book," says he, "by Homer K. M. I couldn't get colour out of it at
first, but there's a vein if you follow it up. I wouldn't have missed
this book for a pair of red blankets."

"You're welcome to it," says I. "What I want is a disinterested
statement of facts for the mind to work on, and that's what I seem to
find in the book I've drawn."

"What you've got," says Idaho, "is statistics, the lowest grade of
information that exists. They'll poison your mind. Give me old K. M.'s
system of surmises. He seems to be a kind of a wine agent. His regular
toast is 'nothing doing,' and he seems to have a grouch, but he keeps
it so well lubricated with booze that his worst kicks sound like an
invitation to split a quart. But it's poetry," says Idaho, "and I have
sensations of scorn for that truck of yours that tries to convey sense
in feet and inches. When it comes to explaining the instinct of
philosophy through the art of nature, old K. M. has got your man beat
by drills, rows, paragraphs, chest measurement, and average annual
rainfall."

So that's the way me and Idaho had it. Day and night all the
excitement we got was studying our books. That snowstorm sure fixed us
with a fine lot of attainments apiece. By the time the snow melted, if
you had stepped up to me suddenly and said: "Sanderson Pratt, what
would it cost per square foot to lay a roof with twenty by twenty-
eight tin at nine dollars and fifty cents per box?" I'd have told you
as quick as light could travel the length of a spade handle at the
rate of one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles per second. How many
can do it? You wake up 'most any man you know in the middle of the
night, and ask him quick to tell you the number of bones in the human