XXVIII.

The man who knows it all.

There is a type of humanity we all encounter from day to day, at whose funeral I shall carry a banner and beat a tom-tom.  He is the man who knows it all.  In his grave, human forethought, and general knowledge, and mortal perfection and everything worth knowing, shall one day lie down and die.  He never makes mistakes, nor loses his temper, nor gets the worst of an argument, nor is worsted in a bargain.  He never acts on impulse, nor jumps without looking, nor commits himself rashly, nor loses the wind out of his sails.  He is so overwhelmingly superior (sometimes he is a woman!) that in his presence you are a child of wrath, a hopeless imbecile, and a black sheep all in one, and yet—­how you hate him and how you long to see some brave young David come along and hit him with a sling shot!  Such a man as he, is fitted to bring the average human to the dust as quickly and as surely as a well aimed bullet brings down a wild duck.

XXIX.

Bald heads and unequal chances.

What a superior chance a man has in this world over a woman!  In the matter of physical attributes alone his innings are as far ahead of hers as the man who carries the banner in a Fourth of July procession is ahead of the little boy who tugs along behind with the lemonade pail.  The other evening I attended the theatre, and casting my eye over the audience between acts, I beheld no less than a score of bald-headed men.  They were composed, and even cheerful, under an infliction that would have ostracized a woman.  Imagine a man taking a bald-headed woman to see the “Railroad of Love!” Imagine a bald-headed girl with a fat, red neck and white eyelashes being in eager demand for parties, coaching jubilees or private suppers.  There never was a man so homely, so halt, so deficient in beauty or brain that he could not get a wife when he wanted, but the candidates for the position of mistress of any man’s household must be pretty, graceful and sweet.  The chances are uneven, my dear, but what are you going to do about it?

XXX.

Human straws.

There is not much credit in being jolly when the joints of life are well oiled and events move as smoothly as feathers drawn through cream.  The glory lies in maintaining your serenity under adverse circumstances; in emulating Mark Tapley, and being jolly when there is not a hand’s breadth of blue in all the heavens.  There are straws laid upon us every day, which, if they do not break our backs, at least go far to loosen the vertebrae of our temper.  One of these straws is the man who expectorates in public places.  What shall I do with that man?  I cannot kill him, because there is a law against the violent removal of even a human straw.  To be sure, he is the most insignificant straw that the wind of destiny blows across the waste of life.  He never will mature a head of wheat though you give him eleven eternities to do it in.  But he serves his purpose, and breaks the back of toleration.