I had been permitted to sit on the stage, but Professor Peterkin needed all that for his gestures. However, I saw enough from where I sat to confirm my impression that University Extension is not so much of a public benefit as a social fad. There was hardly a soul in the audience who could not have got all that Professor Peterkin had to tell him out of his books; there was hardly a soul in the audience who could not have afforded to pay one dollar at least for the seat he occupied; there was not a soul in the audience who had paid more than ten cents for his seat or her seat, and those for whose benefit the lecture was presumably given, the ten-cent people, were crowded out. The lectures themselves are not instructive—Professor Peterkin's particularly—except in so far as it is instructive to hear what Professor Peterkin thinks on this or that subject, and his desire to be original forces him to cook up views which no one else ever held, with the result that what he says is most interesting and proper to be presented to the attention of a discriminating audience, but not proper to be presented to an audience that is supposed to come there to receive instruction."

"You have just said that you did not listen to the lecture. How do you know that what you say is true?" put in the Bibliomaniac.

"I know Professor Peterkin," said the Idiot.

"Does he know you?" sneered Mr. Pedagog.

"I don't think he would remember me if you should speak my name in his presence," observed the Idiot, calmly. "But that is easily accounted for. The Professor never remembers anybody but himself."

"Well, I admit," said Mr. Pedagog, "that the Professor's lectures were rather advanced for the comprehension of a person like the Idiot, nevertheless it was an enjoyable occasion, and I doubt if the fulminations of our friend here will avail against University Extension."

"You speak a sad truth," said the Idiot. "Social fads are impervious to fulmination, as Solomon might have said had he thought of it. As long as a thing is a social fad it will thrive, and, on the whole, perhaps it ought to thrive. Anything which gives society something to think about has its value, and the mere fact that it makes society think is proof of that value."

"We seem to be in a philosophic frame of mind this morning," said Mr. Whitechoker.

"We are," returned the Idiot. "That's one thing about University Extension. It makes us philosophic. It has made a stoic of my dear old daddy."

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