hat's a great argument. Dog's don't
put up in boarding-houses. Is the boarding-house, therefore, the result
of a degraded, artificial civilization? I have seen educated horses that
didn't smoke, but I have never seen an educated horse, or an uneducated
one, for that matter, that had even had the chance to smoke, or the kind
of mouth that would enable him to do it in case he had the chance. I
have also observed that horses don't read books, that birds don't eat
mutton-chops, that dogs don't go to the opera, that donkeys don't play
the piano--at least, four-legged donkeys don't--so you might as well
argue that since horses, dogs, birds, and donkeys get along without
literature, music, mutton-chops, and piano-playing--"

"You've covered music," put in the Lawyer, who liked to be precise.

"True; but piano-playing isn't always music," returned the Idiot.
"You might as well argue because the beasts and the birds do without
these things man ought to. Fish don't smoke, neither do they join the
police-force, therefore man should neither smoke nor become a guardian
of the peace."

[Illustration: "PIANO-PLAYING ISN'T ALWAYS MUSIC"]

"Nevertheless it is a pastime of perdition," insisted Mr. Whitechoker.

"No, it isn't," retorted the Idiot. "Smoking is the business of
perdition. It smokes because it has to."

"There! there!" remonstrated Mr. Pedagog.

"You mean hear! hear! I presume," said the Idiot.

"I mean that you have said enough!" remarked Mr. Pedagog, sharply.

"Very well," said the Idiot. "If I have convinced you all I am satisfied,
not to say gratified. But really, Mr. Pedagog," he added, rising to leave
the room, "if I were you I'd give up the practice of chewing--"

"Hold on a minute, Mr. Idiot," said Mr. Whitechoker, interrupting. He was
desirous that Mr. Pedagog should not be further irritated. "Let me ask
you one question. Does your old father smoke?"

"No," said the Idiot, leaning easily over the back of his chair--"no.
What of it?"

"Nothing at all--except that perhaps if he could get along without it you
might," suggested the clergyman.

"He couldn't get along without it if he knew what good tobacco was," said
the Idiot.

"Then why don't you introduce him to it?" asked the Minister.

"Because I do not wish to make him unhappy," returned the Idiot, softly.
"He thinks his seventy years have been the happiest years that any mortal
ever had, and if now in his seventy-first year he discovered that durin