mbling uneasily
through space like a beetle's ball, is no mean achievement, and I am
proud of it. But the mental feat in which I take most satisfaction, and
which I doubt not is most diverting to my keepers, is that of creating
Mr. W.R. Hearst, pointing his eyes toward the White House and endowing
him with a perilous Jacksonian ambition to defile it. The Hearst is
distinctly a treasure.

On the whole, I have done, I think, tolerably well, and when I
contemplate the fertility and originality of my inventions, the queer
unearthliness and grotesque actions of the characters whom I have
evolved, isolated and am cultivating, I cannot help thinking that if
Heaven had not made me a lunatic my peculiar talent might have made me
an entertaining writer.

EPIGRAMS OF A CYNIC

If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day
the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike
hypocrites of Canada.

To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil,
and to pictures of the latter it appends a tail to represent the note of
interrogation.

"Immoral" is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb.

In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be
construed as indifference.

True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.

Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.

Reason is fallible and virtue invincible; the winds vary and the needle
forsakes the pole, but stupidity never errs and never intermits. Since
it has been found that the axis of the earth wabbles, stupidity is
indispensable as a standard of constancy.

In order that the list of able women may be memorized for use at
meetings of the oppressed sex, Heaven has considerately made it brief.

Firmness is my persistency; obstinacy is yours.

A little heap of dust,
A little streak of rust,
A stone without a name--
Lo! hero, sword and fame.

Our vocabulary is defective; we give the same name to woman's lack of
temptation and man's lack of opportunity.

"You scoundrel, you have wronged me," hissed the philosopher. "May you
live forever!"

The man who thinks that a garnet can be made a ruby by setting it in
brass is writing "dialect" for publication.

"Who art thou, stranger, and what dost thou seek?" "I am Generosity, and
I seek a person named Gratitude." "Then thou dost not deserve to find
her." "True. I will go about my busine