suppose the President could find any self-respecting American in or out of jail who would be willing to wear such a costume as that?"

[Pg 21]

"Well," said the Idiot, "of course some of 'em might object, but I'll bet you four dollars and eighty-seven cents' worth of doughnuts against a Chautauqua rain check that any man who offered you seventeen thousand five hundred dollars a year for wearing those duds without having the money to back the offer up would find your name at the head of the list of his preferred creditors in less than three shakes of a lamb's tail!"[Pg 22]

[Pg 22]

II

AS TO THE FAIR SEX

"I observe with pain," said the Idiot, as he placed the Bibliomaniac's pat of butter under his top waffle, "that there is a more or less acrimonious dispute going on as to the propriety of admitting women to the Hall of Fame. The Immortals already in seem to think that immortality belongs exclusively to the male order of human beings, and that the word is really 'Him-mortality', and decline to provide even a strap for the ladies to hang on in the cars leading to the everlasting heights, all of which causes me to rejoice that I am not an Immortal myself. If[Pg 23] the one durable joy in life, the joy that neither crocks nor fades, association with the fair sex, a diversion which age cannot wither nor custom stale its infinite variety, is something an Immortal must get along without, it's me for the tall timbers of fameless existence. I rejoice that I am but a plain, common-garden, everyday mortal thing, ready for shipment, f. o. b., for the last terminal station on the road to that well-known Irish settlement, O'Blivion."

[Pg 23]

"I didn't know that you were such an admirer of the fair sex, Mr. Idiot," said the Doctor. "Many years' residence in a refined home for single gentlemen like this would seem to indicate that the allurements of feminine society were not for you."

"Quite the contrary," said the Idiot. "It proves rather my interest in the fair sex as a whole. If I had specialized sufficiently upon one single blessed[Pg 24] damozel with pink cheeks, snappy brown eyes, and a pompadour that might strike a soaring lark as the most desirable nest in the world, to ask her to share my lot, and go halves with me in an investment in the bonds of matrimony, it might have been said—I even hope it would have been said—that the allurements of feminine society 

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