41] asphyxiate us with that peculiar variety of natural gas for which you have long been famous."

[Pg 41]

"I'll fill the roster with examples if you'll sit and listen," said the Idiot. "I can match every male genius that ever lived from Noah down to Josephus Daniels with a woman whose product was of equal if not even greater value. Begin where you please—in any century before or since the flood, and I'll be your huckleberry—Wagner, Milton, Cromwell, Roosevelt, Secretary Daniels, Kaiser Wilhelm, Methuselah—I don't care who or what he is—I'll match him."

"All right," said the Doctor. "Suppose we begin low with that trifling little frivoler in literature, William Shakespeare!"

"Good!" cried the Idiot. "He'll do—I'll just mark him off with Mrs. Shakespeare."[Pg 42]

[Pg 42]

"What?" chuckled the Doctor. "Anne Hathaway?"

"No," said the Idiot. "Not Anne Hathaway, but Shakespeare's mother."

"Oh, tush!" ejaculated the Bibliomaniac impatiently. "What rot! A wholly unknown provincial person of whom the world knows about as much as a beetle knows about Mars. What on earth did she ever produce?"

"Shakespeare!" said the Idiot, in an impressive basso-profundo tone that echoed through the room like a low rumble of thunder.

And a silence fell upon that table so deep, so abysmally still, that one could almost hear the snowflakes falling upon the trolley tracks sixteen blocks away.[Pg 43]

[Pg 43]

III

HE GOES CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

"Mercy, Mr. Idiot," cried Mrs. Pedagog, as the Idiot entered the breakfast room in a very much disheveled condition, "what on earth has happened to you? Your sleeve is almost entirely torn from your coat, and you really look as if you had been dropped out of an aëroplane."

"Yes, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, wearily, "I feel that way. I started in to do my Christmas Shopping early yesterday, and what you now behold is the dreadful result. I went into Jimson and Slithers' Department Store to clean up my Christmas list, and, 

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