Comic Strips 2024: Just Act Cool and Flex a Little (2024)

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NO. 6--THE BILLY OF OPAL AND CHANGE, AND THE BETTY OF BROWN

THIS is the Billy who dreams of slashing on a "ten league canvas with hairs from a comet's tail" when he dies! This is the Billy who is a blessed "artest"! Sometimes a degenerate one, sometimes a "reel" one. Sometimes a degener- ate one who makes the clinking coth with the work of his hands; sometimes the real one who slashes the oily colors in a denim blouse, and whose honorable money box has the single-toned rattle of but one, or maybe two, coins in it most times.

It matters not a bit which one he is. Neither one nor the other is fat with bags of the green and gold; and both one and the other has a hushed wonder in his heart for the beauty of line and color, and tree and flower, and mist and sunshine, and faces and bodies; and is reaching endlessly with creative hands for the white fire that is the blinding, bitter-sweet heart of all the beauty in the world.

So this might be the Opal Billy. That would mean the changefulness of him and the exquisite light and shadow that lies in his fancies.

Changeable as the Weather.

Oh, ho! This Billy is like days. He rains and he shines and he glooms and he murks and storms. He works in a rage, like wind and lasting rain, and he lazes and dreams, like a still Autumn day of pale sunshine and the smoke of burning brush.

He laughs for maybe two days and the blue devils hustle him for two more; and then the next he whistles like a very bird in the blue sky and works in a squinting fever all the day!

His hair grows barbarous, he chews his tongue, and his face goes awry with following his brush. He spills and gobs and gets a patchwork face-gay with one green mustache and Prussian blue around the eyes.

If he's the Billy of the degenerates who make the clinking coins with the work of their hands, why, then, this day will be always Sunday, and he will swear when ings-out of Billy. She makes "eatin's" that make you say "ah-h-h-h" when you eat them, like when the the sun crawls down and the light on the wall turns amber and then goes out, and he can't see any more.

And his Betty's patience must be a thing of wonder on that Sunday.

This Opal Billy always delights and is gay in pulling out and tearing up, but he dies the death of a dog when he must put away and clean up his tearings-up and pullings-out.

He likes to cut up and mark on things. He makes little dinky curlycues and crosses and Os on nice, clean, white paper while he waits for his number in the telephone place-a blank place tempts his soul and makes it to sing, and he straightaway makes a "pic" on it.

He hates bills and business and things. He can't add and he gets a fever when he thinks of the letters he owes. He flunked out, from Freshie to Senior, in Math and "Algibbera," and he scowls when he even dreams of circles and angles and why they do what they do.

So he hies him gaily and changefully through the world, and he forgets all the things that have figures in them, while he hunts for the white fire that is the heart of the beauty of the world, so that he might make and create it with his hand.

And when he dies and is done life has been very wonderful to him, without the figures and business and things.

And the stars tell that for the Billy of Opal and change there is the Betty of Brown. She is wholesome and untiring and patient. She flies off on no fits and fevers, She understands, because she is big-hearted.

This Betty Always Serene.

One day is not different from another to her. never whistles and is wondrous gay like a butterfly Betty, and she never weeps and walls and pounds the walls.

She smiles and is unstirred and quite sane always! And she has a wise little place in her head that adds up and divides and figures how to have much "eatin's" and good things, even when the rattle in the money- box is thin.

She buys and sells and does all those things that have figures in them, that are most wonderful and awful to Billy. She puts away the tearings-up and pullings-out of Billy. She makes "eatin's" that make you say "ah-h-h-h" when you eat them, like when the fireworks are going down.

She carries the keys of the place where she and Billy live. She can dust and sweep and wipe the dishes.

She is all things that Billy is not. And-oh ho-if she were an Opal Betty, too-they would fight duels and get dyspepsia and live and die and be buried in bills and dust. Oh, ho!