Just a little heart-to-heart chat with our brave soldiers out there in the battle's front. I would bring you a few human-interest touches from the hurrying hum of the giant presses here, amidst the incessant click of an army of typewriters in the great office outside, punctuated by the steady, relentless clack of the linotypes, whose iron throats are shouting the tocsin of warning to more than a quarter of a million enthusiastic, loyal Menace subscribers every week.

Rome is howling this week in Decatur, Illinois, because of the merciless exposure of her slimy path of intrigue and the uncovering of the trail of the traitorous tricks of that Arch-Despoiler of homes in our staff correspondent's sad story, "A Vacant Chair" in number 67, in which is so graphically depicted the tears and heartaches Fern Reeve left behind when she was led away to the blackness of the Ursuline Convent.

But the howl of the Beast in Decatur is but a gentle swan-song compared to the frenzied, cyclonic storm of shrieks and the gutteral, grating, grunting curses and the horrible harpy yells of red-eyed, murderous hate wrung from the camp of organized Catholicism in Cincinnati by our staff correspondent's living pictures from behind the convent walls on

Price Hill in our number 68, "The Torture Tunnel!" And yet he only touched this awful mass of Cincinnati Catholic corruption lightly in that opening story!

And The Menace army in Cincinnati, indeed over the state of Ohio generally, are showing their appreciation of our mutual battle against this terrible Hag of the Red Rags in their fair city and glorious state. Through their tireless efforts and supreme sacrifices this week, and next week, and the next, The Menace will cover the city of Cincinnati and the state of Ohio like a blanket; even as I write countless and untold thousands of copies of The Menace are spreading the message throughout all Ohio. The Comrades-in-Arms are flooding this office with orders---come on, friends, make it an avalanche!

Our staff correspondent informs us that everywhere on the streets and in the street cars and in the stores and in the homes and even amidst the throngs in the parks he hears the Grand Hailing Sign of the Fraternity of the Free---"Have you read the last Menace?" Everywhere he goes it is the same. In the quiet of homes of luxury and amidst the plainness and purity of the laboring man's cottage, he finds alike the intensest interest and the deepest devotion to the Message of The Menace. And this in Cincinnati!

Bend a little closer---brother, sister,---as you read these lines; let your heart beat nearer to ours in the divine kinship of human grief and loneliness. For, Oh! Baby Boy has closed his beautiful blue eyes amidst the sweet stillness of a pulseless sleep. For Monday evening, July 29, unseen angels silently winged their way from Heaven to the home of Marvin Brown---and when in stately flight they returned to the Father's House, where the "many mansions" be, they tenderly carried Baby Boy with them, leaving to the lonely arms of the stricken parents only a tiny, waxen body of clay.

And so it came, as human custom goes, that The Menace plant and offices were silenced and forsaken Wednesday afternoon, July 30, and we all wended our way to the house where the white streamers of purity fluttered gently beside the door in the soft breeze of the Ozarks. And there upon the green lawn in the grateful shade we found the outdoor chapel by Life's mysterious wayside where we shed with our bereaved and beloved comrade, Marvin Brown, the blinding tears of sorrow because tiny Wendell Phillips had gone away---to see with his own sweet blue eyes "The King in His beauty."

Beautiful were the old fashioned songs that were softly sung---songs Mother used to sing in the far-away long ago---'Sleep, Baby, Sleep," "Abide With Me," "Beautiful, Beckoning Hands." And gently, lovingly, battling the while with his own tears---Brother Theo. C. Walker, that prince of preachers and more---our beloved senior Menace editor---spoke in simple, sublime sentences to us, taking as his theme "Baby's Message." We can never forget that sermon!

And then softly and quietly, with tear-wet eyes, the assembled neighbors and the great Menace force, sworn friends all, each paused a long moment beside the tiny white casket where Baby lay asleep.

The writer was chosen a pall-bearer and when with Rev. Walker, Mr. Phelps and Mr. Grier, I stepped forward and we gently bore the beautiful little casket through the open door and to the hearse waiting in whiteness outside the gate, my thoughts were busy with my own precious children, especially my own little blue-eyed boy---who but yesterday as the years go was a tiny baby---and I understood with a flood of loving friendship the sorrow of my loyal friend, Marvin Brown.

And so in the evening time, as the shadows were

lengthening, we slowly, gently lowered the perfect waxen tenement of the so-little boy who went away, into the waiting arms of Mother Earth. With bared head, the evening sunshine caressing his snowy hair and kindly face and lighting up his gentle eyes that have wept for the sorrow of others so often, our aged, noble editor, Brother Walker, talked with God above the little open grave, and whispered a good night benediction. And we came away and left the little mound literally buried in a bank of flowers. And so it happens that I have written the introduction to the Firing Line this week for my friend and co-worker, Marvin Brown.

Chapter 6