"mind their own business." Thus should they woo harmony and peace,
and live to enjoy something like the completeness of life.

IX.

THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME MOST WEARY.

In the ups and downs and hithers and thithers of an eventful life shall
I tell you the people who have made me the most weary? It is not the
bad people, nor the foolish people; we can get along with all such
because of a streak of common humanity in us all, but I cannot survive
without extreme lassitude the decorous people; those who slip through
life without sound or sparkle, those who behave themselves upon every
occasion, and would pass through a dynamite explosion without rumpling
a hair; those who never have done anything out of the way and never
will, simply for the same reason that a fish cannot perspire--no blood
in 'em! Cut them and they would run cold sap, like a maple tree in
April. Such people are always frightened to death for fear of what the
world is going to say about them. They are under everlasting bonds to
keep the peace. I wonder that they ever un-bend to kiss their
children. If one of them lived in my house I should stick pins in him.
Morality and goodness that lie no deeper than "behavior" are like the
veneering they put on cheap tables--very tawdry and soon peeled off.

X.

NOTHING SO GRAND AS FORCE.

Reading about the superb management of the big fire the other day, a
certain girl of my acquaintance remarked: "Is there anything so grand
in a man as force? In my estimation those firemen and the chief who so
splendidly controlled them are as far superior to the dancing youth, we
meet at parties and hops, as meat is better than foam." Put that into
your pipe, you callow striplings, who aim to be lady-killers! It is
not your tennis suits, nor your small feet, nor your ability to dance
and lead the german that makes a woman's heart kindle at your approach.
It is your response to an emergency, your muscle in a tilt against
odds, your endurance and force, that will win the way to feminine
regard. As for me there is something pathetic in the sight of a big,
handsome fellow in dancing pumps and a Prince Albert coat. I would
rather see him swinging a blacksmith's hammer, or driving a plow
through stony furrows if need be. The "original man" was not created
to shine in the military schottische or win his laurels in the berlin.

XI.

A RAINY RHAPSODY.

Gently, idly, lazily, as petals from an over-blow