“A sign once caught the casual eye, And it said, ‘Paint’; And every one who passed it by, Sinner or saint, Into the fresh green color must Make it his biz A doubting finger-point to thrust, That he, accepting naught on trust, Might say, ‘It is, it is!’” Cynic, do I hear? The term is not one of opprobrium. A cynic is the alert and discerning man who declines to cut the cotton-filled pie or pick up the decoy purse on All Fools’ Day. We are bound to test for ourselves the identical heating apparatus which the man next door cast away as rubbish last spring. We know why its heat units were unsatisfactory to him,--it was because his chimneys were too small; and though our own are as like them as two peas we proceed to our own experiment with our eyes wide open. Mrs. B telephones to Mrs. A and asks touching the merits, habits, and previous condition of servitude of the cook Mrs. A discharged this morning. Mrs. A, who holds an honorary degree bestowed upon her by the good Doctor Experience, leans upon the telephone and explains with conscientious detail the deficiencies of Mary Ann. She does as she would be done by and does it thoroughly. But what is her astonishment to learn the next day that Mary Ann’s trunk has been transferred to Mrs. B’s third story; that Mary Ann’s impossible bread and deadly cake are upon Mrs. B’s table! Mrs. B, too, took a course of lectures under Doctor Experience, and she admires him greatly; but what do these facts avail her when guests are alighting at the door and Mary Ann is the only cook visible in the urban landscape? Moreover, Mrs. A _always was_ (delectable colloquialism!) a hard mistress, and Mrs. B must, she feels, judge of these matters for herself. And so--so--say we all of us! Men who have done post-graduate work in the good doctor’s school are no better fortified against error than the rest of us who may never have got beyond his kindergarten. The results might be different if it were not that Mistress Vanity by her arts and graces demoralizes the doctor’s students, whose eyes wander to the windows as she flits across the campus. Conservative bankers, sage lawyers, and wise legislators have been the frequent and easy prey of the gold-brick operator. The police announce a new crop of “suckers” every spring,--which seems to indicate that Mistress Vanity wields a greater influence than Doctor Experience. These words stare at me oddly in type; they are the symbols of a disagreeable truth,--and yet we may as well face it. The eternal ego will not bow to any dingy doctor whose lectures only illustrate his own inability to get on in the world.