In Little Rock

A stair creaked. . . . The sound rang through the empty house like a shout. On the dim stairway a shoe was hastily withdrawn from the articulate board; a girl crouched against the balusters listening. The noise had been her own fault, but she was too bundled up to move altogether without clumsiness; she had on two dresses, one under the other; there was a package under her arm. No echo answered her mistep. She could smell the chlorides from the bathroom under the staircase; she could hear far away, the day's first milk-train chuff and clank on its siding. Stealthily, with infinite precaution, she put out her foot and took another step. . . .

Thus Mary Lewis, an orphan, ran away from her adopted parents--the Rev. and Mrs. William Fitch of Little Rock, Ark.--to become a chorus girl. The stair that creaked in that breathless dawn seven years ago still creaks, loudly and efficiently, as people pass up and down on household business. But last week Mary Lewis, current sensation of the Metropolitan Opera company and supreme example of What May Happen to a Chorus Girl, went back to Little Rock.

Governor Terral of Arkansas and Mayor Charles F. Moyer in high hats met her at the Capitol and handed her the keys of the city while a fine crowd applauded. She held an informal reception for her girlhood friends in the Governor's reception room; then she went to luncheon with Mrs. Alice C. Henniger, local music teacher (who discovered her voice). At five o'clock she was guest of honor at a high green tea of the Henniger School of Music; next day she gave a concert at the Little Rock High School (which she used to attend when she could steal a morning from the Pastor's housework) ; she shook hands with everybody at a reception given in her honor at the finest hotel in Little Rock. Governor Terral said:

"It is with the greatest feeling of pride . . . that I welcome you to the city to which you have brought ... so much fame . . . and I only wish it were possible for you ... to stay with us always. . . ." Mary Lewis smiled. She was a woman of the world now. And yet--when Mary Lewis had tried to render "Home Sweet Home" at her concert, some of the song had seemed to cause her throat a strange contraction. Maybe it was the air, maybe it was the thought that she lived in Little Rock no longer, but right in the middle of that most optimistic of songs Mary Lewis broke down, wept.