Without heeding the question in the least the Itinerant Tinker turned the slab for Dickey's inspection, and he read on it the two words, TO LOVE. Taking up a wedge the Itinerant Tinker printed the word DEARLY on the flat side of it, and then skilfully drove it between the words TO and LOVE. When he again held it up for Dickey to see, it read: TO DEARLY LOVE. "There!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker, holding the slab proudly at arm's length and turning his head slowly from side to side, "that's what I call a fine bit of ingenuity!" "So that's a split infinitive, is it?" Dickey asked. "Why, you _stupid_ boy!" the Itinerant Tinker exclaimed; "didn't you just this minute see me split it?" "Yes, sir; I did," Dickey murmured rather shamefacedly. "Then, if I _split_ it, what else _could_ it be but a split infinitive, I'd like to know?" "Well," said Dickey, a bit timidly, "I never heard a block of wood called an _infinitive_ before." "Oh, my!" sighed the Itinerant Tinker, as he sank down on his pile of merchandise. "How you _do_ weary me!" He sat looking at the slab of wood for such a long time, turning it admiringly now that way, now this, that poor Dickey began to grow quite nervous. "Please," he ventured at last, "won't you show me now how you mend it?" Dickey didn't care in the least to see it done, but he imagined that by asking the question he would regain the good will of the old man. "There you go again! There you go!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker. He actually shed a tear. "I knew you'd do it--I knew it!" "Now what have I done?" asked Dickey, innocently. "You've broken the silence," said the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "It'll take me hours and hours to glue _that_ together. But first," he went on, after another long pause, "I'll show you how neatly this split infinitive can be mended." Thereupon he withdrew the wedge, dipped a brush into a pot of glue, and, after distributing the sticky fluid over the split sides, brought them carefully and neatly together. "There!" he exclaimed, triumphantly, "_that's_ the proper way to bring together a split infinitive. Beware, my boy, of splitting your infinitives; but if you do, call on the Itinerant Tinker and _he'll_ straighten 'em out for you." "Before we move along," he resumed, after he had loaded himself with his merchandise, "perhaps you'd like to listen to a story?" "I should, if it wasn't about split infinitives," replied Dickey, doubtfully. "They really make me quite dizzy." "Well, it's not," said the Itinerant Tinker, smiling vaguely. "It's the story of the PEDANTIC PEDAGOGUE "I saw him sitting--sitting there, Outside the school-house door, It was a dismal afternoon; The hour was half-past four. "I asked him, 'Sir, what is your name?' His voice came through the fog: 'I have forgotten it, kind sir, But I'm a Pedagogue.