cooler power of ratiocination.

Marathon is a suburban Xanadu gently caressed by the train service of
the Cinder and Bloodshot. It may be recognized as an aristocratic and
patrician stronghold by the fact that while luxuries are readily
obtainable (for instance, banana splits, or the latest novel by Enoch A.
Bennett), necessaries are had only by prayer and advowson. The drug
store will deliver ice cream to your very refrigerator, but it is
impossible to get your garbage collected. The cook goes off for her
Thursday evening in a taxi, but you will have to mend the roof, stanch
the plumbing and curry the furnace with your own hands. There are ten
trains to take you to town of an evening, but only two to bring you
home. Yet going to town is a luxury, coming home is a necessity. The
supply of grape juice seems almost unlimited, yet coal is to be had
catch-as-catch-can.

Another proof that Marathon is patrician at heart is that nothing is
known by its right name! The drug store is a "pharmacy," Sunday is "the
Sabbath," a house is a "residence," a debt is a "balance due on bill
rendered." A girls' school is a "young ladies' seminary," A Marathon man
is not drafted, he is "inducted into selective service." And the
railway station has a porte cochère (with the correct accent) instead of
a carriage entrance. A furnace is (how erroneously!) called a "heater."
Marathon people do not die--they "pass away." Even the cobbler, good
fellow, has caught the trick; he calls his shop the "Italo-American Shoe
Hospital."

This is an innocent masquerade! If Marathon prefers not to call a
flivver a flivver, I shall not expostulate. And yet this quaint
subterfuge should not be carried quite so far. Stone walls are made for