g
the whole period of his manhood he had been deprived through ignorance of
so great a blessing as a good cigar, he'd become like the rest of us,
living in anticipation of delights to come, and not finding approximate
bliss in living over the past. Trust me, my dear Mr. Whitechoker, to look
after him. He and my mother and my life are all I have."

The Idiot left the room, and Mr. Pedagog put in a greater part of the
next half-hour in making personal statements to the remaining boarders to
the effect that the word he used was eschewed, and not the one attributed
to him by the Idiot.

Strange to say, most of them were already aware of that fact.

X

"The progress of invention in this country has been very remarkable,"
said Mr. Pedagog, as he turned his attention from a scientific weekly he
had been reading to a towering pile of buckwheat cakes that Mary had just
brought in. "An Englishman has just discovered a means by which a ship in
distress at sea can write for help on the clouds."

"Extraordinary!" said Mr. Whitechoker.

"It might be more so," observed the Idiot, coaxing the platterful of
cakes out of the School-Master's reach by a dexterous movement of his
hand. "And it will be more so some day. The time is coming when the
moon itself will be used by some enterprising American to advertise his
soap business. I haven't any doubt that the next fifty years will develop
a stereopticon by means of which a picture of a certain brand of cigar
may be projected through space until it seems to be held between the
teeth of the man in the moon, with a printed legend below it stating
that this is _Tooforfivers Best, Rolled from Hand-made Tobacco, Warranted
not to Crock or Fade, and for sale by All Tobacconists at Eighteen for a
Dime_."

[Illustration: "THE MOON ITSELF WILL BE USED"]

"You would call that an advance in invention, eh?" asked the
School-Master.

"Why not?" queried the Idiot.

"Do you consider the invention which would enable man to debase nature to
the level of an advertising medium an advance?"

"I should not consider the use of the moon for the dissemination of good
news a debasement. If the cigars were good--and I have no doubt that some
one will yet invent a cheap cigar that is good--it would benefit the
human race to be acquainted with that fact. I think sometimes that the
advertisements in the newspapers and the periodicals of the day are of
more value to the public than the reading-matte