The laws are numerous as flies upon a summer day; at making laws the statesmen wise still pound and pound away. No man on earth could recollect a list of all the laws; I tried it once--my mind is wrecked, and now you know the cause. Some gents who are in prison yet proclaim with angry shout that they are so with laws beset, they really can't stay out. "A man can't walk around a block," I heard a sad man wail, "but what the cops will round him flock, and chuck him into jail." I heard the butcher man repine, and weep, and rail at fate, because he had to pay a fine for being short on weight. I heard the corner grocer snort, and use some language sour, because they yanked him into court for selling moldy flour. The milkman bottled half the creek, and sold it on his route; he said: "The law just makes me sick," when friends had bailed him out. The laws are numerous as scales upon a fish, no doubt; and so some people are in jails, and simply can't stay out; but all the time and everywhere one great truth stands out clear: The man who acts upon the square, has nothing much to fear. _Sleuths of Fiction_ I'm weary now of Sherlock Holmes, and all the imitative crew; I'm tired of triumphs built upon a collar button, as a clew. The sleuth is always tall and thin, with nervous hands and hawk-like face; he scours the slums or moves around in marble halls, with equal grace; he always takes some kind of dope or plays the flute or violin, and when he's billed for active work he glues false whiskers on his chin. He always has a Watson near, a tiresome chump, who sits and broods, the while the selling-plater sleuth reels off a string of platitudes. Detective yarns are all so stale! The plot is evermore the same; we always have the murdered man, with knives or bullets in his frame; the pantry window is unlocked; the safe's been opened with a file; suspicion shifts until it rests on every man within a mile; the local peelers blunder round, and ball things up in frightful shape, and then the Great Detective comes, with lens and rule and meas'ring tape; he crawls around upon the floor, examines all the water mains, and tastes the ashes in the stove, and sticks his nose into the drains, and then he says the problem's solved; forthwith he spends two weeks or more in showing Watson and the world how easy 'tis to be a bore! _Put It On Ice_