RB, STAND BACK! STAND WELL BACK TO AVOID BEING
SPLASHED!"]

"And when, as I am turning over my second piece of fried chicken, with
Virginia ham, if H. Hoover should crawl out from under it, and,
shaking the gravy out of his eyes, should lift a warning hand, I shall
say to him: 'Herb,' I shall say, 'Herb, stand back! Stand well back
to avoid being splashed, Herb. Please desist and do not bother me now,
for I am busy. Kindly remember that I am but just returned from over
there and that for months and months past, as I went to and fro across
the face of the next hemisphere that you'll run into on the left of
you if you go just outside of Sandy Hook and take the first turn to
the right, I have been storing up a great, unsatisfied longing for the
special dishes of my own, my native land. Don't try, I pray you, to
tell me a patriot can't do his bit and eat it too, for I know better.

"'Shortly I may be in a fitter frame of mind to listen to your
admonitions touching on rationing schemes; but not to-day, and
possibly not to-morrow either, Herb. At this moment I consider food
regulations as having been made for slaves and perhaps for the run of
other people; but not for me. As a matter of fact, what you may have
observed up until now has merely been my preliminary attack--what you
might call open warfare, with scouting operations. But when they
bring on the transverse section of watermelon I shall take these two
trenching tools which I now hold in my hands, and just naturally start
digging in. I trust you may be hanging round then; you'll certainly
overhear something.'

"'Kindly pass the ice water. That's it. Thank you. Join me, won't you,
in a brimming beaker? It may interest you to know that I am now on my
second carafe of this wholesome, delicious and satisfying beverage.
Where I have lately been, in certain parts of the adjacent continent,
there isn't any ice, and nobody by any chance ever drinks water.
Nobody bathes in it either, so far as I have been able to note. You'll
doubtless be interested in hearing what they do do with it over on
that side. It took me months to find out.

"'Then finally, one night in a remote interior village, I went to an
entertainment in a Y.M.C.A. hut. A local magician came out on the
platform; and after he had done some tricks with cards and
handkerchiefs which were so old that they were new all over again, he
reached up under the tails of his dress coat and hauled out a big
glass globe th