"I'm back too late for supper. Come on down with me to Mory's and keep me company, and I'll buy you a drink." "Did I hear the word 'buy'?" said Ricketts, in the manner then made popular by the lamented Pete Dailey. "You did." "Lead me to it." At Mory's, two or three men whom he didn't know were at the senior table. Le Baron and Reynolds, prospective captain of the crew and chairman of the News, respectively, men of his own society, gave him a hearty, "Hello, Dink," and then stared curiously at Ricketts, whose general appearance neither conformed to any one fashion nor to any two. Gimbel, the politician, was in the off room with three of the more militant anti-sophomore society leaders. The two parties saluted in regulation style. "Hello, you fellows." "Howdy, there." Stover, sitting down, saw Gimbel's perplexed glance at his companion, and thought to himself: "I've got Gimbel way up a tree. I'll bet he thinks I'm trying to work out some society combine against him." The thought recalled to him all the increasing bitterness of the anti-sophomore society fight which had swept the college. There was talk even of an open mass meeting. He remembered that Hunter had mentioned it, and for a moment he was inclined to put the question direct to Gimbel. But his mood was alien to controversy, and Louis, with sidelong, beady eyes, and a fragrant aroma, was waiting the order. Ricketts had, among twenty Yankee devices for greasing his journey through college, a specialty of breaking in new pipes, one of which he now produced, with an apologetic: "You don't mind, do you, if I crack my lungs on this appetizing little trifle?" "I say, Ricketts," said Stover, trying to keep off his mind the one subject, "is that all a joke about your breaking in pipes?" "Straightest thing in the world." "What do you charge?" "Thirty-five cents and the tobacco." "You ought to charge fifty." "I'm going to next year. You think I'm loony?" said Ricketts. "I'm not sure." "Dink, my boy, I'll be a millionaire in ten years. You know what I'm figuring out all this time? I'm going at this scientifically. I'm figuring out the number of fools there are on the top of this globe, classifying 'em, looking out what they want to be fooled on. I'm making an exact science of it." "Go on," said Dink, amused and perplexed, for he was trying to distinguish the serious and the humorous. "What's the principle of a patent medicine?--advertise first, then concoct your medicine. All the science of Foolology is: first, find something all the fools love and enjoy, tell them it's wrong, hammer it into them, give them a substitute and sit back, chuckle, and shovel away the ducats. Bread's wrong, coffee's wrong, beer's wrong. Why, Dink, in the next twenty years all the fools will be feeding on substitutes for everything they want; no salt--denatured sugar--anti-tea--oiloline--peanut butter--whale's milk--et cetera, et ceteray, and blessing the name of the fool-master who fooled them."