To this the landlady paid no attention; but the School-master could not refrain from saying,

“Advanced, and therefore not backward, like some persons I might name.”

“Very clever,” retorted the Idiot, “and really worth rewarding.  Mrs. Smithers, you ought to give Mr. Pedagog a receipt in full for the past six months.”

“Mr. Pedagog,” returned the landlady, severely, “is one of the gentlemen who always have their receipts for the past six months.”

“Which betrays a very saving disposition,” accorded the Idiot.  “I wish I had all I’d received for six months.  I’d be a rich man.”

[Illustration:  “‘IF YOU COULD SPARE SO LITTLE AS ONE FLAME’”]

“Would you, now?” queried the Bibliomaniac.  “That is interesting enough.  How men’s ideas differ on the subject of wealth!  Here is the Idiot would consider himself rich with $150 in his pocket—­”

“Do you think he gets as much as that?” put in the School-master, viciously.  “Five dollars a week is rather high pay for one of his—­”

“Very high indeed,” agreed the Idiot.  “I wish I got that much.  I might be able to hire a two-legged encyclopaedia to tell me everything, and have over $4.75 a week left to spend on opera, dress, and the poor but honest board Mrs. Smithers provides, if my salary was up to the $5 mark; but the trouble is men do not make the fabulous fortunes nowadays with the ease with which you, Mr. Pedagog, made yours.  There are, no doubt, more and greater opportunities to-day than there were in the olden time, but there are also more men trying to take advantage of them.  Labor in the business world is badly watered.  The colleges are turning out more men in a week nowadays than the whole country turned out in a year forty years ago, and the quality is so poor that there has been a general reduction of wages all along the line.  Where does the struggler for existence come in when he has to compete with the college-bred youth who, for fear of not getting employment anywhere, is willing to work for nothing?  People are not willing to pay for what they can get for nothing.”

“I am glad to hear from your lips so complete an admission,” said the School-master, “that education is downing ignorance.”

“I am glad to know of your gladness,” returned the Idiot.  “I didn’t quite say that education was downing ignorance.  I plead guilty to the charge of holding the belief that unskilled omniscience interferes very materially with skilled sciolism in skilled sciolism’s efforts to make a living.”

“Then you admit your own superficiality?” asked the School-master, somewhat surprised by the Idiot’s command of syllables.

“I admit that I do not know it all,” returned the Idiot.  “I prefer to go through life feeling that there is yet something for me to learn.  It seems to me far better to admit this voluntarily than to have it forced home upon me by circumstances, as happened in the case of a college graduate I know, who speculated on Wall Street, and lost the hundred dollars that were subsequently put to a good use by the uneducated me.”