[Illustration] The Fiend’s Delight by Dod Grile “Count that day lost whose low descending sun Views from thy hand no worthy action done.” New York: 1873. TO THE IMMUTABLE AND INFALLIBLE GODDESS, GOOD TASTE, IN GRATITUDE FOR HER CONDEMNATION OF ALL SUPERIOR AUTHORS, AND IN THE HOPE OF PROPITIATING HER CREATORS AND EXPOUNDERS, This Volume is reverentially Dedicated BY HER DEVOUT WORSHIPPER, THE AUTHOR. Contents PREFACE SOME FICTION One More Unfortunate The Strong Young Man of Colusa The Glad New Year The Late Dowling, Senior “Love’s Labour Lost” A Comforter Little Isaac The Heels of Her A Tale of Two Feet The Scolliver Pig Mr. Hunker’s Mourner A Bit of Chivalry The Head of the Family Deathbed Repentance The New Church that was not Built A Tale of the Great Quake Johnny The Child’s Provider Boys who Began Wrong A Kansas Incident Mr. Grile’s Girl His Railway Mr. Gish Makes a Present A Cow-County Pleasantry The Optimist, and What He Died Of The Root of Education Retribution The Faithful Wife Margaret the Childless The Discomfited Demon The Mistake of a Life L. S. The Baffled Asian TALL TALK A Call to Dinner On Death and Immortality Music—Muscular and Mechanical The Good Young Man The Average Parson Did We Eat One Another? Your Friend’s Friend Le Diable est aux Vaches Angels and Angles A Wingless Insect Pork on the Hoof The Young Person A Certain Popular Fallacy Pastoral Journalism Mendicity’s Mistake Insects Picnicking considered as a Mistake Thanksgiving Day Flogging Reflections upon the Beneficent Influence of the Press Charity The Study of Human Nature Additional Talk—Done in the Country Current Journalings OBITUARY NOTICES CHRISTIANS PAGANS MUSINGS, PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL LAUGHORISMS “ITEMS” FROM THE PRESS OF INTERIOR CALIFORNIA POESY Ye Idyll of ye Hippopopotamus Epitaph on George Francis Train Jerusalem, Old and New Communing with Nature Conservatism and Progress Inter Arma Silent Leges Quintessence Resurgam PREFACE