“For my sins, I suppose it must have been, I lived once in Egypt,” said the gray-haired young-looking man in the club smoking-room, “and if Egypt on the other side of the world is anything like the southern part of Illinois, I can readily understand how the children of Israel found the wilderness preferable. As I remember the story, though, in Pharaoh’s realm they had only one plague at a time, whereas in southern Illinois--however, there may be a better condition of things there now, so there’s nothing to gain by recalling our experiences. I sincerely hope things are better, but I scarcely think I have curiosity enough to go back and find out. “In our village--for I was a part of it, and a part of it was mine--about the same conditions obtained as in all the other small settlements within a hundred miles. We had a railroad station and two trains a day. We had a post-office and one mail a day. We had a general store and a blacksmith’s shop and a tavern, and we had a few private residences. If there was anything else of importance, excepting the farmers’ wagons, that came in with loads that were too heavy for the horses, and too often went back with loads that burdened the farmers, the details have escaped my mind. It was a typical southern Illinois village. “Small as it was, there were two social sets in town. The married men lived in their own houses, and their wives visited one another and had their small festivities from time to time in the most serene indifference to the fact that there were other human beings around. And these others--that is, the unmarried men--lived at the tavern, or hotel, as we preferred to call it, equally indifferent to the occurrence of social functions to which we were not bidden. If, as occasionally happened, one of the married men broke loose for a night or two, and spent his spare time and money at the hotel, he was tolerated, but no more. We felt sorry for him when we thought of his return home, but we had no yearnings toward reciprocity in his effort to break down the barriers. “In our set there was, it is true, one married woman, but she did not count. At least we thought so till the trouble came. She was the landlord’s wife. Old Stein, as we called him, though he was not over forty, was a placid, easy-going German, who kept the hotel fairly up to the standard of the country, and I think a trifle above it, but he hadn’t energy enough, apparently, to make any strenuous effort to improve things. What was good enough for his boarders was good enough for him, and we were demoralized enough by the climate, or whatever it is that tends to the deterioration of mankind thereabout, to make no demand for unusual luxury. As far as we ever noticed, he had no remarkable affection for his wife, but seemed rather too indifferent to her very pronounced hunger for admiration.