As a fitting garniture to such a dish, there was a corsage of watercress draped on the corner of the salver. At any rate, it could be said for it that it was not intoxicating, and so could never cause any real misery in this world. I nibbled at my roast beef, but my spirit was broken. I had gone through a week of self-denial, ordering roast beef when I craved edibles, eating at restaurants while my family waited for me at home, and here was the result of my researches: Roast beef is roast beef, and nothing can prevent it. From the ten-cent order of the Busy Home Restaurant, up through to the piece I was then eating, it was the same grim reality, the only justification for a difference in price being a silver salver or a waiter in a tuxedo. "But," I said to myself, "eighty cents isn't so much, at that. Besides, I have heard the orchestra play one tune every half-hour, and have had a kind word from one of the _chargés d'affaires_ of the waiter's staff." This quite reconciled me, until my check was brought. There, added to the initial expense of eighty cents, was the upkeep, such as "Cover, 25c." "Potatoes, 30c." And to this must be added the modest fee of twenty cents to the waiter and ten cents to the hat-boy who gave me the wrong hat. Total expense for one piece of roast beef, $1.70. These investigations may not prove to be much of a contribution to modern science or economics. I doubt if they are ever incorporated in any textbook, even if it should be a textbook on this very subject. But I must take credit to myself for one thing: Not once throughout the whole report have I alluded to the Tenderloin District. XII THE COMMUNITY MASQUE AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR With War and Licker removed from the list of "What's Going on This Week," how will mankind spend the long summer evenings? Some advocate another war. Others recommend a piece of yeast in a glass of grape-juice. The effect is said to be equally devastating. But there is a new school, led by Percy Mackaye, which brings forward a scheme for occupying the spare time of the world which has, at least, the savor of novelty. It presents the community masque as a substitute for war. Whenever a neighborhood, or county, feels the old craving for blood-letting and gas-bombing coming on, a town meeting is to be called and plans drawn up for the presentation of a masque entitled "Democracy" or "From Chrysalis to Butterfly." In this simple way, one and all will be kept out in the open air and will get to know each other better, thus relieving their bellicose cravings right there on the village green among themselves, without dragging a foreign nation into the mess at all. The slogan is "Fight Your Neighbors First. Why Go Abroad for War?" The community masque idea is all right in itself. There certainly can be no harm in dressing up to represent the Three Platoon System, or the Spirit of Machinery, and reciting free verse to the effect that: