Spring’s real harbingers are too subtle for the eye and ear. But the wall was clearest crystal and Sarah was looking down a grassy lane shaded with cherry trees and elms and bordered with raspberry bushes and Cherokee roses. Looking out the window she could see the windowless rear brick wall of the box factory on the next street. Sarah’s room was at the back of the house. You’ve got a neat figure yourself, Sarah – a – nice springtime figure – why do you look out the window so sadly?” The calendar on the wall kept crying to her: “Springtime is here, Sarah – springtime is here, I tell you. Sarah sat in her squeaky willow rocker, and looked out the window. One afternoon Sarah shivered in her elegant hall bedroom “house heated scrupulously clean conveniences seen to be appreciated.” She had no work to do except Schulenberg’s menu cards.

And when these things happen one may know that the city is still in the clutches of winter. Men began to make thirty-day notes to buy Easter dresses. The hand-organs still played “In the Good Old Summertime,” with their December vivacity and expression. The frozen snows of January still lay like adamant in the crosstown streets. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, which was the main thing with her.Īnd then the almanac lied, and said that spring had come. Schulenberg’s patrons now knew what the food they ate was called even if its nature sometimes puzzled them. Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement.

to Sarah’s hall room by a waiter – an obsequious one if possible – and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schulenberg’s customers on the morrow. In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem 3 She was to furnish typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the restaurant – a new bill for each day’s dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch as often as changes occurred in the food or as neatness required. Before Sarah left him she had him willingly committed to an agreement. Schulenberg became a naturalised citizen on the spot. The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu was beautifully typewritten with the viands temptingly marshalled under their right and proper heads from “hors d’oeuvre” to “not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas.” It was written in an almost unreadable script neither English nor German, and so arranged that if you were not careful you began with a toothpick and rice pudding and ended with soup and the day of the week. One evening after dining at Schulenberg’s 40-cent, five-course table d’hôte (served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the coloured gentleman’s head) Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. The restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she hall-roomed. The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah’s battle with the world was the deal she made with Schulenberg’s Home Restaurant. She was a free-lance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying. So, not being able to stenog, she could not enter that bright galaxy of office talent. She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography just let slip upon the world by a business college. Sarah had managed to pry apart the shells with her unhandy weapon far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. But did you ever notice any one try to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to wait for a dozen raw opened that way? It is not difficult to open an oyster with a sword. The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster which he with his sword would open made a larger hit than he deserved. And then, all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed. To account for this you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were all out, or that she had sworn ice-cream off during Lent, or that she had ordered onions, or that she had just come from a Hackett 2 Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card! For the following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. Never, never begin a story this way when you write one.

Geed and sundry rpgs 2017