Coffee and Repartee | Page 9

turning out more men in a week nowadays than the whole
country turned out in a year forty years ago, and the quality is so poor
that there has been a general reduction of wages all along the line.
Where does the struggler for existence come in when he has to compete
with the college-bred youth who, for fear of not getting employment
anywhere, is willing to work for nothing? People are not willing to pay
for what they can get for nothing."
"I am glad to hear from your lips so complete an admission," said the
School-master, "that education is downing ignorance."
"I am glad to know of your gladness," returned the Idiot. "I didn't quite
say that education was downing ignorance. I plead guilty to the charge
of holding the belief that unskilled omniscience interferes very
materially with skilled sciolism in skilled sciolism's efforts to make a
living."

"Then you admit your own superficiality?" asked the School-master,
somewhat surprised by the Idiot's command of syllables.
"I admit that I do not know it all," returned the Idiot. "I prefer to go
through life feeling that there is yet something for me to learn. It seems
to me far better to admit this voluntarily than to have it forced home
upon me by circumstances, as happened in the case of a college
graduate I know, who speculated on Wall Street, and lost the hundred
dollars that were subsequently put to a good use by the uneducated
me."
"From which you deduce that ignorance is better than education?"
queried the School-master, scornfully.
"For an omniscient," returned the Idiot, "you are singularly
near-sighted. I have made no such deduction. I arrive at the conclusion,
however, that in the chase for the gilded shekel the education of
experience is better than the coddling of Alma Mater. In the
satisfaction--the personal satisfaction--one derives from a liberal
education, I admit that the sons of Alma Mater are the better off. I
never could hope to be so self-satisfied, for instance, as you are."
[Illustration: THE SCHOOL-MASTER AS A COOLER]
"No," observed the School-master, "you cannot raise grapes on a thistle
farm. Any unbiassed observer looking around this table," he added,
"and noting Mr. Whitechoker, a graduate of Yale; the Bibliomaniac, a
son of dear old Harvard; the Doctor, an honor man of Williams; our
legal friend here, a graduate of Columbia--to say nothing of myself,
who was graduated with honors at Amherst--any unbiassed observer
seeing these, I say, and then seeing you, wouldn't take very long to
make up his mind as to whether a man is better off or not for having
had a collegiate training."
"There I must again dispute your assertion," returned the Idiot. "The
unbiassed person of whom you speak would say, 'Here is this
gray-haired Amherst man, this book-loving Cambridge boy of
fifty-seven years of age, the reverend graduate of Yale, class of '55, and

the other two learned gentlemen of forty-nine summers each, and this
poor ignoramus of an Idiot, whose only virtue is his modesty, all in the
same box.' And then he would ask himself, 'In what way have these
sons of Amherst, Yale, Harvard, and so forth, the better of the
unassuming Idiot?'"
"The same box?" said the Bibliomaniac. "What do you mean by that?"
"Just what I say," returned the Idiot. "The same box. All boarding, all
eschewing luxuries of necessity, all paying their bills with difficulty, all
sparsely clothed; in reality, all keeping Lent the year through. 'Verily,'
he would say, 'the Idiot has the best of it, for he is young.'"
And leaving them chewing the cud of reflection, the Idiot departed.
"I thought they were going to land you that time," said the genial
gentleman who occasionally imbibed, later; "but when I heard you use
the word 'sciolism,' I knew you were all right. Where did you get it?"
"My chief got it off on me at the office the other day. I happened in a
mad moment to try to unload some of my original observations on him
apropos of my getting to the office two hours late, in which it was my
endeavor to prove to him that the truly safe and conservative man was
always slow, and so apt to turn up late on occasions. He hopped about
the office for a minute or two, and then he informed me that I was an
18-karat sciolist. I didn't know what he meant, and so I looked it up."
"And what did he mean?"
"He meant that I took the cake for superficiality, and I guess he was
right," replied the Idiot, with a smile that was not altogether mirthful.

VI
"Good-morning!" said the Idiot, cheerfully, as he entered the
dining-room.

To this remark no one but the landlady vouchsafed a