Having hinted gently at the leading characteristics of the twelve low comedians, I am ready now to make you acquainted with the twenty leading villains. There is something grimly humorous in the spectacle of a dozen genial, able-bodied, non-alcoholic ruffians levying tribute on a community too self-absorbed or too easy-going or too indifferent to rid itself of them. I find, on the other hand, something somewhat pathetic in the spectacle of twenty otherwise reputable citizens and capitalists driven to villainy by the force of circumstances. To be a villain against one's will is an unnatural and pitiable situation. _That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!_ Here is the list: Thomas Barnstable, President of the People's Heat and Power Company. William B. Wilcox, General Manager of the North Circuit Traction Company. David J. Prendergast, Treasurer of the Underground Steam Company. Porter King, President of the South Valley Railroad Company. James Plugh, Treasurer of the Star Brewing Concern. Ex-State Treasurer George Delaney Johnson, Manager of the United Gas Company. Willis O. Golightly, Treasurer of the Consolidated Electric Works. Hon. Samuel Phipps, President of the Sparkling Reservoir Company. P. Ashton Hall, President of the Rapid Despatch Company. Ex-Congressman Henry B. Pullen, Manager of the Maguinnis Engine Works. And so on. I will not weary you with a complete category. It would contain the names of twelve other gentlemen no less prominent in connection with quasi-public and large private business corporations. With them should be associated one thousand easy-going, second-class villains, whose names are not requisite to my argument, but who from one year to another are obliged by the exigencies of business or enterprise to ask for licenses from the non-alcoholic, genial comedians, for permission to build a stable, to erect a bay-window, to peddle goods in the streets, to maintain a coal-hole, to drain into a sewer, to lay wires underground; in short, to do one or another of the many every-day things which can be done only by permission of the City Government. And the pity of it is that they all would rather not be villains. [_Note._--At the suggestion of Josephine I here enter a caveat for my and her protection. While I was enumerating the list of low comedians she interrupted me to ask if I did not fear lest one of them might sand-bag me some dark night on account of wounded sensibilities. She laughed, but I saw she was a little nervous. "I have mentioned no real names," said I. "That is true," she said, "but somehow I feel that the real ones might be suspicious that they were meant."