The Professor's eyes snapped. "Was that word fewer contemplated or was it an accident? Do you study to find such niceties of distinction?"
"I don't give a snap for niceties of distinction, Professor; I don't know them, in fact. They might have been hammered into my head once, but they were jolted out by bucking horses. Sometimes we forced them out. We didn't want to be hampered. I knew a rancher, an Oxford man, who wilfully clawed the polish off his tongue. He wanted to live down among men, he said, and the rougher the better. One day I saw him get down off his horse to kick a book that some one had dropped in the trail."
"I don't blame him for kicking a book that he might find out there," said the Professor.
"You don't? A scholar lost an Æschylus on the prairie, and some one might have kicked it."
"Ha! I draw you on apace. We'll discuss the ancient goat-song next."
"No, I'd rather talk about sheep and calves. I know more about them. I never look at a learned man that I don't fancy him weary of his burden. Think of a professor's moldy pack, dead languages, dried thought——"
"Hold on, my dear friend. I was a professor, and I had no such pack. Like the modern peddler, I carried the wants of to-day. But, after all, I agree with you in the main. I know that the average doctor of learning is not able to see virtue in the new. To him old platitude is of more value than new vigor. And with one more cup I could——"
"No more."
"Not in the interest of clear elucidation?"
"Not in any interest that you can fish up. I don't want you to go home drunk."