Sure, it was him took the job of foreman here yesterday. We had quite a little talk about things when he come. He told me how he released his little brother from shame. He said he wouldn't of done such a radical thing except that peace is now coming on and the world will no longer need such fighting devils as curls will make of a boy if let to stay long enough.
"Keats might have turned out even worse than I did," he says, "but if there wasn't going to be any way where he could do it legally, what was the use? He'd probably sometime have killed a boy that called him Goldilocks, and then the law might have made it unpleasant for him. I thought it was only fair to give him a chance to live peaceful. Of course in my own case mamma acted for the best without knowing it. We needed fighters, and I wouldn't have been anything at all like a fighter if she hadn't made me wear those curls till my whiskers began to show above the surface. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was a born coward, but those golden strands took all that out of me. I had to fight.
"And see what it did for me in the Army. I don't want to talk about myself, but I made a good average fighter and I would have been there to the last if I'd had my rights. And I simply owe it all to my dear mother. You might say she made me the man I am. I wouldn't ever have been tough if she'd cut my hair humanely from six years on. I certainly hope Keats hasn't gone too long. One of us in a family is enough."
That's the way Bugs talks, and it sounds right sensible. What I say now is, the idee had ought to be took up by the War Department at Washington, D. C. Let 'em pass a law that one boy out of, say, twenty-five has got to wear curls till his voice changes. By that time, going round in this here scenic investiture, as you might say, he will be a demon. In peace times it may add to our crimes of violence, but look what it will be when another war comes. We'll have the finest line of shock troops the world has ever produced, fit and anxious to fight, having led an embittered existence long enough to make it permanent. No line would ever stand against a charge of them devils. They would be a great national asset and might save the country while we was getting ready to begin to prepare a couple months after war was declared on us.
Still I don't suppose it will be took up, and I ain't got time to go down and preach it to Congress personally.
And now let me tell you one thing: I'm going to sleep to-night without a care on my mind for the first time in a year. This here Bugs unites to the distinction of his name a quick and handy nature, and my busiest troubles are over.