then? Was it Boston, or Baltimore, or
San Francisco? I did not know.

There was no stopping now. I was fast in my own clutches. I bit at my
cigar, and tried to call the roll of the seven wise men of Greece. I
stopped at the first, Solon. He, I remembered, rescued the Athenians
from misgovernment and slavery, and left the city before they could
experience a change of heart and hang him.

Who were the nine muses? Well, there was Terpsichore--her disciples are
spoken of every day in the newspapers. And then there was the muse of
History, whose name possibly was Thalia, and the muse of Poetry, whose
name I could not recall. I fared much better with the apostles: Peter
and Paul, of course, and John and James, and Judas and Matthew, and Mark
and Luke; eight out of twelve.

But of the seven wonders of the world I could cite with certainty only
one, the Colossus of Rhodes. I was doubtful about Mount Vesuvius. I
remembered not a single one of the seven deadly sins, and, at first,
could place only two of the ten commandments--the ones on filial
obedience and on the Sabbath. Later I thought of the newest realistic
hit at the Park Theatre; that brought back one more commandment. On the
other hand, it was a relief to call the three Graces straight
off--Faith, Hope, and Charity.

I grew humble. I began to doubt if, after all, it is true that a modern
schoolboy knows more than Aristotle did. In any case, whether
Harrington's boy who is still in the grammar grades knows more than
Aristotle, he certainly knows more than his father. They have a
new-fashioned branch of study in the modern schools, which they call
training the powers of observation. And that boy comes home with
mischief in his soul, and asks Harrington which way do the seeds in an
apple point. Harrington stares at the boy, and the boy smiles
quizzically at Harrington, and the father grows suspicious. Are there
seeds in an apple? There are seedless oranges, of course, which
presupposes oranges not destitute of seeds; but an apple? Harrington
tries to call up the image of the last apple he has eaten and he thinks
of sweet and sour apples, apples of a waxen yellow and apples of a
purple red, but he cannot visualise the seeds.

As Harrington sits there dumb, Jack asks him which shoe does he put on
first when he dresses in the morning. Jack knows, the rascal. He can
trace every process through which the cotton fibre passes from the plant
to the finished cloth. He knows w