"Or describe your progressive idiocy under the title of 'The Silliad!'" put in the Bibliomaniac.
"Ubetcha!" cried the Idiot. "Or tell the sad tale of your life under the title of 'The Seniliad.' And in addition to these wonders, who can estimate to what extent we should all profit were our more serious reviews to secure articles from Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and old Ben Franklin on the present state of the nation! Why, an article dictated off-hand by the shade of Lincoln on the thousands who are now flattering themselves that they occupy his shoes, illustrated with those apt anecdotes of which he was a master, and pointed with his gloriously dry humor, under the title of 'Later Links', would alone make the venture worth while, even if nothing else came of it."
"Oh, well," said the Bibliomaniac, rising, "perhaps there is something in the idea after all, and I wish you success, Mr. Idiot—and, by the way, if the scheme works out as you expect it to, and you happen to come across old Æsculapius, ask him for me for an authoritative statement of the origin and proper treatment of idiocy, will you?"
"Sure," said the Idiot, turning to his breakfast, "but it really isn't necessary to do that, Mr. Bib. Our good old friend, the Doctor here, is quite capable of curing you at any time you consent to put yourself unreservedly in his hands."
VI
ON MEDICAL CONSERVATION
"I see by the paper this morning," said the Idiot, as he put three lumps of sugar into his pocket and absent-mindedly dropped his eyeglasses into his coffee, "that, thanks to the industry of our Medical Schools and Colleges, the world is richer by thirty thousand new doctors to-day than it was yesterday. How does the law of supply and demand work in cases of that kind, Doctor Squills?"
"Badly—very badly, indeed," said the Doctor, with a gloomy shake of his head. "The profession is sadly overcrowded, and mighty few of us are making more than a bare living."
"I was afraid that was the case," said the Idiot sympathetically. "I was talking with a prominent surgeon at the Club the other night, and he was terribly upset over the situation. He intimated that we have been ruthlessly squandering our natural internal resources almost as riotously and as blindly as our lumbermen have been destroying the natural physical resources of the country. He assured me that he himself had reached a point in his career where there was hardly a vermiform appendix left in sight, and where five years ago he was chopping down not less than four of these a day for six days of the week at a thousand dollars per, it was now a lucky time for him when he got his pruning knife off the hook once a month."