Page:The New Yorker 0003, 1925-03-07.pdf/21

THE NEW YORKER BALAS La Ville Lumière Georges François Babbette, a realtor of ACHILLE (digging, etc.): Did you get any maga- Lyons, meets his old friend Achille Rueprin- zines? cipale, a doctor of Bordeaux, in the Etab- GEORGES (digging, etc.): Yeh, I brought back a lissement Duval opposite the Madeleine in suit-case full, but the guy at the customs in Havre Paris. made me give them up. ACHILLE (digging Georges in the ribs with his ACHILLE (digging, etc.): Of course there's no elbow): I hear you have been over to New York, you girls come out—you know. use me asking you if you took in all the revues where old rascal! GEORGES (digging Achille in the ribs with his GEORGES (digging, etc.): Yeh, I did everything. elbow): I'll say I have. (Becomes serious.) Only, somehow, you don't get the same kick out of all that stuff that you ould ACHILLE (digging Georges back one): You son- of-a-gun, you! (In a stage whisper.) Was the wife if it was all happening here at home. Those peo- along? ple over there have a different way of looking at GEORGES (digging Achille back one): Yeh, she those things. They're different from us. It's a dif- went along. But she stopped off to take a tour of the ferent point of view. They're not immoral, they're battlefields around Boston. just unmoral, if you see what I mean. Sex and smut and all are just a part of their lives and they don't ACHILLE (digging, etc.): And she let you go to New York all alone? think anything more about it than we do about onion soup. Why, I've seen women-nice looking women, GEORGES (digging, etc.): Yeh. ACHILLE (digging, etc.): Well, you old son-of- too nicely dressed—looked like ladies-all sitting a-gun! around and laughing and giggling at some of those GEORGES (digging, etc.): I guess I saw the whole shows that we'd strangle our daughters if they went to see. No wonder some of us Frenchmen don't know show, all right, all right. ACHILLE (digging, etc.): Did you bring back how to take Ainerican girls. Can't tell the nice ones from the fast ones. ... Well, that kind of stuff any of those post-cards the fellow sells in front of the El Fey Club? may be all right for New York and the decaying GEORGES (digging, etc.): Did I? morals of the New World, but it certainly wouldn't ACHILLE (digging, etc.): And I suppose you got get by in little old Paris, would it, Achille! properly liquored up while you had a chance to get -Ralph Barton some of the real, old stuff—absinthe and all. GEORGES (digging, etc.): Did I? ACHILLE (digging, etc.): And did you go down California Asserts Herself along that funny little row of bookshops in Fourth Avenue and pick up a few rare editions? Let not Vermont asseverate GEORGES (digging, etc.): Oh, sure. Only I can't That she's the Presidential State; read their lingo. I'll bet if a fellow could he'd get For California always shall his hair curled, all right. The pictures are hot stuff. Remain the only State of Cal.! Digitized by