Arizona republican. [volume] (Phoenix, Ariz.) 1890-1930, 1903-08-16
CALLING ON PHYLLIS.
And Some Of the People One Meets in
Washington Boarding House.


frances lives in a boarding house. said
the Young man with the Photographic
Eye, "and calling upon her is a queer
old Same-lt sure is. Phyllis is always
dressing, and will be down in few
minutes. the black girl who uses kim
keno on her locks tells me when she
answers my ring, and then I'm ushered
in the parlor-you know the kind of a
parlor-pictures in faded oil of the
landlady's four deceased husbands on
the walls, big gilt clock with a. busted
glass cover on the mantelpiece, frame
of wax tube roses on black velvet hang
ing above the clock, and forcing you to
think of your last end, horse-hair
chairs with porcupine seats, faded red
plush settees that you sidestep if you're
wise, bound volume of Godey's Ladys
Magazine for 1854 on the center table,
aged and decrepit-looking square piano
in a shadowy corner, with copies of the
songs of Lilly Dale and Silver Threads
Among the Cold published in 1868, on
top of it, and in another corner what
not heaped up with the kind of sea-
shells that you used to read about in
The Swiss Family Robinson and pieces
of coral and big apple that was stuff
ed full of cloves back in 1S71-oh, I
guess you know the kind of Washington
clearinghouse parlor I mean, all
right.
LAS l enter the dark and musty-
smelling parlor a rat of a black-and-
tan terrier that looks to be about 11S
years of age shifts at the bottoms of my
trousers and begins to bark at me, and
when l try to motion the mutt away
with one of my feet very old lady in
a black silk dress and a white cap with
purple ribbon run through i'll haven't
seen her before on account of the dark
ness of the room-hurriedly picks the
| snarling ki-yoodle up, scowls fiercely
at me, mumbles something about
'brutes, and swishes painfully upstairs,
carrying the ki-yi with her.
Then an eyed. man in a skull cap
and tapping green-an-red carpet slip
pers over white socks, with his long.
shiny broadcloth coat buttoned closely
around him, although the temperature
of the parlor is about 207 centigrade,
gropes his way into the room, and, not
being able to make me out as I stand
in the gloom in the center of the room.
butts into me, emits a senile shrek of
alarm, and fees as precipitately as he
can. considering his nonegenarian' S
years, fancying that I am a second
story man in the act of shredding the
plant.
"Then woman who still dresses like
they used to dress right after the war
wig held waterfall wise by a net, Grim
oline underneath her green satin skirt.
red basque with teenchy tabs in the
back, and the red drpe plastered on her
cheek-bones to give her q sort Of
Camille hectic flush, hurries into the
room from tie dark dining -room-I
can't help but imagine that 1 hear her
joints creak as she does so-looks me
over carefully for minute or SO as she
pretends to be interested in the pages
of Godey's Lady's Magazine for 1854,
and then swishes upstairs herself, be-
slowing real kittenish glance upon
me as she goes by me.
Then large blind Maltese cat with
unseeing topaz eyes totters over my
way, investigates me, rubs himself or
herself against my trousers legs for a
while leaving enough hair on them to
stuff sofa pillow, and then totters out
into the hall ard disappears.
Then three young men with pomad-
ed hair, who look as if they might be-
long to the night shift of the bookbind-
ers' department of the government
printing office, descend the stairs no1s-
lily, rubber in at me as they pass by the
parlor door, wink sagaciously at each
other and jerk their thumbs towards
the stairs, and go out, banging the door
after them.
Then the Second Floor Front, a
hatchet-faced lady with a voice like an
alligator file working overtime. hustles
down the stairs, demanding to know, at
Z Of
towels. I'd jes' like to know and when
she sees me in the twilight of the par
lor she glares in upon me with an ac-
cusing glare. as If I had somehow or
another pinched them towels for which
she is on such a shrill hunt.
Then the Fourth Floor Back, SUI
perannuated suds artist. a clerk of the
treasury department of forty years
standing, who never gets home to the
boarding house dinner, but who always
arrives promptly at s o'clock p. m. with
a jag hefty enough to keep four long
shoremen busy carrying it, reels in
through the hall and. perceiving me in
the semi darkness, Immediately at
tempts to engage me in conversation
with respect to the relative merits of
Arthue Pue German and w. Jennings
Bryan as Presidential timber. 1 fan
him, and he rolls out, mumpling things
about 'pin-heads that don't know any
thing except the cut O their cute little
pink barred shirts
Then the whistling shoe clerk, who
has at last mastered the kinks and in
tricacies of 'Hiawatha' and wants ev-
erybody to know it, sails jauntily down
the stairs in his cunnin Bulgarian blue
serge suit (S7.77-was sS.SS), merrily
piping the Indian lay and bestowing
upon me as he passes by the parlor
glance that is clearly meant to shriVel
me into the belief that L am 100, 40,
and 20 to l shot, all three ways across
the board and that l won't do at any
stage of the route.
And then Phyllis, radiantly rugged
for the trolley whizz to Chevy Chase
oh, yes, we go in for these horribly ex-
citing diversons-comes down, and OF
course it's all right Observation-Disclosures
Post
L. S. MORAL WICKET.
One woman for the last eighteen