"Mr. Speaker, I see here present an ex-member, my alter ego, Mr. Reuben Rubber-Neck, who once parted with six months' wages on another man's game. Mr. Rubber-Neck is a graduate of the celebrated and expensive school of Experience, of which it is written that a large and influential class will learn of no other. As an ex-Member, he is entitled to the privilege of the floor. I, for one, would like to have his counsels at this juncture."
Thus appealed to, Mr. Rubber-Neck got stumblingly to his feet with a gawky and timid demeanor.
"Mr. Chairman, it is not a theory but a hell of a condition that confronts us," he said, uncertainly. "I think that we should use the letter so providentially er—um—provided to make friends with the mammon of righteousness. Two heads are proverbially better than one, if one is an Expert. It behooves us, for the sake of the near and dear kinsmen, the Mark brothers, that we should so bear ourselves toward our generous hosts as to make them feel that they have entertained a devil unawares. Avenge now the innumerable wrongs of me and my likes. Before deciding on our line of action, however, I should like to hear from a learned gentleman in our midst, whose brain is ever fertile in expedients. I refer to the only one of us who has been through college—in at the front door and out the back. I call on the representative of the class of Naughty-naughty!"
He sat down amid vociferous cries of "Hear! Hear!"
The Bookman arose gracefully. "While I thank the gentleman who has preceded me for his encomiums," he said, with deprecatory modesty, "yet I can lay no claim for scholastic honors, owing to an unfortunate difference of opinion with the Faculty in the scorching question of turning state's evidence concerning the ebullition of class feeling, in which I was implicated by a black eye or so. I fought the good fight, I kept the faith, but I did not finish my course. But to return to our sheep.
"In every crisis, I have always found precedent for action in the words of the immortal Swan of Avon. What does Will say? He says:
'Put money in thy purse!'
"Follows naturally the advice of the melancholy Dane, bearing directly on the case in hand:
'Let it work.
'For 'tis the sport to see the engineer
Hoist with his own petard.'
"Again,