John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

the government of the United States must insist and demand that American citizens who may be taken prisoner whether by one party or the other as participants in the present insurrectionary disturbances shall be dealt with in accordance with the broad principles of international law

SOLDIERS GUARD CONVENTION

the Titanic left Southampton on April 10th on its maiden operation is to be performed against the wishes of the New York Life according to “Kimmel” Why they know I’m Kimmel in Niles I’m George to everyone even mother and sister when we meet on the streets

I’m going to Maxim’s

Where fun and frolic beams

With all the girls I’ll chatter

I’ll laugh and kiss and flatter

Lolo, Dodo, Joujou.

Cloclo, Margot, Froufrou

TITANIC LARGEST SHIP IN THE WORLD SINKING

personally I am not sure that the twelvehour day is bad for employees especially when they insist on working that long in order to make more money

Still all my song shall be

Nearer My God to thee

Nearer to thee

it was now about one AM, a beautiful starlight night with no moon. The sea was as calm as a pond, just a gentle heave as the boat dipped up and down in the swell, an ideal night except for the bitter cold. In the distance the Titanic looked an enormous length, its great hulk outlined in black against the starry sky, every porthole and saloon blazing with light

ASK METHODISM TO OUST TRINITY

the bride’s gown is of charmeuse satin with a chiffon veiled lace waist. The veil is of crepe lisse edged with point de venise a departure from the conventional bridal veil and the bouquet is to be lilies of the valley and gardenias

Lolo, Dodo, Joujou ,

Cloclo, Margot, Froufrou

I’m going to Maxim’s

And you can goto…

the Titanic slowly tilted straight on end with the stern vertically upward and as it did so the lights in the cabins and saloons which had not flickered for a moment since we left, died out, came on again for a single flash and finally went out altogether. Meanwhile the machinery rattled through the vessel with a rattle and a groaning that could be heard for miles. Then with a quiet slanting dive

“But it’s so interesting, mommer,” Janey would say when her mother bewailed the fact that she had to work. “In my day it wasn’t considered ladylike, it was thought to be demeaning.” “But it isn’t now,” Janey would say getting into a temper. Then it would be a great relief to get out of the stuffy house and the stuffy treeshaded streets of Georgetown and to stop by for Alice Dick and go down town to the moving pictures and to see the pictures of foreign countries, and the crowds on F Street and to stop in at a drugstore for a soda afterwards, before getting on the Georgetown car, and to sit up at the fountain talking about the picture they’d seen and Olive Thomas and Charley Chaplin and John Bunny. She began to read the paper every day and to take an interest in politics. She began to feel that there was a great throbbing arclighted world somewhere outside and that only living in Georgetown where everything was so poky and oldfashioned, and Mommer and Popper were so poky and oldfashioned, kept her from breaking into it.

Postcards from Joe made her feel like that too. He was a sailor on the battleship Connecticut. There’d be a picture of the waterfront at Havana or the harbor of Marseille or Villefranche or a photograph of a girl in peasant costume inside a tinsel horseshoe and a few lines hoping she was well and liked her job, never a word about himself. She wrote him long letters full of questions about himself and foreign countries but he never answered them. Still it gave her a sort of feeling of adventure to get the postcards. Whenever she saw a navy man on the street or marines from Quantico she thought of Joe and wondered how he was getting on. The sight of a gob lurching along in blue with his cap on one side took a funny twist at her heart.

Sundays Alice almost always came out to Georgetown. The house was different now, Joe gone, her mother and father older and quieter, Francie and Ellen blooming out into pretty giggly highschool girls, popular with the boys in the neighborhood, going out to parties, all the time complaining because they didn’t have any money to spend. Sitting at the table with them, helping Mommer with the gravy, bringing in the potatoes or the Brussels sprouts for Sunday dinner, Janey felt grownup, almost an old maid. She was on the side of her father and mother now against the sisters. Popper began to look old and shrunkup. He talked often about retiring, and was looking forward to his pension.

When she’d been eight months with Mrs. Robinson she got an offer from Dreyfus and Carroll, the patent lawyers up on the top floor of the Riggs Building, to work for them for seventeen a week, which was five dollars more than she was getting from Mrs. Robinson. It made her feel fine. She realized now that she was good at her work and that she could support herself whatever happened. On the strength of it she went down to Woodward and Lothrop’s with Alice Dick to buy a dress. She wanted a silk grownup dress with embroidery on it. She was twentyone and was going to make seventeen dollars a week and thought she had a right to one nice dress. Alice said it ought to be a bronzy gold color to match her hair. They went in all the stores down F Street, but they couldn’t find anything that suited that wasn’t too expensive, so all they could do was buy some materials and some fashion magazines and take it home to Janey’s mother to make up. It galled Janey still being dependent on her mother this way, but there was nothing for it; so Mrs. Williams had to make up Janey’s new dress the way she had made all her children’s dresses since they were born. Janey had never had the patience to learn to sew the way Mommer could. They bought enough material so that Alice could have one too, so Mrs. Williams had to make up two dresses.

Working at Dreyfus and Carroll’s was quite different from working at Mrs. Robinson’s. There were mostly men in the office. Mr. Dreyfus was a small thinfaced man with a small black moustache and small black twinkly eyes and a touch of accent that gave him a distinguished foreign diplomat manner. He carried yellow wash gloves and a yellow cane and had a great variety of very much tailored overcoats. He was the brains of the firm, Jerry Burnham said. Mr. Carroll was a stout redfaced man who smoked many cigars and cleared his throat a great deal and had a very oldtimey Southern Godblessmysoul way of talking. Jerry Burnham said he was the firm’s bay window. Jerry Burnham was a wrinklefaced young man with dissipated eyes who was the firm’s adviser in technical and engineering matters. He laughed a great deal, always got into the office late, and for some reason took a fancy to Janey and used to joke about things to her while he was dictating. She liked him, though the dissipated look under his eyes scared her off a little. She’d have liked to have talked to him like a sister, and gotten him to stop burning the candle at both ends. Then there was an elderly accountant, Mr. Sills, a shriveled man who lived in Anacostia and never said a word to anybody. At noon he didn’t go out for lunch, but sat at his desk eating a sandwich and an apple wrapped in waxed paper which he carefully folded afterwards and put back in his pocket. Then there were two fresh errandboys and a little plainfaced typist named Miss Simonds who only got twelve a week. All sorts of people in every sort of seedyrespectable or Peacock Alley clothes came in during the day and stood round in the outer office listening to Mr. Carroll’s rich boom from behind the groundglass door. Mr. Dreyfus slipped in and out without a word, smiling faintly at his acquaintances, always in a great mysterious hurry. At lunch in the little cafeteria or at a soda-fountain Janey ’ud tell Alice all about it and Alice would look up at her admiringly. Alice always waited for her in the vestibule at one. They’d arranged to go out then because there was less of a crowd. Neither of them ever spent more than twenty cents, so lunch didn’t take them very long and they’d have time to take a turn round Lafayette Square or sometimes round the White House grounds before going back to the office.