INDIAN COMMISSIONER. The gentleman who invented the idea of opening up barber shops near the Indian reservations, so that Lo could get his hair clipped by a reaping machine once every year, whether he needed it or not.
The idea of Marconi's wireless telegraph system pales into insignificance before the idea of coaxing a wild Indian away from the reservation and running the remorseless horse-clippers over the wild foliage to which his head has been acclimated these many years.
This is a noble suggestion, and no doubt the Indians will take kindly to the barbers and pay them much attention even if their tommyhawks and scalping knives are a little dull at first.
In the dramatic language of the plains Biff Hawkins, of Spotted Dog, Idaho, thus describes the opening of the first barber shop in the vicinity of an Indian reservation:
"Hist!"
The speaker was the bootblack in one of those handsome hand-painted barber shops which a loving government at Washington has placed at intervals along the border of the Indian Reservation.
"What is it, Mike?" said Sniffles, the barber.
"Hist!"
Again that ominous word, and Mike pointed feverishly at the distant horizon.