the osseous
frame? One can understand the supremacy of the heart: it plainly bosses
the whole vascular system. But why do the bronchial tubes wag the lungs?
Why is the chin superior to the nose? The ankles to the shins? The solar
plexus to the gall-bladder?

I am unequal to the penetration of this great ethical, aesthetical and
sociological mystery. But in leaving it, let me point to another and
antagonistic one: to wit, that which concerns those viscera of the lower
animals that we use for food. The kidneys in man are far down the
scale--far down in Class V, along with false teeth, the scalp and the
female leg. But the kidneys of the beef steer, the calf, the sheep, or
whatever animal it is whose kidneys we eat--the kidneys of this creature
are close to the borders of Class I. What is it that young Capt. Lionel
Basingstoke, M.P., always orders when he drops in at Gatti's on his way
from his chambers in the Albany to that flat in Tyburnia where Mrs.
Vaughn-Grimsby is waiting for him to rescue her from her _cochon_ of a
husband? What else but deviled kidneys? Who ever heard of a gallant
young English seducer who didn't eat deviled kidneys--not now and then,
not only on Sundays and legal holidays, but every day, every evening?

Again, and by way of postscript No. 2, concentrate your mind upon
sweetbreads. Sweetbreads are made in Chicago of the pancreases of horned
cattle. From Portland to Portland they belong to the first class of
refined delicatessen. And yet, on the human plane, the pancreas is in
Class VI, along with the caecum and the paunch. And, contrariwise, there
is tripe--"the stomach of the ox or of some other ruminant." The stomach
of an American citizen belongs to Class II, and even the stomach of an
Englishman is in Class IV, but tripe is far down in Class VIII. And
chitterlings--the excised vermiform appendix of the cow. Of all the
towns in Christendom, Richmond, Va., is the only one wherein a
self-respecting white man would dare to be caught wolfing a chitterling
in public.

_XI.--THE JAZZ WEBSTER_

_XI. The Jazz Webster_

ACTOR. One handicapped more by a wooden leg than by a wooden head.

ADULTERY. Democracy applied to love.

ALIMONY. The ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

ANTI-VIVISECTIONIST. One who gags at a guinea-pig and swallows a baby.

ARCHBISHOP. A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained
by Christ.

ARGUMENT. A means of persuasion. The agents of argume