post office and around the
whist tables at the Setuckit Club, where ancient and retired
mariners met and pounded their own and each other's knees while
they expressed sulphurous opinions concerning the attitude of the
President and Congress. These opinions were, as a usual thing,
guided by the fact of their holders' allegiance to one or the other
of the great political parties. Captain Sam Hunniwell, a lifelong
and ardent Republican, with a temper as peppery as the chile con
carne upon which, when commander of a steam freighter trading with
Mexico, he had feasted so often--Captain Sam would have hoisted the
Stars and Stripes to the masthead the day the Lusitania sank and
put to sea in a dory, if need be, and armed only with a shotgun, to
avenge that outrage. To hear Captain Sam orate concerning the
neglect of duty of which he considered the United States government
guilty was an experience, interesting or shocking, according to the
drift of one's political or religious creed.

Phineas Babbitt, on the contrary, had at first upheld the policy of
strict neutrality. "What business is it of ours if them furriners
take to slaughterin' themselves?" he wanted to know. He hotly
declared the Lusitania victims plaguey fools who knew what they
were riskin' when they sailed and had got just what was comin' to
'em--that is, he was proclaiming it when Captain Sam heard him;
after that the captain issued a proclamation of his own and was
proceeding to follow words with deeds. The affair ended by mutual
acquaintances leading Captain Sam from the Babbitt Hardware
Company's store, the captain rumbling like a volcano and, to follow
up the simile, still emitting verbal brimstone and molten lava,
while Mr. Babbitt, entrenched behind his counter, with a monkey
wrench in his hand, dared his adversary to lay hands on a law-
abiding citizen.

When the Kaiser and von Tirpitz issued their final ultimatum,
however, and the President called America to arms, Phineas, in
company with others of his breed, appeared to have experienced a
change of heart. At all events he kept his anti-war opinions to
himself and, except that his hatred for the captain was more
virulent than ever since the affair of the postmastership, he found
little fault with the war preparations in the village, the
organizing of a Home Guard, the raising of funds for a new flag and
flagpole and the recruiting meeting in the town hall.

At that meeting a half dozen of Orham