he throbbing raw of life, and it will be an inspiration and
uplift to the community, of which all present can be proud. Lon Price
says he will furnish a good drop curtain free, painted with a choice
nine-room villa with just a line mentioning Price's Addition to Red Gap,
Big Lots, Little Payments. And he's quite hurt when Vernabelle tells him
no, that they must keep entirely out of the slime of commercialism. I
don't think Lon ever again felt the same toward Vernabelle--calling his
business slime, that way.

However, the party broke up full of plans for the new intimate theatre,
leaving an empty punch bowl and a million cigarette ends.

And right here was where the Philistine opposition braided feathers in
its hair and done a war dance. Members of the little group that did
things spoke freely the next day of Vernabelle's art in the dance and her
early Greek costume, taking a mean enjoyment in the horror they inspired
among pillars of the church and the civic purity league. It is probable
that in their artistic relish they endowed Vernabelle with even fewer
clothes than she had wore. At any rate, they left a whole lot to be
inferred, and it promptly was inferred.

The opposition now said this was no job for a chamber of commerce; it
had become a simple matter for the police. The civic purity league had
a special meeting at which the rind was peeled off Vernabelle's moral
character, and the following Sabbath one of the ministers gave a hot
sermon in which the fate of Babylon and a few other undesirable residence
centres mentioned in the Bible was pointed out. He said that so-called
Bohemia was the gateway to hell. He never minced his words, not once.

And the Latin Quarter come in for some more shock assaults when the
talk about an intimate theatre in the Bigler barn got out. The regular
theatre was bad enough, said the civic purity league; in fact, they had
started a campaign against that the month before, right after a one-night
engagement of the Jolly Paris Divorcees Burlesque Company, which, I
gathered, had not upheld the very highest standards of dramatic art.
And if the town was going to stand for anything more intimate than this
show had provided, why, it was time for drastic action if any wholesome
family life was to be saved from the wreck.

Feeling ran high, I want to tell you, and a few of the younger set fell
out of the ranks of good old Bohemia--or was yanked out. Luella Stultz's
father, who is old-fashio