As a nation, we do not know how to eat rationally; few people sleep as they should; our drinking habits could not be much worse; our clothing is stiff, formal, conventional, hideous, and unhealthful; our headgear the delirium tremens of silliness. Much of our architecture is weakly imitative, flimsy, without dignity, character, or stability; much of our religion a profession rather than a life; our scholastic system turns out anæmic and half-trained pupils who are forceful demonstrators of the truth that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” And as for our legal system, if a body of lunatics from the nearest asylum could not concoct for us a better hash of jurisprudence than now curses our citizenship I should be surprised. No honest person, whether of the law or out of it, denies that “law”--which Browning so forcefully satirizes as “the patent truth-extracting process,”--has become a system of formalism, of precedent, of convention, of technicality. A case may be tried, and cost the city, county, or state thousands of dollars; a decision rendered, and yet, _upon a mere technicality that does not affect the real merits of the case one iota_, the decision will be reversed, and either the culprit--whose guilt no one denies--is discharged, or a new trial, with its attendant expense, is ordered. The folly of such a system! The sheer idiocy of _men_ wasting time and strength and energy upon such puerile foolishness. I verily believe the world would be bettered if the whole legal system, from supreme court of the United States down to pettiest justice court, could be abolished at one blow, and a reversion made to the decisions of the old men of each community known for their good common sense, fearlessness, and integrity. [Illustration: RAMONA AND HER STAR BASKET.]