The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1902-08-26
TRUE STORY OF MERRY BACKLANE.
BY HERSELF.

last thirty years when mentlOnlne
my age, but in the portrayal l want to
tell the truth. 1t is hard, oh, SO hard.
l am 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. o, the un-
utterable WEAKNESS of waiting!
The agony OF having scrawny thing
like Marie jump over me into the SEX
tette. Heaven alone knows what they
saw in her.
don't.
They say it was her beautiful hair.
Mine cost IS more.
She paints beautifully.
Ipaint, too.
I'm beaut.
know myself-oh, so we'll.
l can feel.
can touch-oh, so we'll.
l am beaut, tell you.
Along some lines have gotten to the
edge of the world. have been on the
ragged edge ever since. Oh, why didn't
some kind angel push me off? Damn,
fudge. Amt awful?
Before proceeding farther with the
portrayal of Merry Backlane will write
out her uninteresting history.
My father was the bearded lady in a
Coney Island museum. Afterwards he
ran plate game until he was pinched.
He kissed me goodby just to see if l had
been drinking again. Then they took
him away.
1t is a matter of supreme Indifference
to me whether he ever got out or not.
l found where he had sailed his money
The same day took my mother, my
brother and two sisters to a narrow
strip of barren sand. l told them to
wait there until 6 o'clock. 1t was
known to me that the waters would
cover the place at 4. They were moth
ing to me.
But they didn't wait. Amt awful?
They are with me yet. O, why can't l
lose them? They do not understand me-
Often they will ask me for money.
How foolish!
There is absolutely no sympathy be.
tween my immediate family and me.
They are Low Dutch. am Highball
Scotch.
l carried my uninteresting history to
Asbury Park. The family came with me.
Will l ever, ever be able to lose them?
pray for the time.
There are life lines evenin Asbury Park
When | was Is years old l pawned
dear, old mothers silver handled tooth
brush and false teeth. Igave the money
to the song and dance man with whom
eloped. He eloped with the money.
The world was full of emptiness.
Then | drifted into the back lane of
the chorus.
The nothingness OF it all sometimes,
when payday came around. often see
the dreary, trusting faces of the girls as
they crowd around the managers office
at the seasons close. The weary rows
and rows OF hands stretched out in sup
plication to the ghost that he might walk.
1t is nearly always the same-the same,
do you hear?
You will understand this better when
tell you that twenty out of my thirty
seasons have closed in this weary, dreary
way. Always the same.
Nothing doing! Nothing, nothing,
nothing.
And so now the summer season is on.
To meitisan empty, damnable WEAKNESS.
/ rise in the morning, eat soda crack
er, walk down Broadway and see four
thousand miserable beings like myself,
eat another soda cracker, read little,
smoke cigarette, visit some friend and
stay for dinner if they let me, put the
landlady off for another week, pray that
Johnnie's vacation will soon be over, go
to bed.
Again | rise in the morning-but why
repeat? Such an emptiness in my fine
young woman's BODY viii It ever be
filed before this dreary, desolate season
is oyer?
Truly, an exalted, soulful life.
The New York telegraph.
Cheap Rates East.