Japanese armies. He had little clusters of
pins stuck in the map which represented the opposing forces, and
these he moved about from day to day in conformity with the war news
in the daily papers.

Wherever the Japs won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins,
and then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other
firemen would hear him yell: "Go it, you blamed little, sawed-off,
huckleberry-eyed, monkey-faced hot tamales! Eat 'em up, you little
sleight-o'-hand, bow-legged bull terriers--give 'em another of them
Yalu looloos, and you'll eat rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your
Russians--say, wouldn't they give you a painsky when it comes to a
scrapovitch?"

Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic
champion of the Mikado's men. Supporters of the Russian cause did
well to keep clear of Engine-House No. 99.

Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrnes's head. That
was when the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his
driver's seat on the swaying cart, guiding Erebus and Joe, the
finest team in the whole department--according to the crew of 99.

Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward
his fellow-mortals, the greatest are these--the code of King
Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United
States and the unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The
Round Table methods are no longer practicable since the invention
of street cars and breach-of-promise suits, and our Constitution is
being found more and more unconstitutional every day, so the code of
our firemen must be considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and
Jeffries's new punch trying for place and show.

The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the
Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory,
but the law will not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of
which comes perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself
to the attention of the S. P. C. A.

One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island a lump of
protozoa which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A
steward kicked him down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes
like a raven, seeking for trachoma or ophthalmia; he was hustled
ashore and ejected into the city in the name of Liberty--perhaps,
theoretically, thus inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of
its own virus. This hypodermic injection of