"The idea iss schoen! colossal! prachtvol! ausgezeichnet! wunderbar! wunderschoen! gemuetlich--" A large, tough noodle checked him. While he labored with Teutonic imperturbability to master it Lezard and I exchanged suggestions regarding the proposed annihilation of this fearsome woman who had come ravening among us amid the peaceful and soporific environment of Bronx Park. It was a dreadful thing for us to have our balmy Lotus-eaters' paradise so startlingly invaded by a large, loquacious, loud-voiced lady who had already stirred us all out of our agreeable, traditional and leisurely inertia. Inertia begets cogitation, and cogitation begets ideas, and ideas beget reflexion, and profound reflexion is the fundamental cornerstone of that immortal temple in which the goddess Science sits asleep between her dozing sisters, Custom and Religion. This thought seemed to me so unusually beautiful that I wrote it with a pencil upon my cuff. While I was writing it, quietly happy in the deep pleasure that my intellectual allegory afforded me, Dr. Fooss swabbed the last morsel of nourishment from his plate with a wad of rye bread, then bolting the bread and wiping his beard with his fingers and his fingers on his waistcoat, he made several guttural observations too profoundly German to be immediately intelligible, and lighted his porcelain pipe. "Ach wass!" he remarked in ruminative fashion. "Dot Frauenzimmer she iss to raise hell alretty determined. Von Pachydermatology she knows nodding. Maybe she leaves me alone, maybe it is to be 'raus mit me. I' weis' ni'! It iss aber besser one over on dat lady to put, yess?" "It certainly is advisable," replied Lezard. "Let us try to think of something sufficiently disastrous to terminate her scientific career," said I. And I bowed my rather striking head and rested the point of my forefinger upon my forehead. Thought crystallises more quickly for me when I assume this attitude. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lezard fold his arms and sit frowning at infinity. Dr. Fooss lay back in a big, deeply padded armchair and closed his prominent eyes. His pipe went out presently, and now and then he made long-drawn nasal remarks, in German, too complicated for either Lezard or for me to entirely comprehend. "We must try to get her as far away from here as possible," mused Lezard. "Is Oyster Bay _too_ far and too cruel?" I pondered darkly upon the suggestion. But it seemed unpleasantly like murder. "Lezard," said I, "come, let us reason together. Now _what_ is woman's besetting emotion?" "Curiosity?" "Very well; assuming that to be true, what--ah--quality particularly characterizes woman when so beset." "Ruthless determination." "Then," said I, "we ought to begin my exciting the curiosity of Professor Bottomly; and her ruthless determination to satisfy that curiosity should logically follow." "How," he asked, "are we to arouse her curiosity?"