The Voice: Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.
Beauty: What will I be? Tell me?
The Voice: At first I thought that you would go this time as an actress in the motion pictures but, after all, it’s not advisable. You will be disguised during your fifteen years as what is called a “susciety gurl.”
Beauty: What’s That?
(There is a new sound in the wind which must for our purposes be interpreted as The Voice Scratching its head.)
The Voice: (At Length) It’s a sort of bogus aristocrat.
Beauty: Bogus? What is Bogus?
The Voice: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.
Beauty: (Placidly) It all sounds so vulgar.
The Voice: Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced the old ones.
Beauty: (In a whisper) Will I be paid?
The Voice: Yes, as usual—in love.
Beauty: (With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the immobility of her lips) And will I like being called a jazz-baby?
The Voice (soberly) You will love it...
From The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (copyright 1922)
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