MR. SQUEM
BY ARTHUR RUSSELL TAYLOR
'WHY do we go on perpetuating an uncomfortable breed?'
The man who was shaving at the mirror-paneled door of the Pullman smoking compartment looked at his questioner on the leather seat opposite.
'Give it up,' he answered. 'Why is a hen?'
The first man rapped his pipe empty on the edge of a cuspidor.
'You answer the question,' he said, 'in the only possible way—by asking another.'
'Right,' answered the shaver; and began to run the hot water.
A closely built man, in a suit so heavily striped as to seem stripes before it was a suit, lurched into the compartment and settled himself to his paper and cigar.
'That monkey-on-a-stick,' he presently broke out, 'is still taking good money away from the asses who go to hear him rant about God and Hell and all the rest, up in Boston. I am so damn tired of him, and of that rich rough-neck Freeze. It's the limit.'
'Pretty much,' said the man with the pipe. 'I was reading about the Belgians just before you came in, and when I jumped away from them I lit on some things about Poland. Then I wondered aloud to this gentleman why we go on multiplying—increasing such an uncomfortable breed. Modoc gods and degenerate millionaires make one wonder more.'