employ him. The dead dogs in consequence reeked rascally. Then
they struck! From every vacant lot and public dumping ground, from every
hedge and ditch and gutter and cistern, every crystal rill and the
clabbered waters of all the canals and estuaries--from all the places,
in short, which from time immemorial have been preempted by dead dogs
and consecrated to the uses of them and their heirs and successors
forever--they trooped innumerous, a ghastly crew! Their procession was a
mile in length. Midway of the town it met the procession of cats in full
song. The cats instantly exalted their backs and magnified their tails;
the dead dogs uncovered their teeth as in life, and erected such of
their bristles as still adhered to the skin.

The carnage that ensued was too awful for relation! The light of the sun
was obscured by flying fur, and the battle was waged in the darkness,
blindly and regardless. The swearing of the cats was audible miles away,
while the fragrance of the dead dogs desolated seven provinces.

How the battle might have resulted it is impossible to say, but when it
was at its fiercest the Federated Union of Old Maids came running down a
side street and sprang into the thickest of the fray. A moment later my
mother herself bore down upon the warring hosts, brandishing a cleaver,
and laid about her with great freedom and impartiality. My father joined
the fight, the municipal authorities engaged, and the general public,
converging on the battle-field from all points of the compass, consumed
itself in the center as it pressed in from the circumference. Last of
all, the dead held a meeting in the cemetery and resolving on a general
strike, began to destroy vaults, tombs, monuments, headstones, willows,
angels and young sheep in marble--everything they could lay their hands
on. By nightfall the living and the dead were alike exterminated, and
where the ancient and sacred city of Sardasa had stood nothing remained
but an excavation filled with dead bodies and building materials, shreds
of cat and blue patches of decayed dog. The place is now a vast pool of
stagnant water in the center of a desert.

The stirring events of those few days constituted my industrial
education, and so well have I improved my advantages that I am now Chief
of Misrule to the Dukes of Disorder, an organization numbering thirteen
million American workingmen.

THE BAPTISM OF DOBSHO

It was a wicked thing to do, certainly. I ha