d Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog.

"My dear--my _dear_!" ejaculated Mr. Pedagog. "Pray--ah--I beg of you,
do not enter into this discussion."

"No, Mrs. Pedagog," observed the Idiot, "it was not. It was nothing more
than a book, which, when once you have read it, you would not be
without, since it gives your vocabulary a twist which makes you proof
against ninety-nine out of every one hundred conversationalists in the
world, no matter how weak your cause."

"I am beginning to understand the causes of your weariness," observed
Mr. Pedagog, acridly. "You have been memorizing syllables. Really, I
should think you were in danger of phonetic prostration."

"Not a bit of it," said the Idiot. "Those words are stimulating, not
depressing. I begin to feel better already, now that I have spoken them.
I am not half so weary as I was, but for my weariness I had good cause.
I suffered all night from a most frightful nightmare. It utterly
destroyed my rest."

"Welsh-rarebit?" queried the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally
imbibed, with a tone of reproach. "If so, why was I not with you?"

"That question should be its own answer," replied the Idiot. "A man who
will eat a Welsh-rarebit alone is not only a person of a sullen
disposition, but of reckless mould as well. I would no sooner think of
braving a Welsh-rarebit unaccompanied than I would think of trying to
swim across the British Channel without a lifesaving boat following in
my wake."

"I question if so light a body as you could have a wake!" said Mr.
Pedagog, coldly.

"I am sorry, but I can't agree with you, Mr. Pedagog," said the
Bibliomaniac. "A tugboat, most insignificant of crafts, roils up the
surface of the sea more than an ocean steamer does. Fuss goes with
feathers more than with large bodies."

"Well, they're neither of 'em in it with a cake of soap for real,
bona-fide suds," said the Idiot, complacently, as he helped himself to
his thirteenth buckwheat-cake. "However, wakes have nothing to do with
the case. I had a most frightful dream, and it was not due to
Welsh-rarebits, but to my fatal weakness, which, not having my
_Thesaurus_ at hand, I must identify by the commonplace term of
courtesy. You may not have noticed it, but courtesy is my strong point."

"We haven't observed the fact," said Mr. Pedagog; "but what of it? Have
you been courteous to any one?"

"I have," replied the Idiot, "and a nightmare is what it brought me. I
rode up-town on a trolley-car la