It was New-Year's eve, and Mr. and Mrs. Idiot with their old friends were watching the old year die. The old year had been a fairly successful one for them all, and they were properly mournful over its prospective demise, but the promise of the new was sufficiently bright to mitigate their sorrow.

"What a sandwich life is, after all!" ejaculated the Idiot.

Mr. Pedagog started nervously. The remark was so idiotic that even its source seemed to make it inexcusable.

"I don't quite catch your drift," said he.

"As the man said when an avalanche of snow fell off his neighbor's roof and missed him by an inch," said the Idiot. "Why, just think a moment, Doctor, and my drift will overwhelm you. Look about you and consider what we have ourselves demonstrated to-night. If that does not prove life a series of emotional sandwiches, then I don't know what a sandwich is. Twenty minutes ago we were all gladness over the prosperity of the year gone by. Five minutes ago we were all on the verge of tears because the good old year is going the way of all years. An hour from now we will be joyously acclaiming the new. Two thick slices of joy with a thin slice of grief between."

"Ah!" said Mr. Pedagog. "I see. There is something in the analogy, after all. The bread of joy and the ham of sorrow, as you might put it; do make up the sum of human existence; but in some cases, my lad, I am afraid you will find there is only one slice of bread to two of ham."

"No doubt," replied the Idiot, "but that does not affect my proposition that life is a sandwich. If one slice of ham between two slices of bread is a ham sandwich, why is not one slice of bread between two slices of ham a bread sandwich? What is a sandwich, anyhow? The dictionary says that a sandwich is something placed between two other things; hence, all things are sandwiches, because there is nothing in the world, the world being round, that is not between two other things. Therefore, all things being sandwiches, life is a sandwich, Q.E.D."

"Is life a thing?" demanded Mr. Pedagog.

"Certainly," said the Idiot. "And a mighty good thing, too. If you don't believe it look the word thing up in the dictionary. All things are things."

"But," continued the Schoolmaster, his old spirit of antagonism rising up in his breast, "granted that life is a thing, what is it between so that it becomes a sandwich?"

"The past and the future," said the Idiot. "It is a slice of the immediate between a slice of past and one of future."

Mr. Pedagog laughed.

"You are still the same old Idiot," he said.

"Yes," said the Idiot. "Gibraltar and I and Truth are the three unchangeable things in this life, and that's why I am so happy. I'm in such good company. Gibraltar and Truth are good enough companions for anybody."

Meanwhile Mollie and Tommy, who had been allowed to sit up upon this rare occasion, stirred uneasily.

"Ith I a thandwich, popper?" said the little girl, sleepily, raising her head from her father's shoulder and gazing into his eyes.

"Yes, indeed, you are," said her father, giving her an affectionate squeeze. "A sugar sandwich, Mollie. You're really good enough to eat."

"Well, I'd rather be a pie," put in Tommy; "an apple pie."

"Very well, my son," returned the Idiot. "Have your own way. Henceforth be a pie if you prefer—an apple pie. But may I ask why you express this preference?"

"Oh, because," said Tommy, "if I'm to be an apple pie somebody's got to fill me chock-full of apple sauce."

"The son of his father," observed Mr. Whitechoker.

"I think it is a pity," Mrs. Pedagog put in at this point, "that some of the good old customs of the New Year have gone out."

"As to which, Mrs. Pedagog?" asked the Idiot.

"Well, New-Year's calling particularly," explained the lady. "It is no longer the thing for people to make New-Year's calls, and I must confess I regret it. It used to be a great pleasure to me in the old days to receive the gentlemen—my old friends, and relatives, and boarders."

"Why distinguish between your old friends and your boarders, Mrs. Pedagog?" interrupted the Idiot. "They are synonymous terms."

"They are now," said the good lady, "but—ah—they weren't always. I used sometimes to think you, for instance, didn't like me as much as you might."

"I didn't dare," explained the Idiot. "If I'd liked you as much as I might I'd have told you so, and then Mr. Pedagog would have got jealous and there'd have been a horrid affair."

The lady smiled graciously, and Mr. Pedagog threw a small paper pellet at the Idiot.

"I'm much obliged to you for holding off, Idiot," he said. "I don't know where I'd have been to-day if you'd got in ahead of me. Mrs. Pedagog has always had a soft spot in her heart for you."

"I've got the other spot," said the Idiot, "and a pair of aces are hard to beat in pairs; but I think I voice Mrs. Pedagog's sentiments in the matter, Mr. Pedagog, when I say that she and I would always have been glad to see you every other New-Year's day if I had been the fortunate winner of her hand."

"And Mr. Pedagog and I would have been glad to see you and Mrs. Pedagog in the sandwich years," said Mrs. Idiot to her husband; and then, turning to the Schoolmaster, added, "Wouldn't we, Mr. Pedagog?"

"No, madame," returned Mr. Pedagog, courteously. "You might have been, but I would not. If I had married you I could never have seen any one else with pleasure. I should have kept my eyes solely for you."

"John!" cried Mrs. Pedagog, arching her eyebrows.

"Pleasantry, my dear—mere pleasantry," returned the Schoolmaster, tapping his fingers together and smiling sweetly upon Mrs. Idiot.

"You didn't finish, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "You were telling us how you used to enjoy New-Year's calling before it went out."

"Yes," replied Mrs. Pedagog. "It was charming. I used positively to look forward to its coming with delight. We women, Mr. Idiot, found the old custom very delightful."

"But the men, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "did you ever think of them?"

"What else did we think of? What else is there for a woman to think about?" replied Mrs. Pedagog.

"Jane!" cried Mr. Pedagog.

"Pleasantry, my dear—mere pleasantry," returned Mrs. Pedagog, frigidly. And Mr. Pedagog lit a cigar. It is not always pleasant to be quoted.

"Still," said the Idiot, "you thought of men only as creatures of the moment—"

"Entirely," said Mrs. Pedagog.

"And not as creatures of the week following," said the Idiot.

"What has that to do with it?" asked Mrs. Pedagog.

"Much—from the man's stand-point," returned the Idiot. "His digestion was butchered to make a woman's holiday. Take myself as an example. I used to make New-Year's calls; and to get through with my list by midnight, I had to start in at nine o'clock in the morning."

"Nine o'clock is not so early," said Mr. Whitechoker.

"It's early for cake and pickled oysters," said the Idiot. "And for chicken salad and wedding-cake, and for lemonade and punch, and for lobster and egg-nog, and for ice-cream and pÂtÉ-de-foie-gras."

"H'm!" said Mr. Pedagog, reflectively. "That's true."

"Quite so," observed Mr. Whitechoker, brushing off his vest, upon which the ashes of his cigar had rested. "Especially for the punch."

"There was no punch in my house," said Mrs. Pedagog. "Indeed, I always served a very simple luncheon. We did have chicken salad, of course, but the chicken was good and the salad was crisp—"

"I'd swear to it," said the Idiot.

"And we had egg-nog, but there was more egg than nog in it—"

"Again I'd swear to it," said the Idiot, smacking his lips.

"And as for the lobsters, nobody ever complained—"

"He'd have been a lobster himself who would," said the Idiot. "But that does not prove that no one ever suffered."

"And as for the pickled oysters, no one ever suffered from them that I knew of," continued the good lady. "They are harmless eaten in moderation."

"Exactly right," cried the Idiot. "No gentleman would ever complain of pickled oysters, even if they were made of inferior rubber, eaten in moderation. Yet I recall in my own experience a pickled oyster of most impressive quality. He was not a pickled oyster of the moment. He was the Admiral Dewey of pickled oysters. In appearance he resembled every other pickled oyster I ever met, but—well, he kept me in a state of worry for a month. Just eating him alone was eating pickled oysters in immoderation. I felt as if I had swallowed an overshoe. He was a charming pickled oyster, Mrs. Pedagog, and he was devoted to me, but he involved me in complications alongside of which the Philippine question is child's play. If a New-Year's caller could have confined his attentions to the ladies he met no harm would have come to him, but he couldn't, you know. The day was one continuous round of effort and indigestibles. What a man got at your house and had to eat merely to show his appreciation of your hospitality was all right and wholesome. Your lobster and egg-nog could do him no harm, but he couldn't stop with yours; he had to continue, and consume lobsters and egg-nog everywhere else and all day long. The day resolved itself into a magnificent gorge alongside of which that of Niagara seems like a wagon-rut. It finally came down to the point where either man or the custom had to die, and man being selfish, the custom went. Did you ever consider exactly how much indigestible food an amiable, well-meaning person had to consume in a round of, say, three dozen calls, Mrs. Pedagog?"

Mr. Brief nodded his approval. "Now you've struck it," he said. "I've been there, Idiot."

"I must confess," said Mrs. Pedagog, "that I never looked into that question."

"Well, I'll tell you," the Idiot resumed. "The last time I made New-Year's calls I figured it out for the doctor the next morning, and as I recall the statistics, in the course of that day I ate one hundred and twenty-nine pickled oysters, thirteen plates of chicken salad, seven plates of lobster salad, five plates of mulled sardines, twenty-three plates of ice-cream, four hundred and sixty-three macaroons, eighty-seven sandwiches ranging from lettuce and ham to chicken and potted goose-liver, enough angel-cake to feed all the angels there are and two more, sixteen Welsh rarebits that were being made just as I happened in, and crystallized ginger and salted almonds and marrons to the extent of about eighteen pounds."

"Mercy!" cried Mrs. Pedagog.

"Say, pa, where was I then?" asked Tommy, his eyes glittering with delight.

"You were eating green cheese on the moon, Tommy," said the Idiot.

"Wisht I'd been with you," said Tommy. "Must o' been better than bein' a pie."

"And all of these things," continued the Idiot, with a wink at his son, "I washed down with six gallons of lemonade, nineteen cups of coffee, eighteen cups of tea, and a taste of claret punch."

"And how about the egg-nog?" asked the Bibliomaniac, slyly.

"I judge there were about six crates of eggs in it," said the Idiot. "I never had the nerve to estimate the nog-end of it."

"What did the doctor say when you told him all that?" asked Mrs. Pedagog.

The Idiot chuckled. "What did he say?" he cried. "Why, I should think you could guess. He blamed it all on the Welsh rarebits, but he thought he could get me into shape again in time for the next New Year. I've never been the same man since."

"Well, the way I look at it," said Mrs. Pedagog, "is that it is a great pity that women must be deprived of a function that gives them pleasure because the men make pigs of themselves."

"But you don't understand, Mrs. Pedagog," the Idiot persisted. "I grant you that the man who eats all that makes a pig of himself, but he has no choice. He can't help himself. When a charming hostess insists, he'd be a greater pig if he refused to partake of her hospitality. The custom involved an inevitable sacrifice of man's digestion upon the altar of woman. That's all there was about it. If it could have been arranged so that a man could take a hamper about with him and stow all the cakes and salads and other good things away in that, and eat them later as he happened to need or want them, instead of in his own inner self, the good old custom might have been preserved, but that is impossible in these conventional days."

"You needn't have eaten it all," put in Mrs. Idiot. "You could have pretended to eat it and put it down somewhere."

"I know that, my dear. I didn't even on that occasion eat it all—I only ate what I told you. I found eight sandwiches and a pint of salted almonds in my coat-tail pocket the next morning, which I managed surreptitiously to hide away while my hostesses were getting me something else, and in one place, while nobody was watching me, I hid a half-dozen pickled oysters under a sofa, where I suppose they were found some days later when the room was put in order."

As the Idiot spoke the clock struck twelve, and the guests all rose up.

"Here's to the New Year!" said Mr. Pedagog.

"Not yet," interposed the Idiot. "That's only a signal for the Welsh rarebits to be brought in. I've sworn them off for the New Year, but I haven't for the old. The clock is a half-hour fast."

"No, my dear," said Mrs. Idiot. "It was, but I put it back. It's exactly right now."

"Then," said the Idiot, "I join you in the toast, Mr. Pedagog. Here's to the New Year: may it bring joy to everybody. Meanwhile may it bring also the Welsh rarebits."

"I thought you'd sworn off," suggested Mr. Pedagog.

"So I had," replied the Idiot, "but circumstances over which I have no control force me to postpone my reformation for another twelve months. If they had been served at half-past eleven I should have stuck to my resolve; as they have been delayed until twelve-one I cannot do less than eat them. I do not believe in wilful waste; and besides, it is quite as much the duty of the host to consume the good things he places before his guests as it is for the guests to partake. I can wait a year, I think, without wholly ruining what little digestion my former devotion to New-Year's calling has left me. Gentlemen, I propose the ladies: May their future be as golden as this rarebit; and for the men, may they always be worthy to be the toast upon which that golden future may rest with the certainty born of confidence."

And the guests fell to and ate each a golden buck to the New Year—all save Mollie and Tommy. These two important members of the household went up to their little beds, but just before going to sleep Tommy called through the door to his little sister:

"Mollie!"

"Yeth!"

"Want to play a game with me to-morrow?"

"Yeth!"

"Well, you get a cake and a pie and some gingersnaps and a lot of apples and some candy and we'll play New-Year's calls."

"Splendid!" lisped Mollie. "You'll call on me?"

"Yes," said Tommy; "and all you'll have to do will be to force food on me."

And they soon passed into the land of dreams.