at you are not at all
conceited, but rather somewhat ashamed of what you know yourselves to
be. Now, I rather believe in conceit--real honest pride in yourself as
you know yourself to be. I am an Idiot, and it is my ambition to be a
perfect Idiot. If I had been born a jackass, I should have endeavored to
be a perfect jackass."

"You'd have found it easy," said Mr. Pedagog, dryly.

"Would I?" said the Idiot. "I'll have to take your word for it, sir, for
_I_ have never been a jackass, and so cannot form an opinion on the
subject."

"Pride goeth before a fall," said Mr. Whitechoker, seeing a chance to
work in a moral reflection.

"Exactly," said the Idiot. "Wherefore I admire pride. It is a
danger-signal that enables man to avoid the fall. If Adam had had any
pride he'd never have fallen--but speaking about my controlling my
tongue, it is not entirely out of the range of possibilities that I
shall lose control of myself."

"I expected that, sooner or later," said the Doctor. "Is it to be
Bloomingdale or a private mad-house you are going to?"

"Neither," replied the Idiot, calmly. "I shall stay here. For, as the
poet says,

"''Tis best to bear the ills we hov
Nor fly to those we know not of.'"

"Ho!" jeered the Poet. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that I do not
think you are a success in quotation. Hamlet spoke those lines
differently."

"Shakespeare's Hamlet did. My little personal Shakespeare makes his
Hamlet an entirely different, less stilted sort of person," said the
Idiot.

"You have a personal Shakespeare, have you?" queried the Bibliomaniac.

"Of course I have," the Idiot answered. "Haven't you?"

"I have not," said the Bibliomaniac, shortly.

"Well, I'm sorry for you then," sighed the Idiot, putting a fried potato
in his mouth. "Very sorry. I wouldn't give a cent for another man's
ideals. I want my own ideals, and I have my own ideal of Shakespeare. In
fancy, Shakespeare and I have roamed over the fields of Warwickshire
together, and I've had more fun imagining the kind of things he and I
would have said to each other than I ever got out of his published
plays, few of which have escaped the ungentle hands of the devastators."

"You mean commentators, I imagine," said Mr. Pedagog.

"I do," said the Idiot. "It's all the same, whether you call them
commentors or devastators. The result is the same. New editions of
Shakespeare are issued every year, and people buy them to see not what
Shakespe