atform, you would strew your pathway with--curses. But I do not
mean anything of that sort. No, I refer to something grander, nobler,
more magnificent.

CHAPTER III.

_There was._--Here's explicitness! Here's directness! Here's
explanatoryness! In my pap days I learned that without a verb there
could not be a sentence, not even a judge's sentence. I know "was" ain't
much of a word all alone by itself, but then chuck it in among a lot of
other fellows, and how it does make them stand around. And then it's so
deliciously incomprehensible--there was. Mind you, it don't say that the
same thing isn't now. And, mind you, it don't say whether it refers to
the day before yesterday, or the commencement of the Franco-Prussian
opera bouffe, or our late unpleasantness, or the beginning of the world,
or before that. No, it can't go back of the beginning, for before that
there wasn't. Anyhow, it leaves you in such a pleasant state of
uncertainty that you very willingly pass on to.

CHAPTER IV.

_A man._--Here we arrive at something specific. "A two-legged animal,
who laughs." That definition excludes women, because they giggle, or
chuckle, or cachinnate. This expression is a very general one; it
includes a vast number of individuals. It even takes in tailors, for, by
a wise provision of Providence, the number of tailors in this world at
any one time is always a multiple of nine; so that you can point to any
nine of them and boldly say, a man. I am not sure that this term does
not include gorillas, for, by a wise provision of Congress, they can at
any time be made men and brethren. One advantage about the subject of
this chapter is this: it is never necessary to put a head on it, as it
is generally furnished with that appendage by nature.

So endeth this thrilling tale. A sequel to it will be published in the
early part of the next century, entitled,

"THERE WAS ONCE A TIME UPON A MAN."

* * * * *

HORSE-CAR HUMBUGS.

The Horse-Car is an omnivorous animal, though its chief diet is garbage,
as our sense of smell has often proved to us.

The "people's coach" it has been called, but in misery's name, I ask,
must the whole public crowd into one coach? Yesterday, after I had
waited for a car the best part of the forenoon, it came crawling along
at snail-like pace, the horses fast asleep, and the driver gazing
vacantly into space, thoroughly exhausted in endeavors to wake them up.

I entered,