--the
same. Then again folks are kind of proud of having had the flu. It makes
conversation and everything, and one which has escaped feels a little
mortified like admitting they had never seen Charlie Chaplin. Indeed,
people certainly do get a lot of pleasure out of illness and etc. And so
long as it is under control, all right, leave them enjoy theirselves.
They had to suffer first and mabe a little talk is coming to them.

But with this Bolshevism it's the other way around. The talk comes
first, but believe you me, the suffering will come afterwards. And if
they could only be made to realise this ere too late, a whole lot of
patients would be cured before they got it. A ounce of Americanism is
worth a pound of red propaganda, as the poet says, or would of had he
written to-day.

Things started with Ma as per usual upsetting the cook which has come to
be a habit with her, for cooking is to Ma what his art is to
Caruso--naught but death could tear her from it permanent. And while I
give her credit for trying in every way to be an idle rich, the kitchen
might as well be furnished with magnets and she a nail for all she can
keep out of it with the natural result that keeping out of it is the
best thing the cooks we hire do. And I can't say with any truth that I
have made as much effort to break her of that as of some other lack of
refinements, such as remembering that toothpicks ain't a public utility
and never to say "excuse my back," or keep her knife and fork for the
next course at the Ritz. Because believe you me, Ma is some cook and a
real authograph dinner by her is something to bring tears of sweet
memory to the eyes of the older generation and leave us young things in
sympathetic wonder about them dear dead days when first class
home-cooking was a custom, not a curiosity. And so while the material
side of life don't interest me much, what with my work and etc. to take
my mind off it, still even a artist must eat or Gawd knows where the
strength to act in the "Dove of Peace" or any other six-reeler would
come from if I didn't, and Ma's is that simple nourishing kind, but with
quality, the same as the sort of dresses I wear--made out of two dollars
worth of material and a thousand dollar idea.

Well anyways, our latest cook which had a husband in the service and had
took up her work again so's to release him for the front at Camp Mills,
for he got no further, heard he was coming back home, having got his
dischar