nuts the rest of my life if I want to is at, in or about
Delray, Florida. D-e-l-r-a-y; you've spelled it."

"We're publishing your new book on how to get thin, _Tomorrow We Diet_."

"Oh, yes. Well, I am several laps ahead of that. Now, I am going up to my
home in Madison, Connecticut, to work. Later, I'll maybe drive out to
Yellowstone Park or some place. Well, I might stay here at the Brevoort
for a month; run down to Philadelphia, maybe. Did you know I once wrote a
book for children that has sold 500,000 copies? And, besides a young son
whom I am capable of entertaining if you'll let him tell you, I have a few
ideas...."

Hold on! This isn't so easy as it looked.

Probably Nina Wilcox Putnam is inimitable. This one and that may steal
Ring W. Lardner's stuff, but there is a sort of Yale lock effect about the
slang (American slanguage) in such books as _West Broadway_ which is not
picked so easily. As for the new Nina Wilcox Putnam novel, _Laughter
Limited_--if you don't believe what we say about N.W.P. inimitableness
just open that book and see for yourself. The story of a movie actress?
Yes, and considerable more. Just as _West Broadway_ was a great deal more
than an amusing story, being actually the best hunch extant on
transcontinental motoring, outside of the automobile blue books, which are
not nearly such good reading.

And then there's _Tomorrow We Diet_, in which Nina Wilcox Putnam tells how
she reduced fifty pounds in seven months without exercising anything but
her intelligence. But if you want to know about Nina Wilcox Putnam, read
her story in her own words that appeared in the American Magazine for May,
1922. Here is a bit of it:

"Believe you me, considering the fact that they are mostly men, which it
would hardly be right to hold that up against them, Editors in my
experience has been an unusually fine race, and it is my contracts with
them has made me what I am today, I'm sure I'm satisfied. And when a
fellow or sister writer commences hollering about how Editors in America
don't know anything about what is style or English, well anyways not
enough to publish it when they see it, why all I can say is that I could
show them living proof to the contrary, only modesty and good manners
forbids me pointing, even at myself. I am also sure that the checks these
hollerers have received from said Editors is more apt to read the Editor
regrets than pay to the order of, if you get what I mean.

"Well, I hav