or good judgment,
then?" asked Mr. Brief.

"Of course I do. Plenty of it. He stuck to his ship like a hero who
didn't know how to swim. His judgment was great. He had too much sense
to go back to Spain without any news of something, because he fully
understood that unless he had something to show for the trip, there would
have been a great laugh on Queen Isabella for selling her jewels to
provide for a ninety-day yacht cruise for him and a lot of common
sailors, which would never have done. So he kept on and on, and finally
some unknown lookout up in the bow discovered America. Then Columbus
went home and told everybody that if it hadn't been for his own eagle eye
emigration wouldn't have been invented, and world's fairs would have been
local institutions. Then they got up a parade in which the King and Queen
graciously took part, and Columbus became a great man. Meanwhile the
unknown lookout who did discover the land was knocking about the town and
thinking he was a very lucky fellow to get an extra glass of grog. It
wasn't anything more than the absolute justice of fate that caused the
new land to be named America and not Columbia. It really ought to have
been named after that fellow up in the bow."

"But, my dear Idiot," put in the Bibliomaniac, "the scheme itself was
Columbus's own. He evolved the theory that the earth is round like a
ball."

"To quote Mr. Pedagog--" began the Idiot.

"You can't quote me in your own favor," snapped the School-Master.

"Wait until I have finished," said the Idiot. "I was only going to quote
you by saying 'Tutt!' that's all; and so I repeat, in the words of Mr.
Pedagog, tutt, tutt! Evolved the theory? Why, man, how could he help
evolving the theory? There was the sun rising in the east every morning
and setting in the west every night. What else was there to believe? That
somebody put the sun out every night, and sneaked back east with it under
cover of darkness?"

"But you forget that the wise men of the day laughed at his idea," said
Mr. Pedagog, surveying the Idiot after the fashion of a man who has dealt
an adversary a stinging blow.

"That only proves what I have always said," replied the Idiot. "Wise men
can't find fun in anything but stern facts. Wise men always do laugh at
truth. Whenever I advance some new proposition, you sit up there next to
Mrs. Pedagog and indulge in tutt-tutterances of the most intolerant sort.
If you had been one of the wise men of Columbus's ti