ok. Let me light a cigar for you and then you can
begin. Only _do_ take off that absurd tile. You don't know how
supremely unbecoming it is."

There was nothing for it, so I resolved to make the best of it by
meeting the disagreeable old pantaloon on his own ground. I lit one of
his cigars and sat down to tell the curious old freak what I thought
of him. Ordinarily I would have avoided doing this, but his tyrannical
exercise of his temporary advantage made me angry to the very core of
my being.

"Ready?" said I.

"Quite," said he. "Don't stint yourself. Just behave as if you'd known
me all your life. I sha'n't mind."

And I began: "Well, after referring to the word 'idiot' in the index,
just to get a lead," I said, "I shall begin by saying that you are
evidently a hebetudinous imbecile, an indiscriminate stult--"

"Hold on!" he cried. "What's that last? I never heard the term
before."

"Stult--an indiscriminate stult," I said, scornfully. "I invented the
word myself. Real words won't describe you. Stult is a new term,
meaning all kinds of a fool, plus two. And I've got a few more if you
want them."

"Want them?" he cried. "By Vulcan, I dote upon them! They are nectar
to my thirsty ears. Go on."

"You are a senseless frivoler, a fugacious gid, an infamous
hoddydoddy; you are a man with the hoe with the emptiness of ages in
your face; you are a brother to the ox, with all the dundering
niziness of a plain, ordinary buzzard added to your shallow-brained
asininity. Now will you let me go?"

"Not I," said he, shaking his head as if he relished a situation which
was gradually making a madman of me. "I'd like to oblige you, but I
really can't. You are giving me too much pleasure. Is there nothing
more you can call me?"

"You're a dizzard!" I retorted. "And a noodle and a jolt-head; you're
a jobbernowl and a doodle, a maundering mooncalf and a blockheaded
numps, a gaby and a loon; you're a _Hatter_!" I shrieked the last
epithet.

"Heavens!" he cried, "A Hatter! Am I as bad as that?"

"Oh, come now," I said, closing the _Thesaurus_ with a bang. "Have
some regard for my position, won't you?"

I had resolved to appeal to his better nature. "I don't know who the
dickens you are. You may be the three wise men of Gotham who went to
sea in a bowl rolled into one, for all I know. You may be any old
thing. I don't give a tinker's cuss what you are. Under ordinary
circumstances I've no doubt I should find you a very pl