s good for business, and he's
too decent a man to give It away. Say, I heard the boy
saying there's a war in Europe. I wonder what company
got that up, eh? But I don't believe it'll draw. There
ain't the scenery for it that we have in Mexico."

"Alas!" murmured Raymon. "Our beautiful Mexico. To what
is she fallen! Needing only water, air, light and soil
to make her--"

"Come on, Raymon," I said, "let's go home."

XIV. Over the Grape Juice; or, The Peacemakers

Characters

MR. W. JENNINGS BRYAN.
DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN.
A PHILANTHROPIST.
MR. NORMAN ANGELL.
A LADY PACIFIST.
A NEGRO PRESIDENT.
AN EMINENT DIVINE.
THE MAN ON THE STREET.
THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
And many others.

"War," said the Negro President of Haiti, "is a sad
spectacle. It shames our polite civilisation."

As he spoke, he looked about him at the assembled company
around the huge dinner table, glittering with cut glass
and white linen, and brilliant with hot-house flowers.

"A sad spectacle," he repeated, rolling his big eyes in
his black and yellow face that was melancholy with the
broken pathos of the African race.

The occasion was a notable one. It was the banquet of
the Peacemakers' Conference of 1917 and the company
gathered about the board was as notable as it was numerous.

At the head of the table the genial Mr. Jennings Bryan
presided as host, his broad countenance beaming with
amiability, and a tall flagon of grape juice standing
beside his hand. A little further down the table one saw
the benevolent head and placid physiognomy of Mr. Norman
Angell, bowed forward as if in deep calculation. Within
earshot of Mr. Bryan, but not listening to him, one
recognised without the slightest difficulty Dr. David
Starr Jordan, the distinguished ichthyologist and director
in chief of the World's Peace Foundation, while the bland
features of a gentleman from China, and the presence of
a yellow delegate from the Mosquito Coast, gave ample
evidence that the company had been gathered together
without reference to colour, race, religion, education,
or other prejudices whatsoever.

But it would be out of the question to indicate by name
the whole of the notable assemblage. Indeed, certain of
the guests, while carrying in their faces and attitudes
something strangely and elusively familiar, seemed in a
sense to be nameless, and to represent rather types and
abstractions than actual personalities. Such was the
case, for instance, with a fe