Page:So Big (1924).djvu/374

 No college girls’ midnight fudge spree could be more thrilling. To my unaccustomed eyes the girls in their new hats all look pretty. The matrons appear amazingly well dressed. The men, chatting over their after-luncheon cigarettes, are captains of finance, discussing problems of national import. I refuse to believe what my vis-à-vis says about their being cloak-and-suit salesmen whose conversation probably runs thus:

“‘I come into his place at ten this morning and he wouldn’t look at my stuff till twelve, and finally I goes up to him, and I says to him, I says, “Looka here, Marx.”’

“The very waiters interest me. The ’bus boys are deft, and I refuse to be bothered by their finger nails. The chicken salad is a poem, the coffee a dream, the French pastry a divine concoction.

“When you work three hundred and fifty mornings in the year, a game of golf on the three hundred and fifty-first is a lark. That’s one reason why I play so atrociously, I suppose. They who say that work hardens one, or wearies, or dulls, have chosen the wrong occupation, or have never really tasted the delights of it. It’s the finest freshener in the world. It’s an appetizer. It’s a combination cocktail and hors d’œuvre, to be taken before playing. It gives color to the most commonplace of holidays. It makes a run through the park a treat. There’s very little thrill in a brisk walk if you can brisk-walk from morning until night. But after having sat before a typewriter, or desk, or table, for hours together, to be able to stretch one’s legs for a swing of two or three miles—that’s living.

“The entire output of my particular job depends upon me. By that I mean that when I put the cover on my typewriter the works are closed. The office equipment consists of one flat table, rather messy; one typewriter, much abused, and one typewriter table; a chunk of yellow copy paper, and one of white. All the wheels, belts, wires, bolts, files, tools—the whole manufacturing scheme of things—has got to be contained