ss of pseudo-literature as protecting the truth from
desecration. But the hilarity remained, and flowed into the form of his
idea. And the idea--the divine, incomparable idea--was simply that he
should avenge his goddess by satirizing her false interpreters. He
would write a skit on the "popular" scientific book; he would so heap
platitude on platitude, fallacy on fallacy, false analogy on false
analogy, so use his superior knowledge to abound in the sense of the
ignorant, that even the gross crowd would join in the laugh against its
augurs. And the laugh should be something more than the distension of
mental muscles; it should be the trumpet-blast bringing down the walls
of ignorance, or at least the little stone striking the giant between
the eyes.

II

The Professor, on presenting his card, had imagined that it would
command prompt access to the publisher's sanctuary; but the young man
who read his name was not moved to immediate action. It was clear that
Professor Linyard of Hillbridge University was not a specific figure to
the purveyors of popular literature. But the publisher was an old
friend; and when the card had finally drifted to his office on the
languid tide of routine he came forth at once to greet his visitor.

The warmth of his welcome convinced the Professor that he had been
right in bringing his manuscript to Ned Harviss. He and Harviss had
been at Hillbridge together, and the future publisher had been one of
the wildest spirits in that band of college outlaws which yearly turns
out so many inoffensive citizens and kind husbands and fathers. The
Professor knew the taming qualities of life. He was aware that many of
his most reckless comrades had been transformed into prudent
capitalists or cowed wage-earners; but he was almost sure that he could
count on Harviss. So rare a sense of irony, so keen a perception of
relative values, could hardly have been blunted even by twenty years'
intercourse with the obvious.

The publisher's appearance was a little disconcerting. He looked as if
he had been fattened on popular fiction; and his fat was full of
optimistic creases. The Professor seemed to see him bowing into his
office a long train of spotless heroines laden with the maiden tribute
of the hundredth thousand volume.

Nevertheless, his welcome was reassuring. He did not disown his early
enormities, and capped his visitor's tentative allusions by such
flagrant references to the past that the Profe