The idea struck Professor John Bickering in a telephone booth in a d**g store on West Seventeenth Street. Bickering had been heading for a book shop where he bought most of his volumes on psychology, when he remembered he had left his electric razor connected to his hotel room current.
The razor was a gift from an aunt in Toledo. He hoped he could make contact with the hotel clerk before it would be ruined.
But once in the phone booth, Bickering noticed, absently at first, the markings on the wall. An instant later his call and the razor were forgotten.
The markings were familiar. He had seen them, or rather their counterparts, on the backs of old magazines, in book fly-leaves, wherever in fact some member of the American public found it necessary to pass time.
They were doodlings.
Bi
