o do the double backward leap on the two center trapeses, I can
hardly be called a dead one, even if a little heavier than I was. And
from that time on I have never ceased to be forward."

"You'd have to show me," I says, grimly.

"All right, I will," she says.

And believe you me, she did. She went and got on her dolman and her
spring hat and left me in wrath and the midst of that income tax with
that "I'll never come back" air so familiar to all well-regulated
families.

Well, as I sat there struggling over where to put the x and = marks, and
how much exemption could I get away with and still be on speaking terms
with myself, and wondering whether the two fool dogs was dependents or
not--which they aught to be, seeing how helpless they are and a big
expense and Gawd knows I keep them only for appearances and they aught
to come under the head of professional expenditures, because no
well-known actress but has them to help out the scenery--well anyways, I
was deep in this highly high-brow occupation in the comparatively
perfect silence of my exclusive flat where ordinarily we don't hear a
thing but the neighbors' pianola and the dumb-waiter and the auto horns
on the drive and the train just beyond--well, this comparatively for
New York, perfect silence was broke by an awful yell in the apartment
itself.

"Anarchy!" a terrible voice hollered. And then again "Anarchy! Anarchy!"

Believe you me, my blood turned to lemon soda for a moment and the boys
in the trenches never had worse crawling down the back than me at that
minute, coming as it did right on top of me, writing in opposite to B.
income from salaries--you know--$60,000.00. The silence which followed
was even worse. And I sat there sort of frozen while expecting a bomb
would go off any minute, and Gawd knows sixty thousand is a lot of
money, but any one which investigated the true facts could quickly see
that I earn every cent of it and anyways brains has a right to the
bigger share, not to mention ability, and if the way I worked myself up
from the lower classes ain't proof of what can be done single-handed in
America, I don't know what is, and anybody which works as hard and lives
as decent as I done can do the same, not that I want to hand myself
anything extra, only speaking personally, I am in a position to know.

But just the same I wasn't reasoning at the minute and the justice, as
you might say, of my case didn't occur to me until later. As I sat th