urned to our
little flock from the busy scenes of the great and wicked metropolis.' I
had to get up and hand out the usual stereotyped and mimeographed stuff
about being glad to be in their midst once again and it did my heart
good to see so many bright and shining faces, etc., etc. I had on a
modest little frock that had only lanced me about three hundred and made
the aurora borallis look like a dark night. So that the admiring public
wouldn't overlook any bets in the costume line I enlivened my discourse
with these illustrated song gestures, every move a picture.

"After the olio the Busy Brigade of the Ladies' Auxiliary took the
napkin off a group of sandwiches and a bath tub of lemonade and we all
had an awful time with ourselves cracking rare quips. Me the center of
an admiring throng. They all knew I was an actress and they asked me to
act. You know the extent of my acting, a champagne dance and a burlesque
on the 'Merry Widow' waltz, and my lines are limited to, 'Oh! girls,
here comes the prince, now, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.' Therefore I ducked
the request to exhibit my art. I was going home after the show--I mean
entertainment--and Waldo, the fellow I went with before I got sense
enough to blow the burg with a musical comedy--Waldo started to walk
home with me. I will say this much for Waldo before I go any further, he
has a good eye for the future, even though he is working in a grocery
store.

"Waldo and I were walking down the quiet country lane, he telling me all
the news that had been pulled off while I had been away. When we got
down to the garden gate what do you think came off? Waldo proposed.
Honest, he proposed, just like that. Waldo's intentions were sincere,
but his work was lumpy and he went up in his lines a couple of times. He
didn't pass it out half as strong as these city chaps do when they don't
mean it. I instructed Waldo to can his chatter and forget it. Waldo got
real indignant because I wouldn't fly with him and tried to grab me. Now
I hadn't been prowling about New York alone without learning how to take
care of myself, so I gave him the heel and the way he went to the mat
was a caution for further orders. Waldo was a nice boy, but he was
rough, so after the jolt he got he had sense enough to beat it.

"Say, I had an awful time for the next two or three days. But never
again. I'll never go any further out in the country than Claremont.
These rural districts are for those that like them,