to give, but with the inability or unwillingness to take.
You see I have a great deal of surplus wealth myself--"

Mr. Vedder's eyes flickered up at me.

"Yes," I said. "I've got immense accumulations of the wealth of the
ages--ingots of Emerson and Whitman, for example, gems of Voltaire, and
I can't tell what other superfluous coinage!" (And I waved my hand in
the most grandiloquent manner.) "I've also quite a store of knowledge
of corn and calves and cucumbers, and I've a boundless domain of
exceedingly valuable landscapes. I am prepared to give bountifully of
all these varied riches (for I shall still have plenty remaining), but
the fact is that this generation of vipers doesn't appreciate what I am
trying to do for them. I'm really getting frightened, lest they permit
me to perish from undistributed riches!"

Mr. Vedder was still smiling.

"Oh," I said, warming up to my idea, "I'm a regular multimillionaire.
I've got so much wealth that I'm afraid I shall not be as fortunate as
jolly Andy Carnegie, for I don't see how I can possibly die poor!"

"Why not found a university or so?" asked Mr. Vedder.

"Well, I had thought of that. It's a good idea. Let's join our forces
and establish a university where truly serious people can take courses
in laughter."

"Fine idea!" exclaimed Mr. Vedder; "but wouldn't it require an enormous
endowment to accommodate all the applicants? You must remember that this
is a very benighted and illiterate world, laughingly speaking."

"It is, indeed," I said, "but you must remember that many people, for a
long time, will be too serious to apply. I wonder sometimes if any one
ever learns to laugh really laugh much before he is forty."

"But," said Mr. Vedder anxiously, "do you think such an institution
would be accepted by the proletariat of the serious-minded?"

"Ah, that's the trouble," said I, "that's the trouble. The proletariat
doesn't appreciate what we are trying to do for them! They don't
want your reading-rooms nor my Emerson and cucumbers. The seat of the
difficulty seems to be that what seems wealth to us isn't necessarily
wealth for the other fellow."

I cannot tell with what delight we fenced our way through this foolery
(which was not all foolery, either). I never met a man more quickly
responsive than Mr. Vedder. But he now paused for some moments,
evidently ruminating.

"Well, David," he said seriously, "what are we going to do about this
obstreperous other fellow