“A slanderer!” rasps the wasp. “A character-robber. A rag-tag and bob-tail cheap-and-nasty politician!”
The bee goes on with her musical, conciliatory, and soothing song, and presently mentions The Guardian.
“Don’t name the rag to me!” blares the enraged wasp. “A filthy sheet! The poison of asps! A mud-slinger! A tool of that torch-and-scaffold, anarchistic harlequin, Martin Embree.”
“Have you read it lately?” queries the bee. “God forbid! I would n’t endure a copy in the house.”
“How fortunate,” hums the bee sweetly, “that I brought only small portions of one or two copies.”
Cleverly stimulating the other’s curiosity, our cunning bee succeeds in persuading her to look at the clipping wherein Martin Embree, Emil Bausch, and the Kaiser stand forth wreathed in the olive of a mock-pacifism. Now is the wasp’s angry voice hushed, as she peruses this and follows it with the now famous “hyphen” editorial, and the political quittance of Martin Embree.
“He appears to have lost none of his venom,” observes the reader, “though he is now turning it against his own kind.”
“They are not his own kind!” The bee for the moment forgets that she is committed to the soft footing of diplomacy. “I will not hear it said that they are his own kind! We are his own kind: we Americans!”
“Hoity-toity and here’s a to-do!” cries the aged wasp. “Are we, indeed? Not I, you minx! That gullible old fool, Selden Dana, has been preaching from the same text. He wheedled me into withdrawing my libel suit against the young backbiter. Why I was silly enough to do so, I don’t know. Now, what are you asking me to do?”
“Help,” answers the visiting bee, and sets forth a general outline of her plan.