3.  That the Colonel never went deeply or exhaustively into any group of facts, but that, taking one broad simple hypothesis as his text, he hammered that over and over, saying the same thing again and again in different ways, but always with a wealth of imagery and picturesque phrasing.

4.  That the Colonel invariably got his humorous effects by a good-natured but sometimes sharp ridicule, the process of which was to exaggerate the argument or travesty the cause he was attacking until it became absurd.

5.  That the Colonel, no matter what his theme, always wrote with vigor and heat and color:  so that even if he were dealing with something on the other side of the world, you might suppose that he, personally, was intensely gratified or extremely indignant about it, as the case might be.

These principles Queed was endeavoring, with his peculiar faculty for patient effort, to apply practically in his daily offerings.  It is enough to say that he found the task harder than Klinker’s Exercises, and that the little article on the city’s method of removing garbage, which failed to appear in this morning’s Post, had stood him seven hours of time.

It was a warm rainy night in early May.  Careful listening disclosed the fact that Buck Klinker, who had as usual walked up from the gymnasium with Queed, was changing his shoes in the next room, preparatory for supper.  Otherwise the house was very still.  Fifi had been steadily reported “not so well” for a long time and, for two days, very ill.  Queed sitting before the table, his gas ablaze and his shade up, tilted back his chair and thought of her now.  All at once, with no conscious volition on his part, he found himself saying over the startling little credo that Fifi had suggested for his taking, on the day he sent her the roses.

To like men and do the things that men do.  To smoke.  To laugh.  To joke and tell funny stories.  To take a ...

The door of the Scriptorium-editorium opened and Buck Klinker, entering without formalities, threw himself, according to his habit, upon the tiny bed.  This time he came by invitation, to complete the decidedly interesting conversation upon which the two men had walked up town; but talk did not at once begin.  A book rowelled the small of Klinker’s back as he reclined upon the pillow, and plucking it from beneath him, he glanced at the back of it.

“Vanity Fair.  Didn’t know you ever read story-books, Doc.”

The Doc did not answer.  He was occupied with the thought that not one of the things that Fifi had urged upon him did he at present do.  Smoking he could of course take up at any time.  Buck Klinker worked in a tobacconist’s shop; it might be a good idea to consult him as to what was the best way to begin.  As for telling funny stories—­did he for the life of him know one to tell?  He racked his brain in vain.  There were two books that he remembered having seen in the Astor Library, The Percy Anecdotes, and Mark Lemon’s Jest Book; perhaps the State Library had them....  Stay!  Did not Willoughby himself somewhere introduce an anecdote of a distinctly humorous nature?