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The first boy slapped his leg and lighted a cigarette. “I remember,” said he. “Amounts to this: If I were to stop thinking about you, you’d evaporate.”

“Which is balls,” observed the second boy, judicially, again in the slang of his period, “and can be proved so. For you’re not always thinking about me, and I’ve never evaporated once.”

The first boy, after a slight wink at the second, addressed the tutor. “Supposing you were to happen to forget yourself,” said he to that sleek gentleman, “would you evaporate?”

The tutor turned his little eyes doubtfully upon the tennis boys, but answered, reciting the language of his notes: “The idealistic theory does not apply to the thinking ego, but to the world of external phenomena. The world exists in our conception of it.

“Then,” said the second boy, “when a thing is inconceivable?”

“It has no existence,” replied the tutor, complacently.

“But a billion dollars is inconceivable,” retorted the boy. “No mind can take in a sum of that size; but it exists.”

“Put that down! put that down!” shrieked the other boy. “You’ve struck something. If we get Berkeley on the paper, I’ll run that in.” He wrote rapidly, and then took a turn around the room, frowning as he walked. “The actuality of a thing,” said he, summing his clever thoughts up, “is not disproved by its being inconceivable. Ideas alone depend upon thought for their existence. There! Anybody can get off stuff like that by the yard.” He picked up a cork and a foot-rule, tossed the cork, and sent it flying out of the window with the foot-rule.

“Skip Berkeley,” said the other boy.

“How much more is there?”

“Necessary and accidental truths,” answered the tutor, reading the subjects from his notes. “Hume and the causal law. The duality, or multiplicity, of the ego.”

“The hard-boiled ego,” commented the boy the ruler; and he batted a swooping June-bug into space.

“Sit down, idiot,” said his sprightly mate.”

Conversation ceased. Instruction went forward. Their pencils worked. The causal law, etc., went into their condensed notes like Liebig’s extract of beef, and drops of perspiration continued to trickle from their matted hair.

II

Bertie and Billy were sophomores. They had been alive for twenty years, and were young. Their tutor was also a sophomore. He too had been alive for twenty years, but never yet had become young. Bertie and Billy had colonial names (Rogers, I think, and Schuyler), but the tutor’s name was Oscar Maironi, and he was charging his pupils five dollars an hour each for his instruction. Do not think this excessive. Oscar could have tutored a whole class of irresponsibles, and by that arrangement have earned probably more; but Bertie and Billy had preempted him on account of his fame or high standing and accuracy, and they could well afford it. All three sophomores alike had happened to choose Philosophy 4 as one of their elective courses, and all alike were now face to face with the Day of Judgment. The final examinations had begun. Oscar could lay his hand upon his studious heart and await the Day of Judgment like–I had nearly said a Christian! His notes were full: Three hundred pages about Zeno and Parmenides and the rest, almost every word as it had come from the professor’s lips. And his memory was full, too, flowing like a player’s lines. With the right cue he could recite instantly: “An important application of this principle, with obvious reference to Heracleitos, occurs in Aristotle, who says–” He could do this with the notes anywhere. I am sure you appreciate Oscar and his great power of acquiring facts. So he was ready, like the wise virgins of parable. Bertie and Billy did not put one in mind of virgins: although they had burned considerable midnight oil, it had not been to throw light upon Philosophy 4. In them the mere word Heracleitos had raised a chill no later than yesterday,–the chill of the unknown. They had not attended the lectures on the “Greek bucks.” Indeed, profiting by their privilege of voluntary recitations, they had dropped in but seldom on Philosophy 4. These blithe grasshoppers had danced and sung away the precious storing season, and now that the bleak hour of examinations was upon them, their waked-up hearts had felt aghast at the sudden vision of their ignorance. It was on a Monday noon that this feeling came fully upon them, as they read over the names of the philosophers. Thursday was the day of the examination. “Who’s Anaxagoras?” Billy had inquired of Bertie. “I’ll tell you,” said Bertie, “if you’ll tell me who Epicharmos of Kos was.” And upon this they embraced with helpless laughter. Then they reckoned up the hours left for them to learn Epicharmos of Kos in,–between Monday noon and Thursday morning at nine,–and their quailing chill increased. A tutor must be called in at once. So the grasshoppers, having money, sought out and quickly purchased the ant.