This article is going to be very egotistical and MacLanesque and maybe somewhat shocking besides, so I strongly advise divers citizens of Butte not to read it. It occurs to me that some of the things I write do not agree with the constitutions of the said citizens - it seems to be bad for their livers - hence this preliminary note of warning. So now if you go right on and read it and it affects your liver unpleasantly, don't blame me.

To the others I fain would say here this, that I aim not to instruct in these articles, neither do I aim to better people's morals, nor in fact to bore people in any other way. My aim is to write something to entertain those who pay a nickel-a-throw for the Sunday News - to entertain them in the vaudeville way, artistically if I can, but, anyway, cheerfully, gayly, after the drive-dull-care-away method. If only the citizens of Butte would regard me as vaudeville and read me, with a patter and kettle-drum chorus, only to be entertained! But no, the stuff comes out on Sunday and so they read it at breakfast and assuage their consciences for not going to church by knocking it and me. And they call me a menace. All right - I'll be a menace, and if they don't look out I'll be "some menace." But at that I'll be a gay menace, a menace bound in red and gold, a menace with hair in little curls, a menace with bells on, a menace de luxe. Perhaps I'll come out as the original menace. I'll hit up the menacing business in Butte - I'll let my friends in cheap at the bottom - and we'll all go a-menacing together. It'll be quite fine and dandy. And all owing to the nifty parties who read my stuff at or after their Sunday morning breakfast and don't go to church.

I am herewith going to make a few genre pictures of men I have known and loved. I would rather write about women because men are so nearly all alike and are such conventional masculine beasts, anyway. But the editor of this neat sheet said men for this article - (it'll be women in another one) - so what can a poor girl do?

Since the spring of 1902, that lucky time when I ceased to be I and became M. MacLane and left little old Butte to go and fathom the mysteries that lie along the Atlantic seaboard in the depths of cities, when I knew completely nothing about the element masculine - since that time I have met upwards of a thousand men. The women at first fought shy of me for the most part, but the men came and went in my life in a never-ending stream, like a long glittering galaxy of little gods. So I know quite a lot about them. I shan't write everything I know - t'would hardly bear it - but from the thronged memories within me I'll cull a few types - like as: the Callow Youth, the Literary Man, the Bank Clerk, the Prize-Fighter, the Absinthe Drinker, the Middle-Aged Gambler, the Younger Son, and the Husband of Another.

If all these types seem to make love to me don't be surprised or alarmed. It's the only reason I happen to know anything about them, and besides men always make love to women - always.

The Callow Youth: I knew him first in St Augustine, Florida, where I used to spend my winters. St Augustine is a be-palmed and be-pointsettiaed winter resort of wonderful hotels, small in territory and congested in visiting population. One meets a motley moneyed company there - people from darkest Pittsburgh and deepest Indiana. And into my life one winter there blew a Callow Youth, aged but twenty: I being twenty-four. He was not only callow, but was a gilded sort of youth as well, a golden lad. His hair was the color of benedictine, his outlook on life was assured and mostly sanguine, and he looked a dream in white duck without a hat and with his sleeves rolled up over his bronzed biceps. He had a doting mother and an acrid spinster cousin, by way of family, in Stamford, Connecticut, and he himself was a Yale sophomore. But at the time I met him he was out of that institution on an involuntary vacation, the sole information he gave me on the subject being, "Poor mamma! She doesn't know I'm down here. You see it would worry her - and so needlessly - to know I'd got suspended just for wrecking a fire-engine." He had absolutely no sense of humor - his type never has, and the lack is either quite fatal or else the most delicious thing in the world. 'Twas the latter in the case of the Callow Youth - his callow name was Gerald - he took himself and all the world with a seriousness that was colossal, and for some mysterious reason he fancied himself in love with me. And for the time - and pour passer le temp - it was not difficult to imagine oneself in love with him. He and I used to amble together at sunset when the bells of the ancient cathedral sent languid chimes out over the sea and the low waves splashed the sea-wall at noon-tide, and the sky was of opals and amethysts. And thus the Callow Youth: "You know, Mary, you're the only women I've ever known who understood me at all, and you don't know how much it means to a man. You see, a man's got to have sympathy from some woman or nothing's worth while. There are plenty who'll tell you they love you, without really being sympathetic © like poor Fluff, for instance." ("Poor Fluff" was a personage with intensely yellow hair, by surname O'Rourke, who had supported Trixie Friganza in the chorus of "The American idea.") "Fluff was an uncommon girl in every way, and an awfully good sort, but she always wanted so much sympathy herself, you know - it made it awkward. Now, you're so different. There's just one woman in all the world for me, from now on. Everything and everybody are dead set against me, except you, and if you should fail me now there'd be nothing before me but the grave."

At which point I always looked away at the line of opals and amethysts, whereupon he glanced at me with, "You may not even yet quite comprehend me, Mary - you may think me young and all that rot, but I tell you, truly and really, I'm a devil of a fellow when I get started." Alack, that he never did get "started," whatever that may mean. 'Twas full three weeks before he bored me.

The Literary Man: a type that is rife in New York town, and quite the coldest, hardest, brutalest of all who walk its busy marts, but with a certain scourge-like charm of its own - he was my bete noir for a matter of months. I was not happy with him nor away from him. He possessed that pleasant faculty of keeping me in a chronic state of tolerable misery. And this his manner of speech the while he sat in my little den smoking my cigarettes and damaging sundry of my little belongings - pictures or pillows or articles of vertu by roughly handling them as he talked: "Mary - Mary, you're such an incomparable idiot! I've known you long enough by this time to cease to expect even ordinary decency and propriety from that twisted concoction you call your personality - but up to now I have given you credit for ordinary intelligence. The things that I impressed upon you as distinctly not to be said, at that tea-fight yesterday, were the very things you said, and now see what's come of it - you utter fool! You have just cost me six useful friends merely by sheer wanton recklessness. I wonder if there can ever be such a thing as keeping a tab on your insanity and reckoning on it, or whether it will always be a little blighting curse on us both." Said I, in extreme discomfort, "That being the case, why don't we just drop things right here?" On my left third finger blazed an oriental stone of deep-toned red, the outward and visible sign that the Literary Man and I had exchanged betrothal vows. The Literary Man: "Oh, I've promised myself to break it off - a hundred times. You've cost me so much in every way! But sometimes, and almost, I think possibly you're worth it. Let's go over to Mouquin's and talk things over." We talked things over infinitely that winter, and a countless number of times - and he called me a liar, and an evil spirit, and an imp of darkness, and various other names, besides tramping rough-shod on my already battered heart. But withal it was I who finally broke it off, quietly and triumphantly, and with the pleasant feeling of knowing that it left him in a carping, dissatisfied mood, and with a set of assorted qualms which I think even yet flit, hornet-like, through his mind.

The Bank Clerk: his temperament may not be typical of bank clerks, and yet I've found it characteristic of men in those clerical positions which occupy them from eight in the morning till six in the evening, working for an employer, and leaving them thereafter time to indulge their poetic dreams. I have never known a magazine poet - and New York teems with them - who really had any romance in him. They are all much more interested in sausages and beer and poker games. But in clerks, from law-readers to bartenders, it runs like a vein of precious metal.

The Bank Clerk: - a tall, slightly consumptive looking, rather ordinary chap of six-and-thirty - I recollect his eyes were set somewhat too close together - I knew him in Boston, a picturesque old town which harbored me five years, a town full of delicate incongruities and as capable, in its way, as New York of being one's undoing - and New York's indeed but five hours away from it. The Bank Clerk: he had made up his mind, years before, that when he happened upon a young woman of ordinary good looks and possessed of an imagination, a soul above beer and skittles, he would straightaway fall in love with her and ask the favor of her hand in marriage. Well, he happened upon me, and realizing only that I had an imagination, and not that I was also a perfect devil - he foolishly fell in love with me and asked the favor of my hand in marriage. And I - I never intended to marry him, but for a matter of eleven days my left third finger bore a glittering diamond set between two scintillant sapphires. Because my own name was too ordinary he called me Rosemary; we walked on the Common Sunday noons and week-day evenings, in the teeth of November winds, the while he spoke: "To think that my long dream is realized and She is walking by my side! My dear - my dear, do you know how I look forward to six weeks from today? I have saved up for the last dozen years about six thousand dollars out of my fool salary - and all for my wedding journey! Though I've had none but a phantom bride - still I laid it up against the time when she'd be Living Reality and she and I would make a wedding journey together. Six weeks - think of it! - and you and I will have quitted this frozen New England for Naples - we'll have landed on the shores of fair Italy, where the skies are ever blue. Can you fancy, my Rosemary, the bay of Naples at nightfall, with an indigo sky above it, hung with stars such as Massachusetts will never know - stars like immense yellow daffodils and seeming so near that almost we might reach up with our hands and gather them - stars like golden tears from the tender eyes of some mammoth night goddess - stars that will be blooming there but for us? We'll rest on some rocky promontory between sea and sky, surrounded by the soft black silence, unbroken save for the remote voices of singing fishermen many feet below, and the low music of the orchestras in the little cafes that edge the bay. It will be a soft black world lit but with yellow daffodils, voiced but with far-off music, and melting with the nameless enchantments of only you and me and the feelings in us."

Thus the Bank Clerk, to whom I listened fascinated, for he meant it all. Yet - not for mine. If ever there's a wedding journey for me 'twill be to London, to nowhere but London, that vast mixture of Babylon, Ancient Rome, and itself. As for the Bank Clerk - Boston is full of women - may he have found one, a better one - which might be, easily, and may they have had their day in fair Italy, where the skies are ever blue.

The Prize-Fighter: I met him in New York: a featherweight of local fame, with the lithe grace of a Greek disc thrower, the brows and lips of a demi-god, and the eyes and mind of an unreflective terrier. His succinct name was Red, though his very beautiful hair was of a deep orange color, and though his clothes were well-tailored his taste in neckties was something indeed fierce. With him have I gone many a summer's day down to Coney, and many an evening to Sharkey's, or to Port Arthur or some Chinese restaurant down the Bowery, and many a night have we danced away a half-dozen golden hours in the Third avenue dance-halls. He was a delight to at least three-fourths of my senses - I think he gave me more unmixed pleasure on the little jaunts we took than any man I've yet known. "Kiddo," he said one evening, over a chop-suey, "you sure've got me going. There ain't another skirt on the planet. Jimmy Ryan, frien' o' mine, manager of the Idle Hour, 'e says to me the other night, 'e says, `Just cast yer lamps over this bunch o' skirts on the floor,' e' says, `and pick the winner - she's yours.' But I shakes me head an' I says, `Jimmy, I know a kiddo that's got 'em all skinned forty ways' - and, kiddo, that goes. You don't want me money and y'er the only skirt I ever knowed that was on the level. I was dippy about you the first time we went out to Coney, and I'm dippy about you yet. You may chuck me away any day - I know you ain't in me class - but I'd be dippy still." He himself was one square pal while I knew him, and he never failed to thrill me to my very finger-tips. I'm wondering, with qualms and regrets, if indeed he's dippy still.

The Absinthe Drinker: him, too, I knew in New York. He was good-looking in a pallid sort of way, a slender, tallish young man, a dilettante in letters, and a follower - if that can be called following which bothers not even to note the direction of its leader - of an extremely indifferent, light-hearted, indolently-reckless cult. I was fond of him for two reasons - that the light-hearted and reckless always make an appeal to me, and that I felt my conscience in a perpetual state of assuagement (like the citizens of Butte at their Sunday morning breakfasts) by being myself in a state of but half-approval of his tenets. Every time I held back and took exception to his modes of thought, I reflected, "What a good sort I must be, to disapprove of this." It's a pleasant feeling. In the Cafe Martin, Twenty-sixth street and Fifth avenue, at four o'clock, we spent a hundred afternoons, listening to the music, watching the people, desultorily talking, and looking upon the absinthe in its cold, sinister, death-colored seduction. The Drinker drank eight absinthe frappes in the hour, while I ambled through one. "To think," said I in half-sad protest, "that it's slowly killing you, that you've been slowly dying for two years and are slowly dying now!" And said he quickly, "But, my child, what a sweet, sweet death to die! We are all dying, you know, from one cause or another - we are all, in this orchid-decked room, slowly moving toward our graves. So how much better to go with this exquisite poison in our veins, with the taste of it on our lips, and the flavor of it in our hearts! It brings us the flower of life and the music of the spheres - it would bring them to you if you'd give way to it and take it as I do, with ardor and delight. We would then slowly die together - a primrose death. It softens all the heart-breaks of life. My soul and body are dedicated to it and it, like a Green God of Misericorde, giveth me sundry good gifts in high reward. So drink, my child, drink to the primrose death." I drank with him that spring too often, to the primrose death, but always under a protest - a protest not strong enough to let me refuse my one thin glass, and so much the less strong to make his number smaller. Presently an invisible grave began to yawn too near his careless feet. He was a charming thing, the Absinthe Drinker, but my friendship with him blew away in the autumn winds like the scattering of dead leaves.

The Middle-Aged Gambler: the memory of him brings me mirth. He was hard-headed and hard-hearted (except in my direction), with hard-looking iron-gray hair, and hard-looking fishy gray eyes. He had race-horses at Sheepshead and a great deal of money. I liked him because he was one more type of humanity, and it was my plan to crowd all the people and all the experiences I might into my life while living in New York - knowing that some day Butte-Montana, of deadly-thrall fame, would be again my portion. Besides, the Gambler was kind to me, though he was the sort of man who by nature is hard on women - hard on their souls and hearts and bodies, a flinty experience in their lives. He had a penchant for slim sweet feminine youth with an admixture of subtle brain, and he fancied I filled that bill. He came ever and anon to see me in my little green-and-white apartment in Twenty-seventh street, into which he fitted with that aptness proverbially accredited to a bull in a china shop. He would glance contemptuously around at its thin lack of luxury as he walked about in it - he himself lived in apartments of bizarre and barbaric splendor - and would regard me with amorous compassion. "Kid," said he, "I've got to run out to Pittsburgh for a couple of days, and when I come back we must have this thing settled. I've told you before now that I'm crazy about you - and you know I am - I needn't go over that ground again. You can do whatever you like about me, but Kid, I'm damned if I'll go on like this. You need some one to take care of you - and you've got to agree to let me do it. I've thrown that into you fifty times, and I'm going to keep on throwing it into you till you agree to something. After that, whatever you want - I don't care what it is - anything in New York - just hand me the tip and I'll come through with the coin. Whatever I clean up on the ponies - but I've told you all that before. Come, Kid, be nice to me - say something kind." - I liked him better than literary men, anyway.

As for the others, the Younger Son and the Husband of Another - I'm supposed to hold the stage but seventeen minutes in this vaudeville stunt, so it's to dismiss them with cursory glances. The Younger Son was the younger son of a baronet in England, who had been busily engaged since the hour of his birth in doing nothing whatsoever. He wore a monocle. "But I'm frightfully interested in you, Mary," said he, "and New York's a frightfully interesting place - frightfully."

He and I wandered languidly around New York, languidly out to Brighton, languidly up to the Bronx, and languidly down to Coney. Languidly he loved and languidly he rode away. He had filled me with languid laughter while he stayed, then languidly I "ditched" him. A quaint experience was the Younger Son. He had managed to waste a shocking lot of my time, but then - he was so frightfully classy!

The Husband of Another: the most exasperating invention known to civilized man. He railed at his wife and wept on my doorstep at four in the morning. Indeed, one never knew just when he wasn't going to burst into tears - otherwise one might have avoided those damp incidents. "If only I had met you thirteen years ago," he wailed, "the tragedy of all this might have been averted." "Thirteen years ago," said I, "I was just twelve years of age. I didn't know a tragedy from a glass of lemonade - and cared considerably less. Now kindly retreat from this, my little abode, for I've got to make a quick change and go uptown for dinner." "Always hard - cold - heartless with me now," said he, gazing at me with a large, heavy, sodden, and most annoying brand of reproach. "Is it because I'm married? Is it? Oh, but had I known you thirteen years ago!" and he managed to change the gay, chaste atmosphere of my little flat into a briny gloom, flavored with what may be termed the juice of forbidden fruit. The Husband of Another - I recall him now, and from this distance, without exasperation - with no feeling at all, in fact, but one of gratitude that the gods did not lead him up to me thirteen years ago.

So there were eight of the little gods. There were more. May there be others! A fascinating, fascinating game. One's loves are so real - while they last. And thereafter - one day later - of what are they made, and where are they?

The nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows?

Yet - how much better to be wondering whither and whence the nightingale than never to have heard its mad trill!

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