Here is a large school of famous pretension, professors high-salaried, apparatus complete, globes on which you can travel round the world in five minutes, spectroscopes, and Leyden jars, and chromatropes, and electric batteries. No one disputed its influence or its well-earned fame. The masters and misses that graduate come out equipped for duty. Long may it stand the adornment of the town. But a widow whose sons were killed in the war opens a school in her basement. She has a small group of little children whose tuition is her sole means of subsistence.

The high school looks with sharp eyes on the rising up of the low school. The big institution has no respect whatever for little institutions. The parents patronizing the widow must be persuaded that they are wasting their children's time in that basement. Women have no right to be widows cr have their sons killed in the war. From the windows of the high school the arrows are pointed at the helpless establishment in the corner. "Bang!" goes the artillery of scorn till one of the widow's scholars has gone. "Bang!" go the guns from the deck of the great educational craft till the innovating institution turns over and disappears. Well done! Used it up quick! Ha! ha! ha! Shooting porpoises!

Grab, Chokeham & Co. have a large store. They sell more goods than any in town. They brag over their income and the size of the glass in their show-window. They have enough clerks on light salaries to man a small navy. Mr. Needham, an honest man with small capital, opens a store in the same business. One morning Mr. Grab says to his partner, Mr. Chokeham: "Do you know a young chap has opened a store down on the other end of this block in the same business?"

"Has, eh? We will settle him very speedily." Forthwith it is understood that if at the small store a thing is sold for fifty cents, at the large store you can get it for forty-five. That is less than cost, but Grab & Chokeham are an old house, and can stand it, and Needham cannot. Small store's stock of goods is getting low, and no money to replenish. Small store's rent is due, and nothing with which to pay it. One day small store is crowded with customers, but they have come to the sheriff's sale. The big fish has swallowed the little one. Grab & Chokeham roll on the floor of counting-room in excess of merriment. Needham goes home to cry his eyes out. Big store has put an end to small store. Plenty of room for both, but the former wanted all the sea to itself. No one had any right to show his commercial head in those waters. "Pop!" "Pop!" Shooting porpoises!

Is it not time that the world stopped wasting its ammunition? If you want to shoot, there is the fox of cruel cunning, and the porcupine of fretfulness, and the vulture of filth, and the weasel of meanness, and the bear of religious grumbling. Oh, for more hunters who can "draw a bead so as every time to send plump into the dust a folly of sin! But let alone the innocent things of land and deep. The world is wide enough for us all. Big newspaper, have mercy on the little Great merchants, spare the weak. Let the San Jacinto plow on its majestic way and pass unhurt the porpoises.