ad paid to see the piece once,
and rebelled at being obliged to see it twice to suit my neighbor. On
referring the matter to the box-office, the caliph in charge informed me
that the slaves he allowed to enter his establishment (like those who in
other days formed the court of Louis XIV.) were permitted to praise, but
were suppressed if they murmured dissent. In his _Memoires_, Dumas,
_pere_, tells of a "first night" when three thousand people applauded a
play of his and one spectator hissed. "He was the only one I respected,"
said Dumas, "for the piece was bad, and that criticism spurred me on to
improve it."

How can we hope for any improvement in the standard of our
entertainments, the manners of our servants or the ways of corporations
when no one complains? We are too much in a hurry to follow up a
grievance and have it righted. "It doesn't pay," "I haven't got the
time," are phrases with which all such subjects are dismissed. We will
sit in over-heated cars, eat vilely cooked food, put up with insolence
from subordinates, because it is too much trouble to assert our rights.
Is the spirit that prompted the first shots on Lexington Common becoming
extinct? Have the floods of emigration so diluted our Anglo-Saxon blood
that we no longer care to fight for liberty? Will no patriot arise and
lead a revolt against our tyrants?

I am prepared to follow such a leader, and have already marked my prey.
First, I will slay a certain miscreant who sits at the receipt of customs
in the box-office of an up-town theatre. For years I have tried to
propitiate that satrap with modest politeness and feeble little jokes. He
has never been softened by either, but continues to "chuck" the worst
places out to me (no matter how early I arrive, the best have always been
given to the speculators), and to frown down my attempts at
self-assertion.

When I have seen this enemy at my feet, I shall start down town (stopping
on the way to brain the teller at my bank, who is perennially paring his
nails, and refuses to see me until that operation is performed), to the
office of a night-boat line, where the clerk has so often forced me, with
hundreds of other weary victims, to stand in line like convicts, while he
chats with a "lady friend," his back turned to us and his leg comfortably
thrown over the arm of his chair. Then I will take my blood-stained
way--but, no! It is better not to put my victims on their guard, but to
abide my t