bands that play on the street corners, and go about from door to door,
and crack your jokes just as they crack their music. I am sure you'd
take, particularly in front of barber-shops."

"It would be hard on the comic papers," said the Poet, who was getting a
little unpopular with his fellow-boarders because of his tendency,
recently developed, to take the Idiot's part in the breakfast-table
discussions. "They might be so successful that the barber-shops, instead
of taking the comic papers for their customers to read, would employ one
or more of them to sit in the middle of the room and crack jokes aloud."

"We couldn't rival the comic papers though," said the Doctor, wishing to
save his dignity by taking the bull by the horns. "We might do the
jokes well enough, but the comic papers are chiefly pictorial."

"You'd be pictorial enough," said the Idiot. "Wasn't it you, Mr.
Pedagog, that said the Doctor here looked like one of Cruikshank's
physicians, or as if he had stepped out of Dickens's pages, or something
like it?"

"I never said anything of the sort!" cried the School-master,
wrathfully; "and you know I didn't."

"Who was it said that?" asked the Idiot, innocently, looking about the
table. "It couldn't have been Mr. Whitechoker, and I know it wasn't the
Poet or my Genial Friend who occasionally imbibes. Mr. Pedagog denies
it; I didn't say it; Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't say it. That leaves only two
of us--the Bibliomaniac and the Doctor himself. I don't think the Doctor
would make a personal remark of that kind, and--well, there is but one
conclusion. Mr. Bibliomaniac, I am surprised."

"What?" roared the Bibliomaniac, glaring at the Idiot. "Do you mean to
fasten the impertinence on me?"

"Far from it," returned the Idiot, meekly. "Very far from it. It is
fate, sir, that has done that--the circumstantial evidence against you
is strong; but then, mercifully enough, circumstantial evidence is not
permitted to hang a man."

"Now see here, Mr. Idiot," said the Bibliomaniac, firmly and
impressively, "I want you to distinctly understand that I am not going
to have you put words into my mouth that I never uttered. I--"

"Pray, don't attack me," said the Idiot. "I haven't made any charge
against you. I only asked who could have said that the Doctor looked
like a creation of Cruikshank. I couldn't have said it, because I don't
think it. Mr. Pedagog denies it. In fact, every one here has a clear
case of innocence excep