down a single word of conjecture, the
witness was allowed to advance the opinion that the oil hadnt killed the
plant because it had never reached the roots.

"Ay?" questioned the learned judge, looking as though neither his lunch
nor breakfast nor, for that matter, any nourishment absorbed since the
Taft administration, had agreed with him.

"I'm a bit of a gardener myself, gentlemen," the witness assured them
confidentially, settling back comfortably. "I putter around my own place
Saturdays and Sundays and I know what devilgrass is like. I can well
imagine a bunch of it twenty or twentyfive feet high could be coated
with many, many gallons of oil without a drop seeping down into the
ground."

Mr Miller said magisterially, "Not really good American oil," but no one
paid attention, knowing that he was commenting, not as a member of the
committee, but in his other capacity as the head of an organization to
promote Brotherhood and Democracy by deporting all foreignborn and the
descendants of foreignborn to their original countries. Everyone was
only too happy to have the oil matter concluded at any cost; and after
the stenographer was ordered to resume his labors, the next witness was
called.

"Albert Weener!"

I hope I may never again have to submit to the scrutiny of twelve such
merciless eyes. I cast my own down at the brown linoleum until every
stain and inkspot was impressed ineradicably on my mind. Senator Jones
finally broke the tension by asking, "What is your name?"

Judge Robinson enjoined, "Speak up, speak up. Don't mumble."

"Albert Weener," I replied.

There was a faint sigh through the room. Everyone who read the _Daily
Intelligencer_ had heard of me.

"And what is your occupation, Mr Weener?" asked Henry Miller.

"Salesman, sir," I answered automatically, forgetting my present
connection with the newspaper, and he smiled at me sympathetically.

"You belong to a socalled tradesunion?" inquired Assemblyman Brown.

"I will ask the honorable Mr Brown to modify his question by having the
word 'socalled' struck from it."

"I will inform the honorable attorney general that my question stands
exactly as I phrased it," rejoined Assemblyman Brown sharply. "I'll
remind the attorney general I myself am a member in good standing of a
legitimate union, namely the International Brotherhood of Embalmers,
Morticians, Gravediggers and Helpers, and when I asked the witness if he
belonged to a socalled tradesuni