He opened the door to depart and said, "Good evening," and I responded,
"Good evening." The way out from my study to the street was through a
dark alley across which a pump handle projected to an unreasonable
extent. "Look out for that pump handle," I said, "or you may get hurt."
But the warning did not come soon enough. I heard the collision and then
a hard fall, and a rustle of papers, and a scramble, and then some words
of objurgation at the sudden overthrow.

There was no portable light that I could take to his assistance. Beside
that, I was as much upset with cruel laughter as the reporter had been
by the pump handle. In this state of helplessness I shut the door. But
the next morning newspaper proved how utter had been the discomfiture
and demoralisation of my journalistic friend. He put my sermon under the
name of ex-Governor Pollock at the meeting of the Christian Commission,
and he made my discourse begin with the words, "When I was Governor of
Pennsylvania."

Never since John Gutenberg invented the art of printing was there such a
riot of types or such mixing up of occasions. Philadelphia went into a
brown study as to what it all meant, and the more the people read of
ex-Governor Pollock's speech and of my sermon of the night before, the
more they were stunned by the stroke of that pump handle.

But it was soon forgotten--everything is. The memory of man is poor. All
the talk about the country never forgetting those who fought for it is
an untruth. It does forget. Picture how veterans of the war sometimes
had to turn the hand-organs on the streets of Philadelphia to get a
living for their families! How ruthlessly many of them have been turned
out of office that some bloat of a politician might take their place!
The fact is, there is not a man or woman under thirty years of age, who,