"The king business is not what it is cracked up to be. I know lots of
fellows who would make first-rate kings, and I don't know but what I
would make quite a hit in that line myself. But I wouldn't take the
job if I could get it. I'd sooner be chief of police or a corporation
lawyer. There's more money in it and not half the danger."




THE EATING HABIT


"My friend," said the Observer to his vis-à-vis, who was studying the
bill-of-fare on the other side of the table, "did you ever stop to
consider in what an advanced age we are living? Have you ever studied
the laws of the universe and sought to figure them out?"

"'Never had time,' you say; 'keeps a man busy providing cash to feed
his family.' Well, that's just the point. Have you never realized that
half of our time is spent in preparing, eating and digesting food,
while the other half is employed in making money enough to buy it?
Now, students of psychology say that, in time, the human body will
become so refined that it will be able to absorb all necessary
nourishment from 'universal life,' and need not gorge itself with
animal or vegetable organisms.

"What vast changes such a condition will inaugurate. The Frenchman
will no longer clog his digestive apparatus with 'pate de foi gras;'
the rodent will pursue the even tenor of his way in the land of the
heathen Chinee, without danger of being converted into a stew; the