loaded her into a cab before the police came and
managed to get her back up to the hotel, though the fight she put up was
a caution. Wine is sure a mocker and Scotch highballs is fierce.

"I heard from the folks in Emporia the other day and they are still
talking over the time I and the two guys in the automobile pulled off.
The minister sprung a long sermon on the effects of strong drink on the
young and the Emporia Wasp--you know they did call it the Bee, but the
guy that bought it from the Bee people renamed it the Wasp, because he
got stung worse than any bee could sting--the Emporia Wasp came out with
a long editorial about the profligate rich and the Attic Debating
Society had a big pow-wow in the basement of the church on the subject,
'Be it Resolved, That more people are killed by strong drink than by
hanging.' All this had such a moral effect on the young that the soda
fountain didn't sell a claret phosphate for three weeks after. And the
Ladies' Aid got so busy over Azbe Lewis, the town drunkard, that he had
three proposals of marriage, but he decided to take the lesser of the
evils and stick to drink. I think he ain't such a dope at that.

"Say, sniff. Can you detect the low, plaintive cry of an arnica bottle?
I am learning how to skate. Yes, I fell for it. Fell for it is good.
'Course I did. All over the ice. You see it was this way. I was up to a
tea one of the girls gave in honor of the judge getting a divorce from
his wife--we call it a tea because there wasn't any there. We were all
sitting around panning those who were not among those present, until at
last one of the girls who didn't dare leave till the party broke up
suggested that we go down to the park and take a skate. The hostess was
real nice. She suggested that it wasn't necessary to beat it clear down
there to get a skate, as she had some in the house, and if we drank that
up the Dutchman on the corner knew she was good for any amount within
reason. But we didn't mean what she meant, so we departed. Going down I
became perhaps a little too excited over the coming event and went to
some length to inform the assembled skirts that when it came to cutting
ice I, not seeking to boast, but I was there, forte, and such pastimes
as writing names or doing Dutch rolls I considered rudimentary in the
skating number and only performed by the immature.

"I may have overestimated my ability some, for I had never been on
skates before in my life, but I'm no