eing mashed all around, we could sit following
the chance of this painted pasteboard.

Afterwards we tried "Tiddleywinks" and "Squails," and I beat him so
persistently that both sides of the House were mine and my geniality
entirely returned. He might have been living to this hour had he not
mentioned something about the brutality of _The Island of Dr. Moreau_.
That settled it. I had heard that absurd charge once too often, and
raising my Blaisdell binaural stethoscope I leaped upon him. With one
last touch of humanity, I turned the orbicular ivory plate towards him
and struck him to the earth.

At that moment fell the Fourth Crinoline.

III.

THE TEA-TRAY IN WESTBOURNE GROVE.

My wife's plan of campaign was simple but masterly. She would enlist an
army of enormous bulk, march on the Wenuses in Westbourne Grove, and
wipe them from the face of the earth.

Such was my wife's project. My wife's first step was to obtain, as the
nucleus of attack, those women to whom the total loss of men would be
most disastrous. They flocked to my wife's banner, which was raised in
Regent's Park, in front of the pavilion where tea is provided by a
maternal County Council.

My mother, who joined the forces and therefore witnessed the muster,
tells me it was a most impressive sight. My wife, in a nickel-plated
Russian blouse, trimmed with celluloid pom-pons, aluminium pantaloons,
and a pair of Norwegian _Skis_, looked magnificent.

An old Guard, primed with recent articles from the _Queen_ by Mrs. Lynn
Linton, marched in a place of honour; and a small squadron of confirmed
misogynists, recruited from the Athenaeum, the Travellers' and the
Senior United Service Clubs, who professed themselves to be completely
Mash-proof, were in charge of the ambulance. The members of the Ladies'
Kennel Club, attended by a choice selection of carefully-trained Chows,
Schipperkes, Whippets and Griffons, garrisoned various outposts.

The Pioneers joined my wife's ranks with some hesitation. The prospects
of a world depleted of men did not seem (says my mother) to fill them
with that consternation which was evident in my wife and her more
zealous lieutenants. But after a heated discussion at the Club-house,
which was marked by several resignations, it was decided to join in the
attack. A regiment of Pioneers therefore, marching to the battle-chant
of Walt Whitman's "Pioneers, O Pioneers!" brought up (says my mother)
the rear.

The march of m