their Lord High Chief Grand Marshals on horseback with gold sashes
and waving white plumes, and all the notables of the city in
carriages, and a score of bands to stir their feet and ten thousand
flags waving above their heads. "Wake up America!" And here was
Peter Gudge, with an empty stomach, coming suddenly upon the
swarming crowds in Main Street, and having no remotest idea what it
was all about.

A crowd suggested one thing to Peter. For seven years of his young
life he had been assistant to Pericles Priam, and had traveled over
America selling Priam's Peerless Pain Paralyzer; they had ridden in
an automobile, and wherever there was a fair or a convention or an
excursion or a picnic, they were on hand, and Pericles Priam would
stop at a place where the crowds were thickest, and ring a dinner
bell, and deliver his super-eloquent message to humanity--the elixir
of life revealed, suffering banished from the earth, and all
inconveniences of this mortal state brought to an end for one dollar
per bottle of fifteen per cent opium. It had been Peter's job to
handle the bottles and take in the coin; and so now, when he saw the
crowd, he looked about him eagerly. Perhaps there might be here some
vender of corn-plasters or ink-stain removers, or some three card
monte man to whom Peter could attach himself for the price of a
sandwich.

Peter wormed his way thru the crowd for two or three blocks, but saw
nothing more promising than venders of American flags on little
sticks, and of patriotic buttons with "Wake up America!" But then,
on the other side of the street at one of the crossings Peter saw a
man standing on a truck making a speech, and he dug his way thru the
crowd, elbowing, sliding this way and that, begging everybody's