e
well away from traffic noises, two trim little women, Miss Sallie and
Miss Veemie Tumpson, were delicately uncovering their tulip beds when
Colonel Hampton, passing on his way down town, stopped and raised his
hat. An imperceptible agitation rustled their conventional exteriors,
since it was an occasion of pleasure when Colonel Hampton paused at
anyone's fence. They noticed, however, that his usual geniality was
lacking; that the kindly seams in his face were set into lines of
sternness.

"Well, m'em," he thundered, "their damned outrages continue!"

Miss Sallie gasped and stared at him, while her more timid sister was
too much taken aback to move. In the forty-odd years of their
acquaintance with this agreeable product of the mid-Victorian era, this
was the first time they had heard an oath pass his lips--without an
immediate apology; and the apology had not been forthcoming.

"Yes, m'em," he cried, striking the ferrule of his cane on the sidewalk,
"their damned outrages continue!"

"Why, Colonel," Miss Veemie faltered, "whatever can have happened?" She
was a trifle deaf, but she had no difficulty whatever in understanding
the irate gentleman before her.

"Colonel Hampton," Miss Sallie, as was her habit, took the offensive,
"what do you mean, sir!"

"Mean enough, and happened enough!" The cane again added emphasis.
"Those German vipers have torpedoed another of our ships! The
de-humanized outcasts, the blood-crazed toads, have wantonly destroyed
more American lives! I tell you, m'em, our President is getting damned
tired of it, and we'll have war as certain as your tulips are sure to
be the fairest in our proud city, m'em!"

The cheeks of the little ladies flushed at this dull prophecy, but for
quite a minute the three remained silent.

"Mercy, I hope not," Miss Veemie sighed at last--meaning the war, of
course. "It's terrible!"

"And peace can be terrible," the Colonel thundered. "A country that buys
peace at the price of dishonor is no better than a frump who sells her
soul for gewgaws and furbalows! When posterity shall read of how the
diseased mind of a single lunatic has stabbed history's richest pages
with a sword of murder, rapacity and lust, it will turn a lip of
contempt toward every nation that stood upon a vacuous neutrality. To
hell with neutrality, when a madman stalks abroad!"

Miss Veemie now felt that she had been silenced for the rest of time,
and Miss Sallie's delicate hands, incongruou