s time half the
railways were blocked, and for eighteen hours the mails couldn't get
through."

"Cheerful, merry cuss you are!" retorted Jimmy. "You certainly do fill
everyone you meet chuck full of hope and bright thoughts. Just the same,
I don't care to be snow bound here. But I think neither snow nor
politics will bother me at all."

All of which proved him a bad prophet, as he learned within the next
forty-eight hours; for both snow and politics did enter into his
affairs, first because it snowed as if intent on smothering the earth,
and second, because every woman with whom he dealt insisted on bringing
up the subject of national suffrage for women, even the discussion of
chocolates being for the time relegated to a secondary place.

"I traveled through the middle west after a drought; was on the coast
when they fought free silver; was in the northwest when it campaigned
for the referendum; in Wisconsin when they fought cigarettes and in
Maine when the original thirsty population tried to upset the
prohibition law; but of all places I've been in, and all campaigns I've
been through the outskirts of, this woman's vote thing here has the rest
looking friendly, peaceful and uninteresting!" he said to himself after
the second day. "I suppose women go to the polls in Heaven, and
according to reports it's a pretty well run sort of place, so maybe it'd
work down here."

His soliloquy was brought to an end by the appearance of a bell boy
bearing a telegram. It was from his firm.

"Go Yimville Saturday attend court proceedings re discharge of
Intermountain General Supply Company from bankruptcy Roncavour.
Matador our attorney Wetherby Carmen."

He sat down on the edge of his sample case and said aloud, "Well, if
that isn't rotten luck! What in the deuce does Roncavour mean?"

He rummaged through his grip and found the firm's code book and
interpreted therefrom, "'Important to show courtesy for future business
relations when credit fully restored.' And 'Matador' means 'Introduce
yourself to' and 'Carmen' means 'Have notified him you are coming.'"

"Me the diplomat!" said Jimmy with a sigh, now opening a time table. And
again he was not particularly happy, because Yimville was a mountain
town up in another county, and the sole train he could take with any
degree of comfort was one that would land him at his destination at one
o'clock. A returning passenger train at 4:30 in the evening would bring
him