enter.

The earth began its new year in hard luck. The earthquake in
Constantinople, in February, was only one of a series of similar shakes
elsewhere. The scientists were always giving us a lot of trouble.
Electric showers in the sun disturbed our climate. Comets had been
shooting about the sky with enough fire in their tails to obliterate us.
Caracas was shaken, Lisbon buried, Java very badly cracked. It is a
shaky, rheumatic, epileptic old world, and in one of its stupendous
convulsions it will die. It's a poor place in which to make permanent
investments. It was quite as insecure in its human standards as in its
scientific incompetence.

Our laws were moral earthquakes that destroyed our standards. We were
opposed to sneak thieves, but we admired the two million dollar rascals.
Why not a tax of five or ten thousand dollars to license the business of
theft, so that we might put an end to the small scoundrels who had
genius enough only to steal door mats, or postage stamps, or chocolate
drops, and confine the business to genteel robbery? A robber paying a
privilege of ten thousand dollars would then be able legally to abscond
with fifty thousand dollars from a bank; or, by watering the stock of a
railroad, he would be entitled to steal two hundred thousand dollars at
a clip. The thief's licence ought to be high, because he would so soon
make it up.

A licence on blasphemy might have been equally advantageous. It could be
made high enough so that we could sweep aside all those who swear on a
small scale, those who never get beyond "By George!" "My stars!" or
"Darn it!" Then, again, the only way to put an end to murder in America
is by high licenced murderers. Put a few men in to manage the business
of murder. The common assassins who do their work with car hooks, dull
knives or Paris green, should be abolished by law. Let the few experts
do it who can accomplish murder without pain: by chloroform or bulldog
revolvers. Give these men all the business. The licence in these cases
should be twenty thousand dollars, because the perquisites in gold
watches, money safes, and plethoric pocket-books would soon offset the
licence.

High licences in rum-selling had always been urged, and always resulted
in dead failures; therefore the whole method of legal restraint in crime
can be dismissed with irony. The overcrowding in the East was crushing
our ethical and practical ambition. That is why the trains going
westward were s