"National Soldiers' Home, Leavenworth, Kansas, March 11, 1909. "TO THE MEMBERS OF MCHURDIE'S PARLIAMENT, "_Gents and Comrades_: I take my pen in hand this bright spring morning to tell you that I arrived here safe, this side up with care, glass, be careful, Saturday morning, and I am willing to compromise my chances for heaven, which Father Van Saudt being a Dutchman always regarded as slim, for a couple of geological ages of this. I hope you are the same, but you are not. Given a few hundred white nighties for us to wear by day, and a dozen or two dagoes playing on harps, and this would be my idea of Heaven. The meals that we do have--tell Oscar that when I realize what eating is, what roast beef can be, cut thin and rare and dripping with gravy--it makes me wonder if the days when I boarded at the Thayer House might not be counted as part of the time I must do in the fireworks. And the porcelean bath tubs, and the white clean beds, and the music of the band, and the free tobacco--here I raise my Ebenezer, as the Colonel sings down in his heretic church; here I put my standard down. "Well, Watts, I hear the news about Nelly. We've known it was coming for a year, but that doesn't make it easier. Why don't you come up here, Comrade--we are all lonesome up here, and it doesn't make the difference. Well, John Barclay, the reformed pirate, President of the Exchange National Bank, and general all-round municipal reformer, was over in Leavenworth last week attending the Bankers' Convention, or something, and he came to see me, as though he hadn't bid me good-by at the train two days before. But he said things were going on at the Ridge about the same, and being away from home, he grew confidential, and he told me Lige Bemis had lost all his money bucking the board of trade--did you know that? If not, it isn't so, and I never told you. John showed me the picture of little John B. Ward--as likely a looking yearling as I ever saw. Well, I must close. Remember me to all inquiring friends and tell them Comrade Dolan is lying down by the still waters." And now the screen is darkened for a moment to mark the passage of months before we are given another peep into the parliament. It is May--a May morning that every one of these old men will remember to his death. The spring rise of the Sycamore has flooded the lowlands. The odour of spring is in the air. In the parliament are lilacs in a sprinkling pot--a great armful of lilacs, sent by Molly Culpepper. The members who are present are talking of the way John Barclay has sloughed off his years, and Watts is saying:-- "Boys will be boys; I knew him forty years ago when he was at least a hundred years older, and twice as wise."