ension."

"You speak a sad truth," said the Idiot. "Social fads are impervious to
fulmination, as Solomon might have said had he thought of it. As long as
a thing is a social fad it will thrive, and, on the whole, perhaps it
ought to thrive. Anything which gives society something to think about
has its value, and the mere fact that it makes society _think_ is proof
of that value."

"We seem to be in a philosophic frame of mind this morning," said Mr.
Whitechoker.

"We are," returned the Idiot. "That's one thing about University
Extension. It makes us philosophic. It has made a stoic of my dear old
daddy."

"Oh yes!" cried Mr. Pedagog. "You _have_ a father, haven't you? I had
forgotten that."

"Wherein," said the Idiot, "we differ. _I_ haven't forgotten that I have
one, and, by-the-way, it is from him that I first heard of University
Extension. He lives in a small manufacturing town not many miles from
here, and is distinguished in the town because, without being stingy, he
lives within his means. He has a way of paying his grocer's bills which
makes of him a marked man. He hasn't much more money than he needs, but
when the University Extension movement reached the town he was
interested. The prime movers in the enterprise went to him and asked him
if he wouldn't help it along, dilating upon the benefits which would
accrue to those whose education stopped short with graduation from the
high-schools. It was most plausible. The notion that for ten cents a
lecture the working masses could learn something about art, history,
and letters, could gather in something about the sciences, and all that,
appealed to him, and while he could afford it much more ill than the
smart people, the four hundred of the town, he chipped in. He paid fifty
dollars and was made an honorary manager. He was proud enough of it,
too, and he wrote a long, enthusiastic letter to me about it. It was a
great thing, and he hoped the State, which had been appealed to to help
the movement along, would take a hand in it. 'If we educate the masses
to understand and to appreciate the artistic, the beautiful,' he wrote,
'we need have little fear for the future. Ignorance is the greatest foe
we have to contend against in our national development, and it is the
only thing that can overthrow a nation such as ours is.' And then what
happened? Professor Peterkin came along and delivered ten or a dozen
lectures. The masses went once or twice and found the platf