﻿IN THE LIGHT OF VEIN 
 
False Modesty: 
So many of our fellow workers concentrated all their energies on chicken fricasse they never learnt the location and meaning of drum stick. What it is? What is it? Must I tell ‘em, editor? aw. you tell ‘em . . . Allright, allright, just as you say, its the chicken’s . . . Say! When it’s on a cow it’s—roundsteak. 
(Caught myself just in time). 
Now that my fellow workers know the meaning of drumstick, I hope no false modesty will prevent the making of it a part of their constitution and I shall have performed a great public—ceremony. 
New that Republicans and Democrats are gone “wet”, won’t it be a helva note if the brewers quit making it? 
In this our greatest hour of thirst. Hail Columbia, and the moonshiners take the pledge and jim their stills? 
It’s too terrible to anticipate! 
Try and keep your mind off it, Severin. 
	 
I do not see the name of Steinmetz in the Western Union’s Hall of Fame. 
How come Carlton? Didn’t you have anybody that could sculp his bustle? I see only two names that look as if they never saw England and they may have been born in Canada. 
I’ll tell you Carlton, I don’t see a single big man in the whole damned list—what are you tyring to give us? 
Send a man immediately to take my measurements, before I get too thin—and have Borglum throw the clay together—he’ll do it for nothing when he hears it’s me. I don’t trust those other sculptors. I don’t want to get up there on the pedestal for a million years Iooking like William Jennings Bryan or Rogers Hornsby or Arthur Brisbane. 
Another thing Mr. Carlton, I’m in the habit of getting murdered every so often and it is imperative, therefor, that you send a surveyor over promptly,—you know how those surveyors are, (look at your own list) if I was laying on the ground, my throat slit from ear to ear, they wouldn’t take the trouble to lay a tape-line on my illustrious frame. No. They’d guess at it—we don’t want any guess work about this; Borglum would not stand for it. He’d say, “show me the corpse”. 
My long life, Carlton, is due the fact I that heretofor I kept my murderers laughing so hard they couldn’t wield their razors. You know, yourself, a man can’t do a good job of cutting when he is giggling like a giddy schoolgerl, his eyes full of tears. Only once, Carlton, did I come within an ace of playing pinockle with a bevy of saints—that was when a bunch of drunken harvesthands undertook to hang me for hiding their whiskey. 
Now, everybody knows I don’t drink, myself, and that I took those seven quarts of Hayner’s merely for the purpose of giving the boyd a chance to sober-up, sohelpmegod. What? Me drink that cursed stuff? Sir! I should say not! I was, you may say, judt running a small prohibition program of my own, on a small scale, seven quartd of Hayner’s planted in the oats-bin. 
I looked up at the rafters and told all my best jokes but the boys were too drunk to catch my points—Iost all hope. 
It’s a case of “click” or goodnight! 
I began to mull-over in my mind suitable last word —all great men do that or have it done for them by their kin or next-best. Finally, judt as the rope was getting tight. I blurst out: “The stuff is off with the big Swede.” 
Do you know, Carlton, that last crack tickled them pink — (I can’t ser any humor in it) —and first thing I knew the noose dropped on my chest and the boys were taking up a collection to buy twelve more quarts. 
But had I faltered, Carlton, or so much as looked at that oats-bin, I would now be sitting in Abraham’s lap instead of being a candidate for your select hall of fame—for the boys fully intended to hoist me all the way to heaven. 
O the irony, Carlton, the irony of not having had tense to suggest the collection in the first place, bring their mind from the dim past to the grim present—they had to think of it themselves, O the irony! 
I suggest therefor, Carlton, you make some of the mediocres shove over and put the drunks up there with me—their presence of mind saved my life. 
True-greatness cannot be copied! 
Mebbe not Carlton, mebbe not; but you’d be surprised to see the linotyper go through this, ten times as fast as I wrote it, and still have time left over to put in a few original cracks of his own—deep stuff, that even the reader can’t fathom.