myself of all responsibility. She had her chance.

ONE OVER

I

Professor Farrago had remarked to me that morning:

"The city of New York always reminds me of a slovenly, fat woman with her
dress unbuttoned behind."

I nodded.

"New York's architecture," said I, "--or what popularly passes for
it--is all in front. The minute you get to the rear a pitiable condition
is exposed."

He said: "Professor Jane Bottomly is all facade; the remainder of her is
merely an occiputal backyard full of theoretical tin cans and broken
bottles. I think we all had better resign."

It was a fearsome description. I trembled as I lighted an inexpensive
cigar.

The sentimental feminist movement in America was clearly at the bottom of
the Bottomly affair.

Long ago, in a reactionary burst of hysteria, the North enfranchised the
Ethiopian. In a similar sentimental explosion of dementia, some sixty
years later, the United States wept violently over the immemorial wrongs
perpetrated upon the restless sex, opened the front and back doors of
opportunity, and sobbed out, "Go to it, ladies!"

They are still going.

Professor Jane Bottomly was wished on us out of a pleasant April sky. She
fell like a meteoric mass of molten metal upon the Bronx Park Zooelogical
Society splashing her excoriating personality over everybody until
everybody writhed.

I had not yet seen the lady. I did not care to. Sooner or later I'd be
obliged to meet her but I was not impatient.

Now the Field Expeditionary Force of the Bronx Park Zooelogical Society
is, perhaps, the most important arm of the service. Professor Bottomly
had just been appointed official head of all field work. Why? Nobody
knew. It is true that she had written several combination nature and love
romances. In these popular volumes trees, flowers, butterflies, birds,
animals, dialect, sobs, and sun-bonnets were stirred up together into a
saccharine mess eagerly gulped down by a provincial reading public, which
immediately protruded its tongue for more.

The news of her impending arrival among us was an awful blow to everybody
at the Bronx. Professor Farrago fainted in the arms of his pretty
stenographer; Professor Cornelius Lezard of the Batrachian Department ran
around his desk all day long in narrowing circles and was discovered on
his stomach still feebly squirming like an expiring top; Dr. Hans Fooss,
our beloved Professor of Pachydermatology sat for hours weeping into