side street and sprang into the thickest of the fray. A moment later my
mother herself bore down upon the warring hosts, brandishing a cleaver,
and laid about her with great freedom and impartiality. My father joined
the fight, the municipal authorities engaged, and the general public,
converging on the battle-field from all points of the compass, consumed
itself in the center as it pressed in from the circumference. Last of
all, the dead held a meeting in the cemetery and resolving on a general
strike, began to destroy vaults, tombs, monuments, headstones, willows,
angels and young sheep in marble--everything they could lay their hands
on. By nightfall the living and the dead were alike exterminated, and
where the ancient and sacred city of Sardasa had stood nothing remained
but an excavation filled with dead bodies and building materials, shreds
of cat and blue patches of decayed dog. The place is now a vast pool of
stagnant water in the center of a desert.

The stirring events of those few days constituted my industrial
education, and so well have I improved my advantages that I am now Chief
of Misrule to the Dukes of Disorder, an organization numbering thirteen
million American workingmen.




THE BAPTISM OF DOBSHO


It was a wicked thing to do, certainly. I have often regretted it since,
and if the opportunity of doing so again were presented I should
hesitate a long time before embracing it. But I was young then, and
cherished a species of humor which I have since abjured. Still, when I