. "I grant that such a
guild would be doing a noble work if it would take you in hand and
correct many of your impressions, revise your well-known facts so as to
bring them more in accord with indubitable truths, and impart to your
customs some of that polish which you so earnestly strive for in your
dress."

"Thank you," said the Idiot, suavely. "But I don't wish to overburden
the kind ladies to whom I refer. If my costumes could be looked after I
might find time to look after my customs, and, I assure you, Mr.
Pedagog, if at any time you will undertake to deliver a course of
lectures on Etiquette, I will gladly subscribe for two orchestra-chairs
and endeavor to occupy both of them. At any rate, to return to the main
point, I claim that the world would be happier and brighter and less
sinful if the domestic heathen were kept mended by such a guild, and I
challenge any one here to deny, even on so slight a basis as the loose
suspender-button, the truth of what I say. When I arise in the morning
and find a button gone, do I make genial remarks about the joys of life?
I do not. I use words. Sometimes one word, which need not be repeated
here. I am unhappy, and, being unhappy, the world seems dark and dreary,
and in speaking impatiently, though very much to the point, as I do, I
am guilty of an offence that is sinful. With such a start in the
morning, I come here to the table. Mr. Pedagog sees that I am not quite
myself. He asks me if I am not feeling well, an irritating question at
any time, but particularly so to a man with a suspender-button gone. I
retort. He re-retorts, until our converse is warmer than the coffee, and
our relations colder than the waffles. Finally I leave the house,
slamming the door behind me, structurally weakening the house, and go to
business, where I wreak my vengeance upon the second clerk, who takes it
out of the office-boy, who goes home and vents his wrath on his little
sister, who, goaded into recklessness, teases the baby until he yells
and gets spanked by his mother for being noisy. Now, why should a loose
suspender-button be allowed to subject that baby to such humiliation,
and who can deny that, if it had been properly sewed on by a guild, such
as I have mentioned, the baby never would have been spanked for the
causes mentioned? What is _your_ answer, Mr. Whitechoker?"

"Truly, I am so breathless at your logic that I cannot reason," said the
Minister. "But haven't we digressed a little