out, and it is limber, and
languid, and tired, and can't stand up alone, and it looks as though it
wanted to be laid at rest beside the rotten apples in the alley, rather
than be set out in front of a store to be sold to honest people, and
give them the gangrene of the liver," and the boy put on a health
commissioner air that frightened the grocery man, and he threw the
lettuce out the back door.

"You never mind about my lettuce," said the grocery man, "I can attend
to my affairs. But now tell me what you were thinking about here all the
morning?"

"I was thinking what a fool King Solomon was," said the boy, with the
air of one who has made a statement that has got to be argued pretty
strong to make it hold water.

"Now, lookahere," said the grocery man in anger, "I have stood it
to have you play tricks on me, and have listened to your condemned
foolishness without a murmur as long as you have confined yourself to
people now living, but when you attack Solomon--the wisest man, the
great king--and call him a fool, friendship ceases, and you must get
out of this store. Solomon in all his glory, is a friend of mine, and no
fool boy is going to abuse him in my presence. Now, you dry up!"

"Sit down on the ice box," said the boy to the grocery man, "what you
need is rest. You are overworked. Your alleged brain is equal to wilted
lettuce, and it can devise ways and means to hide rotten peaches under
good ones, so as to sell them to blind orphans; but when it comes to
grasping great questions, your small brain cannot comprehend them. Your
brain may go up sideways to a great question and rub against it, but it
cannot surround it, and grasp it. That's where you are deformed. Now,
it is different with me. I can raise brain to sell to you grocery men.
Listen. This Solomon is credited with being the wisest man, and yet
history says he had a thousand wives. Just think of it. You have got one
wife, and Pa has got one, and all the neighbors have one, if they have
had any kind of luck. Does not one wife make you pay attention? Wouldn't
two wives break you up? Wouldn't three cause you to see stars? How would
ten strike you? Why, man alive, you do not grasp the magnitude of the
statement that Solomon had a thousand wives. A thousand wives, standing
side by side, would reach about four blocks. Marching by fours it would
take them twenty minutes to pass a given point. The largest summer
resort hotel only holds about five hundred peop