He hopped about
the office for a minute or two, and then he informed me that I was an
18-karat sciolist. I didn't know what he meant, and so I looked it up."
"And what did he mean?"
"He meant that I took the cake for superficiality, and I guess he was
right," replied the Idiot, with a smile that was not altogether
mirthful.
VI
"Good-morning!" said the Idiot, cheerfully, as he entered the
dining-room.
To this remark no one but the landlady vouchsafed a reply. "I don't
think it is," she said, shortly. "It's raining too hard to be a very
good morning."
"That reminds me," observed the Idiot, taking his seat and helping
himself copiously to the hominy. "A friend of mine on one of the
newspapers is preparing an article on the 'Antiquity of Modern Humor.'
With your kind permission, Mrs. Smithers, I'll take down your remark and
hand it over to Mr. Scribuler as a specimen of the modern antique joke.
You may not be aware of the fact, but that jest is to be found in the
rare first edition of the _Tales of Bobbo_, an Italian humorist, who
stole everything he wrote from the Greeks."
[Illustration: "'READING THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS'"]
"So?" queried the Bibliomaniac. "I never heard of Bobbo, though I had,
before the auction sale of my library, a choice copy of the _Tales of
Poggio_, bound in full crushed Levant morocco, with gilt edges, and one
or two other Italian _Joe Millers_ in tree calf. I cannot at this moment
recall their names.
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