_Nan_.

XII

_Dear Kate_:

Say, but I am having a good time! And what do you think? I am having my
picture painted. Some artist people blew into the cafe the other night,
and after I had danced a couple of times they talked to the manager,
then they asked me to come over and talk to them. I set down to the
table and they were awful nice to me, didn't get fresh, but asked me a
lot of questions about myself and where I learned to dance. I told them
I could dance ever since I could walk, that I danced as a kid at Coney
Island, and Miner's theatre had got in trouble twice with the Children's
Society because of me. I laughed and said, "Why, I never _learned_ to
dance, I just _danced_." The artist man said he wanted to paint my
picture. It is a funny idea it seems to me. He wants to paint me in this
dirty cabaret with the tables all around me and the bum men setting
around and me a dancing in the center with the lights on me. He said he
is going to call it "Youth." He said to one of the men that was with
him, "Can't you see it, Phillip, can't you see it? That pretty girl the
very spirit of youth with her gold hair around her face and her
wonderful body swaying to the time of the music and all those bloated
beasts looking up at her through the smoke?" I don't see how he is going
to paint the picture, but that is his business. Mine is to go to his
studio every day at ten o'clock.

Do you remember Will Henderson who used to play in the orchestra in the
Grand Opera and who lived next to us when we was at 129? Well, what do
you think? He is playing the piano in this joint here. Isn't that a
come-down? He got to taking coke and he couldn't be trusted to keep his
dates and he lost all his good jobs and now he can only get a place in
the joints, but he does play wonderful! And when he is not too dopey, he
sets down at the piano and makes music that draws the heart right out
of you. He won't touch his violin cause it makes him remember, he says.
It is a lucky thing for me in a way, as he likes me and he has wrote
some music for me to dance by. He wrote a piece for me called "The
Poppy," and that artist chap who is painting my picture got me a dress
made for the dance, and oh, Kate, it is grand! It is red chiffon, and
over it green chiffon like the leaves of the poppy, and I wear red
slippers with pale green silk stockings that are so thin I can hardly
get them on, and he had my hair all fluffed out and piled on top of my