2 Virtue
Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna.... Women hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad tracks, frying tough beefsteaks.... Lime and cement dealers being initiated into the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men or the Woodmen of the World.... Watchmen at lonely railroad crossings in Iowa, hoping that they’ll be able to get off to hear the United Brethren evangelist preach.... Ticket-choppers in the subway, breathing sweat in its gaseous form.... Family doctors in poor neighborhoods, faithfully relying upon the therapeutics taught in their Eclectic Medical College in 1884.... Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects.... Greeks tending all-night coffee-joints in the suburban wildernesses where the trolley-cars stop.... Grocery-clerks stealing prunes and ginger-snaps, and trying to make assignations with soapy servant-girls.... Women confined for the ninth or tenth time, wondering helplessly what it is all about.... Methodist preachers retired after forty years of service in the trenches of God, upon pensions of $600 a year.... Wives and daughters of Middle Western country bankers, marooned in Los Angeles, going tremblingly to swami séances in dark, smelly rooms.... Chauffeurs in huge fur coats waiting outside theaters filled with folks applauding Robert Edeson and Jane Cowl.... Decayed and hopeless men writing editorials at midnight for leading papers in Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.... Owners of the principal candy-stores in Green River, Neb., and Tyrone, Pa.... Presidents of one-building universities in the rural fastnesses of Kentucky and Tennessee.... Women with babies in their arms weeping over moving-pictures in the Elks’ Hall at Schmidtsville, Mo.... Babies just born to the wives of milk-wagon drivers.... Judges on the benches of petty county courts in Virginia, Vermont and Idaho.... Conductors of accommodation trains running between Kokomo, Ind., and Logansport....