hlets, and scolding
as he came.

"Are you educated, yes? Have been to college, yes? Then perhaps you will
understand."

Certainly I understood immediately that he and his pamphlets were as bad
as the book, or worse, in their use of a vocabulary designed to cause
almost any listener the gravest inconvenience. Common Eocene ancestors
occurred at the beginning of his lecture; and I believed that if it
got no stronger than this, I could at least preserve the appearance of
comprehending him; but it got stronger, and at sacro-iliac notch I may
say, without using any grossly exaggerated expression, that I became
unconscious. At least, all intelligence left me. When it returned, he
was saying.--

"But this is only the beginning. Come in here to my crania and jaws."

Evidently he held me hypnotized, for he now hurried me unresisting
through a back door into a dark little where he turned up the gas, and I
saw shelves as in a museum, to one of which he led me. I suppose that
it was curiosity that rendered me thus sheep-like. Upon the shelf were a
number of skulls and jaws in admirable condition and graded arrangement,
beginning to the left with that flat kind of skull which one associates
with gorillas. He resumed his scolding harangue, and for a few brief
moments I understood him. Here, told by themselves, was as much of the
story of the skulls as we know, from manlike apes through glacial man
to the modern senator or railroad president. But my intelligence was
destined soon to die away again.

"That is the Caucasian skull: your skull," he said, touching a specimen
at the right.

"Interesting," I murmured. "I'm afraid I know nothing about skulls."

"But you shall know someding before you leave," he retorted, wagging his
head at me; and this time it was not the book, but a specimen, that he
pushed into my grasp. He gave it a name, not as bad as platyrrhine, but
I feared worse was coming; then he took it away from me, gave me another
skull, and while I obediently held it, pronounced something quite beyond
me.

"And what is the translation of that?" he demanded excitedly.

"Tell me," I feebly answered.

He shouted with overweening triumph: "The translation of that is South
Carolina nigger. Notice well this so egcellent specimen. Prognathous,
megadont, platyrrhine."

"Ha! Platyrrhine!" I saluted the one word I recognized as I drowned.

"You have said it yourself!" was his extraordinary answer;--for what
had I said? Al