a prejudice against dancing
are crude rather than unclean--the outcome much more of ignorance than
salacity. Of course there are exceptions. In my great work on The Prude
all will be attended to with due discrimination in apportionment of
censure. At present the spirit of the dance makes merry with my pen, for
from yonder "stately pleasure-dome" (decreed by one Kubla Khan, formerly
of The Big Bonanza Mining Company) the strains of the _Blue Danube_
float out upon the night. Avaunt, miscreants! lest we chase ye with
flying feet and do our little dance upon your unwholesome carcasses.
Already the toes of our partners begin to twiddle beneath their
petticoats. Come, then, Stoopid--can't you move? No!--they change it to
a galop--and eke the good old Sturm. Firm and steady, now, fair partner
mine, whiles we run that _gobemouche_ down and trample him miserably.
There: light and softly again--the servants will remove the remains.

And hark! that witching strain once more:

[Illustration: Music tablature]

EPIGRAMS

If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the
country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike
hypocrites of Canada.

To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil,
and to pictures of the latter it appends a tail to represent the note of
interrogation.

"Immoral" is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb.

In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be
construed as indifference.

* * * * *

True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.

Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.

Reason is fallible and virtue vincible; the winds vary and the needle
forsakes the pole, but stupidity never errs and never intermits. Since
it has been found that the axis of the earth wabbles, stupidity is
indispensable as a standard of constancy.

In order that the list of able women may be memorized for use at
meetings of the oppressed sex, Heaven has considerately made it brief.

Firmness is my persistency; obstinacy is yours.

A little heap of dust,
A little streak of rust,
A stone without a name--
Lo! hero, sword and fame.

Our vocabulary is defective; we give the same name to woman's lack of
temptation and man's lack of opportunity.

"You scoundrel, you have wronged me," hissed the philosopher. "M