Chapter 5 - Page 2

receipts for the past six months."

"Which betrays a very saving disposition," accorded the Idiot. "I wish I
had all I'd received for six months. I'd be a rich man."

[Illustration: "'IF YOU COULD SPARE SO LITTLE AS ONE FLAME'"]

"Would you, now?" queried the Bibliomaniac. "That is interesting enough.
How men's ideas differ on the subject of wealth! Here is the Idiot
would consider himself rich with $150 in his pocket--"

"Do you think he gets as much as that?" put in the School-master,
viciously. "Five dollars a week is rather high pay for one of his--"

"Very high indeed," agreed the Idiot. "I wish I got that much. I might
be able to hire a two-legged encyclop�dia to tell me everything, and
have over $4.75 a week left to spend on opera, dress, and the poor but
honest board Mrs. Smithers provides, if my salary was up to the $5 mark;
but the trouble is men do not make the fabulous fortunes nowadays with
the ease with which you, Mr. Pedagog, made yours. There are, no doubt,
more and greater opportunities to-day than there were in the olden time,
but there are also more men trying to take advantage of them. Labor in
the business world is badly watered. The colleges are turning out more
men in a week nowadays than the whole country turned out in a year forty
years ago, and the quality is so poor that there has been a general
reduction of wages all along the line. Where does the struggler for
existence come in when he has to compete with the college-bred youth
who, for fear of not getting employment anywhere, is willing to work for
nothing? People are not willing to pay for what they can get for
nothing."

"I am glad to hear from your lips so complete an admission," said the
School-master, "that education is downing ignorance."

"I am glad to know of your gladness," returned the Idiot. "I didn't
quite say that education was downing ignorance. I plead guilty to the
charge of holding the belief that unskilled omniscience interferes very
materially with skilled sciolism in skilled sciolism's efforts to make a
living."

"Then you admit your own superficiality?" asked the School-master,
somewhat surprised by the Idiot's command of syllables.

"I admit that I do not know it all," returned the Idiot. "I prefer to go
through life feeling that there is yet something for me to learn. It
seems to me far better to admit this voluntarily than to have it forced
home upon me by circumstances, as happened in the case of a college
graduate I know, who speculated on Wall Street, and lost the hundred
dollars that were subsequently put to a good