"As the masses of ancient Rome enjoyed the carnage of the amphi-theater; as the populace of Paris crowded with eager avidity around the guillotine to see the blood gush from the heads and trunks of the victims of the revolutionary tribunal; as the Spaniard in holiday attire followed over the plaza the procession and rapturously looked upon the execution of the wretches of the auto da fe; as in all ages the spirit of savagery has made men to enjoy scenes of suffering, brutality and death--so does the modern mob look with frenzied delight upon like exhibitions to-day." For a man so erudite and earnest, Mr. Johnson comes painfully near being ridiculous. The evidence is ample that never since the first settlement of this country have the people found LESS pleasure in the effusion of blood and scenes of brutality. Instead of the savage instinct becoming dominant, we are fairly open to the charge of effeminacy, of super-estheticism. Our very sports are becoming namby pamby as those of the Bengalese, the element of danger which gave zest to them in auld lang syne being all but eliminated. Bear-baiting, cocking- mains, shin-kicking, bulldog-fighting, etc., all greatly enjoyed by the general public a generation or so ago, are now quite generally tabood. Many of us can remember when pugilism was practiced with bare-knuckles and every fight to a finish; it is practiced now with feather pillows "for points," and under police supervision. About the only game left us that is more dangerous than playing Presbyterian billards with an old maid from Boston is college football, and even that will soon be stripped of its vigor on the plea that it is barbarous. When our fathers quarreled they took a pot-shot at each other at ten paces; now disagreements involving even family honor are carried into the courts--the bloody Code Duello has been relegated to "innocuous desuetude." Texas is supposed by our Northern neighbors to be the "wurst ever," the most bloodthirsty place this side the Ottoman Empire; yet the Houston Post, leading paper of Harris county, is crying its poor self sick because some peripatetic Ananias intimated to an Eastern reporter that our wildest and wooliest cowboys would even think of shooting the pigtail off a Chinaman bowling along on a bike. Our governor earned the title of "heroic young Christian" by calling a special session of the legislature to prevent Prof. Fitzsimmons giving it to Prof. Corbett "in de slats" with a buggy cushion--was re-elected on the proposition that a boxing- match is "brutal"--which proves that our people are not ahunger and athirst for gore, do not yearn for the sickening scenes of the Roman amphitheatre, where holy virgins by turning their thumbs up or down, decided questions of life and death. "Bloodthirsty?" Good Lord! The average American would grow sick at the stomach if required to slaughter a pullet with which to regale the palate of his favorite preacher. During the past two decades we have