"Was it a whole day you saw, or only a half-day?" persisted the Idiot.
"You may think you are very funny," retorted the Bibliomaniac. "I think
you are--"
"Now don't get angry," returned the Idiot. "There are two or three
things I do not know, and I'm anxious to learn. I'd like to know how a
day looks to one to whom it is a visible object. If it is visible, is it
tangible? and, if so, how does it feel?"
"The visible is always tangible," asserted the School-master,
recklessly.
"How about a red-hot stove, or manifest indignation, or a view from a
mountain-top, or, as in the case of the young man in the novel who
'suddenly waked,' and, 'looking anxiously about him, saw no one?'"
returned the Idiot, imperturbably.
"Tut!" ejaculated the Bibliomaniac. "If I had brains like yours, I'd
blow them out."
"Yes, I think you would," observed the Idiot, folding up his napkin.
"You're just the man to do a thing like that. I believe you'd blow out
the gas in your bedroom if there wasn't a sign over it requesting you
not to." And filling his match-box from the landlady's mantel supply,
the Idiot hurried from the room, and soon after left the house.
XII
"If my father hadn't met with reverses--" the Idiot began.
"Did you really have a father?" interrupted the School-master. "I
thought you were one of these self-made Idiots. How terrible it must be
for a man to think that he is responsible for you!"
"Yes," rejoined the Idiot; "my father finds it rather hard to stand up
under his responsibility for me; but he is a brave old gentleman, and he
manages to bear the burden very well with the aid of my mother--for I
have a mother, too, Mr.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67