es. I suppose you wouldn't care to consider any question of
compromises or substitutes?"

"I fear it's out of the question, really," was the reply, most kindly
in tone, but with perfect distinctness.

There was a moment's silence. It seemed to Dr. Hicok as if the beating
of his heart must fill the room, it struck so heavily, and the blood
seemed to surge with so loud a rush through the carotids up past his
ears. "Shall I be found to have gone off with a rush of blood to the
head?" he thought to himself. But--it can very often be done by a
resolute effort--he gathered himself together as it were, and with one
powerful exertion mastered his disordered nerves. Then he lifted his
memorandum, gave one glance at the sad, calm face opposite him, and
spoke.

"You know they're every once in a while explaining a vote, as they
call it, in Congress. It don't make any difference, I know; but it
seems to me as if I should put you more fully in possession of my
meaning, if I should just say a word or two, about the reasons for my
selection."

The visitor bowed with his usual air of pleasant acquiescence.

"I am aware," said Dr. Hicok, "that my selection would seem thoroughly
commonplace to most people. Yet nobody knows better than you do, my
dear sir, that the oldest questions are the newest. The same vitality
which is so strong in them, as to raise them as soon as thought
begins, is infinite, and maintains them as long as thought endures.
Indeed, I may say to you frankly, that it is by no means on novelty,
but rather on antiquity, that I rely."

The doctor's hearer bowed with an air of approving interest. "Very
justly reasoned," he observed. The doctor went on--

"I have, I may say--and under the circumstances I shall not be
suspected of conceit--made pretty much the complete circuit of
unsolved problems. They class exactly as those questions do which we
habitually reckon as solved: under the three subjects to which they
relate--God, the intelligent creation, the unintelligent creation.
Now, I have selected my questions accordingly--one for each of those
divisions. Whether I have succeeded in satisfying the conditions
necessary will appear quickly. But you see that I have not stooped to
any quibbling, or begging either. I have sought to protect myself by
the honourable use of a masculine reason."

"Your observations interest me greatly," remarked the audience. "Not
the less so, that they are so accurately coincident with my