ge mortgage on it.

"Journalism," said the Idiot. "There is a pile of money to be made out
of journalism, particularly if you happen to strike a new idea. Ideas
count."

"How far up do your ideas count--up to five?" questioned Mr. Pedagog,
with a tinge of sarcasm in his tone.

"I don't know about that," returned the Idiot. "The idea I have hold
of now, however, will count up into the millions if it can only be set
going, and before each one of those millions will stand a big capital S
with two black lines drawn vertically through it--in other words, my idea
holds dollars, but to get the crop you've got to sow the seed. Plant a
thousand dollars in my idea, and next year you'll reap two thousand.
Plant that, and next year you'll have four thousand, and so on. At that
rate millions come easy."

"I'll give you a dollar for the idea," said the Bibliomaniac.

"No, I don't want to sell. You'll do to help develop the scheme. You'll
make a first-rate tool, but you aren't the workman to manage the tool. I
will go as far as to say, however, that without you and Mr. Pedagog, or
your equivalents in the animal kingdom, the idea isn't worth the fabulous
sum you offer."

"You have quite aroused my interest," said Mr. Whitechoker. "Do you
propose to start a new paper?"

"You are a good guesser," replied the Idiot. "That is a part of the
scheme--but it isn't the idea. I propose to start a new paper in
accordance with the plan which the idea contains."

"Is it to be a magazine, or a comic paper, or what?" asked the
Bibliomaniac.

"Neither. It's a daily."

"That's nonsense," said Mr. Pedagog, putting his spoon into the
condensed-milk can by mistake. "There isn't a single scheme in daily
journalism that hasn't been tried--except printing an evening paper in
the morning."

"That's been tried," said the Idiot. "I know of an evening paper the
second edition of which is published at mid-day. That's an old dodge, and
there's money in it, too--money that will never be got out of it. But I
really have a grand scheme. So many of our dailies, you know, go in for
every horrid detail of daily events that people are beginning to tire of
them. They contain practically the same things day after day. So many
columns of murder, so many beautiful suicides, so much sport, a modicum
of general intelligence, plenty of fires, no end of embezzlements,
financial news, advertisements, and head-lines. Events, like history,
repeat themselves, until pe