Free The Sunday Gentleman by Irving Wallace Page A

down, very much the way Joseph Jefferson sounds on those pioneer recordings Linguaphone puts out. Sometimes she speaks in a shriek, but her sentences are clipped and distinct, often punctuated by shrill laughter. Her speech is staccato.”
    “We have your marvelous letter,” Minna Everleigh was saying, “and we want to thank you for it—the most perfect letter I have ever received. Aida read it and she agrees with me that it is perfect. Now, about that matter you referred to, the Everleigh sisters—I must tell you, they just left for Florida, they are there now and will be there for several months. But Aida and I will be in constant touch with them, and we’ll let them know of your requests and we’ll keep in touch with you.”
    I told her I was deeply appreciative of the time she was giving to act as an intermediary between the Everleighs and myself.
    She listened, and then she asked, “You’re not a Catholic, are you?”
    “No, I’m not.”
    “I thought not. Well, the Catholics and Puritans in this country would be against such a play as you have in mind. The Catholic Church is powerful, you know, and it’s gaining strength. It has control over everything. It is against such women as the Everleighs, yet, Irving darling, when I lived in Chicago, some of the finest women I met socially were of the same class as the Everleighs, some of the very finest…All this condemnation of the Everleighs. They do not merit it. I know. The whole thing is like those Nazis on trial for their war crimes. Many of those Nazis followed orders. I don’t mean that they’re not guilty. They are guilty. But they followed orders, you understand. They had to do what they did. And the Everleigh sisters had to do what they did, too.”
    I began to tell her that I had nothing but admiration for the Everleigh sisters, but she interrupted me.
    “You know, Irving,” she said, “there have been three books written about the Everleigh sisters. One is Come into My Parlor . It should have been called ‘The Club.’ Another is The Gem of the Prairie . And there is also Lords of the Levee . Most all of this is a bunch of untruths and lies. But Come into My Parlor is the best…As to your play, I know something else you can do meantime. I’ve been reading four volumes written by Paul Eldridge, published by Haldeman-Julius who puts out those Little Blue Books in Girard, Kansas. Eldridge’s books are not books really, but pamphlets—still, real literature you could adapt for the stage. I wrote Eldridge my opinion of his work, sheer genius, nothing like that awful novel. Strange Fruit . He teaches Romance languages right here in New York.”
    Then graphically, if somewhat confusingly, Minna acted out, over the telephone—reciting various characters’ speeches with appropriate voice changes, the plot of one Eldridge book, and concluded by relating to me, briefly, the plots of the other three.
    “You know, I have been writing a book of my own for seven years,” she went on. “It is called ‘Poets, Prophets and Gods.’ I have read a lot, you know, all of the three thousand books which I have here in my home, and I went around the world twice, once in 1909 and again in 1912. I am absolutely a freethinker, no nursery stories for me. You are a freethinker, aren’t you?”
    “Well, yes, but—”
    “My book would be heresy. I think I will have Haldeman-Julius publish it. They publish that sort of thing. I will finish it next year and you shall have an autographed copy.”
    “That’s very kind of you.”
    “You may yet have your play, Irving. But really, you don’t think it could actually be done, do you? Did you ever see a photograph of the Everleigh sisters?”
    “No, I haven’t.”
    “One had warm brown hair, and the other had natural golden hair, and it would be difficult to find anyone to portray them on the stage. They were very strange, not happy girls. There was so much tragedy in their lives. They left Chicago in 1911 with over