never heard of the Socratian method, but he was impressed; so
not understanding, he nodded and answered:

"Aha, I see!"

"It's the thing you souvenir that's important. If you want to remember
you can't remember too often."

"No-o."

"And how can you remember better than the first crack out of bed--"

"I get all that," said Snorky, acknowledging the brilliancy of the
argument. "But how the dickens can you make a souvenir out of a
toothbrush?"

"My boy--my boy!" said Skippy with crushing contempt. "Have you no
imagination? A souvenir toothbrush! Why, easy! Make the handle in the
shape of a baseball bat and put the Lawrenceville-Andover score on the
back--red and black."

"Well, I'll be jiggswiggered!"

"You can make 'em in the form of a riding crop for racing sports, masts
for yachtsmen, sword-blades for the army. Why, it's a cinch! You can
have Lawrenceville shields on the back, Princeton colors, Yale colors.
You can do anything, anything with the idea--you can have your best
girl's initials, or you can have her photograph stenciled on!"

"Sure thing! Why not Mother or Auntie--'when this you see remember to
use me!'" said Snorky, who feared where another flight of the
imagination might transport his roommate.

"Green!" said Skippy, flaring up at this destructive levity; but before
he could deliver his broadside the breakfast gong began to rock the
house and simultaneously each head ducked into a waiting basin.

* * * * *

When Skippy during the relaxation of the morning recitations considered
the Souvenir Toothbrush he was not so favorably impressed. Snorky's
suggestion somehow threw a touch of ridicule over the whole proposition
and Skippy, like all true imaginations, shrank from ridicule.
Undoubtedly if the Souvenir Toothbrush became a fact, mothers and
governesses _would_ abuse its opportunities. Think of a parental eye
gazing admonishingly at you from the back of a toothbrush every morning!
Why, the name of Bedelle might become an execration! He saw himself
pilloried among the oppressors of boykind, as unpopular as the compiler
of a Latin grammar or the accursed Euclid! No, the idea was unthinkable!
Skippy did not reject the Souvenir Toothbrush _in toto_. He bought a
blank book on which he inscribed:

INVENTIONS
JOHN C. BEDELLE
1896

On the first page under the day of the month he wrote a full
desc