places, and for the electric wires, and bomb cranks, and accidents,
etc., the world would git too full to stand up in."

"Help to reduce the surplus population!" sez I, and my voice shook with
indignation as I said it. Sez I--

"Elnathan Allen, you had better stop a-pilin' up your statisticks, for a
spell, and come down onto the level of humanity and human brotherhood."

Sez I, "Spozen you should take it to yourself for a spell, imagine how
it would be with you if you had been born there onbeknown to yourself."
Sez I, "If you wuz a-livin' down there in them horrible pits of disease
and death--if you wuz a-standin' over the dyin' bed of wife or mother,
or other dear one, and felt that if you could bring one fresh, sweet
breath of air to the dear one, dyin' for the want of it, you would
almost barter your hopes of eternity--

"If you stood there in that black, chokin' atmosphere, reekin' with all
pestilental and moral death, and see the one you loved best a-slippin'
away from you--borne out of your sight, borne away into the onknown, on
them dead waves of poisinous, deathly air--I guess you wouldn't talk
about reducin' the Surplus Population."

I had been real eloquent, and I knew it, for I felt deeply what I said.

But Elnathan looked cheerful under all my talk. It didn't impress him a
mite, I could see.

He felt safe. He wuz sure the squalor and sufferin' never would or could
touch him. He thought, in the words of the Him slightly changed, that: