reads a chapter in the guide-books, mixes the facts all up, with his bad memory, and then goes off to inflict the whole mess on somebody as wisdom which has been festering in his brain for years, and which he gathered in college from erudite authors who are dead, now, and out of print. This morning at breakfast he pointed out of the window and said:
“Do you see that there hill out there on that African coast?—It’s one of them Pillows of Herkewls, I should say—and there’s the ultimate one alongside of it.”
“The ultimate one—that is a good word—but the Pillars are not both on the same side of the strait.” (I saw he had been deceived by a carelessly written sentence in the Guide Book.)
“Well, it ain’t for you to say, nor for me. Some authors 
THE ORACLE. states it that way, and some states it different. Old Gibbons don’t say nothing about it,—just shirks it complete—Gibbons always done that when he got stuck—but there is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, he says that they was both on the same side, and Trinculian, and Sobaster, and Syraccus, and Langomarganbl—”
“Oh, that will do—that’s enough. If you have got your hand in for inventing authors and testimony, I have nothing more to say—let them be on the same side.”
We don’t mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can tolerate the Oracle very easily; but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising idiot on board, and they do distress
