ion, and the only realities are
the things that do not exist. They are like the old fellow in
India who said that all things were illusions. One day he was
speaking to a crowd on his favorite hobby. Just as he said "all
is illusion" a fellow on an elephant rode toward him. The elephant
raised his trunk as though to strike, thereupon the speaker ran
away. Then the crowd laughed. In a few moments the speaker
returned. The people shouted: "If all is illusion, what made you
run away?" The speaker replied: "My poor friends, I said all is
illusion. I say so still. There was no elephant. I did not run
away. You did not laugh, and I am not explaining now. All is
illusion."

That man must have been a Christian Scientist.

--_The Inter-Ocean_, Chicago, November, 1897.

VIVISECTION.

_Question_. Why are you so utterly opposed to vivisection?

_Answer_. Because, as it is generally practiced, it is an unspeakable
cruelty. Because it hardens the hearts and demoralizes those who
inflict useless and terrible pains on the bound and helpless. If
these vivisectionists would give chloroform or ether to the animals
they dissect; if they would render them insensible to pain, and
if, by cutting up these animals, they could learn anything worth
knowing, no one would seriously object.

The trouble is that these doctors, these students, these professors,
these amateurs, do not give anesthetics. They insist that to render
the animal insensible does away with the value of the experiment.
They care nothing for the pain they inflict. They are so eager to
find some fact that will be of benefit to the human race, that they
are utterly careless of the agony endured.

Now, what I say is that no decent man, no gentleman, no civilized
person, would vivisect an animal without first having rendered
that animal insensible to pain. The doctor, the scientist, who
puts his knives, forceps, chisels and saws into the flesh, bones
and nerves of an animal without having used an anesthetic, is a
savage, a pitiless, heartless monster. When he says he does this
for the good of man, because he wishes to do good, he says what is
not true. No such man wants to do good; he commits the crime for
his own benefit and because he wishes to gratify an insane cruelty
or to gain a reputation among like savages.

These scientists now insist that they have done some good. They
do not tell exactly what they have done. The claim is general in
i