SCENE FIVE

Cutie, our little warm mamma, was decorating the flesh-pots this happy evening. Two lounge serpents named Morris and Bartlett had taken her to the Rainbo Gardens where there was a snake dance going on.

At ten o’clock Morris had taken the count and Bartlett was sitting with his dogs hanging out of the window to cool. Cutie, however, was still in the ring.

Our little twelve-cylinder butterfly had attracted a great deal of attention. As a dancer Cutie had Ruth St. Denis looking like a matzos peddler. St. Vitus himself would have copped fourth prize as a study in still life alongside of her. Nothing but a slow motion camera could do Cutie justice when she let her manners slip.

Among the side line sheiks who were K. Oing our quicksilver stepper was Herman Pupick, the celebrated censor and reformer. Herman was in disguise. He was wearing a large black mustache and a pair of green spats. From a short distance Herman looked like a laboratory specimen playing hookey.

Our hero had sneaked into the Garden in answer to the call of duty. Since his visit to Dr. Kukuheimer he had been working over-time censoring and reforming in a mad effort to put Cutie out of his mind.

While this Nature’s Blunder was taking notes on the low stuff happening before his one eye, he suddenly let out a stifled squawk. Cutie herself had sailed past him.

At first Herman thought it was all a dream. He pinched himself to see if he was awake. But he was dead from the neck both ways so it didn’t count. In the meantime, Cutie had discovered our hero. She penetrated his disguise at a glance. You can hide a light under a bushel but it is much harder for a pole-cat to conceal himself.

“My Gawd!” cried Cutie, turning in her tracks, “If it ain’t nature’s little nobleman, Mr. Pupick.”

Herman rose with the dignity of a lumbago victim.

“How do you do?” he replied in a hushed voice and held out his fin. Our heroine shook it and for a minute she thought somebody had slipped her a dead eel.

“I am grieved,” spoke Herman, “to see you pursuing your sinful course in this manner. I had hoped that our last meeting would cause you to see the error of your ways.”

“Why the shredded wheat over the kisser?” inquired our heroine eyeing the false mustache. “Take ’em off, poison ivy, before somebody throws you into a tank with the rest of the walruses.”

Our hero felt a little dizzy but his duty remained plain.

“It would give me great pleasure,” he said, “to take you out of this place and bring you home to your parents.”

Cutie felt a sudden curiosity.

“Come on, Mr. Pupick,” she invited him, “let’s crawl.”

Herman found himself oozing out of his chair. He was in a trance. He made a last effort and tried to steady himself by thinking of Mrs. Pupick. But all he could remember about her was that her knees looked like a couple of pineapples.

Our hero crossed his good eye and let himself go. The music was raising hell with his complexes. When Cutie put her arms around him she thought she had grabbed hold of a sack of cement.

“You are making a mistake,” our heroine grunted, “the idea is that we are going to have a dance, not a tug of war.”

But Herman was beyond the power of reason. As his smeller leaned against Cutie’s corn colored hair, he let out one gasp and swallowed his false mustache. When he felt our little mamma’s shimmy begin to shake, Herman thought a bolt of lightning was playing a tattoo on him. For a few minutes this flat wheeled caboose of gloom couldn’t figure out which part of him was his feet.

“What’s the matter?” Cutie whispered, “you are behaving like a clam diver with the hiccoughs. Have you lost control?”

Herman didn’t know exactly what was being said. He had grown so hot that his glass eye was beginning to melt around the edges. Just then the management turned the lights down and everything became green.

“Oh, God,” our hero groaned. And then all he knew was that somebody had tied him to a pin wheel as big as a barn door and set a match to it. He was going good at the rate of seven hundred revolutions to the second when somebody else shoved a bomb down his throat and he blew up.

SIXTH MEASURE

_In which Herman Pupick Skids off the Straight and Narrow_

SIXTH MEASURE

When Herman recovered what a practical joker would call his senses he found himself in a taxi cab. He felt something was terribly wrong. Opening his glim he saw Cutie. She was wiping his face with a sponge.

“Where am I?” murmured our hero.

“You are safe for the time being,” Cutie answered, “if the posse don’t locate our tracks.”

Herman shuddered and realized that he was covered with blood. He looked like a tomato somebody had thrown away.

“What has happened?” he groaned.

“Plenty,” our little first aid replied. “You are certainly a rough worker. Where was you raised, in a spittoon? It is too bad you left your pick at home on the mantlepiece, or you might have been more successful in your love making.”

“Love making,” moaned Herman. “Oh, my God, what have I done?”

“Yes,” continued Cutie, “we are dancing pretty when all of a sudden right in front of everybody you let out a terrible yell and fasten your horse teeth in my ear. Then, before I can get a good hold, you pull a half nelson on me and I am down for the count when the bouncers step in. One of them whams you on the skull with a near beer bottle and the other does a buck and wing on your neck. But little Herman, the Boy Scout, won’t give up. All you do is sink your teeth in my shoulder and make noises like a basket full of hungry pooches. Well, they finally tore you from my clutches after the riot call had been sent in and they had you stretched out on the curbing waiting for the booby wagon when this taxi creeps into sight and I shove you in and here we are, fleeing the angry posse which is threatening to dip you in oil and set fire to you without further argument.”

When Herman Pupick heard this he grabbed hold of his head and moaned like a lost soul.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Well,” said Cutie, “we will stop first at my little love nest and lay up for a few repairs. You look as if you had just escaped from a lunatic asylum full of Swiss bell ringers. After we have restored some of your face and removed the rest of it we will make plans for the future.”

A half hour later Herman was lying on a couch in a room that smelled like the eau de cologne department of Marshall Field’s. Our heroine had bandaged him up till he looked like a second hand patch work quilt.

Herman was just about to thank her when he happened to look at the table next to him. On that table in plain view were all the books he had suppressed in the last ten years.

This terrible sight restored our hero to himself. Staggering to his feet he let out the famous Pupick war cry and fell upon the dreadful volumes.

“How dare you?” he cried, “fill your home with such lewd and obscene books as these? Don’t you know they are corrupt and dangerous influences? No young girl should be allowed to handle them.”

Wounded though he was, our hero seized the literature which his pure soul found so offensive and tore it into shreds. When he got through, the room looked as if a nanny goat had been sleeping in it.

Just as our bruised and battered killjoy had finished his job, Cutie appeared in the doorway. She was a little overdressed for a Ziegfield chorus, but nobody in their right mind would have barred her out of a school for the blind. She was holding a pair of large lavender pajamas with fancy buttons on the jacket, in her hand. When she saw the room full of torn paper she came to a full stop and sighed.

“My Gawd,” she muttered, “he’s gone cuckoo again. Say,” she said aloud, “come out of it, Ophelia. You have had a large evening and there’s no use trying to stage an encore at this hour. Here, I think this sleeping bag will just fit you.”

And our little life restorer held up the lavender pajamas.

Herman Pupick stood with his one eye riveted on his hostess as if she were the chariot scene from Ben Hur.

SEVENTH ACT

_In which Herman Pupick Makes a Convert_

SEVENTH ACT

When Herman Pupick, the celebrated censor and reformer came to life the next morning, he was dressed in a pair of silk lavender pajamas. Even so, he looked like a cross between a chop suey pedlar and the inside of an Odd Fellow’s coffin.

“Good morning,” said Cutie, as our hero opened his one good eye to this unaccustomed sight at the foot of his haystack. For Cutie, risen from the morning tub, crowded her two hundred dollar kimona like a freshly inflated brand new inner tube.

“My Gawd,” continued our heroine, after a long look at the piece of rat bait occupying the company couch, “I forgot all about you being out here. I must have got my dates mixed. You are Mr. Pupick, the celebrated censor and reformer, if I remember right.”

“Yes,” moaned Herman, “but I must have met with an accident.”

“All right,” said Cutie, “you can use the bathroom.”

Ten minutes later, our hero came bounding out and stood jumping up and down in the middle of the room.

“I have received a message,” he gurgled, “from on High. It is a plan to rid the country of all lewd and obscene literature overnight.”

Throwing himself on the floor in front of Cutie, our hero sunk his false teeth into her ankle and barked for more.

“You are my inspiration,” Herman cried. “Until you came into my life, I was only an ordinary censor and reformer. Now I feel new vigor in my veins. I feel strong enough to stamp out the entire sins of our age.”

Cutie reached for a crowbar which was standing on the mantlepiece and as she did so her kimona carried the ball for ten yards around the left end. Herman couldn’t restrain himself and raised his voice in song.

“When Jesus shows his shining face there is sunshine in my soul,” our hero chanted.

“Stand up, poison ivy,” Cutie interrupted, kicking him under the chin, “and if you try to bite me once more I will play taps on your skull with this crowbar. I won’t stand for your making love to me unless you use a pair of iceman’s tongs and a mask. You are a very rough man, Herman, besides which you have a face which in its happiest moments reminds me of a cow pasture, it being so full of places I can’t look.”

“Oh, my dear young woman,” our hero moaned, “you have failed to understand me. You are my inspiration for higher things. You do not know how lewd and wicked is the world. How dangerous it is for little children to grow up surrounded by lewd and obscene literature.”

Herman’s potato head fell despairingly on Cutie’s knee.

“Debauchery is everywhere,” our hero groaned. “I cannot sleep nights thinking of all the evil there is and of the things I have left undone.”

Cutie felt a pang of conscience. Emboldened by her silence, Herman’s noble heart grew warm. He reached one of his fins for her ribs and declaimed passionately:

“Think, think, my dear fellow worker. Everywhere you turn, what do you see? Books which corrupt the morals of the young. Plays which stir young men and women to depravities. We will put an end to it. Don’t you understand? God has sent you to me. I have plucked you from the fire.”

Our little burning brand felt a great white light open in her soul.

“Ouch,” she murmured, “don’t pinch me so hard. I understand. I have led a sinful life, reading books unfit for children.”

“Yes, yes,” panted our hero, “your wickedness is plain to you now. Repent! Repent!”

“No,” Cutie murmured.

Herman threw his arms around her, his face shining with piety like a Christmas tree. Burying his nose in her collarbone, he began to squeal like a peanut wagon.

“We will burn down all the bookstores,” he cried, “and blow up all the publishing houses and public libraries and arrest everybody. Everybody,” he repeated. “Repent, sister, repent! Think of the little kiddies whose lives we will purify.”

Cutie burst into tears.

“Let me go,” she sobbed. “I am unfit for the great work.”

Herman lifted her to her feet. A moment later, Len Small was elected governor by a large majority of one hundred thousand votes. Although this gesture on the part of the proletariat argued that a Republican landslide had started, the commander in chief of the navy, a bald headed man with a wen on his right thumb, refused permission to the transcontinental aviators to stop over in Madrid. The results of this action are too well known for further comment. Herman Pupick was defeated for congress on the fifth ballot and the commonwealth of Illinois had lost another able defender.

EIGHTH PART

_In which Mrs. Pupick Makes the Front Page_

EIGHTH PART

The days passed rapidly and the nights had no flies on them either. The whole world was beginning to talk about Herman Pupick.

Until Cutie had come into this crepe hanger’s life, Herman had been only a cold and plodding censor. But after spending a week in our warm mamma’s bungalow discussing ways and means to throw the hooks into the Devil, Herman was a changed man.

He closed up all the dance halls by writing letters to the papers and caused the arrest of twenty-nine authors in Schlogl’s restaurant, suppressed the Chicago Literary Times, wiped out all the bookleggers, and had all the abdominal belt displays taken out of all the drug store windows.

There was even some talk of his running for President on the Smut Hounds’ ticket. But Herman wouldn’t listen to this.

“The government is paying me $29 a week to clean up the nation,” said our hero simply, taking Cutie in his arms one evening, “and I can do more good where I am.”

Mrs. Pupick didn’t read the newspapers because she had no interest in rape. When Herman failed to report for his farina the first morning, Mrs. Pupick was worried. She feared he might have been run over by a kiddie car.

All that day she sat and waited. At night she prayed and sang hymns. But it did no good. So at dawn she telephoned her neighbor’s husband who was a dog catcher for a Greek restaurant and asked him if he had seen our hero.

When he said he hadn’t seen Herman for two days, Mrs. Pupick put on her Sunday wig and sat in front of the parlor window.

On the ninth day this onion sack was rewarded for her vigil. Looking out of the window, she saw her missing link parading down the street with three dizzy broads hanging on his arms. “The Lord have mercy on my poor soul,” gulped Mrs. Pupick, and fell to the floor with a crash.

When she opened her eyes, Herman was bending over her. He had unbuttoned her cast iron shirt waist to give her air. Mrs. Pupick pulled the rug over her in confusion and sat up.

“Where have you been?” she demanded.

Our hero breathed with relief.

“Thank God you are alive!” he lied like a dog. “I have been busy censoring and reforming, my dear. I want you to meet my assistants.”

Taking a fire gong out of his pocket Herman smote it with a monkey wrench. Three vampires leaped out of the kitchen in response. One of them was Cutie, the other two were her sisters in God.

“Meet my staff,” Herman spoke up. “Staff, this is Mrs. Pupick.”

“Hot baby!” cried Cutie, “you don’t mean that you are married and that this bag of prunes is the wife?”

“Yes,” said Herman frankly. “Be kind to her, for she will be a great help to us in our work.”

Cutie’s two friends poked their fingers in Mrs. Pupick’s stomach to see if she was real.

“You vile wretch,” our warm mamma cut loose, “so this is the way you have been deceiving me! Getting me to repent and repent and all the time with a ball and chain waiting for you at home.”

Mrs. Pupick staggered to her feet and grabbed a hat pin off the dresser. Before anybody could sandbag her she had run the hat pin into Cutie’s left chest. Our heroine let out a moan and fell on the bed just as two newspaper reporters and a press photographer were ringing the door bell.

_L’ENVOI_

L’ENVOI

There are three graves out in Rosehill Cemetery. Bring your sponge along while we give them the once-over. Over the first grave is a $500.00 tombstone donated by Charlie Blake and it says on the tombstone:

“Here lies Herman Pupick, glass eye and all. He was a mush head and a wet smack. When he died, his many admirers presented him with a drainpipe for a coffin. Those who knew him best called him Polecat Herman.

“During his unfortunate life, this piece of rat bait which lies six feet below was a censor and a reformer. He was highly respected by old maids suffering from dementia menopause.

“It was Herman Pupick’s ambition to go to heaven, but the fumigators threatened to strike, so St. Peter wouldn’t let him in.

“How this smut hound happened to die is interesting. He was stabbed by his wife during a quarrel. Mrs. Pupick accused him of adultery. Herman broke down and confessed he had committed adultery twenty-nine times and was tired of it. Those were his last words.

“Like all censors and reformers, Herman had a foul mind and a bad breath. His soul was a spittoon and everything that fell into it got dirty. After his death a delegation of students arrived at the undertaking rooms to permit an autopsy. But there was no outhouse available.

“The biography of this dead censor can be written in a few words. Everything he saw reminded him how dirty he was. Instead of cleaning himself up, he attacked the world with a cake of Sapolio. He tried for thirty-seven years to establish an alibi for his weak glands by claiming that God admired and rewarded impotent morons.

“There is no use feeling sorry for him. He was one of Nature’s blunders. His mind was still in its foetal stage. If God wants him, He can have him. And take the drain pipe, too. There are no competing claims.

“Rest in peace, Herman Pupick. The bereaved world will try to struggle on a little while longer without your uplifting presence.”

Over the second grave is another $400.00 tombstone donated by Professor J. Louis Guyon, and it says on this tombstone:

“Here lies the wife of Herman Pupick. She was a woman of refinement. She couldn’t pass a bathroom without blushing. It is wrong to speak angry of the dead. This interferes with our last testament to Mrs. Pupick.

“We will, therefore, refer as kindly as we can to her. During her life, Mrs. Pupick suffered in mind and body. Her virginity had decomposed at an early age. Her veins were full of lemon juice and she had a face like a second-hand apricot. Her knees looked like a couple of pineapples.

“She wore a switch and had false teeth and suffered from chillblains and she was so thin from worrying that she would have to be padded in order to fit into a bean blower.

“What Mrs. Pupick worried about was that some evil minded man might insult her. She was always scared to death for fear that some low and brutal male would try to rape her. This terror kept her from going out in the streets except when accompanied by several protectors.

“In a way, Mrs. Pupick’s fears proved ungrounded. Up to the time of her death nobody had tried to take advantage of her. But still you can’t tell. Mrs. Pupick knew men were filthy and vile, and whether anything happened or not it was best to be on your guard.

“Mrs. Pupick was proud of her husband until the day she murdered him. Herman used to pray every night before sliding into the hay alongside of this kippered herring that God should keep him pure. Mrs. Pupick felt that the way God answered her husband’s prayer every night was a miracle.

“The last day of this lady’s life was an exciting one. After her husband had confessed his sins to her, she murdered Cutie and him both and then staggered to the mirror and, taking a good look at herself, dropped dead.

“Rest in peace, Mrs. Pupick. No white slaver can get you now.”

There is no tombstone over the third grave. Cutie lies buried here, but nobody has put a tombstone up. When it became known that Cutie was dead, everybody went out and got drunk. But nobody thought of buying a tombstone.

Poor Cutie! She was a great kid and never hurt anybody. The undertaker who embalmed her wept like a baby. And the horses that carried her to the graveyard walked slower than usual.

The birds keep flying over the place where she’s buried. And at night people who knew her grow sad. She was a little bit rough in her work, but she meant well.

There is no use prolonging the discussion. Wherever our little warm mamma has gone there the flowers are blooming and the band is playing and the boys are all having a good time.

Rest in peace, Cutie. When we get rich we will buy you a tombstone and have three words chiseled under your name:

_Faith, Hope and Charity._

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Page 8: “exact appelation” changed to “exact appellation”

Page 27: “fox trottter” changed to “fox trotter”