BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
BUTTERED SIDE
DOWN
EDNA FERBER
1
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
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.
2
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
PART. 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 edians 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
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