gs returned to him, but he followed Madame le Claire like a
faithful hound.

V

SUBLIMINAL ENGINEERING

Now, Red-Neck Johnson's right hand never knew his left hand's game;
And most diverse were the meanings of the gestures of the same.
For, benedictions to send forth, his left hand seemed to strive,
While his right hand rested lightly on his ready forty-five.
"Mr. Chairman and Committee," Mr. Johnson said, said he,
"It is true, I'm tangled up some with this person's property;
It is true that growin' out therefrom and therewith to arrive,
Was some most egregious shootin' with this harmless forty-five:
But list to my defense, and weep for my disease," said he;
"I am double," half-sobbed Red-Neck, "in my personality!"
--_The Affliction of Red-Neck Johnson_.

Madame le Claire led Mr. Amidon to the next room, turned him over to
Aaron (now wonderfully healed of his dumbness) with a gesture of
dismissal; and he was ushered by the negro into a most modern-looking
chamber, in which was a brass bedstead with a snowy counterpane.

"Dinner will be suhved in ten minutes, suh," said Aaron.

They were waiting for him in the little dining-room, when he was wafted
through the door by Aaron's obsequious bow. The tigrine Le Claire
advanced from a bay-window, bringing a slender man with stooped
shoulders.

"Papa," she said, "this is Mr. Amidon, whom I have induced to dine with
us; Mr. Amidon, Professor Blatherwick."

Professor Blatherwick was bent, and much bleached, faded and wrinkled.
His eyes seemed both enormous in size and sunk almost to his occiput,
by reason of being seen through the thickest of glasses. His lank,
grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside
grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled
dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip--a beard which any
absent-minded man might well be supposed to have failed to observe, and
therefore to have neglected to shave. When Madame le Claire stopped in
leading him forward, he halted, and feeling blindly forward into the
air as if for Amidon's hand, though quite ten feet from him, he
murmured:

"I am bleaced to meet you, sir."

"Evidently German," thought Amidon.

"I understandt," said the professor, opening the conversation, as
Madame le Claire poured the tea, "that you haf hadt some interesding
experiences in te realm of te supliminal."

Amidon's tension of mind,