“There’s a certain party of some prominence on Wall Street that wants me to be one of a party on board his yacht, as his wife is going to Europe for the summer, but I don’t know about these yachting parties, for there has been so much scandal about some of them that I am afraid it will lacerate my reputation.  You know, above all things, I must be careful with that.  Especially now that I am going to become a bride.  Yep, Wilbur and I expect to pull off the wedding bell specialty early in June, or as soon as the season opens at Saratoga.

“I think a young married couple can have such a nice quiet time in Saratoga if they go there on their bridal trip and the season is opened.  There is so many society people and others there that life never drags.

“I remember I was there on my first wedding tour, but my husband wasn’t with me.  What!  Didn’t you know I had been married.  Certainly I have, and I am betraying no confidences when I declare myself.  Yes, I have been married, and to Saratoga on my wedding trip my husband couldn’t accompany me because he was with another show.  I never had such an extended bridal trip.  All one-night stands.  I was with a musical comedy at the time, and I met my husband in Racine, Wis.  I know that’s an awful place to meet anybody, even your husband, but this is a sad and true tale.  He was the leading juvenile with a one-two-three show, and such a handsome thing you never saw on the stage.

“Honest, to hear him spring that sure-fire hokum you would have thought he believed it.  I know he passed the same line of dope out to me, and I fell for it.  What more could you ask?  I was a young and trusting thing then, having been in the business only one season, so I was not ‘wised’ up to the proper point to believe no man until he makes good.  He introduced himself to me after the performance, and as we were laying off there waiting for the angel to come across with the necessary funds for us to continue our successful tour, I had nothing else to do but to listen to his line of chatter.

“He handed it over so strong that I took it all in, and one day when he sought my hand I nailed him to the mast and we beat it for the justice of the peace and were made one.

“His show closed shortly after that and I had to learn to send him money.  He got so proud and stuck up that he wouldn’t even hunt for a job, until at last it got so unbearable that I had to get a divorce.

“He was a gay and festive young thing, and though I left town the day we were married I still look upon him as my first husband.

“No, I never have seen him since, but we did a great deal of corresponding especially when he needed money.

“If you could get Clarence—­yes, that was his name ain’t it a scream?—­if you could get Clarence soused he was the boy comic.  Honest, I have seen him bring a smile out of a head waiter.

“He was the real spendthrift.  Why, every day he was courting me in Racine he would take me down and let me look at the lake for hours at a time, and often he would tell me he was going to take me boat riding.  Shows what a piker I was.  If I knew what I do now I would have sprung a laugh and told him if he wanted my fair young heart he would have to show me more excitement than a watch meeting.