_Si_. Well, I am afraid my profession would be rather a shock to you. _Tyc_. I like shocks. _Si_. Well, I will tell you some day. _Tyc_. Now, I say; or else I shall know you are ashamed of it. _Si_. Well, then, I sponge. _Tyc_. Why, what sane man would call sponging a profession? _Si_. I, for one. And if you think I am not sane, put down my innocence of other professions to insanity, and let that be my sufficient excuse. My lady Insanity, they say, is unkind to her votaries in most respects; but at least she excuses their offences, which she makes herself responsible for, like a schoolmaster or tutor. _Tyc_. So sponging is an art, eh? _Si_. It is; and I profess it. _Tyc_. So you are a sponger? _Si_. What an awful reproach! _Tyc_. What! you do not blush to call yourself a sponger? _Si_. On the contrary, I should be ashamed of not calling myself so. _Tyc_. And when we want to distinguish you for the benefit of any one who does not know you, but has occasion to find you out, we must say ‘the sponger,’ naturally? _Si_. The name will be more welcome to me than ‘statuary’ to Phidias; I am as proud of my profession as Phidias of his Zeus. _Tyc_. Ha, ha, ha! Excuse me—just a particular that occurred to me. _Si_. Namely——? _Tyc_. Think of the address of your letters—Simon the Sponger! _Si_. Simon the Sponger, Dion the Philosopher. I shall like mine as well as he his. _Tyc_. Well, well, your taste in titles concerns me very little. Come now to the next absurdity. _Si_. Which is——? _Tyc_. The getting it entered on the list of arts. When any one asks what the art is, how do we describe it? Letters we know, Medicine we know; Sponging? _Si_. My own opinion is, that it has an exceptionally good right to the name of art. If you care to listen, I will explain, though I have not got this properly into shape, as I remarked before. _Tyc_. Oh, a brief exposition will do, provided it is true. _Si_. I think, if you agree, we had better examine Art generically first; that will enable us to go into the question whether the specific arts really belong under it. _Tyc_. Well, what is Art? Of course you know that? _Si_. Quite well. _Tyc_. Out with it, then, as you know. _Si_. An art, as I once heard a wise man say, is a body of perceptions regularly employed for some useful purpose in human life. _Tyc_. And he was quite right. _Si_. So, if sponging has all these marks, it must be an art? _Tyc_. _If_, yes.