'Room for one more?' inquired a voice, and the rubber-tire man slid into the seat. 'I just pulled off a little thing out here,' he said, 'that ought to put a small star in my crown. A down-and-out--a tough looker--says to me, "_Please_, mister, give me a dime. I'm hungry." And I says to him, "Get out! What you want is a good drink--go get it," and slips him a quarter. Talk about gratitude! To think there are men--you know it and I know it and he was afraid of it--who'd have steered him to a quick-lunch and put him against soft-boiled eggs!' '"Man's inhumanity to man"'-- 'Sure! Nothing but that ever makes me any trouble about things. Tear ninety, George,'--this to the conductor,--'and burn this panetella some time. You said you were in education,' he went on. 'I've just blown myself to a Universal History--five big volumes, with lots of maps and pictures and flags of all nations and hanging gardens of Babylon and such things. Gave down thirty-five for it, and my name is printed--Peter B. Squem--on the first page of every book. Now,'--Mr. Squem grew quite earnest,--'you'd say, wouldn't you, that if a man could take those books down,--chew them up, you understand, and take them down,--he'd have an education? Not the same, of course, as normal school or college, and yet an education.' 'I think, if you know what's good for you, you will steer clear of what you call an education. I think I should stick to rubber tires, and a few comfortable certainties--and peace.' Mr. Squem stared. 'How's that?' he inquired. 'Education is your line, you were saying, and yet you queer your stuff. I'd get quick word from the house, if I handled Mercury tires that way.' 'But you wouldn't,' rejoined Professor Browne, 'you wouldn't, because tires mean something. Tires are your life-preserver--they are shaped like life-preservers, aren't they?' 'You've got me going,' said Mr. Squem, 'and no mistake. I don't mind telling you I'd hoped to get some hunch from you--on education. You see, my clothes are right, I always have a room with bath, and I get two hundred a month and fifty on the side. I read the papers--and the magazine section on Sunday--and I got through four books last year. And yet there's something not there--by Keefer, not there! I'd give something to _get_ it there--to slide it under, somehow, and bring the rest of me up to regular manicuring and ice-cream forks and the way my clothes fit!'