e easy-going, popular
youngsters who've devoted their college days to growing. Just at present
he's got more vitality than brains. I imagine from his answer to the
Doctor that he is a good-natured hulks who could get anything he wanted
in college except a scholarship. I haven't any doubt that he was beloved
of all his classmates and was known to his fellows as Old Hoss, or
Beefy Bill or Blue-eyed Billie and could play any game from Muggins to
Pit like a hero of a Bret Harte romance."

"You've sized Bill up all right," said the Doctor. "He is just that, but
he has brains. The only trouble is he's been saving them up for a rainy
day and now when the showers are beginning he doesn't know how to use
'em. How would you go about getting him a job, Mr. Idiot?"

"Bill ought to go into the publishing business," said the Idiot. "He was
cut out for a book-agent. He has a physique which, to begin with, would
command respectful attention for anything he might have to say
concerning the wares he had to sell. He seems to have, from your brief
description of him, that suavity of manner which would surely secure his
admittance into the houses of the _elite_, and his sense of humor I
judge to be sufficiently highly developed to enable him to make a sale
wherever he felt there was the remotest chance. Is he handsome?"

"I am told he looks like me," said the Doctor, pleasantly.

"Oh, well," rejoined the Idiot, "good looks aren't essential after all.
It would be better though if he were a man of fine presence. If he's big
and genial, as you suggest, he can carry off his deficiencies in
personal pulchritude."

The Doctor flushed a trifle. "Oh, Bill isn't so plain," he observed
airily. "There's none of your sissy beauty about Bill, I grant you,
but--oh, well"--here the Doctor twirled his mustache complacently.

"I should think the place for Bill would be on the trolley," sneered the
Bibliomaniac.

"No, sir," returned the Idiot. "Never. Geniality never goes on the
trolley. In the first place it isn't appreciated by the Management and
in the second place it is a dangerous gift for a motor-man. I had a
friend once--a college graduate of very much Bill's kind--who went on
the trolley as a Conductor at seven dollars a week and, by Jingo, would
you believe it, all his friends waited for his car and of course he
never asked any of 'em for their fare. Gentlemen, he used to say,
welcome to my car. This is on me."

"Swindled the Company by let