t promised to marry
your closest friend, Professor Lezard--"

"What!" I shouted with all my might, "have _you_ put one over on me,
too?"

Lezard and Fooss seized me, for I had risen and was jumping up and down
and splashing them with soup.

"Everybody has put one over on me!" I shrieked. "Everybody! Now I'm going
to put one over on myself!"

[Illustration: "'Everybody has put one over on me!' I shrieked."]

And I lifted my plate of soup and reversed it on my head.

They told me later that I screamed for half an hour before I swooned.

Afterward, my intellect being impaired, instead of being dismissed from
my department, I was promoted to the position which I now hold as
President Emeritus of the Consolidated Art Museums and Zooelogical Gardens
of the City of New York.

I have easy hours, little to do, and twenty ornamental stenographers and
typewriters engaged upon my memoirs which I dictate when I feel like it,
steeped in the aroma of the most inexpensive cigar I can buy at the
Rolling Stone Inn.

There is one typist in particular--but let that pass.

_Vir sapit qui pauca loquitor._

UN PEU D'AMOUR

When I returned to the plateau from my investigation of the crater, I
realized that I had descended the grassy pit as far as any human being
could descend. No living creature could pass that barrier of flame and
vapour. Of that I was convinced.

Now, not only the crater but its steaming effluvia was utterly unlike
anything I had ever before beheld. There was no trace of lava to be
seen, or of pumice, ashes, or of volcanic rejecta in any form whatever.
There were no sulphuric odours, no pungent fumes, nothing to teach the
olfactory nerves what might be the nature of the silvery steam rising
from the crater incessantly in a vast circle, ringing its circumference
halfway down the slope.

Under this thin curtain of steam a ring of pale yellow flames played and
sparkled, completely encircling the slope.

The crater was about half a mile deep; the sides sloped gently to the
bottom.

But the odd feature of the entire phenomenon was this: the bottom of
the crater seemed to be entirely free from fire and vapour. It was
disk-shaped, sandy, and flat, about a quarter of a mile in diameter.
Through my field-glasses I could see patches of grass and wild flowers
growing in the sand here and there, and the sparkle of water, and a crow
or two, feeding and walking about.

I looked at the girl who was standi