“I’m glad I didn’t hold my breath while he was gone.  I think he must have taken a surface car for Oak Park.  Those Chicago rum-dums are the true sports, all right, all right.  If necessity compels them to buy anything stronger than beer they commence to look sassy at the waiter and talk loud.  Chicago is sure rightly named when they call it the Windy City.  You just ought to have heard the line of jolly some of those boys tried to hand out to me.  To me, mind you, to me!  They must have thought that I was some unsophisticated young ingenue that never had been further away from State street than an occasional excursion across the lake to St. Joe.

“I sloshed around town for a couple of days just to give those people a change from the usual run of Randolph street romps, then I hit the hummer for bleeding Kansas and Emporia.

“Say, I had a great first entrance into that burg and nothing else; but a crate of lemons got off to crab the act.  When I climb down off the hurdle, behold, the village choir right there on the job to see the train come in.  The arrival of the train—­notice the train—­is what you might call the main event of the day.  As soon as the village yokels saw my trunks being unloaded they all did the grand duck for the theatre to strike the house manager, thinking it was a show.  I hadn’t tipped my mitt to the folks, so they were not at the tank to give me the parental embrace, but after giving the necessary instructions to the baggage man I climbed into the Palace Hotel bus and romped up to my ancestors’ abode.

“Business of weeping on neck.  Mother wigwags father, who comes over from the grocery store, where he is electing the President of the United States.  Business of rejoicing ad. lib.  Sister comes in from the village school; neighbors kick in to see what’s coming off.  Entrance of trunks, gasps of surprise by populace.  Distribution of presents by muh.

“That night there was a young people’s meeting at the church.  A young people’s meeting is a signal for every old dame in the township that’s not married to iron out her white silk waist and take it on the run for the tabernacle.  After the usual prelude the minister got up and said, ’We would like a few words from Sabrina, who has lately returned to our little flock from the busy scenes of the great and wicked metropolis.’  I had to get up and hand out the usual stereotyped and mimeographed stuff about being glad to be in their midst once again and it did my heart good to see so many bright and shining faces, etc., etc.  I had on a modest little frock that had only lanced me about three hundred and made the aurora borallis look like a dark night.  So that the admiring public wouldn’t overlook any bets in the costume line I enlivened my discourse with these illustrated song gestures, every move a picture.