a cue again, marries
the mayor's daughter and becomes the regular Democratic candidate for
county recorder.

These stories may be true. I don't know. Only these same magazines print
stories that have a brave fireman in the picture carrying a fainted girl
down his ladder through the flames, and if you believed them you'd also
believe they had to set a tenement house on fire every time a fireman
wants to get married. And that don't stand to reason. Mebbe the other
stories don't either.

But what about the other side of these same stories? What about the
village good boy that goes through war's purifying flame and comes back
home to be the town tough? Ain't it time someone showed up the moral
ravages war commits on our best young men?

Me? I just had a talk lately with a widowed mother down to Red Gap and
what this beastly war has done to her oldest boy--well, if she could of
looked ahead she would of let the world go right on being unsafe even for
Republicans. She poured her heart out to me. She is Mrs. Arline Plunkett,
one of the sweetest, gentlest mothers that ever guarded a son from every
evil influence. And then to see it all go whoosh! The son's name was
Shelley Plunkett, or it was until he went out into the world to make a
name for himself. He is now largely known as Bugs Plunkett. I leave it
to you if a nice mother would relish having her boy make that name for
himself. And after all the pains she'd took with his moral development
from the cradle up--till he run away from home on account of his curls!

Arline had been left well-off by her husband, who was president of
the Drovers' Trust Company, and her home was about the most refined
home in Red Gap, having full bookcases and pictures of foreign Catholic
churches--though Arline is a Presbyterian--and metal statues of antique
persons, male and female, and many articles of adornment that can't be
had for the ordinary trading stamps. She lived, of course, only for her
two boys, Shelley and Keats. Keats being an infant didn't require much
living for, but Shelley was old enough to need a lot of it.

He was eight years old when I first seen him, with long golden curls to
his shoulders and lace on his velvet pants. He came in when I was calling
on his ma and acted the perfect little gentleman. He was so quiet and
grown-up he made me feel right awkward. He had the face of a half-growed
angel framed in these yellow curls, and his manners was them of Sir
Galahad that h