













BUTTERED SIDE DOWN


STORIES

BY

EDNA FERBER





MARCH, 1912




FOREWORD


"And so," the story writers used to say, "they lived happily ever after."

Um-m-m--maybe.  After the glamour had worn off, and the glass slippers
were worn out, did the Prince never find Cinderella's manner redolent of
the kitchen hearth; and was it never necessary that he remind her to be
more careful of her finger-nails and grammar?  After Puss in Boots had
won wealth and a wife for his young master did not that gentleman often
fume with chagrin because the neighbors, perhaps, refused to call on the
lady of the former poor miller's son?

It is a great risk to take with one's book-children.  These stories make
no such promises.  They stop just short of the phrase of the old story
writers, and end truthfully, thus:  And so they lived.

E. F.




CONTENTS


    I.  THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
   II.  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
  III.  WHAT SHE WORE
   IV.  A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
    V.  THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
   VI.  ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
  VII.  MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
 VIII.  THE LEADING LADY
   IX.  THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
    X.  THE HOMELY HEROINE
   XI.  SUN DRIED
  XII.  WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH




BUTTERED SIDE DOWN


I

THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE

Any one who has ever written for the magazines (nobody could devise a
more sweeping opening; it includes the iceman who does a humorous article
on the subject of his troubles, and the neglected wife next door, who
journalizes) knows that a story the scene of which is not New York is
merely junk.  Take Fifth Avenue as a framework, pad it out to five
thousand words, and there you have the ideal short story.

Consequently I feel a certain timidity in confessing that I do not know
Fifth Avenue from Hester Street when I see it, because I've never seen
it.  It has been said that from the latter to the former is a ten-year
journey, from which I have gathered that they lie some miles apart.  As
for Forty-second Street, of which musical comedians carol, I know not if
it be a fashionable shopping thoroughfare or a factory district.

A confession of this kind is not only good for the soul, but for the
editor.  It saves him the trouble of turning to page two.

This is a story of Chicago, which is a first cousin of New York, although
the two are not on chummy terms.  It is a story of that part of Chicago
which lies east of Dearborn Avenue and south of Division Street, and
which may be called the Nottingham curtain district.

In the Nottingham curtain district every front parlor window is
embellished with a "Rooms With or Without Board" sign.  The curtains
themselves have mellowed from their original
department-store-basement-white to a rich, deep tone of Chicago smoke,
which has the notorious London variety beaten by several shades.  Block
after block the two-story-and-basement houses stretch, all grimy and
gritty and looking sadly down upon the five square