Automatic Age

T he
A u t o m a t ic A ge
By H. I. PHILLIPS, in The Boston Globe
Identifications of 1927 (As Revealed by a Conversation
in a Moedrn Home)
“ I saw Mrs. Boolak in the subway
today.”
“ Did she look well?”
“ No, her garters were quite shab­
by.”
“ Was she alone?”
“ She had two young women with
her.”
place her at first. I kept saying to
myself, ‘ That woman’s kneecaps are
very familiar to me. Why can’t I
remember her name?’ ”
“ Your memory is getting awful,
Willis.”
*
*
*
"W hat kind o f looking young wom­
en? I wonder if I know them.”
“ Speaking of Eddie Skoobs, have
you seen Mrs. Skoobs lately?”
“ Well, I didn’t pay much attention
to them . . . I simply noticed that
one o f them had awful knees.”
“ I saw her last Tuesday. She was
sitting on a divan in the main lobby
of the New Grand Hotel,”
“ Very knotty?”
“ Yes.”
“ That’s her daughter, Minerva.”
“ The other young woman had a
scar about 18 inches above the ankle
on her right leg. She was nobody
I ever had seen before.”
“ Mrs. Boolak has a niece who is
with her a lot, but both legs are
without a blemish. It couldn’t have
been she.”
* *
“ By the way, in a restaurant yes­
terday I saw that woman who was
my partner at bridge last week.”
“ W ho?”
“ I can’t recall her name, but she
was the one with the awful fat legs.”
“ You don’t mean Mrs. Migwish, the
banker’s wife.”
“ That’s who it was. She sat at a
table opposite me and I just couldn’t
© International Arcade Museum
“ Did you speak to her?”
“ N o; I didn’t know her at first.
She’s lost all that excess flesh around
the patella.”
“ Not really?”
“ Yes, both knees looked quite
drawn. The muscular fibers o f the
quadricaps extensor were quite vis­
ible, which is something quite new
with her. Her tibia is most pro­
nounced now.”
“ She must be dieting.”
“ That’s what I thought. I never
saw a woman whose legs had changed
so in a few weeks. I hardly knew
her.”
“ Look out the window, Willis;
there’s that Jenks girl getting into a
taxi with her mother.”
"Which is the mother?”
“ The one with the old rose scan­
tiest ”
“ O, yes!”
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