“Debauchery is everywhere,” our hero groaned. “I cannot sleep nights thinking of all the evil there is and of the things I have left undone.” Cutie felt a pang of conscience. Emboldened by her silence, Herman’s noble heart grew warm. He reached one of his fins for her ribs and declaimed passionately: “Think, think, my dear fellow worker. Everywhere you turn, what do you see? Books which corrupt the morals of the young. Plays which stir young men and women to depravities. We will put an end to it. Don’t you understand? God has sent you to me. I have plucked you from the fire.” Our little burning brand felt a great white light open in her soul. “Ouch,” she murmured, “don’t pinch me so hard. I understand. I have led a sinful life, reading books unfit for children.” “Yes, yes,” panted our hero, “your wickedness is plain to you now. Repent! Repent!” “No,” Cutie murmured. Herman threw his arms around her, his face shining with piety like a Christmas tree. Burying his nose in her collarbone, he began to squeal like a peanut wagon. “We will burn down all the bookstores,” he cried, “and blow up all the publishing houses and public libraries and arrest everybody. Everybody,” he repeated. “Repent, sister, repent! Think of the little kiddies whose lives we will purify.” Cutie burst into tears. “Let me go,” she sobbed. “I am unfit for the great work.” Herman lifted her to her feet. A moment later, Len Small was elected governor by a large majority of one hundred thousand votes. Although this gesture on the part of the proletariat argued that a Republican landslide had started, the commander in chief of the navy, a bald headed man with a wen on his right thumb, refused permission to the transcontinental aviators to stop over in Madrid. The results of this action are too well known for further comment. Herman Pupick was defeated for congress on the fifth ballot and the commonwealth of Illinois had lost another able defender. EIGHTH PART _In which Mrs. Pupick Makes the Front Page_ EIGHTH PART The days passed rapidly and the nights had no flies on them either. The whole world was beginning to talk about Herman Pupick. Until Cutie had come into this crepe hanger’s life, Herman had been only a cold and plodding censor. But after spending a week in our warm mamma’s bungalow discussing ways and means to throw the hooks into the Devil, Herman was a changed man. He closed up all the dance halls by writing letters to the papers and caused the arrest of twenty-nine authors in Schlogl’s restaurant, suppressed the Chicago Literary Times, wiped out all the bookleggers, and had all the abdominal belt displays taken out of all the drug store windows. There was even some talk of his running for President on the Smut Hounds’ ticket. But Herman wouldn’t listen to this. “The government is paying me $29 a week to clean up the nation,” said our hero simply, taking Cutie in his arms one evening, “and I can do more good where I am.”