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Back The Best of Simple Save as PDF
Chapters (76)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. Foreword: Who Is Simple?
  5. Feet Live Their Own Life
  6. Landladies
  7. Simple Prays A Prayer
  8. Conversation on the Corner
  9. Simple on Indian Blood
  10. A Toast to Harlem
  11. Simple and His Sins
  12. Temptation
  13. Wooing the Muse
  14. Vacation
  15. Letting off Steam
  16. Jealousy
  17. Banquet in Honor
  18. A Veteran Falls
  19. High Bed
  20. Final Fear
  21. There Ought to be a Law
  22. Income Tax
  23. No Alternative
  24. Springtime
  25. Last Whipping
  26. Seeing Double
  27. Simple on Military Integration
  28. Blue Evening
  29. A Letter from Baltimore
  30. Seven Rings
  31. What Can a Man Say?
  32. Empty Room
  33. Picture for Her Dresser
  34. Cocktail Sip
  35. Apple Strudel
  36. Bop
  37. Formals and Funerals
  38. Fancy Free
  39. Midsummer Madness
  40. Morals Is Her Middle Name
  41. They Come and They Go
  42. A Million—and One
  43. Two Loving Arms
  44. All in the Family
  45. Kick for Punt
  46. Subway to Jamaica
  47. No Tea for the Fever
  48. Boys, Birds, and Bees
  49. On the Warpath
  50. A Hearty Amen
  51. Must Have a Seal
  52. Shadow of the Blues
  53. Once in a Wife-time
  54. Present for Joyce
  55. Christmas Song
  56. Tied in a Bow
  57. Sometimes I Wonder
  58. Four Rings
  59. Simply Love
  60. Bang-up Big End
  61. Duty Is Not Snooty
  62. Bones, Bombs, Chicken Necks
  63. A Dog Named Trilby
  64. Enter Cousin Minnie
  65. Radioactive Red Caps
  66. Two Sides Not Enough
  67. Puerto Ricans
  68. Minnie Again
  69. Vicious Circle
  70. Again Cousin Minnie
  71. Name in Print
  72. Minnie One More Time
  73. An Auto-Obituary
  74. Jazz, Jive, and Jam
  75. About the Author
  76. Newsletter Sign-up

“That is one reason,” said Simple. “The other reason is that if you don’t know anything about anything, like Joyce’s landlady, you should not open your mouth.”

“Your ruling would practically put an end to conversation,” I said. “Almost nobody knows much about anything. Do you want to plunge the world into silence?”

“Only landladies,” said Simple, “and wives. Isabel is trying to bug me again by mail. Look what I found on the hall table today from Baltimore!”

He proceeded to read her letter:

“Dear Mr. Semple, My Former Husband,

This is the very last letter you will ever get from me because I have asked you to do something for me and you do not do it, now I will do it myself. I will pay with my own money my own self for the last installment on our divorce. If I don’t, the man I love might get out of the mood of marrying me at all, he has waited so long for you to do your husbandly duty. Jesse B. Semple, I do not think much of you, and have never did. You are less than a man. You marry a woman, neglect her, ignore her, then won’t divorce her, not even when your part is only one third of the payment. So you go to hell! The next thing you will get from me will be the Decree, and the lawyer will send that. You do not deserve no gold seal on that paper because you have not put a cent into it and unless a gold seal goes with it free, you will not get one. From now on, you kiss my foot!

ISABEL ESTHERLEE JONES

P.S. I have taken back my maiden name until I get freshly married as I do not want no parts of you attached to me any longer.

MISS JONES

“That is an insult,” said Simple. “I will not let Isabel get the last word in on me. I will send that lawyer my part of the money tomorrow. Right now I got saved $92.18. Lend me $41.16.”

“In the middle of the week? If ever. Are you out of your mind?”

“This is an emergency. But if I can’t emerge with it tomorrow, I will on pay day. I’ll add my whole pay check to that money I got in my sock and send it off—because when I get that paper, I want to be sure mine has a gold seal on it, too. A paper don’t look like nothing without a seal.”

Shadow of the Blues

Shadow of the Blues

“I GOT IT,” said Simple when I ran into him on Saturday.

“Got what?”

“One Hundred and Thirty-Three Dollars and Thirty-Three Cents.”

“How?”