There was a
noise about Queen Bess lacking in her harpy contemporaries.
"Big-hearted Bess," the coppers used to call her, and "Queenie" was the
name her employees had for her. But to customers she was always Queen
Bess. In the district where Queen Bess functioned the gossip of the day
always prophesied dismally concerning her. She didn't save her money,
Queen Bess didn't. And the time would come when she'd realize what that
meant. And the idea of Queen Bess blowing in $5,000 for a tally-ho layout
to ride to the races in! Six horses and two drivers in yellow and blue
livery and girls all dressed like sore thumbs and the beribboned and
painted coach bouncing down the boulevard to Washington Park--a lot of
good that would do her in her old age!
But Queen Bess went her way, throwing her tainted money back to the town
as fast as the town threw it into her purse, roaring, swearing,
laughing--a thumping sentimentalist, a clownish Samaritan, a Madam
Aphrodite by Rube Goldberg. There are many stories that used to go the
rounds. But when I read the coroner's report there was one tale in
particular that started up in my head again. A mawkish tale, perhaps, and
if I write it with too maudlin a slant I know who will wince the
worst--Queen Bess, of course, who will sit up in her grave and, fastening
a blazing eye on me, curse me out for every variety of fat-head and
imbecile known to her exhaustive calendar of epithets.
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234