worthy their unsavory occupation. The committee has sent to all the papers of Missouri a communication signed "Economist," urging that they use their influence to secure the enactment of a law by the legislature taxing all property not employed for general public purposes. This, of course, includes all church property of whatever denomination, and therein appears to be a non-sectarian movement well calculated to secure the support of fairminded men. It is, of course, an outrage, that the mechanic's cottage and the widow's cow should be taxed for the support of the State, while the half-million dollar church is exempt; but it is evident to all capable of looking beneath the surface that such a reform is not the purpose of the A.P.A. The idea appears to be to pass an omnibus bill, subjecting to taxation not only all church property, but sectarian schools, hospitals, orphan asylums, etc. This accomplished, it will be easy enough to secure a repeal of that clause relating to churches, and the vast eleemosynary and educational institutions of the Catholics at St. Louis and elsewhere in the State will not only be subjected to taxation, but to appraisement by those who will demand the pound of flesh. The Catholics now pay taxes to support the public schools, while maintaining their own at private expense. If these latter are subjected to taxation the triple burden may prove too heavy to be borne, in which event the Catholics will be compelled to suffer their children to grow up in ignorance or send them to public schools dominated by Protestant influences, and this is the self-evident object of the A.P.A. A glance at the committee appointed to engineer this "reform" should give the people of Missouri pause. Minor Merriwether, an intellectual lightweight, shining by the reflected light of his wife, who is a kind of Prohibition Mother Lease, is president of the committee; the other members being Rev. W.

W. Hopkins, a cranky little preacher, to fortune and to fame unknown; Rev. R. P. Farris, who was bounced from the editorship of a Presbyterian paper as a hopeless backnumber of the witch-burning and tongue-boring period, and Jake Williams, a busy little red-bug on the body politic whom nobody has yet thought it worth his while to expectorate upon and drown. A fine combination, truly, to undertake, by dark lantern methods, the reformation of the economic conditions of a sovereign State.

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THE RIDDLE UNRAVELING.

Ir will be remembered that a month ago I discovered the "Rev. J. B. Riddle, pastor of the First Baptist Church, Waxahachie, Texas." It was one of those happy accidents that sometimes occur to the earnest entomologist; but I was unable to classify my discovery. I am pleased to announce that I have partially succeeded in unraveling my Riddle, and find him a rarer specimen than I had dared to hope. Nothing so important has occurred in the study of insects since "Butch" Armstrong of Waco discovered a new variety of bumblebee. Dr. Riddle is so happy at being discovered that he has taken to sending me telegrams and writing me long letters. It is these latter that give me a correct insight into his character and enable me to classify him. Dr. Riddle is not a pathogenic micrococcus at all, as I at first suspected; he is not even an itch bacillus -he's a dude. At the top of each page of his letters is a wood-cut portrait of the author, making a reasonably successful effort to look pleasant. The artist evidently dropped a quarter into the contribution-box at the very moment he snapped the kodak. As only men who imagine themselves particularly handsome put their pictures on

their note paper, I am able to announce authoritatively that Brother Riddle considers himself a thing of beauty and a joy forever. And he is pretty-pretty as a piebald bull pup. When I make a million out of the ICONOCLAST I am going to buy him and put him in my park with a whole herd of spotted deer and a drove of peacocks. It doesn't matter what he costs; I am going to have him. I dote on the beautiful, and the doctor is beautiful as Adonis. And I really think he knows more than did that young man. After studying his counterfeit presentment from a phrenological standpoint, I am convinced that he would recognize a good thing on sight, and "push it along." Dr. Riddle's picture, if printed half-tone in the Chambermaid's Own, would create a decided sensation. Every serving-maid in Christendom would be trying to kidnap him. We would have to lock him up o' nights or there's no telling what would happen. The nereids and the naiads, the dryads and the hamadryads would fight for his favors. True, he is not a classic; but, taken "by and large,” he's a bute. He has tacitly acknowledged as much himself. The idealist may object that his head resembles a football, and his mouth is too suggestive of Symmes' Hole; that his eyes might be mistaken for two burnt holes in a blanket, while his ears lop down like those of a terrier before they are trimmed; but even Apollo was not altogether perfect-the chasm between the ideal and the real in physical beauty has never been successfully bridged. Dr. Riddle's proboscis is built on the pattern of a Milwaukee pie, we must not forget that the Venus of Milo had big feet. Physical imperfections will crop out; if not at one end, then at the other. Despite the trifling blemishes noted by the skilled connoisseur, Dr. Riddle is a specimen of manly beauty seldom equaled and never surpassed. He is a pastoral Apollo, a backwoods Beau Brummel. I do

If

not blame him for getting stuck on himself and putting his pictures on his note paper. Beauty such as his should not be hid under a bushel. If his face is not his fortune it is his own fault. He could easily get a dollar a day to sit on a stump in a farmer's field as a bluff for the blackbirds. Billy Kersands would give him a cool million for that mouth. That illustrated note paper should make him a successful preacher. Think of the ecstasy of his female parishioners when they receive a letter from their beloved pastor, enclosing a tea-store chromo! Any stranger in Waxahachie would gladly chip a saw-buck into the contribution-box just to see Brother Riddle feed that face! And he is just as good as he is beautiful. "The outward evidences of an inward grace" shine in his letter to the Apostle. It is redolent with the odor of sanctity, and over it all his Christian charity oozes like molasses from a busted barrel. Brother Riddle assures me that he has seen the time when he would make a long pilgrimage to give me a cowhide performance, equal, if not superior to the one in San Antonio," but that "the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ" has transformed him from a wild and woolly anthropophagus, whose food is bleeding hearts and human marrow bones, into a meek and lowly saint, plodding painfully up the steep and narrow path to St. Peter's gate with a hymn-book in one hand and a copy of the ICONOCLAST in the other. The letter evidences the softening and humanizing influence of that religion dished out at Baylor. It also reminds me of an old deacon up in Illinois who, after returning from prayer-meeting in his store clothes, undertook to feed a calf that had been lately pulled from the parent stem. He put a bucket of skim-milk before the youthful bovine and bade it drink. The calf didn't begin to commence, so he pushed its nose down into the pail. It threw up its head and " snorted" the lacteal fluid all over

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him. Seizing it firmly by the ears, he jammed its head up and down in the pail, remarking at the top of his voice:

"If it warn't fer the grace o' God shed abroad in my heart, I'd jam your blankety-blank head down through the bottom o' that blankety-blanked old bucket!"

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That is too evidently the way Brother Riddle feels: If it warn't for the grace o' God shed abroad in his heart he would "board the train," come to Waco and chase the Apostle" around city hall square until his tongue hung out so far he could straddle it and slide! What a tremendous difference religion does make in a man! Instead of resorting to physical force to right a supposed wrong,—as is the custom with gentlemen-he sits him calmly down and writes an insulting letter. I rather expected when I ridiculed Dr. Riddle that he would offer up public prayer for me-but he didn't. He wrote me what awful things he would do if his Saviour did not hold him back by his little alpaca coat-tails. Instead of leading me tenderly into the fold, he persists in frightening me to death! I much fear that Brother Riddle is not so good as he looks-that his heavenly smile is but a mask behind which riot the world, the flesh and the devil. I fear that he is one of those bloodless pharisees who mistake cowardice for Christian charity, and a white liver for a good heart. I may have been cowhided in San Antonio for aught I know to the contrary; but no one except Brother Riddle seems to have ever heard of it hitherto. He may have heard it at Baylor University, for even the godly will gab. He should not render a verdict on ex parte evidence, however. I don't. When a Dallas druggist assured me that during the recent Baptist conference in that city he sold more private disease panaceas and devices for onanism than during the preceding year, I didn't rush forth and herald it from the housetops as a fact, notwithstanding its apparent probability.