. And then it seemed to me that tact required that I
should not seem to know that he had been in the superheated jail of the
Stygian country. So I observed, "You've been off on a vacation, eh?"

"How do you know that?" was the immediate response.

"Well," I put in, "you've been absent for a fortnight, and you look more
or less--ah--burned."

"Yes, I am," replied the deceitful editor. "Very much burned, in fact.
I've been--er--I've been playing golf with a friend down in Cimmeria."

"I envy you," I observed, with an inward chuckle.

"You wouldn't if you knew the links," replied Boswell, sadly. "They're
awfully hard. I don't know any harder course than the Cimmerian."

And then I became conscious of a mistrustful gaze fastened upon me.

"See here," clicked the machine. "I thought I was invisible to you? If
so, how do you know I look burned?"

I was cornered, and there was only one way out of it, and that was by
telling the truth. "Well, you are invisible, old chap," I said. "The
fact is, I've been told of your trouble, and I know what you have
undergone."

"And who told you?" queried Boswell.

"Your successor on the Gazette, Madame Socrates, nee Xanthippe," I
replied.

"Oh, that woman--that woman!" moaned Boswell, through the medium of the
keys. "Has she been here, using this machine too? Why didn't you stop
her before she ruined me completely?"

"Ruined you?" I cried.

"Well, next thing to it," replied Boswell. "She's run my paper so far
into the ground that it will take an almighty powerful grip to pull
it out again. Why, my dear boy, when I went to--to the ovens, I had a
circulation of a million, and when I came back that woman had brought it
down to eight copies, seven of which have already been returned. All in
ten days, too."

"How do you account for it?" I asked.

"'Side Talks with Men' helped, and 'The Man's Corner' did a little, but
the editorial page did the most of it. It was given over wholly to the
advancement of certain Xanthippian ideas, which were very offensive to
my women readers, and which found no favor among the men. She wants to
change the whole social structure. She thinks men and women are the same
kind of animal, and that both need to be educated on precisely the same
lines--the girls to be taught business, the boys to go through a course
of domestic training. She called for subscriptions for a cooking-school
for boys, and demanded the endowment of a commercial college for girls,