ut:

"It is almost as if the Senate had hurled its glove into the teeth of
the advancing wave that is sounding the clarion of equal rights."

A water consumer in Los Angeles, California, whose supply had been
turned off because he wouldn't pay, wrote to the department as follows:

"In the matter of shutting off the water on unpaid bills, your company
is fast becoming a regular crystallized Russian bureaucracy, running in
a groove and deaf to the appeals of reform. There is no use of your
trying to impugn the verity of this indictment by shaking your official
heads in the teeth of your own deeds.

"If you will persist in this kind of thing, a widespread conflagration
of the populace will be so imminent that it will require only a spark to
let loose the dogs of war in our midst. Will you persist in hurling the
corner stone of our personal liberty to your wolfish hounds of
collectors, thirsting for its blood? If you persist, the first thing you
know you will have the chariot of a justly indignant revolution rolling
along in our midst and gnashing its teeth as it rolls.

"If your rascally collectors are permitted to continue coming to our
doors with unblushing footsteps, with cloaks of hypocritical compunction
in their mouths, and compel payment from your patrons, this policy will
result in cutting the wool off the sheep that lays the golden egg, until
you have pumped it dry--and then farewell, a long farewell, to our
vaunted prosperity."

MICE

"What's the matter with Briggs?"

"He was getting shaved by a lady barber when a mouse ran across the
floor."--_Life_.

MIDDLE CLASSES

WILLIE--"Paw, what is the middle class?"

PAW--"The middle class consists of people who are not poor enough to
accept charity and not rich enough to donate anything."

MILITANTS

_See_ Suffragettes.

MILITARY DISCIPLINE

Murphy was a new recruit in the cavalry. He could not ride at all, and
by ill luck was given one of the most vicious horses in the troop.

"Remember," said the sergeant, "no one is allowed to dismount without
orders."

Murphy was no sooner in the saddle than he was thrown to the ground.

"Murphy!" yelled the sergeant, when he discovered him lying breathless
on the ground, "you dismounted!"

"I did."

"Did you have orders?"

"I did."

"From headquarters, I suppose?"

"No, sor; from hintquarters."

"How dare you come on parade," exclaimed an Irish sergeant to a