e left many of his
hearers with a grateful relief that neutrality had been officially
enjoined upon them.

Later Herman beamed less brightly as he recounted tales of German
prowess. He came to exhibit a sort of indignant pity for the Fatherland,
into whose way so many obstacles were being inopportunely thrown. He
compared Germany to a wounded deer that ravenous dogs were seeking to
bring down, but his predictions of her ultimate victory were not less
confident. Minna Vielhaber wept back of the bar at Herman's affecting
picture of the stricken deer with the arrow in her flank, and would be
comforted only when he brought the war to a proper close.

It was at this time that Winona wrote in her journal: "General Sherman
said that war is the bad place. He knew."

It was also at this time that a certain phrase from a high source
briefly engaged the notice of Sharon Whipple.

"Guinea pigs," said he, "are also too proud to fight, but they ain't
ever won the public respect on that account. They get treated
accordingly."

It was after this that Sharon was heard ominously to wish that he were
thirty or forty years younger. And it was after this that Winona became
active as a promoter of bazaars for ravaged Belgium and a pacifist whose
watchword was "Resist not evil!" She wrote again in her journal: "If
only someone would reason calmly with them!" She presently became
radiant with hope, for a whole boatload of earnest souls went over to
reason calmly with the combatants.

But the light she had seen proved deceiving. The earnest souls went
forward, but for some cause, never fully revealed to Winona, they had
been unable to reason calmly with those whose mad behaviour they had
meant to correct. It was said that they had been unable to reason calmly
even among themselves. It was merely a mark of Winona's earnestness that
she felt things might have gone differently had the personnel of this
valiant embassy been enlarged to include herself. Meantime, war was
becoming more and more the bad place, just as General Sherman had said.
She had little thought now for silk stockings or other abominations of
the frivolous, for her own country seemed on the very verge of
committing a frightful error.

Some time had elapsed since Wilbur Cowan definitely knew that he would
never go to war because of the mother of Lyman Teaford's infant son. He
began to believe, however, that he would relish a bit of fighting for
its own sake. Winona reasone