was to ask the
Beans out for the week-end, and then after Sunday dinner load 'em into
the tourin' car, collect me, and drive off about 20 miles or so to the
south shore of Long Island.

Maybe, though, you don't remember about Private Ben Riggs? Oh, of course
the name still sticks. It's that kind of a name. But just what was it he
did? Uh-huh! Scratchin' your head, ain't you? And yet it was less than
two years ago that he was figurin' more prominent in the headlines than
anybody else you could name, not barrin' Wilson or Von Hindenburg.

One of our first war heroes, Ben Riggs was, and for nearly two weeks
there he had the great American people shoutin' themselves hoarse in his
honor, as you might say. There was editorials, comparin' his stunt to
what Dewey did at Manila Bay, or Hobson at Santiago, and showin' how
Private Ben had a shade the best of it, after all. The Sunday
illustrated sections had enlarged snapshots of him, of his boyhood home
in Whositville; of his dear old mother who made that classic remark,
"Now, wasn't that just like Ben"; and of his girlish sweetheart, who was
cashier at the Acme Lunch and who admitted that "she always had known
Ben was going to be a great man some day."

Then when the governor of Ben's state worked his pull and got Ben sent
home right in the midst of it all there was another grand
hooray--parades, banquets and so on. And they raised that testimonial
fund for him to buy a home with, and presented him with a gold medal.
Next, some rapid firin' publishin' firm rushed out a book: "Private Ben
Rigg's Own Story," which he was supposed to have written. And then, too,
he went on in a vaudeville sketch and found time to sign a movie
contract with a firm that was preparin' to screen his big act, "True To
Life."

It was along about that stage that Private Ben, with more money in the
bank than he'd ever dreamed came from all the mints, got this great
scheme in his nut that a noble plute like him ought to have a big
estate somewhere and build a castle on it. So he comes out here on the
south shore, lets a real estate shark get hold of him, and the next
thing he knows he owns about a hundred acres of maybe the most worthless
land on the whole island. His next move is to call in an architect, and
inside of a month a young army of laborers was layin' the foundations
for what looked like a city hall, but was really meant to be Riggsmere
Manor, with 78 rooms, 23 baths, four towers, and a dini