"Very true," said Mrs. Pedagog. "But I wish he'd stop saying it. The last
three dozen cakes have got cold as ice while he was talking, and I can't
afford such reckless waste."

"Nor we, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, with a pleasant smile; "for, as I
was saying to the Bibliomaniac this morning, your buckwheat cakes are, to
my mind, the very highest development of our modern civilization, and to
have even one of them wasted seems to me to be a crime against Nature
herself, for which a second, third, or fourth shaking up of this earth
would be an inadequate punishment."

This remark so pleased Mrs. Pedagog that she ordered the cook to send up
a fresh lot of cakes; and the guests, after eating them, adjourned to
their various duties with light hearts, and digestions occupied with work
of great importance.

XI

"I wonder what would have happened if Columbus had not discovered
America?" said the Bibliomaniac, as the company prepared to partake of
the morning meal.

"He would have gone home disappointed," said the Idiot, with a look of
surprise on his face, which seemed to indicate that in his opinion the
Bibliomaniac was very dull-witted not to have solved the problem for
himself. "He would have gone home disappointed, and we would now be
foreigners, like most other Americans. Mr. Pedagog would doubtless be
instructing the young scions of the aristocracy of Tipperary, Mr.
Whitechoker would be Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bibliomaniac would be
raising bulbs in Holland, and----"

[Illustration: "THE BIBLIOMANIAC WOULD BE RAISING BULBS"]

"And you would be wandering about with the other wild men of Borneo at
the present time," put in the School-Master.

"No," said the Idiot. "Not quite. I should be dividing my time up between
Holland, France, Switzerland, and Spain."

"You are an international sort of Idiot, eh?" queried the Lawyer, with a
chuckle at his own wit.

"Say rather a cosmopolitan Idiot," said the Idiot. "Among my ancestors
I number individuals of various nations, though I suppose that if we go
back far enough we were all in the same boat as far as that is concerned.
One of my great-great-grandfathers was a Scotchman, one of them was a
Dutchman, another was a Spaniard, a fourth was a Frenchman. What the
others were I don't know. It's a nuisance looking up one's ancestors,
I think. They increase so as you go back into the past. Every man
has had two grandfathers, four great-grandfathers, eight