After a season of debate, compromise and conciliation, when the gray in his hair had perceptibly thickened and the lines in his face had deepened, though still he wore his chronic patient smile which makes strangers like him, the final specifications were blue-printed and the work was started. A lady to whom I have the honor of being very closely related by marriage removed the first shovel load of loam from the contemplated excavation. She is not what you would call a fancy shoveler and the net result of her labor, I should say offhand, was about a heaping dessert-spoonful of topsoil. Had I guessed what that inconsequential pinch of earth would subsequently mean to us in joy I should have put it in a snuffbox and carried it about with me as the first tangible souvenir of a great accomplishment and a reminder to me never again to look slightingly upon small things. Bulk does not necessarily imply ultimate achievement. If Tom Thumb had been two feet taller and eighteen inches broader than he was I doubt whether he would amounted to much as a dwarf. Well, we reared the foundations and then one fine April morning our country abandoned its policy of watchful waiting for one of swatful hating. While we were at war it did not seem patriotic to try to go ahead. There was another reason--a variety of reasons rather. Very soon labor was not to be had, or materials either. Take the detail of concrete. Now that the last war is over and the next war not as yet started, I violate no confidence and betray no trust in stating that one of our chief military secrets had to do with this seemingly harmless product. We were shooting concrete at the Germans. In large quantities it was fatal; in small, mussy. And while the Germans were digging the gummy stuff out of their eyes and their hair our fellows would swarm over the top and capture them. And if you are not sure that I am telling the exact truth regarding this I only wish you had tried during active hostilities--as I did--to buy a few jorums and noggins of concrete. Trying would have made a true believer of you, too. And the same might be said for steel girders and cow hair to put into plaster so it will stick, and ten-penny nails. We were firing all these things at the enemy. It must have disconcerted him terribly to be expecting high explosives and have a keg of ten-penny nails or a bale of cow hair burst in his midst. Without desire to detract from the glory of the other branches of the service, I am of the opinion that it was ten-penny nails that won the war. And in bringing about this splendid result I did my share by not buying any in large amount for going on eighteen months. I couldn't.