"He said that, did he? Well, he doesn't know what he is talking about," he retorted. "I am spending money on my inventions. I have already invested fifty cents in my patent Clothes-Pin-Holding Laundry-Bonnet, and I have strung the wires along my fence to be used in my electric Hired-Man-Discourager; and when I have managed to save up a few dollars more I'm going to get a battery to attach to it, when woe betide that man of Jimpsonberry's if he tries to talk to Maria while she is at work! Furthermore, I have extended the operations of that same useful invention so that it will meet a long-felt want in all suburban communities as a discourager of promiscuous wooing. You never lived in the country, did you?" "Not permanently," said the Poet. [Illustration: "'COURTING HIS BEST GIRL ON SOME OTHER FELLOW'S STONE WALL'"] "Then you are not aware of a singular habit the young country swain has of courting his best girl on some other fellow's stone wall after the sun goes down," said the Idiot. "Some balmy evening next spring, if you'll come up here I'll show you one of the features of suburban life that will give you an idea for a poem. That stone wall that runs along the front of my place has been the scene of more engagements than I can tell you of. Many a time when I have come home late at night I have counted as many as ten couples sitting on the cold coping of that wall telling each other how beautiful the world is, and holding each other on with loving arms." "Rather an affecting scene, that," said the Poet. "It was at first," rejoined the Idiot, "and I rather liked to see it. Indeed, I once suggested to Mrs. Idiot that we should have the coping upholstered, so that they might sit more comfortably. I even wanted to put a back along the inner side of it for them to lean against, but after a while it palled. We couldn't sit out on our own front porch on a summer evening and talk without sentimental interruptions that were demoralizing to a sustained conversation. We'd try to talk, for instance, about Browning, or Tennyson, or Le Gallienne, or some other poet of their class, when we'd be interrupted by such sentiments as, 'Ess I is,' and 'I's oo ducky,' and 'Ain't de moon boofer?' Then when we had guests we never dared to take them out-of-doors, but remained cooped up inside the house, because Mrs. Idiot feared to intrude upon the sacred right of those ten couples to do their courting comparatively unobserved." "It must have been a nuisance," said the Poet.