sterday, and if I hadn't staved him off I think he'd have
proposed swapping places with me. He has said quite often of late that I
had the best of it, because all I had to earn was my salary, whereas he
had to earn my salary and his own living besides. I offered to give him
ten per cent. of my salary for ten per cent. of his living, but he said
he guessed he wouldn't, adding that I seemed to be as great an Idiot as
ever."

"I fancy he was right there," said Mr. Pedagog. "I should really like to
know how a man of your peculiar mental construction can be of the
slightest practical value to a banker. I ask the question in all
kindness, too, meaning to cast no reflections whatever upon either you
or your employer. You are a roaring success in your own line, which is
all any one could ask of you."

"There's hominy for you, as the darky said to the hotel guest," returned
the Idiot. "Any person who says that discord exists at this table
doesn't know what he is talking about. Even the oil and the vinegar mix
in the caster--that is, I judge they do from the oleaginous appearance
of the vinegar. But I am very useful to my employer, Mr. Pedagog. He
says frequently that he wouldn't know what not to do if it were not for
me."

"Aren't you losing control of your tongue?" queried the Bibliomaniac,
looking at the Idiot in wonderment. "Don't you mean that he says he
wouldn't know what to do if it were not for you?"

"No, I don't," said the Idiot. "I never lose control of my tongue. I
meant exactly what I said. Mr. Barlow told me, in so many words, that if
it were not for me he wouldn't know what _not_ to do. He calls me his
Back Action Patent Reversible Counsellor. If he is puzzled over an
intricate point he sends for me and says: 'Such and such a thing being
the case, Mr. Idiot, what would you do? Don't think about it, but tell
me on impulse. Your thoughtless opinions are worth more to me than I can
tell you.' So I tell him on impulse just what I should do, whereupon he
does the other thing, and comes out ahead in nine cases out of ten."

"And you confess it, eh?" said the Doctor, with a curve on his lip.

"I certainly do," said the Idiot. "The world must take me for what I am.
I'm not going to be one thing for myself, and build up a fictitious
Idiot for the world. The world calls you men of pretence conceited,
whereas, by pretending to be something that you are not, you give to the
world what I should call convincing evidence th