"There you go," he blurted out, "bringin' kids into the world when you
ain't got any guarantee you can feed em.

"You must a-had a souse last night," Tom grinned.

Bert shook his head.

"Aw, what's the use of gettin' grouched?" Billy cheered. "It's a pretty
good country."

"It WAS a pretty good country," Bert replied, "when we was all Mohegans.
But not now. We're jiggerooed. We're hornswoggled. We're backed to a
standstill. We're double-crossed to a fare-you-well. My folks fought for
this country. So did yourn, all of you. We freed the niggers, killed the
Indians, an starved, an' froze, an' sweat, an' fought. This land looked
good to us. We cleared it, an' broke it, an' made the roads, an' built
the cities. And there was plenty for everybody. And we went on fightin'
for it. I had two uncles killed at Gettysburg. All of us was mixed up in
that war. Listen to Saxon talk any time what her folks went through to
get out here an' get ranches, an' horses, an' cattle, an' everything.
And they got 'em. All our folks' got 'em, Mary's, too--"

"And if they'd ben smart they'd a-held on to them," she interpolated.

"Sure thing," Bert continued. "That's the very point. We're the losers.
We've ben robbed. We couldn't mark cards, deal from the bottom, an' ring
in cold decks like the others. We're the white folks that failed. You
see, times changed, and there was two kinds of us, the lions and the
plugs. The plugs only worked, the lions only gobbled. They gobbled the
farms, the mines, the factories, an' now they've gobbled the government.
We're the white folks an' the children of white folks, that was too busy
being good to be smart. We're the white folks that lost out. We're the
ones that's ben skinned. D'ye get me?"

"You'd make a good soap-boxer," Tom commended, "if only you'd get the
kinks straightened out in your reasoning."

"It sounds all right, Bert," Billy said, "only it ain't. Any man can get
rich to-day--"

"Or be president of the United States," Bert snapped. "Sure thing--if
he's got it in him. Just the same I ain't heard you makin' a noise like
a millionaire or a president. Why? You ain't got it in you. You're a
bonehead. A plug. That's why. Skiddoo for you. Skiddoo for all of us."

At the table, while they ate, Tom talked of the joys of farm-life he had
known as a boy and as a young man, and confided that it was his dream to
go and take up government land somewhere as his people had done before
him. Unfortunatel