has made them tame," and I am one of the tame ones. A domestic tabby
couldn't be tamer, nor a yellow bird fed on lump sugar. I expect
nothing but that my winter's hat will be adorned with a chubby green
parrot, and that I shall walk the street leading a brimstone dog by a
magenta ribbon. If one is forced to eat, drink and sleep with the
Romans, perhaps it is better for one's peace of mind not to be too
pronounced a Greek!
L.
I SHALL MEET HIM SOME DAY.
I shall meet the man who ties his horse's nose in a bag, some day, in
single combat, and there will be only one of us left to tell the tale
of the encounter. Wouldn't I love to see that man forced to take his
dinner while tied up in a flour bag! I should love to deal out his
coffee through a garden hose, and serve his vegetables through a
long-distance telephone. There is nothing like turn about to incite
justice in the human breast. While we are afflicted with such an
epidemic of strikes, why not have one that has some sense in it. Let
the overworked horses, straining themselves blind with terrible loads,
go on a strike. Let the persecuted dogs, deprived of water and
scrimped for food, stoned and hounded as mad when they are only crazed
by man's inhumanity, go on a strike. Let the cattle, and the countless
thousands of stock, prodded into cars and cramped in long passages of
transit, blinded with the crash of fellow-victims' horns while crowded
together in their inadequate quarters, trampled under riotous hoofs,
and kept without food and overfilled with water to make them look fat,
go on a strike. Let the chickens and geese and all the live feathered
stock on South Water Street, kept in little bits of coops and flung
headlong and screaming down into dark cellars, trundled over rough
roads in jolting wagons and utterly deprived for hours at a time of a
drop of water to cool the fever of their terrible fear, go on a strike.
Let the horses of these fat aldermen, left all day in the court house
alleyway without food and checked tight with head-check lines, go on a
strike. Let the patient nags that stand all day by the curbstone and
are plagued and annoyed by mischievous boys, go on a strike. In such a
strike as any of these the Lord himself might condescend to take sides
with the oppressed against the oppressor.
LI.
A MANNISH WOMAN.
There are many disagreeable things to be met with in life, but none
that is much harder upon the nerves
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