"When I am blue as indigo, you wrote, And cold as is the Arctic snow, Give me no megrims rotting. I choose the friend The Heavens send Who takes me Idiyachting. Remember that? Well, it was a mighty nice present, and I wouldn't sell it for a million abandoned farms up in New Hampshire, but this year I'd rather have the money--say one thousand dollars and five cents--a thousand dollars instead of the poem and five cents in place of the cigar." "I am afraid you value my verse too high," smiled the Poet. "Not that one," said the Idiot. "The mere words don't amount to much. I could probably buy twice as many just as good for four dollars, but the way in which you arranged them, and the sentiment they conveyed, made them practically priceless to me. I set their value at a thousand dollars because that is the minimum sum at which I can be tempted to part with things that on principle I should always like to keep--like my word of honor, my conscience, my political views, and other things a fellow shouldn't let go of for minor considerations. The value of the cigar I may have placed too high, but the poem--never." "And yet you don't want another?" asked the Poet, reproachfully. "Indeed I do," returned the Idiot, "but I can't afford to own so much literary property any more than I can afford to possess Mr. Brief's automobile--and this is precisely what I am driving at. So many people nowadays present us at Christmas with objects we can't afford to own, that we cannot possibly repay, and overwhelm us with luxuries when we are starving for our necessities, so that Christmas, instead of bringing happiness with it, brings trial and tribulation. I know of a case last year where a very generous-hearted individual sent a set of Ruskin, superbly bound in full calf that would have set the Bibliomaniac here crazy with joy, to a widow who had just pawned her wedding-ring to buy a Christmas turkey for her children. A bundle of kindling-wood would have been far more welcome than a Carnegie library at that moment, and yet here was a generous soul who was ready to spend a good hundred dollars to make the recipient happy. Do you suppose the lady looked upon that sumptuous Ruskin with anything but misery in her heart?" "Oh, well, she could have pawned that instead of her wedding-ring," sniffed the Bibliomaniac.