"Well, I declare!" ejaculated Mr. Whitechoker. "What a strange affair!" "Then we got Dubbins's publishers to take a hand," said the Idiot. "They issued a monthly budget of gossip concerning their authors, which newspaper editors all over quoted in their interesting items of the day. From these paragraphs the public learned that Dubbins wrote between 4 A.M. and breakfast-time; that Dubbins never penned a line without having a tame rabbit, named Romola, sitting alongside of his ink-pot; that Dubbins got his ideas for his wonderful poem, 'The Mystery of Life,' from hearing a canary inadvertently whistle a bar of 'Hiawatha;' that Dubbins was the best-dressed author in the State of New York, affecting green plaid waistcoats, pink shirts, and red neckties; witty things that Dubbins's boy had said about Dubbins's work to Dubbins himself were also spread all over the land, until finally Philander Kenilworth Dubbins became a select series of household words in every town, city, and hamlet in the United States. And there he is to-day--a great man, bearing a great name, made for him by his friends. _Howls from Helicon_ is full of bad poems, but Dubbins is a son of Parnassus just the same. Now we propose to do it for others. For five dollars down, Mr. Poet, I'll make you conspicuous; for ten, I'll make you notorious; for fifty, I'll make you famous; for a hundred, I'll give you immortality." "Good!" cried the Poet. "Immortality for a hundred dollars is cheap. I'll take that." "You will?" said the Idiot, joyfully. "Put up your money." "All right," laughed the Poet. "I'll pay--C. O. D." "Another hundred gone!" moaned the Idiot, as the party broke up and its members went their several ways. "I think it's abominable that this commercial spirit of the age should have affected even you poets. You ought to have gone into business, old man, and left the Muses alone. You've got too good a head for poetry." VII ON THE DECADENCE OF APRIL-FOOL'S-DAY "I am sorry to observe," said the Idiot, as he sat down at the breakfast-table yesterday morning, "that the good old customs of my youthful days are dying out by slow degrees, and the celebrations that once filled my childish soul with glee are no longer a part of the pleasures of the young. Actually, Mr. Whitechoker, I got through the whole day yesterday without sitting on a single pin or smashing my toes against a brickbat hid beneath a hat. What on earth can be coming over the boys of the land that they no longer avail themselves of the privileges of the fool-tide?" "Fool-tide's good," said Mr. Brief. "Where did you get that?"