, that nobody should put on a clean
collar oftener than his neighbor does. I'm sick of every sort of reform.
I should like to retrograde awhile. Let a dyspeptic ascertain that he
can eat porridge three times a day and live, and straightway he insists
that everybody ought to eat porridge and nothing else. I mean to get
up a society every member of which shall be pledged to do just as he
pleases.

THE PARSON. That would be the most radical reform of the day. That
would be independence. If people dressed according to their means, acted
according to their convictions, and avowed their opinions, it would
revolutionize society.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I should like to walk into your church some Sunday and
see the changes under such conditions.

THE PARSON. It might give you a novel sensation to walk in at any time.
And I'm not sure but the church would suit your retrograde ideas.
It's so Gothic that a Christian of the Middle Ages, if he were alive,
couldn't see or hear in it.

HERBERT. I don't know whether these reformers who carry the world on
their shoulders in such serious fashion, especially the little fussy
fellows, who are themselves the standard of the regeneration they seek,
are more ludicrous than pathetic.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Pathetic, by all means. But I don't know that they
would be pathetic if they were not ludicrous. There are those reform
singers who have been piping away so sweetly now for thirty years, with
never any diminution of cheerful, patient enthusiasm; their hair growing
longer and longer, their eyes brighter and brighter, and their faces, I
do believe, sweeter and sweeter; singing always with the same
constancy for the slave, for the drunkard, for the snufftaker, for the
suffragist,--"There'sa-good-time-com-ing-boys (nothing offensive is
intended by 'boys,' it is put in for euphony, and sung pianissimo, not
to offend the suffragists), it's-almost-here." And what a brightening up
of their faces there is when they say, "it's-al-most-here," not doubting
for a moment that "it's" coming tomorrow; and the accompanying melodeon
also wails its wheezy suggestion that "it's-al-most-here," that
"good-time" (delayed so long, waiting perhaps for the invention of the
melodeon) when we shall all sing and all play that cheerful instrument,
and all vote, and none shall smoke, or drink, or eat meat, "boys." I
declare it almost makes me cry to hear them, so touching is their faith
in the midst of a jeer-ing world.

HERBE