If beer was fatal, most of us figured that we had been dead for years and didn't know it.

The effect of constant complaints was to demoralize us and make our work harder.

I thought at first that these investigators were our friends and I gave them all the help I could.

But instead of helping us, they only hurt us, and then I soured on their misapplied zeal.

They were a species new to me that seemed to have sprung up in the hard times, just as cooties spring up in time of war.