Chapter 2

"Do you know, I sometimes think--" began the Idiot, opening and shutting
the silver cover of his watch several times with a snap, with the
probable, and not altogether laudable, purpose of calling his landlady's
attention to the fact--of which she was already painfully aware--that
breakfast was fifteen minutes late.

"Do you, really?" interrupted the School-master, looking up from his
book with an air of mock surprise. "I am sure I never should have
suspected it."

"Indeed?" returned the Idiot, undisturbed by this reflection upon his
intellect. "I don't really know whether that is due to your generally
unsuspicious nature, or to your shortcomings as a mind-reader."

"There are some minds," put in the landlady at this point, "that are so
small that it would certainly ruin the eyes to read them."

"I have seen many such," observed the Idiot, suavely. "Even our friend
the Bibliomaniac at times has seemed to me to be very absent-minded. And
that reminds me, Doctor," he continued, addressing himself to the
medical boarder. "What is the cause of absent-mindedness?"

"That," returned the Doctor, ponderously, "is a very large question.
Absent-mindedness, generally speaking, is the result of the projection
of the intellect into surroundings other than those which for want of a
better term I might call the corporeally immediate."

"So I have understood," said the Idiot, approvingly. "And is
absent-mindedness acquired or inherent?"

Here the Idiot appropriated the roll of his neighbor.

"That depends largely upon the case," replied the Doctor, nervously.
"Some are born absent-minded, some achieve absent-mindedness, and some
have absent-mindedness thrust upon them."

"As illustrations of which we might take, for instance, I suppose," said
the Idiot, "the born idiot, the borrower, and the man who is knocked
silly by the pole of a truck on Broadway."

"Precisely," replied the Doctor, glad to get out of the discussion so
easily. He was a very young doctor, and not always sure of himself.

"Or," put in the School-master, "to condense our illustrations, if the
Idiot would kindly go out upon Broadway and encounter the truck, we
should find the three combined in him."

The landlady here laughed quite heartily, and handed the School-master
an extra strong cup of coffee.

"There is a great deal in what you say," said the Idiot, without a
tremor. "There are very few scientific phenomena that cannot be
demonstrated in one way or another by my poor self. It is the