id, alive or
dead. After this I shall always appreciate and admire him for the way he
made money, since, for the first time in my life, I fully realized what
it could buy. And I bought things!

First I went to see Madam Courtier for corsets. I had heard about her
and I knew it meant a fortune. But that didn't matter! She came in and
looked at me for about five minutes without saying a word and then she
ran her hands down and down over me until I could feel the flesh just
crawling off of me. It was delicious!

Then she and two girls in puffs and rats came in and did things to a
corset they laced on me that I can't even write down, for I didn't
understand the process, but when I looked in that long glass I almost
dropped on the floor. I wasn't tight and I wasn't stiff and I
looked--I'm too modest to write how lovely I really looked to myself.
I was spellbound with delight.

[Illustration: I was spellbound with delight]

Next I signed the check for three of those wonders with my head so in
the clouds I didn't know what I was doing, but I came to with a jolt
when the prettiest girl began to get me into that black taffeta bag I
had worn down to the city. I must have shrunk the whole remaining pounds
I had felt obliged to lose for Alfred and Ruth Chester from the horror I
felt when I looked at myself. The girl was really sympathetic and said
with a smile that was true kindness: "Shall I call a taxi for madam and
have it take her to Klein's? They have wonderful gowns by Rene all ready
to be fitted at short notice. Really, madam's figure is such that it
commands a perfect costume now." Men do business well, but when women
enter the field they are geniuses at money extracting. I felt myself
already clothed perfectly when that girl said my figure "commanded" a
proper dress. Of course, Klein pays Madam Courtier a commission for the
customers she passes right on to him. The one for me must have looked to
her like a real estate transaction.

I spent three days at the great Klein store, only going to the hotel to
sleep and most of the time I forgot to eat. Madam Rene must have been
Madam Courtier's twin sister in youth, and Madam Telliers in the hat
department was the triplet to them both. When women have genius it
breaks out all over them like measles and they never recover from it;
those women had the confluent kind. But I know that old Rene really
liked me, for when I blushed and asked her if they had a good beauty
doctor in