Ulysses about the matter, and remonstrated with him.

“I cannot understand it,” he wrote in reply. “I asked the man about Schopenhauer’s Four-fold Root of Sufficient Reason to which I found a reference in a volume of essays by Frederic Harrison. He said he never had heard of any such root. Can he not read and talk as you do, and as all mortals do? How does it happen that he is ignorant of these things?”

I explained to him that only a small part of the human race was interested in affairs of the intellect, and that millions of men were still in the condition of unhappy mental blindness from which he had so recently emerged. He was aghast at this statement, but it did not tend to re-establish Briggs in his respect.

It was now the season of the year when I was accustomed to make a tour among the neighboring coffee plantations, to estimate and bid on the crops. I was not able to take Ulysses with me conveniently, so I left him in the care of Briggs and Akbar. To Briggs I gave the key to my library, with orders to supply Ulysses with whatever he might demand, and I prepared for my pupil’s use a catalogue of all the books in my collection. The library was chiefly made up of works of history, philosophy and criticism, admirably suited to the special tastes of Ulysses.

My absence lasted during a period of nearly three months, and on my return I found Ulysses almost in a condition of “must,” or insanity. He had read all, or nearly all, the books that I had placed upon the list, and had gained through that extraordinary memory of his an immense mass of fact and opinion. He was now suffering from intellectual dyspepsia. I consulted him about his troubles, and got in reply an avalanche of questions on every variety of subject. His confidence in my knowledge was, apparently, unlimited. It would have been a source of inexpressible gratification to me if I could have shared it.

I was not unmindful of the fate which had befallen poor Briggs, nevertheless I felt it my duty to help Ulysses out of his difficulties. I did not imagine that his questions would occasion me much trouble, and if they should, I thought myself the possessor of sufficient savoir faire to get out of it in some way. I avoided some things merely by assuring him that he would understand them better when he had read more. When I essayed an answer to any of his interrogatories, he had an unpleasant habit of pinning me down to exact statements and definite opinions. I had never appreciated the extent and variety of my ignorance until it was subjected to this test; and although Ulysses’ attitude toward 

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