"Then you cannot complain if Uncle Sam is equally solicitous about the personal paraphernalia of the man who asks to occupy his little cottage on the Potomac," said the Idiot. "So it happens that when a man runs for the Presidency the persons who intrude upon his private life, as you put it, are conferring a real service upon their fellow-citizens. When I hear from an authentic source that Mr. So-and-So, the candidate of the Thisorthatic party for the Presidency, is married to an estimable lady who refers to all Frenchmen as parricides, because she believes they have come from Paris, I have a right to consider whether or not I wish to vote to place such a lady at the head of my official table at White House banquets, where she is likely, sooner or later, to encounter the French ambassador, and the man who gives me the necessary information is doing me a service. You may say that the lady is not running for a public office, and that, therefore, she should be protected from public scrutiny, but that is a fallacy. A man's wife is his better half and his children are a good part of the remainder, and what they do or don't do becomes a matter of legitimate public concern. As a matter of fact, a public man _can_ have no private life." "Then you approve of these stories of candidates' cousins, the prattling anecdotes of their grandchildren, these paragraphs narrating the doings of their uncles-in-law, and all that?" sneered the Bibliomaniac. "Certainly, I do," said the Idiot. "When I hear that Judge Torkin's grandson, aged four, has come out for his grandfather's opponent I am delighted, and give the judge credit for the independent spirit which heredity accounts for; when it is told to me that Tom Watson's uncle is going to vote for Tom because he knows Tom doesn't believe what he says, I am almost inclined to vote for him as the uncle of his country; when I hear that Debs's son, aged three, has punched his daddy in the eye, on general principles I feel that there's a baby I want in the White House; and when it is told to me that the Prohibition candidate's third cousin has just been cured of delirium tremens, I feel that possibly there is a family average there that may be struck to the advantage of the country." "Say, Mr. Idiot," put in the Poet, at this point, "who are you going to vote for, anyhow?" "Don't ask me," laughed the Idiot. "I don't know yet. I admire all the candidates personally very much." "But what are your politics--Republican or Democratic?" asked the Lawyer. "Oh, that's different," said the Idiot. "I'm a Sammycrat." "A what?" cried the Idiot's fellow-boarders in unison. "A Sammycrat," said the Idiot. "I'm for Uncle Sam every time. He's the best ever." XV ON SHORT COURSES AT COLLEGE Mr. Pedagog threw down the morning paper with an ejaculation of impatience.