because, being my own employer, I am naturally pleased with myself, and am not likely to dispense with my own services." And so he stayed at home, and for a week pottered about the house, as he put it, and he had a glorious time. "What are you going to do with yourself this morning, dear?" asked Mrs. Idiot on the morning of the first day. "I've got to go to market, and there are one or two other little things to be attended to which will keep me out for some hours. Do you think you can amuse yourself while I am out?" "Well, I don't know," said the Idiot. "I can try. Of course, you know, my dear, that I am a good deal of a baby yet. However, if you can trust me to stay all by my lonesome for two or three hours I'll try to behave. I promise not to take the piano apart, and I vow I won't steal any jam, and I sha'n't float hair-brushes in the bath-tub pretending that they are armored cruisers looking for Spaniards, and I'll try to be good, but I can't make any promises." Mrs. Idiot smiled, as an indulgent guardian should, and went forth. The Idiot stayed at home and enjoyed himself. What he did is perhaps best indicated by his remarks some time later at a Sunday-night tea at which Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog, and Mr. Brief, the lawyer, were present. "Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "did you ever have an attic?" "A what?" demanded the Schoolmaster, naturally somewhat nonplussed. "An attic," said the Idiot. "A favored spot wherein to potter, to root, to rummage." "Why, yes," said Mrs. Pedagog, after a moment of deliberation. "I have had an attic, but it never seemed to me to be a particularly interesting spot. I've used it as a sort of store-room for things I didn't know what to do with." "Useless things," suggested Mr. Pedagog. "Entirely so," acquiesced the good lady. "Then if they are useless, why keep them?" queried the Idiot. "Useless things might better be thrown away than stored away even in an attic." "Oh, as for that," rejoined Mrs. Pedagog, "they were useless in the sense that there was nothing I could do with them, and yet there was generally some quality of association or something about them that so appealed to me that I couldn't quite throw them away, or even bring myself to give them away." "That is the idea," said the Idiot. "One's cherished possessions are often stored away up-stairs and forgotten, and then sometimes years after you'll go rummaging about the house for lack of some other employment; an old trunk, a wooden box, will be unearthed in the attic, and then what a flood of memories will come rushing back over you as the long-forgotten objects come to light, one by one." "I have had much the same experience," said Mr. Brief, "in what I might term my professional attic. We keep a room for the storage of old papers, and strange exhibits in 

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