a terrible racket from the upper, and when he yelled up
to find out what the trouble was, Pat answered, "Shure an' bedad an' how
can I ever get a night's sleep at all, at all? I been trying to get into
this darned little hammock ever since eight bells!"

"'Now, gentlemen, standing up here before you, I feel a good deal like
Pat, and maybe after I've spieled along for a while, I may feel so darn
small that I'll be able to crawl into a Pullman hammock with no trouble
at all, at all!

"'Gentlemen, it strikes me that each year at this annual occasion when
friend and foe get together and lay down the battle-ax and let the waves
of good-fellowship waft them up the flowery slopes of amity, it
behooves us, standing together eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder as
fellow-citizens of the best city in the world, to consider where we are
both as regards ourselves and the common weal.

"'It is true that even with our 361,000, or practically 362,000,
population, there are, by the last census, almost a score of larger
cities in the United States. But, gentlemen, if by the next census we do
not stand at least tenth, then I'll be the first to request any knocker
to remove my shirt and to eat the same, with the compliments of G.
F. Babbitt, Esquire! It may be true that New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia will continue to keep ahead of us in size. But aside from
these three cities, which are notoriously so overgrown that no decent
white man, nobody who loves his wife and kiddies and God's good
out-o'doors and likes to shake the hand of his neighbor in greeting,
would want to live in them--and let me tell you right here and now, I
wouldn't trade a high-class Zenith acreage development for the whole
length and breadth of Broadway or State Street!--aside from these three,
it's evident to any one with a head for facts that Zenith is the finest
example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere.

"'I don't mean to say we're perfect. We've got a lot to do in the way
of extending the paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it's the
fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a
nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the
wheels of progress go round!

"'That's the type of fellow that's ruling America to-day; in fact, it's
the ideal type to which the entire world must tend, if there's to be a
decent, well-balanced, Christian, go-ahead future for this little old
planet! Once in a wh