We rubber plants form the connecting link between the vegetable kingdom and the decorations of a Waldorf-Astoria scene in a Third Avenue theatre.I haven't looked up our family tree, but I believe we were raised by grafting a gum overshoe on to a 30-cent table d'hote stalk of asparagus.You take a white bulldog with a Bourke Cockran air of independence about him and a rubber plant and there you have the fauna and flora of a flat.What the shamrock is to Ireland the rubber plant is to the dweller in flats and furnished rooms.We get moved from one place to another so quickly that the only way we can get our picture taken is with a kinetoscope.We are the vagrant vine and the flitting fig tree.You know the proverb:
"Where the rubber plant sits in the window the moving van draws up to the door."We are the city equivalent to the woodbine and the honeysuckle.No other vegetable except the Pittsburg stogie can withstand as much handling as we can.When the family to which we belong moves into a flat they set us in the front window and we become lares and penates, fly-paper and the peripatetic emblem of "Home Sweet Home."We aren't as green as we look.I guess we are about what you would call the soubrettes of the conservatory.You try sitting in the front window of a $40 flat in Manhattan and looking out into the street all day, and back into the flat at night, and see whether you get wise or not--hey? Talk about the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden--say! suppose there had been a rubber plant there when Eve--but I was going to tell you a story.
The first thing I can remember I had only three leaves and belonged to a member of the pony ballet.I was kept in a sunny window, and was generally watered with seltzer and lemon.I had plenty of fun in those days.I got cross-eyed trying to watch the numbers of the automobiles in the street and the dates on the labels inside at the same time.
Well, then the angel that was molting for the musical comedy lost his last feather and the company broke up.The ponies trotted away and Iwas left in the window ownerless.The janitor gave me to a refined comedy team on the eighth floor, and in six weeks I had been set in the window of five different flats I took on experience and put out two more leaves.
Miss Carruthers, of the refined comedy team--did you ever see her cross both feet back of her neck?--gave me to a friend of hers who had made an unfortunate marriage with a man in a store.Consequently I was placed in the window of a furnished room, rent in advance, water two flights up, gas extra after ten o'clock at night.Two of my leaves withered off here.Also, I was moved from one room to another so many times that I got to liking the odor of the pipes the expressmen smoked.
I don't think I ever had so dull a time as I did with this lady.
There was never anything amusing going on inside--she was devoted to her husband, and, besides leaning out the window and flirting with the iceman, she never did a thing toward breaking the monotony.
When the couple broke up they left me with the rest of their goods at a second-hand store.I was put out in front for sale along with the jobbiest lot you ever heard of being lumped into one bargain.Think of this little cornucopia of wonders, all for $1.89: Henry James's works, six talking machine records, one pair of tennis shoes, two bottles of horse radish, and a rubber plant--that was me!
One afternoon a girl came along and stopped to look at me.She had dark hair and eyes, and she looked slim, and sad around the mouth.
"Oh, oh!" she says to herself."I never thought to see one up here."She pulls out a little purse about as thick as one of my leaves and fingers over some small silver in it.Old Koen, always on the lockout, is ready, rubbing his hands.This girl proceeds to turn down Mr.James and the other commodities.Rubber plants or nothing is the burden of her song.And at last Koen and she come together at 39 cents, and away she goes with me in her arms.
She was a nice girl, but not my style.Too quiet and sober looking.
