fellows at the club are down for a pool tournament I want you to come up
and hear them play. It was extraordinary last night to hear the balls
dropping one by one--click, click, click--as regularly as a metronome,
into the pockets. One of the finest shots, I am sorry to say, I missed."

"How did it happen?" asked the Bibliomaniac. "Weren't your ears long
enough?"

"It was a kiss shot, and I couldn't hear it," returned the Idiot.

"I think you men are crazy," said the School-master, unable to contain
himself any longer.

"So?" observed the Idiot, calmly. "And how do we show our insanity?"

"Seeing concerts and hearing games of pool."

"I take exception to your ruling," returned the Imbiber. "As my friend
the Idiot has frequently remarked, you have the peculiarity of a great
many men in your profession, who think because they never happened to
see or do or hear things as other people do, they may not be seen, done,
or heard at all. I _saw_ the concert I attended last night. Our musical
club has rooms next to a hospital, and we have to give silent concerts
for fear of disturbing the patients; but we are all musicians of
sufficient education to understand by a glance of the eye what you would
fail to comprehend with fourteen ears and a microphone."

"Very well said," put in the Idiot, with a scornful glance at the
School-master. "And I literally heard the pool tournament. I was dining
in a room off the billiard-hall, and every shot that was made, with the