"You couldn't do that with men and women constituted as they are," said the Idiot. "Your foot-protector would no doubt be a good thing, but so are rubber overshoes. Nothing will ever be patented to compel a man to keep his feet dry, and he won't do it except under compulsion, but once having his feet wet he will seek the remedy. It's the Elixir of Life that I bank on most, however. I don't believe there is one among us, excepting Mrs. Pedagog, to whom twenty-five was not the most delightful period of existence. To Mrs. Pedagog, as to all women, eighteen is the limit. But men at twenty-five and women at eighteen know so much, enjoy so much, regard themselves so highly! There is nothing _blasé_ about them then. Disillusion--which I think ought to be called dissolution--comes later. At thirty a man discovers that the things he knew at twenty-five aren't so; and as for a woman at twenty-five, if so be she is unmarried, her life is empty, and if so be she is married, she has cares in the shape of children and a husband, who as a theory was a poet, but who as a reality is a mere business machine who is oftentimes no fonder of staying at home than he was before he was married and went out to see her every night." "What a wise little pessimist he is!" said Mr. Pedagog to the Doctor. "Very. But I fail to comprehend why he branches off into Pessimism when Electricity was his text," said the Doctor. "Because he's the Id--" began the Bibliomaniac, but the Idiot interrupted him. "Don't jump fences, gentlemen, before you know whether they are made of barbed wire or not. I'm coming to the points you are bringing up, and if you are not careful they may puncture you," he said. "I am not in any sense a pessimist. Quite the contrary. I am an optimist. I'm not old enough or cross-grained enough as yet to be a pessimist, and it's because I don't want to be a pessimist that I want this Elixir of Electricity to hurry up and have itself patented. If men when they reached the age of twenty-five, and women at eighteen, would begin to take this they might live to be a thousand and yet retain all the spirit and feelings of twenty-five and eighteen. That's the connection, Dr. Capsule. If I could be twenty-five all my life I'd be as happy as a bird--and if I were the Poet here I'd immortalize that idea in verse-- "A man's the biggest thing alive When he has got to twenty-five; And as for woman, she's a queen Whose summers number just eighteen." "That's a good idea," returned the Poet. "I'll make a note of that, and if I sell it I'll give you a commission." "No, don't do that," said the Idiot, slyly. "I shall be satisfied to see your name in print." The Poet having accepted this sally in the spirit in which it was intended, the Idiot resumed: