When they begin to talk it is the same thing over
again in another shape. If there is a crack or a flaw in your answer to
their confounded shoulder-hitting questions, they will poke and poke
until they have got it gaping just as the baby's fingers have made a rent
out of that atom of a hole in his pinafore that your old eyes never took
notice of. Then they make such fools of us by copying on a small scale
what we do in the grand manner. I wonder if it ever occurs to our
dried-up neighbor there to ask himself whether That Boy's collection of
flies is n't about as significant in the Order of Things as his own
Museum of Beetles?
--I couldn't help thinking that perhaps That Boy's questions about the
simpler mysteries of life might have a good deal of the same kind of
significance as the Master's inquiries into the Order of Things.
--On my left, beyond my next neighbor the Scarabee, at the end of the
table, sits a person of whom we know little, except that he carries about
him more palpable reminiscences of tobacco and the allied sources of
comfort than a very sensitive organization might find acceptable. The
Master does not seem to like him much, for some reason or other,--perhaps
he has a special aversion to the odor of tobacco. As his forefinger
shows a little too distinctly that he uses a pen, I shall compliment him
by calling him the Man of Letters, until I find out more about him.
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