propaganda--maybe it is, but at any rate it's real. Honestly, I've gotten
so tired, we all have, of all this stuff about the small Middle Western
Town being the backbone of the country--"

"Backbone? Last vertebra!"

"As for 'Main Street,' it's--"

"It's the hardest book to read through without fallin' asleep where you
sit, though, that I've struck since the time I had to repeat Geology."
Peter smiles. "But, there, Johnny, I guess I'm the bone-head part of the
readin' public--"

"That's why you're just the kind of person that ought to read books like
that, Peter. The reading public in general likes candy laxatives, I'll
admit--Old Nest stuff--but you--"

"'Nobody else will ever have to write the description of a small Middle
Western Town'" quotes Oliver, discontentedly. "Well, who ever wanted to
write the description of a small Middle Western Town?" and from Ricky
French, selecting his words like flowers for a _boutonniere_.

"The trouble with 'Main Street' is not that it isn't the truth but that it
isn't nearly the whole truth. Now Sherwood Anderson--"

"Tennyson. Who _was_ Tennyson? He died young."

"Well, if _that_ is Clara Stratton's idea of how to play a woman who did."

The two sentences seem to come from no one and arrive nowhere. They are