Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood six oranges were my daily portion, supposed to substitute soups and entrees^ roasts, veg., and cheese. I sipped my breakfasts, drank my lunches, gargled my suppers, and, if oranges really have the advertised alkaline reaction in the digestive tracts, I must have been alkaline all through, so that a piece of litmus-paper would have turned blue at the very thought of me. On the first day that I was allowed out of doors I felt that in the good American fashion I should have worn a large button with * Sunkist ' upon it in my coat-lapel. The old house-owner had cause to worry. He had no measure by which to judge our probable actions, for the code of manners is still so uncodified that one has no measures by which to estimate action and reaction. All he knew was that we were so-called Bohemians, and in America so-called Bohemians are the highwaymen of society. In a land where impertinence is almost always successful the American Bohemian has pushed impertinence to limits unsuspected by any of Murger's heroes. We understand that, being in possession with his (rather startled) consent, and not paying any rent or receiving salary as caretakers, we might have been difficult to evict. Had we stood by the laws of our kind we could not only have stuck tight in the old man's house until the full force of the law had been brought to bear upon us, but also we might with luck have sold the place over his head and made off with the earnest-money. We have heard of even more nonchalant actions on the part of brother Bohemians. So no wonder the old man trembled. We must confess to being Bohemians more in habits than in consciences, and, as soon as the doctor was sure that I would once more become a movable object, Jo set off with the doctor's wife in her car to hunt for suitable lodgings. • ••••• [12]