There it goes! That would be. That would happen to me. I haven't got enough trouble. Here I am, a poor, lone orphan, stuck for the evening at this four party where I don't know a soul. And now my garter has to go and break. That's the kind of thing they think up to do to me. Let's see, what shall we have happen to her now? Well, suppose we make her garter break; of course, it's an old gag, but it's always pretty sure-fire. A lot they've got to do, raking up grammar-school jokes to play on a poor, heartsick orphan, alone in the midst of a crowd. That's the bitterest kind of loneliness there is, too. Anybody'll tell you that. Anybody that wouldn't tell you that is a rotten egg.

This couldn't have happened to me in the perfumed sanctity of my boudoir. Or even in the comparative privacy of the taxi. Oh, no. That would have been too good. It must wait until I'm cornered, like a frightened rat, in a room full of strangers. And the dressing-room forty yards awayÑit might as well be Sheridan. I would get that kind of break. Break, break, break, on thy cold gray stones, O sea, and I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me. Boy, do I would that it could! I'd have this room emptied in thirty seconds, flat.

Thank God I was sitting down when the crash came. There's a commentary on existence for you. There's a glimpse of the depths to which a human being can sink. All I have to be thankful for in this world is that I was sitting down when my garter busted. Could you blessings over, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done. Yeah. I see.

What is a person supposed to do in a case like this? What would Napoleon have done? I've got to keep a cool head on my shoulders. I've got to be practical. I've got to make plans. The thing to do is to avert a panic at all costs. Tell the orchestra for God's sake to keep on playing. Dance, you jazz-mad puppets of fate, and pay no attention to me. I'm all right. Wounded? Nay, sire, I'm healthy. Oh, I'm great.

The only course I see open is to sit here and hold on to it, so my stocking won't come slithering down around my ankle. Just sit here and sit here and sit here. There's a rosy future. Summer will come, and bright, bitter Autumn, and jolly of King Winter. And here I'll be, hanging on to this damned thing. Love and fame will pass me by, and I shall never know the sacred, awful joy of holding a tiny, warm body in my grateful arms. I may not set down imperishable words for posterity to marvel over; there will be for me nor travel nor riches nor wise, new friends, nor glittering adventure, nor the sweet fruition of my gracious womanhood. Ah, hell.

Won't it be nice for my lucky hosts, when everybody else goes home, and I'm still sitting here? I wonder if I'll ever get to know them well enough to hang my blushing head and whisper my little secret to them. I suppose we'll have to get pretty much used to one another. I'll probably live a long time; there won't be much wear on my system, sitting here, year in, year out, holding my stocking up. Maybe they could find a use for me, after a while. They could hang hats on me, or use my lap for an ash-tray. I wonder if their lease is up, the first of October. No, no, no, now I won't hear a word of it; you all go right ahead and move, and leave me here for the new tenants. Maybe the landlord will do me over for them. I expect my clothes will turn yellow, like Miss Havisham's, in Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, an English novelist, 1812-1870. Miss Havisham had a broken heart, and I've got a broken garter. The Frustration Girls at the World's Fair, The Frustration Girls and Their Ice-Boat, The Frustration Girls at the House of All Nations. That's enough of that. I don't want to play that any more.

To think of a promising young life blocked, halted, shattered by a garter! In happier times, I might have been able to use the word "garter" in a sentence. Nearer, my garter thee, nearer to thee. It doesn't matter; my life's over, anyway. I wonder how they'll be able to tell when I'm dead. It will be a very thin line of distinction between me sitting here holding my stocking, and just a regulation dead body. That's from Nicholas Nickleby. What am I having, anywayÑAn Evening with Dickens? Well, it's the best I'll get, from now on.

If I had my life to live over again, I'd wear corsets; corsets with lots of firm, true, tough, loyal-hearted garters attached to them all the way around. You'd be safe with them; they wouldn't let you down. I wouldn't trust a round garter again as far as I could see it. I or anybody else. Never trust a round garter or a Wall Street man. That's what life has taught me. That's what I've got out of all this living. If I could have just one more chance, I'd wear corsets. Or else I'd go without stockings, and play I was the eternal Summer girl. Once they wouldn't let me in the Casino at Monte Carlo because I didn't have any stockings on. So I went and found my stockings, and then came back and lost my shirt. Dottie's Travel Diary: or Highways and Byways in Picturesque Monaco, by One of Them. I wish I were in Monte Carlo right this minute. I wish I were in Carcassonne. Hell, it would look like a million dollars to me to be on St. Helena.

I certainly must be cutting a wide swath through this party. I'm making my personality felt. Creeping into every heart, that's what I'm doing. Oh, have you met Dorothy Parker? What's she like? Oh. she's terrible. God, she's poisonous. Sits in a corner and sulks all eveningÑnever opens her yap. Dumbest woman you ever saw in your life. You know, they way she doesn't write a word of her stuff. They say she pays this poor little guy, that lives in some tenement on the lower East Side, ten dollars a week to write it and she just signs her name to it. He has to do it, the poor devil, to help support a crippled mother and five brothers and sisters; he makes buttonholes in the daytime. Oh, she's terrible.

Little do they know, the blind fools, that I'm full of tenderness and affection, and just aching to give and give and give. All they can see is this unfortunate exterior. There's a man looking at me now. All right, baby, go on a look your head off. Funny, isn't it? Look pretty silly, don't I, sitting here holding my knee? Yes, and I'm the only one that's going to hold it, too. What do you think of that, sweetheart? Heaven send that no one comes over here and tries to make friends with me. That's the first time I ever wished that, in all my life. What shall I do if anyone comes over? Suppose they try to shake hands with me and say, "No spik Inglese," that's all. Can this be me, praying that nobody will come near me? And when I was getting dressed, I thought, "Maybe this will be the night that romance will come into my life." Oh, if I only had the use of both my hands, I'd just cover my face and cry my heart out.

That man, that man who was looking! He's coming over! Oh, now what? I can't say, "Sir, I have not the dubious pleasure of your acquaintance." I'm rotten at that sort of thing. I can't answer him in perfect French. Lord knows I can't get up and walk haughtily away. I wonder how he'd take it if I told him all. He looks a little too Brooks Brothers to be really understanding. The better they look, the more they think you are trying to get new with them, if you talk of Real Things, Things That Matter. Maybe he'd think I was just eccentric. Maybe he's got a humane streak, somewhere underneath. Maybe he's got a sister or a mother or something. Maybe he'll turn out to be one of Nature's noblemen.

How do you do? Listen, what would you do if you were I, and . . . . ?