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 possibility suggest an indelicate thought or act, and now in one moment to have the veil dropped from their innocent eyes.

And thus the mothers complained until jest such men as the verses described walked up and put their arms round the prettiest and most naked of the girls, held 'em as close to their vile hearts as if they wuz runnin' away with 'em, and jumped round the room with 'em, the happy mothers lookin' on and smilin' placidly, seein' the girls' pretty flushed faces layin' right up against the villians' breastbones. And it wuzn't a great while before all the girls had some strangers' arms round 'em and wuz prancin' round the room.

Well, a man I had met in Loontown come up to me and asked me sunthin' about my books, and that seemed to set the fashion, for I don't know how many come up to me and asked me about 'em. And most every one on 'em said they had read my books to a dyin' friend, or to the aged, them that had lost their minds, as fur as I could make out, or wuz so fur gone they couldn't sense their trouble. But I thanked 'em, every one on 'em, and felt it, too, it is so sweet to think on that you have soothed last hours of the mentally shattered and the infirm in intellect, I got quite a lot of comfort out of the thought.

Two or three wimmen there had had friends who had read 'em, they wuz in distant parts of the country, but I wuz glad to hear from 'em and hear they had read 'em. And then three or four, and mebby more, asked me if I lived in Boston; I don't know what under the sun there wuz about me that put that thought into their heads, unless it wuz my bunnet, the ribbin bow on it did rise up noble and sort of majestic above my fore-top; mebby it put 'em in mind of Bunker Hill. I knew it wuz a bun