You are just as ridiculous, Meschines, as you were thirty or fifty years ago, said the general, tranquilly. "You declaim for the sake of hearing your own voice. Besides, what you say is un-American. Grace Parsloe, as I was saying, got a place as shop- girl in one of the great New York stores. I don't say she mightn't have done worse: what I say is, I doubt whether she could have done better.