They had been married a little more than a year. Mimi glanced idly through the mail beside her plate at breakfast as Jimmie performed his usual rite of picking juicy morsels from the World .
“ ‘New Prohibition Shakeup Threatened’—humph! the bootleggers must have started that—they’ll shoot prices way up to the sky for liquor now—reminds me, Mimi, how’s my stock? The gin must be getting kinda low—I’ll telephone McCarthy today. … Say, here’s a rich bit—about a Jew selling robes to the Ku Klux Klan. By the way, Mimi, have you seen my Shriner’s pin laying around anywhere? I must’ve left it in my grey suit when I sent it to the cleaners last week. Telephone them and see if I did, won’t you? … Here’s one from Georgia. Man asks native how much corn he expects to raise this year and the native answers: ‘Oh, ’bout a hundred gallons.’ Say, that’s rich, don’t you think so? … They’re talking about passing a law out in Iowa to keep schools from using textbooks that mention fermentation—say it’s against the prohibition laws. … And here’s a story where a crowd of women down in Louisiana tarred and feathered another woman and run her out of town. Kinda rough on the gal but she must’ve been pretty rotten. And over in Texas they lynched another nigger. They’re really cleaning things up. This Klan’s stirring up things all over-little rough, maybe—but these kikes and Catholics and niggers got to be kept under control. …”
Mimi listened only half-heartedly to Jimmie’s selection of the news which interested him—in fact, did not hear him. She interrupted him as he paused.
“Here’s a note from Mrs. Crosby—wants us to come to dinner Friday night—they’re having a few people in to meet some Chinaman—Wu Hseh-Chuan.”