Mebbe she don't
look so bad as the Goddess of Liberty on a float in the middle of one of
our wide streets when the Chamber of Commerce is giving a Greater Red
Gap pageant; but take her in a hall, where you set close up to the
platform, and she looks more like our boasted liberty has degenerated
into license, or something like that. Anyway, the committee had to
promise her she could do something in her flag and crown and talcum
powder, because they knew she'd knock the show if they didn't.
This reminded 'em they had to have a program of entertainment; so they
got me on the committee with the other Mes-dames to think up things, me
always being an easy mark. I find out right off that we're a lot of
foreigners and you got to be darned careful not to hurt anybody's
feelings. Little Bertha Lehman's pa would let her be a state--Colorado
or Nebraska, or something--but he wouldn't let her sing unless it would
be a German song in the original; and Hobbs, the English baker, said his
Tillie would have to sing "Britannia Rules the Waves," or nothing; and
two or three others said what they would and wouldn't do, and it looked
like Red Gap itself was going to be dug up into trenches.
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