Irresistible bodies met the immovable, cheered on by yelling legions,
each phalanx would conquer or die, and die they did by scores; they
kicked and slugged like maniacs until separated by the combined
police-forces of the surrounding cities, and more were killed and
wounded than in the entire Spanish War. When night fell, thousands of
collegians invaded the capitol of the State, and with savage yells and
wedge-rushes drove all citizens from the streets; they closed every
theatre, pelting the actors with whiskey bottles stolen from the
saloons in which they had smashed thousands of dollars' worth of
costly furniture; they stole every sign from stores, which caught
their fancy; no woman was respected, until their orgies were stopped
by the bayonets of the national guard.
Such "scholars" as these had for many years been ground through these
educational mills by thousands, crowding the ranks of the professional
classes to suffocation. Legions of unscrupulous lawyers, more
heartless than pirates or brigands in Bulgaria, infested every city
and town, busy as demons stirring up strife, drilling witnesses to
perjury, bull-dozing the innocent even unto death with the full
connivance of the plunder-sharing judges, until the jails were crowded
with victims who could not pay their outrageous fees.
These lawyer-sharks packed caucuses, stuffed ballot-boxes, and thereby
elected themselves to legislatures where they enacted unjust laws to
subserve their own iniquitous depredations.
But this nefarious pillaging was not confined to the courts alone:
armies of patientless doctors must be fed at the expense of the
long-suffering public, and as all the people were not _naturally_ sick
all the time for the benefit of the quacks, these so-called doctors
prevailed upon their legislative college-chums to pass laws compelling
all to be innoculated with virus, ostensibly to render them immune to
various contagions, but really to furnish unlimited plunder to their
"family physicians."
Even the women caught the craze for "higher education" to fit
themselves for "kid-glove" professional emoluments; they, too, tore
each other's hair, scratched each other's faces in frantic football
rushes, tumbling over each other in the wild scrimmage for fees,
leaving the kitchens to the ignorant foreigners, who ruined digestions
with preposterous cookery, which would have killed a nation of
ostriches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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