“Well, he never has,” returned the Idiot, calmly.  “He never goes near his farm.  He doesn’t have to.  It’s leased to the husband of the house-keeper whose daughter has a crush on the fire department.  He takes his pay in produce, and gets more than if he took it in cash on the basis of the New York vegetable market.”

“Then you have got us into an argument about country life that ends—­” began the School-master, indignantly.

“That ends where it leaves off,” retorted the Idiot, departing with a smile on his lips.

“He’s an Idiot from Idaho,” asserted the Bibliomaniac.

“Yes; but I’m afraid idiocy is a little contagious,” observed the Doctor, with a grin and sidelong glance at the School-master.

X

“Good-morning, gentlemen,” said the Idiot, as he seated himself at the breakfast-table and glanced over his mail.

“Good-morning yourself,” returned the Poet.  “You have an unusually large number of letters this morning.  All checks, I hope?”

“Yes,” replied the Idiot.  “All checks of one kind or another.  Mostly checks on ambition—­otherwise, rejections from my friends the editors.”

“You don’t mean to say that you write for the papers?” put in the School-master, with an incredulous smile.

“I try to,” returned the Idiot, meekly.  “If the papers don’t take ’em, I find them useful in curing my genial friend who imbibes of insomnia.”

“What do you write—­advertisements?” queried the Bibliomaniac.

“No.  Advertisement writing is an art to which I dare not aspire.  It’s too great a tax on the brain,” replied the Idiot.

“Tax on what?” asked the Doctor.  He was going to squelch the Idiot.

“The brain,” returned the latter, not ready to be squelched.  “It’s a little thing people use to think with, Doctor.  I’d advise you to get one.”  Then he added, “I write poems and foreign letters mostly.”

“I did not know that you had ever been abroad,” said the clergyman.

[Illustration:  “’YOU DON’T MEAN TO SAY THAT YOU WRITE FOR THE PAPERS?’”]

“I never have,” returned the Idiot.

“Then how, may I ask,” said Mr. Whitechoker, severely, “how can you write foreign letters?”

“With my stub pen, of course,” replied the Idiot.  “How did you suppose—­with an oyster-knife?”

The clergyman sighed.

“I should like to hear some of your poems,” said the Poet.

“Very well,” returned the Idiot.  “Here’s one that has just returned from the Bengal Monthly.  It’s about a writer who died some years ago.  Shakespeare’s his name.  You’ve heard of Shakespeare, haven’t you, Mr. Pedagog?” he added.

Then, as there was no answer, he read the verse, which was as follows: 

     SETTLED.

    Yes!  Shakespeare wrote the plays—­’tis clear to me. 
      Lord Bacon’s claim’s condemned before the bar. 
    He’d not have penned, “what fools these mortals be!”
      But—­more correct—­“what fools these mortals are!”