During the same epoch they managed to get a little table facing the wall and a pillar, and were soon rummaging through the Feed Folder for some dish that they could afford to buy without becoming insolvent. They finally took refuge in the haven of all who don’t know what they want, and after they had eaten the last scrap of the roast beef they quietly paid the eleven-dollar check and went out to find the bank.
The next day they took a train for their home, and were so accustomed to foreign compartment cars that they decided to get a compartment. But when they found out the price, they concluded to buy a motor car instead and compromised on a berth in the main dormitory. There were no lowers to be had, and so they thanked the Pullman Conductor and took an upper.
The car seemed a trifle like a dry-kiln in temperature and they asked the porter if he would mind introducing a little outside atmosphere. He looked at the thermomenter and said it was only 190 degrees in the car and that the rules of the company forbade him from opening any more air-holes unless it got up to 3,000 degrees. They thanked the porter for the trouble they had caused him and asked him how all the folks were and bade him good-night and crawled up the ladder and disappeared back of the curtains, and were soon wrapped in the arms of Morph.
A week after they had arrived home, and had told everybody how glad they were to get back to God’s Country, the Cost of living began to show unusual agility in the high jump. The trial heats had caused people to gasp, but when the finals came on, everybody became highly excited and ran to and fro wondering what was coming next in way of sensation.
Mr. and Mrs. Typical American, with their originality of brain convolutions, decided that the only reasonable thing to do was to teach the people how to starve. And so they organized a Gradual Starvation Class and secured many other Typical Americans as pupils and thanked God that through his bounty, the people did not have to do the job suddenly, but could dwindle away slowly and almost painlessly.
They were getting on Very Well until a certain few Americans—not in any sense typical—came out in the open here and there, and said: “Not by a damsight! With grainaries groaning with unused grain, with eggs piled Babel-high in gigantic warehouses, with cotton enough in one State to clothe the whole Nation in summer, and wool enough on the backs of one-tenth of the sheep of the country to clothe the whole Nation in winter, with banks bursting with gold and freight cars enough to move the wares of the planet when not cornered in the holy cause of Pillage—not by a damsight will America starve herself to make a few Rich richer!”