"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.[Pg 57]
VI
"Good-morning!" said the Idiot, cheerfully, as he entered the dining-room.
To this remark no one but the landlady vouchsafed a reply. "I don't think it is," she said, shortly. "It's raining too hard to be a very good morning."
BOBBO
"That reminds me," observed the Idiot, taking his seat and helping himself copiously to the hominy. "A friend of mine on one of the newspapers is preparing an article on the 'Antiquity of Modern Humor.' With your kind permission, Mrs. Smithers, I'll take down your remark and hand it over to Mr. Scribuler as a specimen of the modern antique joke. You may not be aware of the fact, but that jest is to be found in the rare first edition of the Tales of Bobbo, an Italian humorist, who stole everything he wrote from the Greeks."
"So?" queried the Bibliomaniac. "I never heard of Bobbo, though I had, before the[Pg 59][Pg 58] auction sale of my library, a choice copy of the Tales of Poggio, bound in full crushed Levant morocco, with gilt edges, and one or two other Italian Joe Millers in tree calf. I cannot at this moment recall their names."