. The advertisement business is on the bum this year
becase times are so hard up. The advertisers have to save their money
and advertising agents are failing right and left. So poor Uncle
Jimmie can't get a place to work at.

"The people in the other studios are very neighborly. Uncle Jimmie
leaves a sine on the door when he goes out. It says 'Don't Knock.'
They don't they come right in and borrow things. Uncle Jimmie says not
to have much to do with them, becase they are so queer, but when I am
not at home, the ladies come to call on him, and drink Moxie or
something. I know becase once I caught them. Uncle Jimmie says I shall
not have Behemiar thrust upon me by him, and to keep away from these
ladies until I grow up and then see if I like them. Aunt Beulah thinks
that Uncle Jimmie takes me around to other studios and I won't tell
but he does not take me anywhere except to walk and have ice-cream
soda, but I say I don't want it because of saving the ten cents. We
cook on an old gas stove that smells. I can't do very good
housekeeping becase things are not convenient. I haven't any oven to
do a Saturday baking in, and Uncle Jimmie won't let me do the washing.
I should feel more as if I earned my keap if I baked beans and made
boiled dinners and layer cake, but in New York they don't eat much but
hearty food and saluds. It isn't stylish to have cake and pie and
pudding all at one meal. Poor Grandpa would starve. He eats pie for
his breakfast, but if I told anybody they would laugh. If I wrote
Albertina what folks eat in New York she would laugh.

"Uncle Jimmie is teaching me to like salud. He laughs when I cut up
lettice and put sugar on it. He teaches me to like olives and dried
up sausages and sour crought. He says it is important to be edjucated
in eating, and everytime we go to the Delicate Essenn store to buy
something that will edjucate me better. He teaches me to say 'I beg
your pardon,' and 'Polly vous Fransay?' and to courtesy and how to
enter a room the way you do in private theatricals. He says it isn't
knowing these things so much as knowing when you do them that counts,
and then Aunt Beulah complains that I am not being brought up.

"I have not seen Uncle Peter for a weak. He said he was going away. I
miss him. I would not have to tell him how I was being brought up, and
whether I was hitting the white lights as Uncle Jimmie says.--He would
know."

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E