To be dull of wit is sadly unfortunate, but to be dull of wit and be compelled to live in a Colony made up of more or less reckless young men is doubly unfortunate.

In the group eccentricities are quickly discouraged. The grouch, the crank, the bully, if he would remain and live in harmony must learn his lesson in democracy—the individualist is given short shift.

Of course the dull of wit should be given immunity at all times, and in theory he is, but in real practice even the most gentle hearted man will have his little joke at the expense of the man less alert mentally. The members of the Colony are no exception to this rule.

“Tell us more,” the boys asked of the Moon-Struck-One, one evening after the day’s work was done, “about the inhabitants of Mars, which you see in your trances.”

And then he—the Moon-Struck-One—would explain in detail the strange people he had seen in his dreams.

“These planets,” he told them, “are all being made ready for the coming race of Man.... After Cycles and Cycles, we move on to newer and better worlds.... Each of the mystic Seven Planets are at the service of the human race. Time and time again a new world has borne the burden of the evolving man’s hope and his despair.... The cosmic scheme is worthy of the Wondrous God, who holds not only the Seven Planets in control, but rules the Seven Universes with their Seven Suns—you laugh, most men laugh, the churchmen laugh, they do not know, they have not seen—but I know and have seen.”

“How interesting,” said one boy, winking slyly to his fellows. “I know something of astronomy myself; my brother was a Princeton graduate.”

It was a summer’s evening when this conversation took place and the boys were sitting out on the lawn enjoying the night air, for the day had been hot and oppressive.

“What do any of you know of the Stars?” said the Moon-Struck-Sage.

“Very little, but tell us,” said one of the boys, “for I believe in your visions. I dreamed one night myself about a big fire—a bad sign as you very well know—and the next day I got ‘pinched.’”

“Yes, you are deeply learned in the Stars,” he said with smiling skepticism, “that is, I suppose you can tell the difference between a star and a lantern.”

“Look out,” said a boy who had not spoken before, “he is joking you.”

“No, seriously,” said the Witless One, "when I said ‘lantern’ I had reference to the light that Edison hangs out each night when the weather is clear—you have no doubt read of it. He plans to construct a light that will illuminate this country at night almost as brightly as the sun lights it by day.... Do you see that light just above the trees in the East. You can tell it as it is larger than any stars around it. It has the appearance of a star only much brighter. Do you see it?"

“Yes,” said the boys who were all attention, although one or two were skeptical until one of the group remembered that he had read about Edison’s powerful light in the Sunday magazine supplement of a New York paper.

“He is a wonderful man,” said another.

At last all were convinced and the Moon-Struck-One, satisfied, arose rather abruptly, and went into the house.

A few days later he left the Colony to go to his relatives in a distant city, and so the boys had no one to play tricks upon, no one who was not their equal in wit.

It was some weeks afterwards that one of the young men said to me as we were talking out of doors in the evening:

“There is that light of Edison’s hanging over the trees.”

“Where?” I asked.

“That bright light over there that looks like a big star. The Witless One told us about it. In some ways he was really wiser than we gave him credit for.”

“That’s the Evening Star,” I said.

“It is what?” asked another boy.

“It is Venus, the Evening Star.”

“He told us it was put up there by Edison.”

“So it really isn’t an illuminated balloon?”

The boys looked from one to the other, then every one laughed loudly and long.

“Doesn’t the Bible say, ‘Answer a fool according to his folly?’” asked a boy.

“Yes, and it also says, ‘Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.’”