Optimist quote lettering across upper back

The Palace people finally paid, so I can tell you about the wall. Mr Fenwick wanted the words across the top of the ballroom, above the bandstand, and he was very particular. Three lines, he said, and the middle one to lean downhill like a tired horse. I told him a sign painter cannot make a line lean without it looking drunk, but he only laughed and said the customers would be drunk anyway.

I did the capitals first, in black enamel, with OPTIMIST large enough to read from the door. The HOPER and DREAMER I did in the joined hand Father taught us. Fenwick insisted ALWAYS get a line under it, as the only word that mattered, and he wanted hopes and dreams underlined too, so they looked like something you could stand on. I said it would take a week. It took nine days, because each evening the couples came in early to watch and told me which letters were crooked. The girl in the cloakroom said my apostrophes were wrong. She was right.

On the last night, Fenwick climbed the ladder himself with a tin of gold and stopped halfway through the second line. He said his wife had written those words on a card the week they met, and he had never once believed them. Then he finished the dot over the i in improbable and came down, and the band struck up a waltz nobody could dance to without laughing. I stayed to watch them try.

Love, Walter