proposals since I have been back, one of marriage. I told them all 'no.'
That I preferred to live a la carte. I could have become a farmer's
bride in Emporia if I had but said the word. I didn't tell you how I
came to sneak that snare, did I? You know I went out there with the
intention of staying a month, surging around and showing the village
belles that May Manton wasn't the only authority on correct dress. Ten
days was my limit.

"The family and every one agreed that my metropolitan broadmindedness
was too much of a strain on the sense of morality of the peasantry, as
it were. No, nothing of the slightest consequence, nothing that would
have caused the inhabitants of Broadway to even arch their eyebrows. All
I did was to inhale a snootful and go out with a friend and stand the
thriving little village of Emporia up on end and tip it over. 'Tis a
strange tale. List, and I will unfold it to you. One day I was wafting
slowly and sedately down to the Boston Store for my mail when lo! and
behold, what did I see out in front of the Palace Hotel but an
automobile. Believe me when I tell you, it was the first time I had
looked a radiator in the face for a week. Two young fellows were
monkeying around the machine, and as they were nice-looking chaps I gave
them the furtive glance, and one of them stopped and asked me if he
hadn't been introduced to me in the Harlem Casino. At any other time I
would have taken his remark as a deep insult, inferring as it did that I
was so far from Forty-second street, but now I could have fell on his
neck and cried with joy. I told him that I had never met him in the
place he had mentioned, but to let it go at that, and if he even knew
where Harlem was it was introduction enough.

"Come to find out they were making a trip across the continent, and had
stopped there to get a little gasolene for the machine. We talked things