"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. "And the Goverment, this great beneficent Goverment, that looks down with pity on oncivilized races--the Goverment of the United States sells and rents this man-eater and soul-destroyer at so much a year. "If I had my way," sez I, a-gittin' madder and madder the more I thought on't-- "If I had my way I'd bring over a hull drove of cannibals and Hottentots, etc., and let 'em camp round Uncle Sam a spell, and try to reform him. "And the first thing I would have 'em make that old man do would be to empty out his pockets, turn 'em right inside out and empty out all the accursed gains he had got from this shameful traffic. And then I'd have them cannibals jest trot that old man right round to every saloon and rum-hole he had rented and wuz a partner in the proceeds, and make him lay to and empty out every barrel and hogset of whiskey and beer and cider, and make him do the luggin' and liftin' his own self. "And then I'd let them Hottentots drive him round a spell to all the houses of infamy in which he wuz in partnership, and I'd make him haul some matches out of his pockets and set fire to 'em, and burn 'em all down, every one of 'em. "And then I'd let the old man set down and rest a spell, and let them heathens instruct him and teach him a spell their way of man-eatin'. And I'll bet after a while they could git the old man up to their level, so if he sot out to kill a man, he would jest kill him, and not destroy his soul first. For he hain't upon a level with 'em now," sez I, a-lookin' firm and decided at my pardner. And he sez, "I shouldn't think you would dast to talk so about Uncle Sam; you have always pretended to like him--you would never bear to hear a word agin him." "Wall," sez I, "it is because I like him that I want him to do right. Do you spoze a mother don't like a child when she spanks him for temper, or blisters him for croup, or gives him worm-wood for worms? "I love that old man, and wish him awful well, and when I see him so noble and sot up in lots of things, it jest makes me mad as a hen to see him so awful mean and little in others.