"How are men made?" sez I dryly, as dry as ever a corncob wuz, after
many years.

"Oh, men are made so's they try to answer wimmen some--they have to;
they have to keep their hand in so's to not lose their speech on that
very account. I presume Columbus knew all about such things. He had two
wives; he knew what trouble wuz."

I see that man wuz a-tryin' every way to draw my attention away offen
them long streets of saloons built up in Chicago, and I wouldn't suckumb
to it. So I branched right out, and back agin, and sez I--

"The idee of a civilized city, after eighteen hundred years of
Christianaty--the idee of their doin' sunthin' that if savage Africans
or Inguns wuz a-doin' the World would ring with it, and missionaries
would start for 'em on the run, or by the carload.

"There is a awful fuss made about a cannibal eatin' a man now and then,
makin' a good plain stew of him, or a roast, and that is the end of it;
they eat up his flesh, but they don't make no pretensions to fry up his
soul; they leave that free and pure, and it goes right up to Heaven.

"But here in our Christian land, in city and country, this great
man-eatin' trade costs the country over a billion dollars a year, and
devours one hundred and twenty thousand men each year, and destroys the
soul and mind first, before it tackles the body.

"They go as fur ahead of cannibals in this wickedness as eternity is
longer than time.