up.  So the war hits us there, too.) As I see it, the income tax is the greatest mistake the government ever made.  It hits the wrong man.  It falls on the man with an income and lets the other man escape.  The way I look at it, and the way all the men that will be behind you look at it, is that if a man sticks tight to it and goes on earning all the income he can, he’s doing his bit, in his own way, to win the war.  All we ask is to be let alone (don’t put that in your notes as from me, but you can say it), let us alone to go on quietly piling up income till we get the Germans licked.  But if you start to take away our income, you discourage us, you knock all the patriotism out of us.  To my mind, a man’s income and his patriotism are the same thing.  But, of course, don’t say that I said that.”

The just complaint of my barber, as expressed in the pauses of his operations.

“I’m not saying nothing against the Government (any facial massage this morning?).  I guess they know their own business, or they’d ought to, anyway.  But I kick at all this talk against the barber business in war time (will I singe them ends a bit?).  The papers are full of it, all the time.  I don’t see much else in them.  Last week I saw where a feller said that all the barber shops ought to be closed up (bay rum?) till the war was over.  Say, I’d like to have him right here in this chair with a razor at his throat, the way I have you!  As I see it, the barber business is the most necessary business in the whole war.  A man’ll get along without everything else, just about, but he can’t get along without a shave, can he?—­or not without losing all the pep and self-respect that keeps him going.  They say them fellers over in France has to shave every morning by military order:  if they didn’t the Germans would have ’em beat.  I say the barber is doing his bit as much as any man.  I was to Washington four months last winter, and I done all the work of three senators and two congressmen (will I clip that neck?) and I done the work of a United States Admiral every Saturday night.  If that ain’t war work, show me what is.  But I don’t kick, I just go along.  If a man appreciates what I do, and likes to pay a little extra for it, why so much the better, but if he’s low enough to get out of this chair you’re in and walk off without giving a cent more than he has to, why let him go.  But, sometimes, when I get thinking about all this outcry about barber’s work in war time, I feel like following the man to the door and slitting his throat for him...  Thank you, sir; thank you, sir.  Good morning.  Next!”

The just complaint of Mr. Singlestone;—­formerly Mr. Einstein, Theatre Proprietor.