Chapter 10

"The progress of invention in this country has been very remarkable,"
said Mr. Pedagog, as he turned his attention from a scientific weekly he
had been reading to a towering pile of buckwheat cakes that Mary had just
brought in. "An Englishman has just discovered a means by which a ship in
distress at sea can write for help on the clouds."

"Extraordinary!" said Mr. Whitechoker.

"It might be more so," observed the Idiot, coaxing the platterful of
cakes out of the School-Master's reach by a dexterous movement of his
hand. "And it will be more so some day. The time is coming when the
moon itself will be used by some enterprising American to advertise his
soap business. I haven't any doubt that the next fifty years will develop
a stereopticon by means of which a picture of a certain brand of cigar
may be projected through space until it seems to be held between the
teeth of the man in the moon, with a printed legend below it stating
that this is _Tooforfivers Best, Rolled from Hand-made Tobacco, Warranted
not to Crock or Fade, and for sale by All Tobacconists at Eighteen for a
Dime_."

[Illustration: "THE MOON ITSELF WILL BE USED"]

"You would call that an advance in invention, eh?" asked the
School-Master.

"Why not?" queried the Idiot.

"Do you consider the invention which would enable man to debase nature to
the level of an advertising medium an advance?"

"I should not consider the use of the moon for the dissemination of good
news a debasement. If the cigars were good--and I have no doubt that some
one will yet invent a cheap cigar that is good--it would benefit the
human race to be acquainted with that fact. I think sometimes that the
advertisements in the newspapers and the periodicals of the day are of
more value to the public than the reading-matter, so-called, that stands
next to them. I don't see why you should sneer at advertising. I should
never have known you, for instance, Mr. Pedagog, had it not been for Mrs.
Pedagog's advertisement offering board and lodging to single gentlemen
for a consideration. Nor would you have met Mrs. Smithers, now your
estimable wife, yourself, had it not been for that advertisement. Why,
then, do you sneer at the ladder upon which you have in a sense climbed
to your present happiness? You are ungrateful."

"How you do ramify!" said Mr. Pedagog. "I believe there is no subject in
the world which you cannot connect in some way or another with every
other subject in the world. A discussion of the merits of Shakespeare's
sonnets could be turned by your dexterous tongue in five minutes into a
quarrel over the comparative merits of