Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/56

 Band, and the fire department parades, and the richest men in town was on the welcomin' committee. I never heard so many long-winded speeches in my hull life and everybody learns the entire words of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' for the fust time. They was two pages in the 'Sentinel' about me, and my pitcher and everything. Two weeks later they forgot I ever come back!"

"D'ye think they made all that fuss for my sake? Like fun! It give 'em a chance to be important for one day, and they snatched at it like the fust trout of the season after a fat fly. Them lifelong orators got a chance to orate and strut around wearin' 'Reception Committee' badges, high hats, and swollowtail coats, and that's why they done it! Is any of 'em interested in me now? No. Only to come around and ask me will I vote against the bonus and not ask my country to pay me for fightin' for it. Well, I don't want no bonus—I'm willin' to make my own way and aluss was. I'm agoin' to study law by mail. I've aluss had a hankerin' to be a lawyer, and Judge Tuckerman thinks I'd make a good one. If Drew City was really so all-fired proud of me, why didn't they give me a chance to make suthin' out of myself by fixin' so's I could go to law school?"

Well, I don't know about gratitude, but it did seem to me that Lem had a real kick coming. Maybe he has got a bent for law and would make a lawyer. They's no question but that he loves to argue, and I often heard old Ajariah snort that Lem's "wuss than a Philadelphia lawyer!" Ajariah meant that to be a