ner-partner he burst out:

"I found a place where I can get all the hootch I want at eight a
quart--"

"Did you read about this fellow that went and paid a thousand dollars
for ten cases of red-eye that proved to be nothing but water? Seems this
fellow was standing on the corner and fellow comes up to him--"

"They say there's a whole raft of stuff being smuggled across at
Detroit--"

"What I always say is--what a lot of folks don't realize about
prohibition--"

"And then you get all this awful poison stuff--wood alcohol and
everything--"

"Course I believe in it on principle, but I don't propose to have
anybody telling me what I got to think and do. No American 'll ever
stand for that!"

But they all felt that it was rather in bad taste for Orville Jones--and
he not recognized as one of the wits of the occasion anyway--to say, "In
fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn't the initial
cost, it's the humidity."

Not till the one required topic had been dealt with did the conversation
become general.

It was often and admiringly said of Vergil Gunch, "Gee, that fellow can
get away with murder! Why, he can pull a Raw One in mixed company and
all the ladies 'll laugh their heads off, but me, gosh, if I crack
anything that's just the least bit off color I get the razz for fair!"
Now Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest
of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his
pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks
aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful important
to tell you!"

The women wriggled, and Babbitt was stirred to like naughtiness. "Say,
folks, I wished I dared show you a book I borrowed from Doc Patten!"

"Now, George! The idea!" Mrs. Babbitt warned him.

"This book--racy isn't the word! It's some kind of an anthropological
report about--about Customs, in the South Seas, and what it doesn't SAY!
It's a book you can't buy. Verg, I'll lend it to you."

"Me first!" insisted Eddie Swanson. "Sounds spicy!"

Orville Jones announced, "Say, I heard a Good One the other day about
a coupla Swedes and their wives," and, in the best Jewish accent, he
resolutely carried the Good One to a slightly disinfected ending.
Gunch capped it. But the cocktails waned, the seekers dropped back into
cautious reality.

Chum Frink had recently been on a lecture-tour among the small towns,
and he chuckled, "Awful goo