Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/113

 Rh to the tragic downfall of the Stuarts. Indeed, the gayest laugh occasionally rings a death-knell, and so our humorists wield a power which could hardly be entrusted into better hands. "Punch" has the cleanest record of any English journal. It has ever—save for those perverse and wicked slips which cost it the friendship of stouthearted Richard Doyle—allied itself with honor and honesty, and that sane tolerance which is the basis of humor. "Life" has fought an even braver fight, and has been the active champion of all that is helpless and ill-treated, the advocate of all that is honorable and sincere. The little children who crawl, wasted and fever-stricken, through the heated city streets, the animals that pay with prolonged pain for the pleasures of scientific research,—these hapless victims of our advanced civilization find their best friend in this New York comic paper. The girl whose youth and innocence are bartered for wealth in the open markets of matrimony, sees no such vigorous protest against her degradation as in its wholesome pages. It is scant praise to say that "Life" does more to quicken charity, and to purify social