I believe firmly in local option in all things; but there is no reason why New York, or any other great city, should live as Kansas and Idaho live. I prefer New York because a big city gives me a spiritual uplift that a prairie town does not. It is my privilege to live where I desire. I like to hear fine music, to come in contact with intellectuals; to go to plays that are worth while; to read books that satisfy my soul. I find such a life in New York. I have no quarrel with the man who prefers the silence and loneliness of forests and plains. He may be far happier than I. But I do insist that if I let him alone, he also should let me alone. Throbbing cities thrill me: cities with their glamour, their wonder, their enchantment, their dreams of agate and stone, their lofty towers that plunge to the very skies and kiss the clouds. I happen to like the innocent laughter in a glass of champagne. You may call it wicked hilarity. But the Continental manner of living appeals to me. I like the color and warmth and fervor of life; and people who drink red wine with their meals seem to me to be more cosmopolitan than those who do not. All this seems part of the pageant of life to me. I am not provincial, and I do not care to be made provincial by unintelligent and unimaginative law-makers. It may be that I am entirely wrong. I do not know. But I do know that it seems utterly unreasonable to force me to abstain from wine if I wish it, just because there are a few heavy imbibers of whiskey in the world. I think it is a far more serious matter to have practically all of us law-breakers than to have one-half of one per cent of us drunkards. Let us have done with insincere, inelastic laws, and get back to wisdom and truth and sanity. BOOTLEG [Illustration: John V. A. Weaver noticing the bartender who has been thrown out of work by Prohibition.] JOHN V. A. WEAVER (With a graceful bow to Don Marquis) You heard me! How many times I got to tell you? Them is my words: you leave that girl alone. Leave her alone, you hear? Leave her alone! You think I'll have my son foolin' around A little snippy rat that's all stuck-up, And thinks my son's not good enough for her? "Yeh," that's what Bill says, "Yeh, it's like I say; Ellen is got swell friends up on the Drive; I'm sorry she had to break a date with Fred. But still, you know, the world is changed a lot, And we changed with it. You're about the same, But me--well, I been gettin' right along, And honest, Jack, you see the sense yourself-- Why should I let my daughter marry a clerk?"