s task again.

Oscar Fernald paces in busily, and in half an hour Lycurgus Mason, who
has been thrown out of the current of life, drifts into his place in
the back-water, and the parliament is ready for business. They see
Gabriel Carnine totter by, chasing after pennies to add to his little
pile. The bell tinkles, and the postman brings a letter. McHurdie
opens it and says, as he looks at the heading:

"It's from old Jake. It is to all of us" he adds as he looks at the
top of the sheet of letter paper. He takes off his apron and
ceremoniously puts on his coat; then seats himself, and unfolding the
sheet, begins at the very top to read:--

"National Soldiers' Home,
Leavenworth, Kansas,
March 11, 1909.

"TO THE MEMBERS OF MCHURDIE'S PARLIAMENT,

"_Gents and Comrades_: I take my pen in hand this bright spring
morning to tell you that I arrived here safe, this side up with
care, glass, be careful, Saturday morning, and I am willing to
compromise my chances for heaven, which Father Van Saudt being a
Dutchman always regarded as slim, for a couple of geological ages of
this. I hope you are the same, but you are not. Given a few hundred
white nighties for us to wear by day, and a dozen or two dagoes
playing on harps, and this would be my idea of Heaven. The meals
that we do have--tell Oscar that when I realize what eating is, what
roast beef can be, cut thin and rare and dripping with gravy--it
makes me wonder if the days when I boarded at the Thayer House might
not be counted as part of the time I must do in the fireworks. And
the porcelean bath tubs, and the white clean beds, and the music of
the band, and the free tobacco--here I raise my Ebenezer, as the
Colonel sings down in his heretic church; here I put my standard
down.

"Well, Watts, I hear the news about Nelly. We've known it was coming
for a year, but that doesn't make it easier. Why don't you come up
here, Comrade--we are all lonesome up here, and it doesn't make the
difference. Well, John Barclay, the reformed pirate, President of
the Exchange National Bank, and general all-round municipal
reformer, was over in Leavenworth last week attending the Bankers'
Convention, or something, and he came to see me, as though he hadn't
bid me go