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“Change the subject,” said the Bibliomaniac, curtly.

“With pleasure,” answered the Idiot, filling his glass with cream. “We’ll change the subject, or the object, or anything you choose. We’ll have another breakfast, or another variety of biscuits frappe –anything, in short, to keep peace at the table. Tell me, Mr. Pedagog,” he added, “is the use of the word ‘it,’ in the sentence ‘it looks like rain,’ perfectly correct?”

“I don’t know why it is not,” returned the School-master, uneasily. He was not at all desirous of parleying with the Idiot.

“And is it correct to suppose that ‘it’ refers to the day–is the day supposed to look like rain?–or do we simply use ‘it’ to express a condition which confronts us?”

“It refers to the latter, of course.”

“Then the full text of Mr. Whitechoker’s remark is, I suppose, that ‘the rainy condition of the atmosphere which confronts us looks like rain?'”

“Oh, I suppose so,” sighed the School-master, wearily.

“Rather an unnecessary sort of statement that!” continued the Idiot. “It’s something like asserting that a man looks like himself, or, as in the case of a child’s primer–

“‘See the cat?’

“‘Yes, I see the cat.’

“‘What is the cat?’

“‘The cat is a cat. Scat cat!'”

At this even Mrs. Smithers smiled.

“I don’t agree with Mr. Pedagog,” put in the Bibliomaniac, after a pause.

Here the School-master shook his head warningly at the Bibliomaniac, as if to indicate that he was not in good form.

“So I observe,” remarked the Idiot. “You have upset him completely. See how Mr. Pedagog trembles?” he added, addressing the genial gentleman who occasionally imbibed.

“I don’t mean that way,” sneered the Bibliomaniac, bound to set Mr. Whitechoker straight. “I mean that the word ‘it,’ as employed in that sentence, stands for day. The day looks like rain.”

“Did you ever see a day?” queried the Idiot.

“Certainly I have,” returned the Bibliomaniac.

“What does it look like?” was the calmly put question.

The Bibliomaniac’s impatience was here almost too great for safety, and the manner in which his face colored aroused considerable interest in the breast of the Doctor, who was a good deal of a specialist in apoplexy.

“Was it a whole day you saw, or only a half-day?” persisted the Idiot.

“You may think you are very funny,” retorted the Bibliomaniac. “I think you are–“

“Now don’t get angry,” returned the Idiot. “There are two or three things I do not know, and I’m anxious to learn. I’d like to know how a day looks to one to whom it is a visible object. If it is visible, is it tangible? and, if so, how does it feel?”

“The visible is always tangible,” asserted the School-master, recklessly.

“How about a red-hot stove, or manifest indignation, or a view from a mountain-top, or, as in the case of the young man in the novel who ‘suddenly waked,’ and, ‘looking anxiously about him, saw no one?'” returned the Idiot, imperturbably.

“Tut!” ejaculated the Bibliomaniac. “If I had brains like yours, I’d blow them out.”

“Yes, I think you would,” observed the Idiot, folding up his napkin. “You’re just the man to do a thing like that. I believe you’d blow out the gas in your bedroom if there wasn’t a sign over it requesting you not to.” And filling his match-box from the landlady’s mantel supply, the Idiot hurried from the room, and soon after left the house.

XII

“If my father hadn’t met with reverses–” the Idiot began.

“Did you really have a father?” interrupted the School-master. “I thought you were one of these self-made Idiots. How terrible it must be for a man to think that he is responsible for you!”

“Yes,” rejoined the Idiot; “my father finds it rather hard to stand up under his responsibility for me; but he is a brave old gentleman, and he manages to bear the burden very well with the aid of my mother–for I have a mother, too, Mr. Pedagog. A womanly mother she is, too, with all the natural follies, such as fondness for and belief in her boy. Why, it would soften your heart to see how she looks on me. She thinks I am the most everlastingly brilliant man she ever knew–excepting father, of course, who has always been a hero of heroes in her eyes, because he never rails at misfortune, never spoke an unkind word to her in his life, and just lives gently along and waiting for the end of all things.”