lizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snow-bound in the
mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry,
which may have corrupted his demeanour."

"It has," says Mrs. Sampson. "Ever since I knew him he has been
reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls
Ruby Ott [13], and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by
her poetry."

[FOOTNOTE 13: Homer K. . . . Ruby Ott--If the reader has not
yet deciphered the references, he should consult
Project Gutenberg's e-book #246
(http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/246)]

"Then Idaho has struck a new book," says I, "for the one he had was by
a man who writes under the _nom de plume_ of K. M."

"He'd better have stuck to it," says Mrs. Sampson, "whatever it was.
And to-day he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and
on 'em is pinned a note. Now, Mr. Pratt, you know a lady when you see
her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a
moment that I'd skip out to the woods with a man along with a jug of
wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down
under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but
I'm not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising
Cain in any such style as that. And of course he'd bring his book of
verses along, too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics
alone! Or let him take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldn't
kick unless it was on account of there being too much bread along. And
what do you think of your gentleman friend now, Mr. Pratt?"

"Well, 'm," says I, "it may be that Idaho's invitation was a kind of
poetry, and meant no harm. May be it belonged to the class of rhymes
they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent
through the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they
don't say. I'd be glad on Idaho's account if you'd overlook it," says
I, "and let us extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to
the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like
this, Mrs. Sampson," I goes on, "we should let our thoughts dwell
accordingly. Though it is warm here, we should remember that at the
equator the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fifteen
thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty degrees and forty-nine
degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet."