His daughters are quite accomplished in light, ornamental iron work. They are well bred, high strung girls, and have the vitality of young tigers. These girls and their father are responsible for the most remarkable phenomenon of the streets of Springfield in 1917. Inspired by the Amazons of the Russian Revolution, at the very beginning of that revolution, before it was declared a failure by the western world, they filled out an idea which had long been forming in their minds, and organized a troop of girl cavalry and offered it to the government for service against Germany. The girls were fully disciplined and equipped at the time of the declaration of war. Their services were refused, and almost all of the girls went into the stereotyped war work, many of them overseas. But now the whole body of troops is together again, riding our streets night and day, armed with the Avanel sword, and led, quite haughtily, by the Iron Gentleman’s youngest daughter. The brothers have organized a similar group of cavalry, armed with the same blade, and call it The Horse Shoe Brotherhood. But, of course, it has not attracted the same attention as the dazzling girls. The Horse Shoe Brotherhood was not accepted by the government as a body. They enlisted, or were drafted, one at a time, in a conventional fashion. Many of the cavalry girls, following the example of the Michael women, are often gritty enough to shoe their own horses. The “Iron Gentleman” is lean and ruddy, with a hooked and hatchet face. He has the habit of pointing his long, skinny fingers at the enemy he denounces, who may be present in imagination, or even in fact, while the oratory flows. Every street corner of Springfield is haunted with the legends of a series of fist fights in the boyhood biography of “The Iron Gentleman,” election scrimmages of his young manhood, and the like. It is said that at the interesting age of fourteen he broke half the street lamps of Springfield with well thrown cinders until one evening when he had his jacket thoroughly dusted by a most energetic father. He had several personal encounters on the streets of Springfield in middle age, horsewhipping some hereditary enemy, or thwarting some hereditary enemy who threatened, imminently, to horsewhip him. “The Iron Gentleman” is a savage only two or three days in the year in his old age. He tells his boys’ and girls’ children and grandchildren, that they are to shoe horses and ideas forevermore, and send these ideas galloping across the world, sure footed; and his family are to keep on doing this, whether the town likes it or not. He tells them to hammer out swords perfectly tempered and to put their own souls on the anvil and hammer them till they are swords likewise, and to go forth and cut their way through the world, and bring back the heads of their enemies to Springfield and hang them in rows in front of their forges, whether the town likes it or not.