It is difficult to say if our laws relating to vagrancy and vagrants are more cruel or more absurd. If not so atrocious they would evoke laughter; if less ridiculous we should read them with indignation. Here is an imaginary conversation: THE LAW: It is forbidden to you to rob. It is forbidden to you to steal. It is forbidden to you to beg. THE VAGRANT: Being without money, and denied employment, I am compelled to obtain food, shelter and clothing in one of these ways, else I shall be hungry and cold. THE LAW: That is no affair of mine. Yet I am considerate—you are permitted to be as hungry as you like and as cold as may suit you. THE VAGRANT: Hungry and cold, yes, and many thanks to you; but if I go naked I am arrested for indecent exposure. You require me to wear clothing. THE LAW: You’ll admit that you need it. THE VAGRANT: But not that you provide a way for me to get it. No one will give me shelter at night; you forbid me to sleep in a straw stack. THE LAW: Ungrateful man! We provide a cell. THE VAGRANT: Even when I obey you, starving all day and freezing all night, and holding my tongue about it, I am liable to arrest for being “without visible means of support.” THE LAW: A most reprehensible condition. THE VAGRANT: One thing has been overlooked—a legal punishment for soliciting work. THE LAW: True; I am not perfect. TAKING ONESELF OFF A person who loses heart and hope through a personal bereavement is like a grain of sand on the seashore complaining that the tide has washed a neighboring grain out of sight. He is worse, for the bereaved grain can not help itself; it has to be a grain of sand and play the game of tide, win or lose; whereas he can quit—by watching his opportunity can “quit a winner.” For sometimes we do beat “the man that keeps the table”—never in the long run, but infrequently and out of small stakes. But this is no time to “cash in” and go, for you can not take your little winning with you. The time to quit is when you have lost a big stake, your foolish hope of eventual success, your fortitude and your love of the game. If you stay in the game, which you are not compelled to do, take your losses in good temper and do not whine about them. They are hard to bear, but that is no reason why you should be. But we are told with tiresome iteration that we are “put here” for some purpose (not disclosed) and have no right to retire until “summoned”—it may be by small-pox, it may be by the bludgeon of a blackguard, it may be by the kick of a cow; the “summoning” Power (said to be the same as the “putting” Power) has not a nice taste in the choice of messengers. That argument is not worth attention, for it is unsupported by either evidence or anything resembling evidence. “Put here.” Indeed! And by the keeper of the table! We were put here by our parents—that is all that anybody knows about it; and they had no authority and probably no intention.