sed the work of Creation.

Voltaire said that if he had been Jehovah 'he would not have chosen the
Jews.' My late friend, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, a Voltairian to the
core, said that if he had been consulted 'he would have made health, not
disease, catching.' Ninon de Lenclos, the veriest woman that ever lived,
said that, had she been invited to give an opinion, 'she would have
suggested that women's wrinkles be placed under their feet.'

'Everything is for the best in the best of worlds!' exclaims Dr.
Pangloss in Voltaire's famous novel, 'Candide,' but few people are as
satisfied with the world as that amiable philosopher. There are people
who are even dissatisfied with our anatomy, and who declare that man's
leg would be much safer and would run much less risk of being broken if
the calf had been placed in front of it instead of behind. Some go as
far as to say that man is the worst handicapped animal of creation--that
he should have been made as strong as the horse, able to run like the
stag, to fly like the lark, to swim and dive like the fish, to have a
keen sense of smell like the dog, and one of sight like the eagle. Not
only that, but that man is the most stupid of all, the most cruel, the
most inconsistent, the most ungrateful, the most rapacious, the only
animal who does not know when he has had enough to eat and to drink, the
only one who kills the fellow-members of his species, the only one who
is not always a good husband and a good father.

'Man, the masterpiece of creation, the king of the universe!' they
exclaim. 'Nonsense!' There is hardly an animal that he dares look
straight in the face and fight. No; he hides behind a rock, and, with an
engine of destruction, he kills at a distance animals who have no other
means of defence than those given them by nature, the coward!

There is not the slightest doubt that the genius of man has to reveal
itself in the discovery of all that may remedy the disadvantages under
which he finds himself placed. Boats, railways, automobiles, balloons,
steam, electricity, and what not, have been invented, and are used to
cover his deficiencies. Poor man! he has to resort to artificial means
in every phase of life. Even clothes he has to wear, as his body has not
been provided with either fur or feathers.

CHAPTER XV

THE HUMOURS OF THE INCOME-TAX

(A WARNING)

I have often heard Americans say that the future may keep in store for
them the paying of income