"Well, anyhow, I found them," said the Idiot, cheerfully; "and while they were not especially good reading, they were good reminders of other days. It wouldn't be a bad idea if every married man were to read over the letters of his days of courtship once a year. I think it would bring back more forcibly than anything else the conditions of the contract which he was inviting the young partner of his joys to sign. If an attic never held anything but bundles of one's old love-letters it would demonstrate its right to become an institution." "Very true," said the lawyer; "but," he added, prompted by that cautious spirit which goes always with the professional giver of advice, "suppose that side by side with that little bundle of pressed flowers and autumn leaves and promises one should chance to find another little bundle of pressed flowers and autumn leaves and promises--the promises written by some other hand than the hand that is rummaging in the cedar chest? What then? Would that prove a pleasing find?" "Oh, as for that," the Idiot remarked, "when I advocate the maintenance of an attic as one of the first duties of mankind, I mean its intelligent maintenance. The thing which makes of the British Museum, the National Attic of Great Britain, a positive educational force is its intelligent direction. It is the storehouse of the useless possessions of the British Empire which have an inspiring quality. There is nothing in it which makes a Briton think less of himself or which in any way unpleasantly disturbs his equanimity. So with the attic of the humble citizen. It must be intelligently directed if it is to become an institution, and should not be made the repository of useless things which ought to be destroyed, among which I class that other possible bundle to which you refer." And inasmuch as the whole party agreed to the validity of this proposition, the subject was dropped, and the Idiot and his guests wandered on to other things. VI THE IDIOT'S GARDEN "I should think, my dear Idiot," Mr. Pedagog observed one summer evening, as his host stood upon the back piazza of "Castle Idiot," as they had come to call the dwelling-place of their friend, "that with all this space you have about you, you would devote some of it to a garden." "Why, I do," said the Idiot. "I've got a small patch down there behind the tennis-court, fifty by one hundred feet, under cultivation. The stuff we get is almost as good as the average canned goods, too. We had a stalk of asparagus the other night that was magnificent as far as it went. It was edible for quite a sixteenth of an inch, or at least I was told so. That portion of it had already been nibbled off by my son Thomas while it was resting in the pantry waiting to be served. However, the inedible end which arrived was quite sturdy, and might have stood between my family and starvation if the necessity had arisen."