– “Why was I born? Why should I breathe?” Here I quite agree with you. I don’t think you ought to breathe.

Topic V. –You demand that I shall show you the man whose soul is dead and then mark him. I am awfully sorry; the man was around here all day yesterday, and if I had only known I could easily have marked him so that we could pick him out again.

Topic VI. –I notice that you frequently say, “Oh, for the sky of your native land.” Oh, for it, by all means, if you wish. But remember that you already owe for a great deal.

Topic VII. –On more than one occasion you wish to be informed, “What boots it, that you idly dream?” Nothing boots it at present–a fact, sir, which ought to afford you the highest gratification.

 

THE FORCE OF STATISTICS

They were sitting on a seat of the car, immediately in front of me. I was consequently able to hear all that they were saying. They were evidently strangers who had dropped into a conversation. They both had the air of men who considered themselves profoundly interesting as minds. It was plain that each laboured under the impression that he was a ripe thinker.

One had just been reading a book which lay in his lap.

“I’ve been reading some very interesting statistics,” he was saying to the other thinker.

“Ah, statistics!” said the other; “wonderful things, sir, statistics; very fond of them myself.”

“I find, for instance,” the first man went on, “that a drop of water is filled with little…with little…I forget just what you call them…little–er–things, every cubic inch containing–er–containing…let me see…”

“Say a million,” said the other thinker, encouragingly.

“Yes, a million, or possibly a billion…but at any rate, ever so many of them.”

“Is it possible?” said the other. “But really, you know, there are wonderful things in the world. Now, coal…take coal….”

“Very good,” said his friend, “let us take coal,” settling back in his seat with the air of an intellect about to feed itself.

“Do you know that every ton of coal burnt in an engine will drag a train of cars as long as…I forget the exact length, but say a train of cars of such and such a length, and weighing, say so much…from…from…hum! for the moment the exact distance escapes me…drag it from…”

“From here to the moon,” suggested the other.

“Ah, very likely; yes, from here to the moon. Wonderful, isn’t it?”

“But the most stupendous calculation of all, sir, is in regard to the distance from the earth to the sun. Positively, sir, a cannon-ball–er–fired at the sun…”

“Fired at the sun,” nodded the other, approvingly, as if he had often seen it done.

“And travelling at the rate of…of…”

“Of three cents a mile,” hinted the listener.

“No, no, you misunderstand me–but travelling at a fearful rate, simply fearful, sir, would take a hundred million–no, a hundred billion–in short would take a scandalously long time in getting there–”

At this point I could stand no more. I interrupted– “Provided it were fired from Philadelphia,” I said, and passed into the smoking-car.

 

MEN WHO HAVE SHAVED ME

A barber is by nature and inclination a sport. He can tell you at what exact hour the ball game of the day is to begin, can foretell its issue without losing a stroke of the razor, and can explain the points of inferiority of all the players, as compared with better men that he has personally seen elsewhere, with the nicety of a professional. He can do all this, and then stuff the customer’s mouth with a soap-brush, and leave him while he goes to the other end of the shop to make a side bet with one of the other barbers on the outcome of the Autumn Handicap. In the barber-shops they knew the result of the Jeffries-Johnson prize fight long before it happened. It is on information of this kind that they make their living. The performance of shaving is only incidental to it. Their real vocation in life is imparting information. To the barber the outside world is made up of customers, who are to be thrown into chairs, strapped, manacled, gagged with soap, and then given such necessary information on the athletic events of the moment as will carry them through the business hours of the day without open disgrace.

As soon as the barber has properly filled up the customer with information of this sort, he rapidly removes his whiskers as a sign that the man is now fit to talk to, and lets him out of the chair.

The public has grown to understand the situation. Every reasonable business man is willing to sit and wait half an hour for a shave which he could give himself in three minutes, because he knows that if he goes down town without understanding exactly why Chicago lost two games straight he will appear an ignoramus.

At times, of course, the barber prefers to test his customer, with a question or two. He gets him pinned in the chair, with his head well back, covers the customer’s face with soap, and then planting his knee on his chest and holding his hand firmly across the customer’s mouth, to prevent all utterance and to force him to swallow the soap, he asks: “Well, what did you think of the Detroit-St. Louis game yesterday?” This is not really meant for a question at all. It is only equivalent to saying: “Now, you poor fool, I’ll bet you don’t know anything about the great events of your country at all.” There is a gurgle in the customer’s throat as if he were trying to answer, and his eyes are seen to move sideways, but the barber merely thrusts the soap-brush into each eye, and if any motion still persists, he breathes gin and peppermint over the face, till all sign of life is extinct. Then he talks the game over in detail with the barber at the next chair, each leaning across an inanimate thing extended under steaming towels that was once a man.

To know all these things barbers have to be highly educated. It is true that some of the greatest barbers that have ever lived have begun as uneducated, illiterate men, and by sheer energy and indomitable industry have forced their way to the front. But these are exceptions.