was and con
tiuties to be a close and intimate
friend of Alfred aud Reggie Vanderbilt; it was
from the Vanderbilt home that the elopement oc
curred, by the way. After this hasty marriage
the young Grays settled down to lead the same
life that their friends did. Father Burnham came
forward and made an allowance—at least he
settled a certain amount on his daughter, and the
young couple began spending it without realizing
that is is impossible to spend your principal and
have it, too.
They set up a New York establishment and spent
their Summers in Newport. Mrs. Gray took part in
all the pleasure of the colony, and life was one grand
rocketing of gaity and extravagance. Austen was a
favorite cotillon leader, and the day he thought of no
new and charming figure was a day lost. They spent
quite as much as Mrs. Kip-Little.
Bump!
“But after all we are society in the moulding,"
said Miss Elkins to her Duke. "The laws of two
centuries from now ate now being cast at this
/ moment."
"There aren’t any laws except the eternal laws,”
said the. Duke. “You’ll never have a real society
until you recognize this. The moment you do you
will have taken your first step, and your second
step will be to cast aside all the laws you're now
making.”
"But there will always be one law,” ventured
Miss Elkins. "The law against work.”
“Not at all,” said the Duke. "You’H see then
that it will not be that you do work—but the
way you take your work.”
But it is now six-thirty in the Gray’s apartment.
There is a stirring in the kitchen, another stirring in
the blue and white bedroom sacred to the head of the
family. There’s a splashing in the bathroom. It is
seven by the clock in the kitchen, and two sleepy-eyed
people ap-
p e a r in
the dining
room; they
are Mr.
and Mrs.
Austen Gray,
They sit down
to the table
and consume
grape fruit and
eggs and coffee.
At seven - thirty
Austen takes his
new sailor hat and
goes forth to his
day’s work?. He has a
job in one of the big de
partment stores $nd
his hours are from
eight to six with an hour
off for luncheon.
“How does it feel to lose
your money?” asked a
thoughtless friend of Mrs
Gray just before Austen began
his apprenticeship at the de
partment store.
“Just like a skyrocket that
went up with a hurrah and came
down with a bang,” replied Mrs.
Gray—'and the bang hurts.”
But here come the Newton
Adamses. Who are they and what
are they doing? To get their story
we must drop in at one of the big shops
and say that we want to see their latest
French hats. We will be taken to a
tall, gracious young goddess who will
turn out to be Mrs. Adams. Mrs. Adams
selling hats when a year ago she was
voted the real leader of the youngest
division in the Circus Set? Selling hats
when a year ago she was giving dances
for one and two hundred guests at the
Casino, and when her presence at any
entertainment was necessary to make
it a success?
But yes! You see it happened thus. Mrs.
Adams was Alice Potter, a daughter of
Frank Potter, who was one of the most
popular men of his day in New York
as well as in Newport. After his death
Alice was brought up by her aunt, a
promipent Newport cottager, and when
she fell in love with a poor but am
bitious young lawyer, her aunt told her
to marry him and be happy because
all her money and the house in New
port would be hers anyway. ' And then
Aunt Serena took to her bed and died,
but on her death bed she insisted that
Alice and New ton be married at once,
and they were.
It was so romantic, and Alice proved
a clever general; she became a leader
f soTo tiy
eAMPR-euw
STVPlO
NY
Mr». McCarty Little, Formerly Mrs. Spies Kip. Who Has
Two Choices—To Go to a Mining Camp with Her
Husband or to Go on the Stage by Way of Paris.
store and made them see that she could sell hats, aud
to-day she has the cream of the customers who want
"Something different, do you know, from the ordin
ary hat, my dear.”
S-s-s-s-sh! it is no secret to adipit that this former
golden butterfly more used to ballrooms than work
shops, has made good and that she is making money
for her firm far beyond their expectations.
“How does it feel," she asks, “to leave my Newport
friends and pleasures? Well, 1 simply had to do some
thing, and I did not want to sit home and make boudoir
caps and satin pin cushions for my friends who would
only criticise them and perhaps forget to pay me, so
I prefer to be insulted by strangers rather than by my
friends and acquaintances and 1 get paid every week.”
“Up in Newport," said the Duke, "I revise the
Holy Writ for them. 1 say: 'From her who hath
shall be taken all she hath; but to her who hath
not shall be given mightily.’ ”
“Given what?” asked Miss Elkins.
“Courage, independence and reality,” said the
Duke. "I bow to the sticks! They have to work!”
The Origin of “Show Me!”
fnoro^ oy
*
ptjpoNT.
Mn. New
ton Adams
Who Would
Rather Sell
Hats in a
Department
Store Than
Make Pink
Satin Pin
Cushions at
Home.
in the colony; and Newton devoted him
self to private theatricals and to work
ing up a Newport practice. But alas.
Aunt Serena's money gave out all of a
sudden; it couldn’t stand the strain of
such a pace as these young people set,
for it takes a big income, indeed, to hold
any sort of leadership in Newport.
And so last Fall the Adamses found
their fortune depleted, and nothing but
work and economy staring them in the
face.
As it takes time for even the most
ambitious lawyer to work up a practice,
and in the meantime ode must eat, Mrs.
Adams said to herself:
“I like hats! I should adore selling
them; I will sell them,” and straight
way went down to a big department
S OME days ago a well-meaning
critih of St. Louis informed the
business men of that city that
they had outgrown its stick-in-the-
mud slogan "You'll have to show
me,” and that the first step of prog
ress would be the selection of a less
slow slogan. Many of those present
profested that "show me” never
was the property of St. Louis, yet
they weren’t sure from where it
came, nor why. They could recall
vaguely that it belonged to the
State of Missouri, surely not to any
one city.
The speaker's words appeared in
the daily papers, aud one gentleman,
with a fondness for digging into the
dust laden records of local history,
appeared with the information that
the challenge, “You’ll have to show
me,” was a corruption of the name
of a famous Indian chief of the
Sioux tribe old Yumus Shome, who
led the tribe which crossed the low
lands below the mouth of the Illi
nois, carrying their canoes on their
heads from the Mississippi to the
Missouri, and thus giving the name
to the historical old French town.
Portage des Sioux.
Yumus Shome. it is averred, is
buried at Westport. Jackson County,
Missouri, and his name—carelessly
pronounced, “you mua’ show me,”
has passed into the vernacular of
the State.
That is a very probable story, and
one that ought to hold belief, but
alas, -this is a practical age, and
sooner or later some one is sure to
come forward with proof that there
was never such an existence, and
such it was In this case, when an
other geqtteman with a fondness for
delving in the dust laden archives
tried to show proof that there was
no such chief as Yumus Shome. He
contended that his were the true
facts of the case, w'hicb came about
in this way.
When Omaha first talked of hold
ing a trans-Mississippi exposition,
the newspapers in Kansas City in
dulged in a fusilade of sarcastic
jibes. The idea of Omaha, the dead
one, bestirring itself enough to get
up a world’s fair was too prepos
terous to be accepted as serious.
And so, when the fair became a
fact and included among its days a
Kansas City day, a huge delegation
went up from the Kaw town, each
wearing a button with the legend.
“I’m from Missouri. You will have
to show me.” The expression
caught the public fancy, and in a
little time Missouri was known the.
world over as the “Show Me State.”
So it was Kansas City, not St. l-ouis.
that started the stick-in-the-mud
slogan.