iterally extracted them by force, for he was anxious to repeat the
operation on the occupants of the car chugging behind them.

Now, there are many, many fair women born within the state lines of Old
Kentucky who live calm and peaceful lives and die and are buried with no
greater contrast of experience than comes from birth and death, love and
hate, riches and poverty, and they never know the difference; but
occasionally one bursts out of her bonds and flames her beauty over
strange worlds, in foreign embassies, in the courts of St. James or
Petrograd, or in an opera or theater box in New York. When this eruption
occurs many sparks fly. And many sparks from bright eyes were showered
on the author of "The Purple Slipper," who sat calmly unaware in the
left stage-box of the Big Show that August night beside the notorious
Hawtry, Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, and Mr. Dennis Farraday. And of the
sparks no one was more conscious than both Miss Hawtry and Mr.
Vandeford, while big Dennis was in a blissfully ignorant state of mind
like to that of Miss Patricia Adair of Adairville, Kentucky. Though he
had been for about forty-eight hours a producer on the rear side of the
footlights, Mr. Farraday still had the attitude of mind possessed by one
of an audience, and he watched the stage rather than the "front." He
thus failed to get the impression created by his guest from Kentucky,
and blissfully left Mr. Vandeford to deal with her sensations derived
from the show. Mr. Vandeford had his hands full.

To Miss Adair the Big Show was a series of mental and moral and artistic
explosions. She sat with delight through the Japanese acrobats and Swiss
quartette of yodelers, and she welcomed pretty, pert little Mazie
Villines with enthusiasm that gradually faded into horror as that artist
flaunted more and more lingerie and "dished the dirt" which the
inebriate playwright, at that moment engaged in "putting pep" into Miss
Adair's own beloved "Purple Slipper," _nee_ "The Renunciation of
Rosalind," had supplied. The "dirt" was received by the audience at
large with a hilarious joy that entirely justified the managers of the
Big Show for keeping Mazie busy "dishing."

However, all things come to an end, and with a last provocative,
revealing kick Mazie was allowed to depart and give way to a pair of
young dancers who promised to display wares more wholesome.

Without knowing why he did it, Mr. Vandeford leaned forward so that his
left ear was with