"I rather like
that song."
"Did you ever hear me sing it?" asked the Idiot.
"Never mind," returned the genial old gentleman, hastily. "Perhaps you
are right, after all."
[Illustration: BOBBO]
The Idiot smiled, and resumed: "Our shops would be perpetually closed,
and an enormous loss to the shopkeepers would be sure to follow. Mr.
Pedagog's theory that we should have Sunday breakfasts every day is not
tenable, for the reason that with a perpetual day of rest agriculture
would die out, food products would be killed off by unpulled weeds; in
fact, we should go back to that really unfortunate period when women
were without dress-makers, and man's chief object in life was to
christen animals as he met them, and to abstain from apples, wisdom, and
full dress."
"The Idiot is right," said the Bibliomaniac. "It would not be a very
good thing for the world if every day were Sunday. Wash-day is a
necessity of life. I am willing to admit this, in the face of the fact
that wash-day meals are invariably atrocious. Contracts would be void,
as a rule, because Sunday is a _dies non_."
"A what?" asked the Idiot.
"A non-existent day in a business sense," put in the School-master.
"Of course," said the landlady, scornfully. "Any person who knows
anything knows that."
"Then, madame," returned the Idiot, rising from his chair, and putting a
handful of sweet crackers in his pocket--"then I must put in a claim for
$104 from you, having been charged, at the rate of one dollar a day for
104 _dies nons_ in the two years I have been with you.
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