pin' me friendly on the shoulder.
"Walter, call in Mr. Marvin."

He was some grand little demonstrator, Mr. Marvin--one of these
round-faced, pink-cheeked, chunky built young gents, who was as chummy
and as entertainin' from the first handshake as if we'd been room-mates
at college. I can't say how well posted he was on what was goin' on in
the different departments he hustled me through, but he knew enough to
smother me with machinery details.

"Now, here we have a battery of six hogging machines," he'd say. "They
cut the gears, you know."

"Oh, yes," I'd say, tryin' to look wise.

It was that way all through the trip. I saw two or three thousand sweaty
men in smeared overalls and sleeveless undershirts putterin' around
lathes and things that whittled shavings off shiny steel bars, or
hammered red-hot chunks of it into different shapes, or bit holes in
great sheets of steel. I watched electric cranes the size of trolley
cars juggle chunks of metal that weighed tons. I listened to the roar
and rattle and crash and bang, and at the end of two hours my head was
whirlin' as fast as some of them big belt wheels; and I knew almost as
much about what I'd seen as a two-year-old does about the tick-tock
daddy holds up to her ear.

Young Mr. Marvin don't seem discouraged, though. He suggests that we
drive into town for lunch. We did, in a canary-colored roadster that
purred along at about fifty most of the way. We fed at a swell club,
along with a bunch of cheerful young lieutenants of industry who didn't
seem worried about the high cost of anything. I gathered that most of
'em was in the same line as Mr. Marvin--supplies or munitions. From the
general talk, and the casual way they ordered pink cocktails and
expensive cigars, I judged it wasn't exactly a losin' game.

Nor they didn't seem anxious about gettin' back to punch in on the
time-clocks. About two-thirty we adjourns to the Country Club, and if
I'd been a mashie fiend I might have finished a hard day's work with a
game of golf. I thought I ought to do some more shops, though. Why, to
be sure! But at five we knocked off again, and I was towed to another
club, where we had a plunge in a marble pool so as to be in shape for a
little dinner Mr. Marvin was gettin' up for me. Quite some dinner! There
was a jolly trip out to an amusement park later on. Oh, the Wonder folks
were no tightwads when it came to showin' special agents of the
Corrugated around.

I tried anoth