ting yourself, and I don't believe _you_ said
it, only the chain of circumstance--"

"Oh, hang your chain of circumstance!" interrupted the Bibliomaniac.

"It is hung," said the Idiot, "and it appears to make you very
uncomfortable. However, as I was saying, I think I have got hold of an
idea involving a truly philanthropic and by no means selfish scheme of
Social Expansion."

"Heigho!" sighed Mr. Pedagog. "I sometimes think that if I had not the
honor to be the husband of our landlady I'd move away from here. Your
views, sir, are undermining my constitution."

"You only think so, Mr. Pedagog," replied the Idiot. "You are simply
going through a process of intellectual reconstruction at my hands. You
feel exactly as a man feels who has been shut up in the dark for years
and suddenly finds himself in a flood of sunlight. I am doing with you
as an individual what I would have society do for mankind at large--in
other words, while I am working for individual expansion upon the raw
material I find here, I would have society buckle down to the
enlargement of itself by the improvement of those outside of itself."

"If you swim in water as well as you do in verbiage," said the
Bibliomaniac, "you must be able to go three or four strokes without
sinking."

"Oh, as for that, I can swim like a duck," said the Idiot. "You can't
sink me."

"I fancied not," observed Mr. Pedagog, with a smile at his own joke.
"You are so light I wonder, indeed, that you don't rise up into space,
anyhow."

"What a delightful condition of affairs that suggestion opens up!" said
the Idiot, turning to the Poet. "If I were you I'd make a poem on that.
Something like this, for instance:

"I am so very, very light
That gravitation curbs not me.
I rise up through the atmosphere
Till all the world I plainly see.

"I dance about among the clouds,
An airy, happy, human kite.
The breezes toss me here and there,
To my exceeding great delight.

"And when I would return to sup,
To breakfast, or perchance to dine,
I haul myself once more to earth
By tugging on a piece of twine."

Mr. Pedagog grinned broadly at this.

"You aren't entirely without your good points," he said. "If we ever
accept your comic-paper idea we'll have to rely on you for the nonsense
poetry."

"Thank you," said the Idiot. "I'll help. If I had a man like you to give
me the suggestions I could make a fortune out of poetry. The only
trouble