“You don’t know him?” said the Doctor, smiling. “Yes, you do; at least, you have seen him before; and I will show you him in his likeness as you saw him two little years ago. “Such as you see that man to-day,” continued the Doctor, as we strolled toward the town, “he is entirely the creation of one small and insignificant man; not the man you just saw watching for him, but another so very insignificant that his name even is forgotten by the few who have heard it. I alone remember his face. Nobody knows anything else that throws light on his identity, except the fact that he was on one occasion addressed as ‘Mr. Thingumajig,’ and that he is or was a writer for the press, in no very great way of business. Now let us turn down Main Street, and I will show you the man he reduced to the ignominious object we have just been watching.” We soon stopped at a photograph gallery, and the Doctor led me, in a way that showed that his errand was not a rare one, to a little room in the rear, where, on a purple velvet background, hung a nearly life-size crayon portrait. It represented a large gentleman--the large gentleman whom we had just seen--attired in much similar garments, only that in the picture his neatness was spotless and perfect. Not a wrinkle, not a stain marred him from top to toe. He stood in the graceful and dignified attitude of one who has been set up by his fellow-citizens to be looked at and admired, and who knows that his fellow-citizens are only doing the right thing by him. His silk hat was jauntily poised upon his hip, and the smile that illuminated his moustache and whiskers was at once genial, encouraging, condescending, and full of deep religious and political feeling. It was hardly necessary to look at the superb gilt inscription below to know that that portrait was “Presented by the Vestry of St. Dives Church, on the Occasion of his Retirement from their Body to Assume the Burden of Civic Duties in the Assembly of the State that Counts Him Among her Proudest Ornaments.” [Illustration] “Mr. Silo!” cried I. “Mr. Silo,” said the Doctor; “but he did not go to the Assembly, and that picture has never been presented. When you saw him to-day he was running away from his brother-in-law, to get to New York to go on any sort of a spree to drown his misery. Come along, and you shall hear the tale of a fallen idol. And if, as you listen, an ant should cross your path, do not step on it. Mr. Silo stepped upon an ant, and the ant made of him the thing you saw.” I do not tell this story exactly in the Doctor’s own words, though I will let it look as if I did. The trouble of letting non-literary people tell stories in their own language is that the “says I’s,” and the “says he’s,” and the “well, this man” passages, and “then this other man I was telling you about” interpolations take up so much of the narrative that a story like this could not be read while a pound of candles burned.