Tulsa Daily World

$5 a Week.

(By Herbert Kaufman in Woman's World.)

Thus is it down on Beelzebub's books:

"August the seventeenth—Isabel Brooks;
Home in the country; folks, decent but poor;
Character excellent; morals still pure;
Came to the city today and found work;
Wages five dollars; department store clerk."

Wages five dollars! To last seven days!
Three for a miserable hall-room she pays;
Two nickels daily the street car receives:
One dollar-forty for eating, that leaves.

One-forty has quite a long ways to reach
Twenty-one banquets at seven cents each!
There! Every penny of wage has been Spent—
Squandered for feasting and ruining and rent!
Spendthrift! She doesn't remember life's ills.
How in the world will she pay doctor's bills?
What if she's furloughed (there's always a chance):
Isabel ought to save up in advance.
Hold! We've not mentioned her clothes—she must wear
Dresses, hats, shoes, stockings, ribbons for hair—
How shall she get them? Suppose that we stop;
Perhaps it's as well if we let the thing drop.

You good mathematicians may figure it out;
It's a matter of figures or figure, no doubt.
Carry this picture, it's better, I'm sure;
"Character excellent; morals still pure."

What else is written, we won't try to see;
Beelzebub thinks much the same way as we.
Why, as I live! There's a tear in his eye!
Now, what in Hell can make old Satan cry?

Surely the devil is feeling his age;
Look what he's writing on Isabel's page:

"Virtue's a luxury hard to afford
When a girl hasn't money enough for her board."

No inflated prices for fancy frills at The Cyclone, just good plain furniture and your money's worth for your money.

Adv.