Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a matt ff By REITA | HUAI (| ro LET. °. 6 a “ = SS i | NI Wz MN LAMBERT Author of ‘‘ Suspicion.”* \ A NOVELETTE—COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE the long columns of the classified ads section of any of the metropolitan dailies, but its true significance has never been prop- erly analyzed. How much feminine bitter- ness might be traced to that eclectic moni- tion! How many “ comfortable, moderate- ly priced, handsomely furnished ” and alto- gether desirable rooms are available to “gentlemen only,” while feminine virtue and industry must content itself with second choice. And the sinister restriction is no modern development in the profession to which it accrues. It was this very phrase that lured one Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, to his event- ual ignominy and landed the weeping Mrs. Bardell in the Fleet. Mrs. Bardell was a [ is perhaps the most popular phrase in lady and, as Sergeant Buzfuz so touchingly pointed out, a widow. But both Sergeant Buzfuz and his fair client lived in pre- psychoanalytic days. They did not recog- nize the basic, biological truths upon which that historic case is built. Certainly, little Mrs. Amalie Ladd, of Sharleyville, Kansas—who, like Mrs. Bar- dell, was also a lady and a widow—did not search out her true motive for appending the phrase to her carefully worded adver- tisement. Mrs. Ladd had but recently come to New York and this was her first venture as proprietress of a rooming house. It was her predecessor from whom she had taken over the smal but sedate brownstone front on East Fifty-Third Street, who had sug- gested the sinister phrase. 662 CoOmmicaooks (S@)