"Oh, go to bed!" Dan said that, and went
away.

"Oh, yes, it's all very well to say go to bed when
a man makes an argument which another man can't
answer. Dan don't never stand any chance in an
argument with me. And he knows it, too. What
should you say, Jack?"

"Now, doctor, don't you come bothering around
me with that dictionary bosh. I don't do you any
harm, do I? Then you let me alone."

"He's gone, too. Well, them fellows have all
tackled the old Oracle, as they say, but the old
man's most too many for 'em. Maybe the Poet
Lariat ain't satisfied with them deductions?"

The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme, and
went below.

"'Pears that he can't qualify, neither. Well, I
didn't expect nothing out of him. I never see one
of them poets yet that knowed anything. He'll
go down, now, and grind out about four reams of
the awfullest slush about that old rock, and give it
to a consul or a pilot or a nigger, or anybody he
comes across first which he can impose on. Pity
but somebody'd take that poor old lunatic and dig
all that poetry rubbage out of him. Why can't a
man put his intellect onto things that's some value?
Gibbons and Hippocratus and Sarcophagus, and
all them old ancient philosophers, was down on
poets--"

"Doctor," I said, "you are going to invent au-
thorities now, and I'll leave you, too. I always en-
joy your conversation, notwithstanding the luxuri-

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