through the battle zone, and into a strip of country where
pine woods flourished on a sandy soil. The fragrant breath of
sun-warmed balsam came down about them, and Miss Chuff let out the
motor as though to escape from the scene of carnage they had just
witnessed.

"Whither are we bound?" asked the editor, with pardonable curiosity, as
their tires hummed over a smooth road.

"Cana, New Jersey," said Miss Chuff, "where poor Quimbleton is in
hiding. He is in very sore straits. He narrowly escaped capture after
the parade the other day. I managed to get him smuggled out of the city
in the same ambulance that carried Father's horse. The horse was drunk
and Quim was sober. Wasn't that an irony of fate? But I promised to
tell you how I became associated with the Happiness Corporation."

CHAPTER V

THE TREACHERY OF MISS CHUFF

"My story," said Miss Chuff, as the car slid along the road, "is rich
in pathos. My father, as you can imagine, is an impossible man to live
with. My poor mother was taken to an asylum years ago. Her malady takes
a curious form: she is never violent, but spends all her time in poring
over books, magazines and papers. Every time she finds the word HUSBAND
in print she crosses it out with blue pencil.

"From my earliest days I was accustomed to hear very little else but
talk about liquor. The fairy tales that most children are allowed to
enjoy merely as stories were explained to me by my father as allegories
bearing upon the sinister seductions of drink. Little Red Riding Hood
and the Wolf, for instance, became a symbol of young womanhood pursued
by the devouring Bronx cocktail. The princess from whose mouth came
toads and snakes was (of course) a princess under the influence of
creme de menthe. Cinderella was a young girl who had been brought low
by taking a dash of brandy in her soup. Every dragon, with which good
fairy tales are liberally provided, was the Demon Rum. It is really
amazing what stirring prohibition propaganda fairy tales contain if you
know how to interpret them.

"All this kind of palaver naturally roused my childish curiosity as to
the subject of intoxicants. But, like a docile daughter, I fell into
the career marked out for me by my father. I became a militant for the
Pan-Antis. I distributed tracts by the million; I wrote a little poem
on the idea that the gates of hell are swinging doors with slats. I can
honestly say that I never felt any real hankering for liquor u