"Folks is funny people," remarked a man with a weather-beaten face who sat in the corner seat, and seemed to be addressing no one in particular. "I know a boy that's going to git hung some day. And when they've got the noose rigged nice around his neck, and everything ready, and the trap a-waitin' to be sprung, why, then that boy is goin' to be so sorry for hisself that he won't hardly know what to do. He'll say: 'I ain't never had no chance in life, I ain't. The world ain't never used me right.' ... Yes, folks is funny people."
After this soliloquy there occurred a brief silence in the smoking room, and presently the train boy took up his basket and went upon his way.
"You say they take on the lunches at Covin now?" one of the passengers asked of the man in the electric-blue cap.
"Yes."
"What's become of old man Whitney, over to Fayetteville?"
"They used to git lunches off of him," replied the other, "but the old man wasn't none too dependable. Now and then he'd oversleep, and folks on the 5 a. m. out of Columbus was like to starve for breakfast."
"Right smart shock-headed boy the old man's got," put in another. "The old man gives 'im anything he wants. He wanted a motorcycle, and the old man give 'im one. Then he wanted one of them hot-candy machines; they cost about two hundred and fifty dollars, but the old man give it to 'im just the same."
"The kid went to San Francisco with it, didn't he?" asked the man with the electric-blue cap.
"He started to go there," replied the former speaker, "but he only got as fur as Little Rock; then he come on back home, and the old man bought 'im a wireless-telegraph plant. Yeaup! That boy gets messages right outa the air—from Washington, D. C., and Berlin, and every place. The Govamunt don't allow 'im to tell you much of it. He tells a little, though—just to give you a notion."
So, through the five-hour ride the conversation ran. Several times the talk drifted to politics and to the European War, but the politics discussed were local and lopsided, and the war was all too clearly regarded as something interesting but vague and remote. On the entire journey not one word was spoken indicating that the people of this section had the least grasp on any national question, or that they were considering national questions, or that they realized what the war in Europe is about—that it is a war for freedom and democracy, a war against war, a war to prevent a few individuals from ever again plunging the world into war. Nor, though the day of our entry into the war was close at hand, had the idea that we might be forced to take part in the conflict so much as occurred to any of them.