continued the Idiot, “gratification is gratifying but not filling, so my friend concluded that he had better give up novel-writing and try jokes.  He kept at that a year, and managed to clear his postage-stamps.  His jokes were good, but too classic for the tastes of the editors.  Editors are peculiar.  They have no respect for age—­particularly in the matter of jests.  Some of my friend’s jokes had seemed good enough for Plutarch to print when he had a publisher at his mercy, but they didn’t seem to suit the high and mighty products of this age who sit in judgment on such things in the comic-paper offices.  So he gave up jokes.”

[Illustration:  WOOING THE MUSE]

“Does he still know you?” asked the landlady.

“Yes, madame,” observed the Idiot.

“Then he hasn’t given up all jokes,” she retorted, with fine scorn.

“Tee-he-hee!” laughed the School-master.  “Pretty good, Mrs. Smithers—­pretty good.”

“Yes,” said the Idiot.  “That is good, and, by Jove! it differs from your butter, Mrs. Smithers, because it’s entirely fresh.  It’s good enough to print, and I don’t think the butter is.”

“What did your friend do next?” asked Mr. Whitechoker.

“He was employed by a funeral director in Philadelphia to write obituary verses for memorial cards.”

“And was he successful?”

“For a time; but he lost his position because of an error made by a careless compositor in a marble-yard.  He had written,

    “’Here lies the hero of a hundred fights—­
      Approximated he a perfect man;
    He fought for country and his country’s rights,
      And in the hottest battles led the van.’”

“Fine in sentiment and in execution!” observed Mr. Whitechoker.

“Truly so,” returned the Idiot.  “But when the compositor in the marble-yard got it engraved on the monument, my friend was away, and when the army post that was to pay the bill received the monument, the quatrain read,

    “’Here lies the hero of a hundred flights—­
      Approximated he a perfect one;
    He fought his country and his country’s rights,
      And in the hottest battles led the run.’”

“Awful!” ejaculated the Minister.

“Dreadful!” said the landlady, forgetting to be sarcastic.

“What happened?” asked the School-master.

“He was bounced, of course, without a cent of pay, and the company failed the next week, so he couldn’t make anything by suing for what they owed him.”

“Mighty hard luck,” said the Bibliomaniac.

“Very; but there was one bright side to the case,” observed the Idiot.  “He managed to sell both versions of the quatrain afterwards for five dollars.  He sold the original one to a religious weekly for a dollar, and got four dollars for the other one from a comic paper.  Then he wrote an anecdote about the whole thing for a Sunday newspaper, and got three dollars more out of it.”