Everywhere along the entire band the story was the same. The grass rushed confidently in, bit off great chunks, then smaller, then smaller, until its movement ceased entirely. That part which embedded itself in the salt lost the dazzling green color so characteristic and turned piebald, from dirty gray through brown and yellow, an appearance so familiar in its normal counterpart on lawns and vacant lots. The encircled area filled up and choked with the balked weed. Time after time it essayed the deadly band, only to be thwarted. The glistening fortification, hardly battered, stood triumphant, imprisoning the invader within. Commentators in trembling voices broke the joyful news over every receivingset and even the stodgiest newspapers brought out their blackest type to announce GRASS STOPPED! _33._ The President of the United States, as befitted a farmer knowing something of grasses on his own account, issued a proclamation of thanksgiving for the end of the peril which had beset the country. The stockmarket recovered from funereal depths and jumped upward. In all the great cities hysterical rapture so heated the blood of the people that all restraints withered. In frantic joy women were raped in the streets, dozens of banks were looted, thousands of plateglasswindows were smashed while millions of celebrants wept tears of 86 proof ecstasy. Torn tickertapes made Broadway impassable and the smallest whistlestops spontaneously revived the old custom of uprooting outhouses and perching them on the church steeple. I had my own particular reason to rejoice coincident with the stoppage of the grass. It was so unreal, so dreamlike, that for many days I had trouble convincing myself of its actuality. It began with a series of agitated telephone messages from a firm of stockbrokers asking for my immediate presence, which because of my assignments, failed to reach me for some time. So engrossed was I in the events surrounding the victory over the grass I could not conceive why any broker would want to see me and so put off my visit several times, till the urgency of the calls began to pique my curiosity. The man who greeted me was runcible, with little strands of sickly hair twisted mopwise over his bald head. His striped suit was rumpled, the collar of his shirt was wrinkled, and dots of perspiration stood out on his upperlip and forehead. "Mr Weener?" he asked. "Oh, thank God, thank God." Completely at a loss, I followed him into his private office. "You recall commissioning us--when we were located in Pomona--to purchase some shares of Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates for your account?" To tell the truth, while I had not forgotten the event, I had been sufficiently ashamed of my rashness to have pushed all recollection of the transaction to the back of my mind. But I nodded confirmingly. "No doubt you would be willing to sell at a handsome profit?"