notebook, quivered slightly as he said fifteen words of
introduction.

As Pershing stood up to speak the crowd surged forward. The general was
worried. "Don't, don't! Somebody will get hurt!" he called sharply. Then
Mayor Smith surged forward also and said something to the police about
watching the crowd.

The general took off his cap. Holding it in his left hand (with the
gloves) he patted his close-cropped hair nervously. He frowned. He began
to speak.

The speech has already been covered by our hated rivals. We will not
repeat it, save to say that it was as crisp, clean-cut, and pointed as
his chin. He was nervous, as we could see by the clenching and
unclenching of his hands. His voice is rather high. We liked him for not
being a suave and polished speaker. He gestured briskly with a pointing
forefinger, and pronounced the word _patriotic_ with a short
A--"pattriotic." Later he stumbled over it again and got it out as
_patterotism_. We liked him again for that. He doesn't have to pronounce
it, anyway. We liked him best of all for the unconscious slip he made.
"This reception," he said, "I understand is for the splendid soldiery of
America that played such an important part in the war with our Allies."
A respectful ripple of laughter passed over the stand at this, but he
did not notice it. He was fighting too hard to think what to say next.
We liked him, too, for saying "such an important part." A man who had
been further away from the fighting would have said that it was America,
alone and unaided, that won the war. He is just as we have hoped he
would be: a plain, blunt man. We have heard that he is going to enter
the banking business. We'd like to have an account at that bank.

FALL FEVER

[Illustration]

About this time of year, when the mellow air swoons (as the poets say)
with golden languor and the landscape is tinged a soft brown like a
piece of toast, we feel the onset and soft impeachment of fall fever.

Fall fever is (in our case at any rate) more insidious than the familiar
disease of spring. Spring fever impels us to get out in the country; to
seize a knotted cudgel and a pouchful of tobacco and agitate our limbs
over the landscape. But the drowsiness of autumn is a lethargy in the
true sense of that word--a forgetfulness. A forgetfulness of past
discontents and future joys; a forgetfulness of toil that is gone and
leisure to come; a mere breathing existence in which one stands vacantly