Chapter XXI

"Who was that fellow," asked Fidu, "who passed me just now with such a wild, wild look in his eye?"

"That fellow," replied Gud, "was an author who just spent a week-end with me."

"And what did you do to him?" asked Fidu. "He was as crazy as the nebular hypothesis."

"Upon his request I criticized his book, which he insisted on reading to me."

"But what did you say about it?" demanded Fidu, "he looked as locoed as a lop-eared logarithm."

"I made several criticisms. I told him that his plot was choppy, and that most of it was stale; that the work lacked sadly in originality and there was considerable repetition. I said it was very melodramatic in spots and that it had entirely too many murders, and that many of the biggest murderers seemed to escape without punishment. I also told him that it was full of sordid realism and most unhappy endings, that it was overloaded with action, and worst of all, it utterly lacked any evidence of a distinct moral purpose."

"Well no wonder," said Fidu, "that the poor fellow was raving; you made, if I may say so, quite a severe criticism."

"I grant that, but his book deserved it--everything I said about it was absolutely true."

"What did he call his book?" asked Fidu.

"He called it," replied Gud, "'An Outline of History.'"