hole three
hundred bottles of this ammunition dump had exploded. Some had been
put up only a short while and hadn't had time to go morbid; and even
some of the old stuff had remained staunch.

The mincemeat shrapnel had proved fairly destructive, but the turnip
marmalade didn't seem to of developed much internal energy. All of them
jars of marmalade proved to be what they call "duds." But you bet enough
had gone up to make a good battle sketch. The ketchup, especial, was
venomous.

I met G.H. Stultz as I left the trenches. He'd been caught in a
machine-gun nest of ketchup and had only wiped about half of it off
his face. He looked like a contagious disease.

"Say, look here," he says; "you can't tell me there isn't a Providence
ever watching over this world to give some of us just what's coming to
us!" That was very silly, because I'd never told him anything of the
sort.

Then I go out into No Man's Land and meet Cousin Egbert by a lemonade
stand. He was one radiant being. He asked me to have a glass of the
beverage, and I done so; and while I was sipping it he says brightly:

"Wasn't that some gorgeous display of fireworks? And wasn't it fine to
stand there and watch them bottles laugh their heads off at this food
profiteer?"

I said he ought to be right sorry for her--after all the work she'd done.

"Not me!" he says firmly. "She never done any work in her life except to
boost her own social celebrity."

Then he took another gulp of his lemonade and says, very bitter:

"Madam Peach Blossom! I wonder what that funny little mite of hers will
say when she sees her to-night? Something laughable, I bet--like it would
be 'Madam Onion Blossom!'--or something comical, just to give her a good
laugh after her hard day."

Such is Cousin Egbert, and ever will be. And Genevieve May, having took
up things all round the circle, is now back to the dance.

X

AS TO HERMAN WAGNER

It had been a toilsome day for Ma Pettengill and me. Since sunup we
had ridden more than a score of mountain miles on horses that could
seldom exceed a crawl in pace. At dawn we had left the flatlands along
the little timbered river, climbed to the lava beds of the first mesa,
traversed a sad stretch of these where even the sage grew scant, and
come, by way of a winding defile that was soon a mounting canon, into
big hills unending.

Here for many hours we had laboured over furtive, tortuous trails,
aimless and lost, it might have s