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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Idiot, by John Kendrick Bangs
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Idiot
+
+
+Author: John Kendrick Bangs
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 20, 2006  [eBook #18881]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDIOT***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 18881-h.htm or 18881-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/8/8/18881/18881-h/18881-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/8/8/18881/18881-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE IDIOT
+
+by
+
+JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
+
+Author of "Coffee and Repartee" "The Water Ghost, and Others" "Three
+Weeks in Politics" Etc.
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+1895
+Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers.
+All rights reserved.
+
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM K. OTIS
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+   "CERTAINLY. I ASKED FOR ANOTHER CUP"
+
+   "THE NUISANCE OF HAVING TO PAY"
+
+   "SHE COULD NOT POSSIBLY GET ABOARD AGAIN"
+
+   "DEMANDS TICKETS FOR TWO"
+
+   "THEY ARE GIVEN TO REHEARSING AT ALL HOURS"
+
+   "'HA! HA! I HAVE HIM NOW!'"
+
+   "HAS YOUR FRIEND COMPLETED HIS ARTICLE ON OLD JOKES?"
+
+   THEY DEPARTED
+
+   "YOU FISH ALL DAY, AND HAVE NO LUCK"
+
+   HE COULD BE HEARD THROWING THINGS ABOUT
+
+   "HE WAS NOT MURDERED"
+
+   "SUPERINTENDENT SMITHERS HAS NOT ABSCONDED"
+
+   THE INSPIRED BOARDER PAID HIS BILL
+
+   "I KNOW YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE IT ISN'T THERE"
+
+   "YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HEARD IN SAN FRANCISCO"
+
+   THE PROPHETOGRAPH
+
+   "I GRASPED IT IN MY TWO HANDS"
+
+   "PIANO-PLAYING ISN'T ALWAYS MUSIC"
+
+   "THE MOON ITSELF WILL BE USED"
+
+   "DECLINES TO BE RIDDEN"
+
+   "THE BIBLIOMANIAC WOULD BE RAISING BULBS"
+
+   "DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH TO CHOOSE HIS OWN FACE"
+
+   "JANITORS HAVE TO BE SEEN TO"
+
+   "MY ELOQUENCE FLOATED UP THE AIR-SHAFT"
+
+
+
+
+THE IDIOT
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+For some weeks after the happy event which transformed the popular Mrs.
+Smithers into the charming Mrs. John Pedagog all went well at that lady's
+select home for single gentlemen. It was only proper that during the
+honey-moon, at least, of the happy couple hostilities between the Idiot
+and his fellow-boarders should cease. It was expecting too much of
+mankind, however, to look for a continued armistice, and the morning
+arrived when Nature once more reasserted herself, and trouble began. Just
+what it was that prompted the remark no one knows, but it happened that
+the Idiot did say that he thought that, after all, life on a canal-boat
+had its advantages. Mr. Pedagog, who had come into the dining-room in a
+slightly irritable frame of mind, induced perhaps by Mrs. Pedagog's
+insistence that as he was now part proprietor of the house he should be
+a little more prompt in making his contributions towards its maintenance,
+chose to take the remark as implying a reflection upon the way things
+were managed in the household.
+
+"Humph!" he said. "I had hoped that your habit of airing your idiotic
+views had been put aside for once and for all."
+
+"Very absurd hope, my dear sir," observed the Idiot. "Views that are not
+aired become musty. Why shouldn't I give them an atmospheric opportunity
+once in a while?"
+
+"Because they are the sort of views to which suffocation is the most
+appropriate end," snapped the School-Master. "Any man who asserts, as you
+have asserted, that life on a canal-boat has its advantages, ought to go
+further, and prove his sincerity by living on one."
+
+"I can't afford it," said the Idiot, meekly. "It isn't cheap by any
+manner of means. In the first place, you can't live happily on a
+canal-boat unless you can afford to keep horses. In fact, canal-boat life
+is a combination of the most expensive luxuries, since it combines
+yachting and driving with domesticity. Nevertheless, if you will put your
+mind on it, you will find that with a canal-boat for your home you can do
+a great many things that you can't do with a house."
+
+"I decline to put my mind on a canal-boat," said Mr. Pedagog, sharply,
+passing his coffee back to Mrs. Pedagog for another lump of sugar,
+thereby contributing to that good lady's discomfiture, since before their
+marriage the mere fact that the coffee had been poured by her fair hand
+had given it all the sweetness it needed; or at least that was what the
+School-Master had said, and more than once at that.
+
+"You are under no obligation to do so," the Idiot returned. "Though if I
+had a mind like yours I'd put it on a canal-boat and have it towed away
+somewhere out of sight. These other gentlemen, however, I think, will
+agree with me when I say that the mere fact that a canal-boat can be
+moved about the country, and is in no sense a fixture anywhere, shows
+that as a dwelling-place it is superior to a house. Take this house, for
+instance. This neighborhood used to be the best in town. It is still far
+from being the worst neighborhood in town, but it is, as it has been for
+several years, deteriorating. The establishment of a Turkish bath on one
+corner and a grocery-store on the other has taken away much of that air
+of refinement which characterized it when the block was devoted to
+residential purposes entirely. Now just suppose for a moment that this
+street were a canal, and that this house were a canal-boat. The canal
+could run down as much as it pleased, the neighborhood could deteriorate
+eternally, but it could not affect the value of this house as the home of
+refined people as long as it was possible to hitch up a team of horses to
+the front stoop and tow it into a better locality. I'd like to wager
+every man at this table that Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't take five minutes to
+make up her mind to tow this house up to a spot near Central Park, if it
+were a canal-boat and the streets were water instead of a mixture of
+water, sand, and Belgian blocks."
+
+"No takers," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Tutt-tutt-tutt," ejaculated Mr. Pedagog.
+
+[Illustration: "THE NUISANCE OF HAVING TO PAY"]
+
+"You seem to lose sight of another fact," said the Idiot, warming up to
+his subject. "If man had had the sense in the beginning to adopt the
+canal-boat system of life, and we were used to that sort of thing, it
+would not be so hard upon us in summer-time, when we have to live in
+hotels in order that we and our families may reap the benefits of a
+period of country life. We could simply drive off to that section of the
+country where we desired to be. Hotels would not be needed if a man could
+take his house along with him into the fields, and one phase of life
+which has more bad than good in it would be entirely obliterated. There
+is nothing more disturbing to the serenity of a domestic man's mind than
+the artificial manner of living that prevails in most summer hotels. The
+nuisance of having to pay bills every Monday morning under the penalty of
+losing one's luggage would be obviated, and all the comforts of home
+would be directly within reach. The trouble incident upon getting the
+trunks packed and the children ready for a long day's journey by rail,
+and the fatigue arising from such a journey, would be reduced to a
+minimum. The troubles attendant upon going into a far country, and
+leaving one's house in the sole charge of a lot of servants for a month
+or two every year, would be done away with entirely; and if at any time
+it became necessary to discharge one of these servants, she could be put
+off the boat in an instant, and then the boat could be pushed out into
+the middle of the canal, so that the discharged domestic could not
+possibly get aboard again and take her revenge by smashing your crockery
+and fixtures. That is one of the worst features of living in a stationary
+house. You are entirely at the mercy of vindictive servants. They know
+precisely where you live, and you cannot escape them. They can come back
+when there is no man around, and raise several varieties of Ned with your
+wife and children. With a movable house, such as the canal-boat would be,
+you could always go off and leave your family in perfect safety."
+
+[Illustration: "SHE COULD NOT POSSIBLY GET ABOARD AGAIN"]
+
+"How about safety in a storm?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Safety in a storm?" echoed the Idiot. "That seems an absurd sort of a
+question to one who knows anything about canal-boats. I, for one, never
+heard of a canal-boat being seriously damaged in a storm as long as it
+was anchored in the canal proper. It certainly isn't any more dangerous
+to be in a canal-boat in a storm than it is to be in a house that
+offers resistance to the winds, and is shaken from roof to cellar at
+every blast. More houses have been blown from their foundations than
+canal-boats sunk, provided ordinary care has been taken to protect
+them."
+
+"And you think the canal-boat would be healthy?" asked the Doctor. "How
+about dampness and all that?"
+
+"That is a professional question," returned the Idiot, "which I think you
+could answer better than I. I don't see why a canal-boat shouldn't be
+healthy, however. The dampness would not amount to very much. It would be
+outside of one's dwelling, and not within it, as is the case with so many
+houses. A canal-boat having no cellar could not have a damp one, and if
+by some untoward circumstance it should spring a leak, the water could
+be pumped out at once and the leak plugged up. However this might be,
+I'll offer another wager to this board on that point, and that is that
+more people die in houses than on canal-boats."
+
+"We'd rather give you our money right out," retorted the Doctor.
+
+"Thank you," said the Idiot. "But I don't need money. I don't like money.
+Money is responsible for more extravagance than any other commodity in
+existence. Besides, it and I are not intimate enough to get along very
+well together, and when I have any I immediately do my level best to rid
+myself of it. But to return to our canal-boat, I note a look of
+disapproval in Mr. Whitechoker's eyes. He doesn't seem to think any
+more of my scheme than do the rest of you--which I regret, since I
+believe that he would be the gainer if land edifices were supplanted by
+the canal system as proposed by myself. Take church on a rainy morning,
+for instance. A great many people stay at home from church on rainy
+mornings just because they do not want to venture out in the wet. Suppose
+we all lived in canal-boats? Would not people be deprived of this flimsy
+pretext for staying at home if their homes could be towed up to the
+church door? Or, better yet, granting that the churches followed out the
+same plan, and were themselves constructed like canal-boats, how easy it
+would be for the sexton to drive the church around the town and collect
+the absentees. In the same manner it would be glorious for men like
+ourselves, who have to go to their daily toil. For a consideration, Mrs.
+Pedagog could have us driven to our various places of business every
+morning, returning for us in the evening. Think how fine it would be for
+me, for instance, instead of having to come home every night in an
+overcrowded elevated train or on a cable-car, to have the office-boy come
+and announce, 'Mrs. Pedagog's Select Home for Gentlemen is at the door,
+Mr. Idiot.' I could step right out of my office into my charming little
+bedroom up in the bow, and the time usually expended on the cars could be
+devoted to dressing for tea. Then we could stop in at the court-house for
+our legal friend; and as for Doctor Capsule, wouldn't he revel in driving
+this boarding-house about town on his daily rounds among his patients?"
+
+"What would become of my office hours?" asked the Doctor. "If this house
+were whirling giddily all about the city from morning until night, I
+don't know what would become of my office patients."
+
+"They might die a little sooner or live a little longer, that is all,"
+said the Idiot. "If they weren't able to find the house at all, however,
+I think it would be better for us, for much as I admire you, Doctor, I
+think your office hours are a nuisance to the rest of us. I had to elbow
+my way out of the house this morning between a double line of sufferers
+from mumps and influenza, and other pleasingly afflicted patients of
+yours, and I didn't like it very much."
+
+"I don't believe they liked it much either," returned the Doctor. "One
+man with a sprained ankle told me about you. You shoved him in passing."
+
+"Well, you can apologize to him in my behalf," returned the Idiot; "but
+you might add that he must expect very much the same treatment whenever
+he and a boy with mumps stand between me and the door. Sprained ankles
+aren't contagious, and I preferred shoving him to the other alternative."
+
+The Doctor was silent, and the Idiot rose to go. "Where will the house be
+this evening about six-thirty, Mrs. Pedagog?" he asked, as he pushed his
+chair back from the table.
+
+"Where? Why, here, of course," returned the landlady.
+
+"Why, yes--of course," observed the Idiot, with an impatient gesture.
+"How foolish of me! I've really been so wrapped up in my canal-boat ideal
+that I came to believe that it might possibly be real and not a dream,
+after all. I almost believed that perhaps I should find that the house
+had been towed somewhere up into Westchester County on my return, so that
+we might all escape the city's tax on personal property, which I am told
+is unusually high this year."
+
+With which sally the Idiot kissed his hand to Mr. Pedagog and retired
+from the scene.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"Let's write a book," suggested the Idiot, as he took his place at the
+board and unfolded his napkin.
+
+"What about?" asked the Doctor, with a smile at the idea of the Idiot's
+thinking of embarking on literary pursuits.
+
+"About four hundred pages long," said the Idiot. "I feel inspired."
+
+"You are inspired," said the School-Master. "In your way you are a
+genius. I really never heard of such a variegated Idiot as you are in all
+my experience, and that means a great deal, I can tell you, for in the
+course of my career as an instructor of youth I have encountered many
+idiots."
+
+"Were they idiots before or after having drank at the fount of your
+learning?" asked the Idiot, placidly.
+
+Mr. Pedagog glared, and the Idiot was apparently satisfied. To make Mr.
+Pedagog glare appeared to be one of the chiefest of his ambitions.
+
+"You will kindly remember, Mr. Idiot," said Mrs. Pedagog at this point,
+"that Mr. Pedagog is my husband, and such insinuations at my table are
+distinctly out of place."
+
+"I ask your pardon, Mrs. Pedagog," rejoined the offender, meekly.
+"Nevertheless, as apart from the question in hand as to whether Mr.
+Pedagog inspires idiocy or not, I should like to get the views of this
+gathering on the point you make regarding the table. _Is_ this your
+table? Is it not rather the table of those who sit about it to regale
+their inner man with the good things under which I remember once or twice
+in my life to have heard it groan? To my mind, the latter is the truth.
+It is _our_ table, because we buy it, and I am forced to believe that
+some of us pay for it. I am prepared to admit that if Mr. Brief, for
+instance, is delinquent in his weekly payments, his interest in the table
+reverts to you until he shall have liquidated, and he is not privileged
+to say a word that you do not approve of; but I, for instance, who since
+January 1st have been compelled to pay in advance, am at least sole
+lessee, and for the time being proprietor of the portion for which I have
+paid. You have sold it to me. I have entered into possession, and while
+in possession, as a matter of right and not on sufferance, haven't I the
+privilege of freedom of speech?"
+
+"You certainly exercise the privilege whether you have it or not,"
+snapped Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Well, I believe in exercise," said the Idiot. "Exercise brings strength,
+and if exercising the privilege is going to strengthen it, exercise it I
+shall, if I have to hire a gymnasium for the purpose. But to return to
+Mrs. Pedagog's remark. It brings up another question that has more or
+less interested me. Because Mrs. Smithers married Mr. Pedagog, do we lose
+all of our rights in Mr. Pedagog? Before the happy event that reduced our
+number from ten to nine--"
+
+"We are still ten, are we not?" asked Mr. Whitechoker, counting the
+guests.
+
+"Not if Mr. Pedagog and the late Mrs. Smithers have become one," said the
+Idiot. "But, as I was saying, before the happy event that reduced our
+number from ten to nine we were permitted to address our friend Pedagog
+in any terms we saw fit, and whenever he became sufficiently interested
+to indulge in repartee we were privileged to return it. Have we
+relinquished that privilege? I don't remember to have done so."
+
+"It's a question worthy of your giant intellect," said Mr. Pedagog,
+scornfully. "For myself, I do not at all object to anything you may
+choose to say to me or of me. Your assaults are to me as water is to a
+duck's back."
+
+"I am sorry," said the Idiot. "I hate family disagreements, and here we
+have Mrs. Pedagog taking one side and Mr. Pedagog the other. But whatever
+decision may ultimately be reached, of one thing Mrs. Pedagog must be
+assured. I on principle side against Mr. Pedagog, and if it be the wish
+of my good landlady that I shall refrain from playing intellectual
+battledore and shuttlecock with her husband, whom we all revere, I
+certainly shall refrain. Hereafter if I indulge in anything that in any
+sense resembles repartee with our landlord, I wish it distinctly
+understood that an apology goes with it."
+
+"That's all right, my boy," said the School-Master. "You mean well. You
+are a little new, that's all, and we all understand you."
+
+"I don't understand him," growled the Doctor, still smarting under the
+recollection of former breakfast-table discomfitures. "I wish we could
+get him translated."
+
+"If you prescribed for me once or twice I think it likely I should be
+translated in short order," retorted the Idiot. "I wonder how I'd go
+translated into French?"
+
+"You couldn't be expressed in French," put in the Lawyer. "It would take
+some barbarian tongue to do you justice."
+
+"Very well," said the Idiot. "Proceed. Do me justice."
+
+"I can't begin to," said Mr. Brief, angrily.
+
+"That's what I thought," said the Idiot. "That's the reason why you
+always do me such great injustice. You lawyers always have to be doing
+something, even if it is only holding down a chair so that it won't blow
+out of your office window. If you haven't any justice to mete out, you
+take another tack and dispense injustice with lavish hand. However, I'll
+forgive you if you'll tell me one thing. What's libel, Mr. Brief?"
+
+"None of your business," growled the Lawyer.
+
+"A very good general definition," said the Idiot, approvingly. "If
+there's any business in the world that I should hate to have known as
+mine it is that of libel. I think, however, your definition is not
+definite. What I wanted to know was just how far I could go with remarks
+at this table and be safe from prosecution."
+
+"Nobody would ever prosecute you, for two reasons," said the lawyer. "In
+a civil action for money damages a verdict against you for ten cents
+wouldn't be worth a rap, because the chances are you couldn't pay. In a
+criminal action your conviction would be a bad thing, because you would
+be likely to prove a corrupting influence in any jail in creation.
+Besides, you'd be safe before a jury, anyhow. You are just the sort of
+idiot that the intelligent jurors of to-day admire, and they'd acquit you
+of any crime. A man has a right to a trial at the hands of a jury of his
+peers. I don't think even in a jury-box twelve idiots equal to yourself
+could be found, so don't worry."
+
+"Thanks. Have a cigarette?" said the Idiot, tossing one over to the
+Lawyer. "It's all I have. If I had a half-dollar I should pay you for
+your opinion; but since I haven't, I offer you my all. The temperature of
+my coffee seems to have fallen, Mrs. Pedagog. Will you kindly let me have
+another cup?"
+
+"Certainly," said Mrs. Pedagog. "Mary, get the Idiot another cup."
+
+Mary did as she was told, placing the empty bit of china at Mrs.
+Pedagog's side.
+
+"It is for the Idiot, Mary," said Mrs. Pedagog, coldly. "Take it to him."
+
+"Empty, ma'am?" asked the maid.
+
+"Certainly, Mary," said the Idiot, perceiving Mrs. Pedagog's point. "I
+asked for another cup, not for more coffee."
+
+[Illustration: "CERTAINLY. I ASKED FOR ANOTHER CUP"]
+
+Mrs. Pedagog smiled quietly at her own joke. At hair-splitting she could
+give the Idiot points.
+
+"I am surprised that Mary should have thought I wanted more coffee,"
+continued the Idiot, in an aggrieved tone. "It shows that she too thinks
+me out of my mind."
+
+"You are not out of your mind," said the Bibliomaniac. "It would be a
+good thing if you were. In replenishing your mental supply you might have
+the luck to get better quality."
+
+"I probably should have the luck," said the Idiot. "I have had a great
+store of it in my life. From the very start I have had luck. When I think
+that I was born myself, and not you, I feel as if I had had more than my
+share of good-fortune--more luck than the law allows. How much luck does
+the law allow, Mr. Brief?"
+
+"Bosh!" said Mr. Brief, with a scornful wave of his hand, as if he
+were ridding himself of a troublesome gnat. "Don't bother me with such
+mind-withering questions."
+
+"All right," said the Idiot. "I'll ask you an easier one. Why does not
+the world recognize matrimony?"
+
+Mr. Whitechoker started. Here, indeed, was a novel proposition.
+
+"I--I--must confess," said he, "that of all the idiotic questions
+I--er--I have ever had the honor of hearing asked that takes the--"
+
+"Cake?" suggested the Idiot.
+
+"--palm!" said Mr. Whitechoker, severely.
+
+"Well, perhaps so," said the Idiot. "But matrimony is the science, or the
+art, or whatever you call it, of making two people one, is it not?"
+
+"It certainly is," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But what of it?"
+
+"The world does not recognize the unity," said the Idiot. "Take our good
+proprietors, for instance. They were made one by yourself, Mr.
+Whitechoker. I had the pleasure of being an usher at the ceremony,
+yielding the position of best man gracefully, as is my wont, to the
+Bibliomaniac. He was best man, but not the better man, by a simple
+process of reasoning. Now no one at this board disputes that Mr. and Mrs.
+Pedagog are one, but how about the world? Mr. Pedagog takes Mrs. Pedagog
+to a concert. Are they one there?"
+
+"Why not?" asked Mr. Brief.
+
+"That's what I want to know--why not? The world, as represented by the
+ticket-taker at the door, says they are not--or implies that they are
+not, by demanding tickets for two. They attempt to travel out to Niagara
+Falls. The railroad people charge them two fares; the hackman charges
+them two fares; the hotel bills are made out for two people. It is the
+same wherever they go in the world, and I regret to say that even in our
+own home there is a disposition to regard them as two. When I spoke of
+there being nine persons here instead of ten, Mr. Whitechoker himself
+disputed my point--and yet it was not so much his fault as the fault of
+Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog themselves. Mrs. Pedagog seems to cast doubt upon
+the unity by providing two separate chairs for the two halves that make
+up the charming entirety. Two cups are provided for their coffee. Two
+forks, two knives, two spoons, two portions of all the delicacies of the
+season which are lavished upon us out of season--generally after it--fall
+to their lot. They do not object to being called a happy _couple_, when
+they should be known as a happy single. Now what I want to know is why
+the world does not accept the shrinkage which has been pronounced valid
+by the church and is recognized by the individual? Can any one here tell
+me that?"
+
+[Illustration: "DEMANDS TICKETS FOR TWO"]
+
+No one could, apparently. At least no one endeavored to. The Idiot looked
+inquiringly at all, and then, receiving no reply to his question, he rose
+from the table.
+
+"I think," he said, as he started to leave the room--"I think we ought to
+write that book. If we made it up of the things you people don't know, it
+would be one of the greatest books of the century. At any rate, it would
+be great enough in bulk to fill the biggest library in America."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+"I wish I were beginning life all over again," said the Idiot one spring
+morning, as he took his accustomed place at Mrs. Pedagog's table.
+
+"I wish you were," said Mr. Pedagog from behind his newspaper. "Then your
+parents would have you shut up in a nursery, and it is even conceivable
+that you would be receiving those disciplinary attentions with a slipper
+that you seem to me so frequently to deserve, were you at this present
+moment in the nursery stage of your development."
+
+"My!" ejaculated the Idiot. "What a wonder you are, Mr. Pedagog! It is a
+good thing you are not a justice in a criminal court."
+
+"And what, may I venture to ask," said Mr. Pedagog, glancing at the Idiot
+over his spectacles--"what has given rise to that extraordinary remark,
+the connection of which with anything that has been said or done this
+morning is distinctly not apparent?"
+
+"I only meant that a man who was so given over to long sentences as you
+are would probably make too severe a judge in a criminal court," replied
+the Idiot, meekly. "Do you make use of the same phraseology in the
+class-room that you dazzle us with, I should like to know?"
+
+"And why not, pray?" said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"No special reason," said the Idiot; "only it does seem to me that an
+instructor of youth ought to be more careful in his choice of adverbs
+than you appear to be. Of course Doctor Bolus here is under no obligation
+to speak more grammatically or correctly than he does. People call him in
+to prescribe, not to indulge in rhetorical periods, and he can write his
+prescriptions in a sort of intuitive Latin and nobody be the wiser, but
+you, who are said to be sowing the seeds of knowledge in the brain of
+youth, should be more careful."
+
+"Hear the grammarian talk!" returned Mr. Pedagog. "Listen to this
+embryonic Samuel Johnson the Second. What have I said that so offends the
+linguistic taste of Lindley Murray, Jun.?"
+
+"Nothing," returned the Idiot. "I cannot say that you have said anything.
+I never heard you say anything in my life; but while you can no doubt
+find good authority for making use of the words 'distinctly not
+apparent,' you ought not to throw such phrases around carelessly. The
+thing which is distinct is apparent, therefore to say 'distinctly not
+apparent' to a mind that is not given to analysis sounds strange. You
+might as well say of a beautiful girl that she is plainly pretty, meaning
+of course that she is evidently pretty; but those who are unacquainted
+with the idiomatic peculiarities of your speech might ask you if you
+meant that she was pretty in a plain sort of way. Suppose, too, you were
+writing a novel, and, in a desire to give your reader a fair idea of the
+personal appearance of a homely but good creature, you should say, 'It
+cannot be denied that Rosamond Follansbee was pretty plain?' It wouldn't
+take a very grave error of the types to change your entire meaning. To
+save a line on a page, for instance, it might become necessary to
+eliminate a single word; and if that word should chance to be the word
+'plain' in the sentence I have given, your homely but good person would
+be set down as being undeniably pretty. Which shows, it seems to me, that
+too great care cannot be exercised in the making of selections from our
+vocabu--"
+
+"You are the worst I _ever_ knew!" snapped Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Which only proves," observed the Idiot, "that you have not heeded the
+Scriptural injunction that you should know thyself. Are those buckwheat
+cakes or doilies?"
+
+Whether the question was heard or not is not known. It certainly was not
+answered, and silence reigned for a few minutes. Finally Mrs. Pedagog
+spoke, and in the manner of one who was somewhat embarrassed. "I am in an
+embarrassing position," said she.
+
+"Good!" said the Idiot, _sotto-voce_, to the genial gentleman who
+occasionally imbibed. "There is hope for the landlady yet. If she can be
+embarrassed she is still human--a condition I was beginning to think she
+wotted not of."
+
+"She whatted what?" queried the genial gentleman, not quite catching the
+Idiot's words.
+
+"Never mind," returned the Idiot. "Let's hear how she ever came to be
+embarrassed."
+
+"I have had an application for my first-floor suite, and I don't know
+whether I ought to accept it or not," said the landlady.
+
+"She has a conscience, too," whispered the Idiot; and then he added,
+aloud, "And wherein lies the difficulty, Mrs. Pedagog?"
+
+"The applicant is an actor; Junius Brutus Davenport is his name."
+
+"A tragedian or a comedian?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Or first walking gentleman, who knows every railroad tie in the
+country?" put in the Idiot.
+
+"That I do not know," returned the landlady. "His name sounds familiar
+enough, though. I thought perhaps some of you gentlemen might know of
+him."
+
+"I have heard of Junius Brutus," observed the Doctor, chuckling slightly
+at his own humor, "and I've heard of Davenport, but Junius Brutus
+Davenport is a combination with which I am not familiar."
+
+"Well, I can't see why it should make any difference whether the man is a
+tragedian, or a comedian, or a familiar figure to railroad men," said Mr.
+Whitechoker, firmly. "In any event, he would be an extremely objec--"
+
+"It makes a great deal of difference," said the Idiot. "I've met
+tragedians, and I've met comedians, and I've met New York Central stars,
+and I can assure you they each represent a distinct type. The tragedians,
+as a rule, are quiet meek individuals, with soft low voices, in private
+life. They are more timid than otherwise, though essentially amiable.
+I knew a tragedian once who, after killing seventeen Indians, a
+road-agent, and a gross of cowboys between eight and ten P.M.
+every night for sixteen weeks, working six nights a week, was afraid of a
+mild little soft-shell crab that lay defenceless on a plate before him on
+the evening of the seventh night of the last week. Tragedians make
+agreeable companions, I can tell you; and if J. Brutus Davenport is a
+tragedian, I think Mrs. Pedagog would do well to let him have the suite,
+provided, of course, that he pays for it in advance."
+
+"I was about to observe, when our friend interrupted me," said Mr.
+Whitechoker, with dignity, "that in any event an actor at this board
+would be to me an extremely objec--"
+
+"Now the comedians," resumed the Idiot, ignoring Mr. Whitechoker's
+remark--"the comedians are very different. They are twice as bloodthirsty
+as the murderers of the drama, and, worse than that, they are given to
+rehearsing at all hours of the day and night. A tragedian is a hard
+character only on the stage, but the comedian is the comedian always.
+If we had one of those fellows in our midst, it would not be very long
+before we became part of the drama ourselves. Mrs. Pedagog would find
+herself embarrassed once an hour, instead of, as at present, once a
+century. Mr. Whitechoker would hear of himself as having appeared by
+proxy in a roaring farce before our comedian had been with us two months.
+The wise sayings of our friend the School-Master would be spoken nightly
+from the stage, to the immense delight of the gallery gods, and to the
+edification of the orchestra circle, who would wonder how so much
+information could have got into the world and they not know it before.
+The out-of-town papers would literally teem with witty extracts from our
+comedian's plays, which we should immediately recognize as the dicta of
+my poor self."
+
+[Illustration: "THEY ARE GIVEN TO REHEARSING AT ALL HOURS"]
+
+"All of which," put in Mr. Whitechoker, "but proves the truth of my
+assertion that such a person would be an extremely objec--"
+
+"Then, as I said before," continued the Idiot, "he is continually
+rehearsing, and his objectionableness as a fellow-boarder would be
+greater or less, according to his play. If he were impersonating a
+shiftless wanderer, who shows remarkable bravery at a hotel fire, we
+should have to be prepared at any time to hear the fire-engines rushing
+up to the front door, and to see our comedian scaling the fire-escape
+with Mrs. Pedagog and her account-books in his arms, simply in the line
+of rehearsal. If he were impersonating a detective after a criminal
+masquerading as a good citizen, the School-Master would be startled some
+night by a hoarse voice at his key-hole exclaiming: 'Ha! ha! I have him
+now. There is no escape save by the back window, and that's so covered
+o'er with dust 'twere suffocation sure to try it.' I hesitate to say what
+would happen if he were a tank comedian."
+
+[Illustration: "'HA! HA! I HAVE HIM NOW!'"]
+
+"Perhaps," said Mr. Whitechoker, with a trifle more impatience than was
+compatible with his calling--"perhaps you will hesitate long enough for
+me to state what I have been trying to state ever since this soliloquy
+of yours began--that in any event, whether this person be a tragedian, or
+a comedian, or a walking gentleman, or a riding gentleman in a circus, I
+object to his being admitted to this circle, and I deem it well to say
+right here that as he comes in at the front door I go out at the back. As
+a clergyman, I do not approve of the stage."
+
+"That ought to settle it," said the Idiot. "Mr. Whitechoker is too good
+a friend to us all here for us to compel him to go out of that back door
+into the rather limited market-garden Mrs. Pedagog keeps in the yard. My
+indirect plea for the admission of Mr. Junius Brutus Davenport was based
+entirely upon my desire to see this circle completed or nearer completion
+than it is at present. We have all the professions represented here but
+the stage, and why exclude it, granting that no one objects? The men
+whose lives are given over to the amusement of mankind, and who are
+willing to place themselves in the most outrageous situations night after
+night in order that we may for the time being seem to be lifted out of
+the unpleasant situations into which we have got ourselves, are in my
+opinion doing a noble work. The theatre enables us to woo forgetfulness
+of self successfully for a few brief hours, and I have seen the time when
+an hour or two of relief from actual cares has resulted in great good.
+Nevertheless, the gentleman is not elected; and if Mrs. Pedagog will
+kindly refill my cup, I will ask you to join me in draining a toast to
+the health of the pastor of this flock, whose conscience, paradoxical as
+it may seem, is the most frequently worn and yet the least thread-bare
+of the consciences represented at this table."
+
+This easy settlement of her difficulty was so pleasing to Mrs. Pedagog
+that the Idiot's request was graciously acceded to, and Mr. Whitechoker's
+health was drank in coffee, after which the Idiot requested the genial
+gentleman who occasionally imbibed to join him privately in eating
+buckwheat cakes to the health of Mr. Davenport.
+
+"I haven't any doubt that he is worthy of the attention," he said; "and
+if you will lend me the money to buy the tickets, I'll take you around
+to the Criterion to-night, where he is playing. I don't know whether he
+plays Hamlet or A Hole in the Roof; but, at any rate, we can have a good
+time between the acts."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+"I see the men are at work on the pavements this morning," said the
+School-Master, gazing out through the window at a number of laborers at
+work in the street.
+
+"Yes," said the Idiot, calmly, "and I think Mrs. Pedagog ought to sue the
+Department of Public Works for libel. If she hasn't a case no maligned
+person ever had."
+
+"What are you saying, sir?" queried the landlady, innocently.
+
+"I say," returned the Idiot, pointing out into the street, "that you
+ought to sue the Department of Public Works for libel. They've got their
+sign right up against your house. _No Thorough Fare_ is what it says.
+That's libel, isn't it, Mr. Brief?"
+
+"It is certainly a fatal criticism of a boarding-house," observed Mr.
+Brief, with a twinkle in his eye, "but Mrs. Pedagog could hardly secure
+damages on that score."
+
+"I don't know about that," returned the Idiot. "As I understand it, it is
+an old maxim of the law that the greater the truth the greater the libel.
+Mrs. Pedagog ought to receive a million----By-the-way, what have we this
+morning?"
+
+"We have steak and fried potatoes, sir," replied Mrs. Pedagog, frigidly.
+"And I desire to add, that one who criticises the table as much as you do
+would do well to get his meals outside."
+
+"That, Mrs. Pedagog, is not the point. The difficulty I find here lies in
+getting my meals inside," said the Idiot.
+
+"Mary, you may bring in the mush," observed Mrs. Pedagog, pursing her
+lips, as she always did when she wished to show that she was offended.
+
+"Yes, Mary," put in the School-Master; "let us have the mush as quickly
+as possible--and may it not be quite such mushy mush as the remarks we
+have just been favored with by our talented friend the Idiot."
+
+"You overwhelm me with your compliments, Mr. Pedagog," replied the Idiot,
+cheerfully. "A flatterer like you should live in a flat."
+
+"Has your friend completed his article on old jokes yet?" queried the
+Bibliomaniac, with a smile and some apparent irrelevance.
+
+[Illustration: "HAS YOUR FRIEND COMPLETED HIS ARTICLE ON OLD JOKES?"]
+
+"Yes and no," said the Idiot. "He has completed his labors on it by
+giving it up. He is a very thorough sort of a fellow, and he intended
+to make the article comprehensive, but he found he couldn't, because,
+judging from comments of men like you, for instance, he was forced to
+conclude that there never was a _new_ joke. But, as I was saying the
+other morning----"
+
+"Do you really remember what you say?" sneered Mr. Pedagog. "You must
+have a great memory for trifles."
+
+"Sir, I shall never forget you," said the Idiot. "But to revert to what
+I was saying the other morning, I'd like to begin life all over again, so
+that I could prepare myself for the profession of architecture. It's the
+greatest profession in the world, and one which is surest to bring
+immortality to its successful follower. A man may write a splendid book,
+and become a great man for a while and within certain limits, but the
+chances are that some other man will come along later and supplant him.
+Then the book's sale will die out after a time, and with this will come
+a diminution of its author's reputation, in extent anyway. An actor or a
+great preacher becomes only a name after his death, but the architect who
+builds a cathedral or a fine public building really erects a monument to
+his own memory."
+
+"He does if he can build it so that it will stay up," said the
+Bibliomaniac. "I think you, however, are better off as you are. If you
+had a more extended reputation or a lasting name you would probably be
+locked up in some retreat; or if you were not, posterity would want to
+know why."
+
+"I am locked up in a retreat of Nature's making," said the Idiot, with a
+sigh. "Nature has set around me certain limitations which, while they are
+not material, might as well be so as far as my ability to soar above them
+is concerned--and it's well she has. If it were otherwise, my life would
+not be safe or bearable in this company. As it is, I am happy and not at
+all afraid of the effects your jealousy of me might entail if I were any
+better than the rest of you."
+
+"I like that," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"I thought you would," said the Idiot. "That's why I said it. I aim to
+please, and for once seem to have hit the bull's-eye. Mary, kindly break
+open this biscuit for me."
+
+"Have you ideas on the subject of architecture that you so desire to
+become an architect?" queried Mr. Whitechoker, who was always full of
+sympathy for aspiring natures.
+
+"A few," said the Idiot.
+
+Mr. Pedagog laughed outright.
+
+"Let's test his ideas," he said, in an amused way. "Take a cathedral, for
+instance. Suppose, Mr. Idiot, a man should come to you and say: 'Idiot,
+we have a fund of $800,000 in our hands, actual cash. We think of
+building a cathedral, and we think of employing you to draw up our plans.
+Give us some idea of what we should do.' Do you mean to tell me that you
+could say anything reasonable or intelligent to that man?"
+
+"Well, that depends upon what you call reasonable and intelligent. I have
+never been able to find out what you mean by those terms," the Idiot
+answered, slowly. "But I could tell him something that I consider
+reasonable and intelligent."
+
+"From your own point of view, then, as to reasonableness and
+intelligence, what should you say to him?"
+
+"I'd make him out a plan providing for the investment of his $800,000 in
+five-per-cent, gold bonds, which would bring him in an income of $40,000
+a year; after which I should call his attention to the fact that $40,000
+a year would enable him to take 10,000 poor children out of this
+sweltering city into the country, to romp and drink fresh milk and eat
+wholesome food for two weeks every summer from now until the end of time,
+which would build up a human structure that might be of more benefit to
+the world than any pile of bricks, marble, and wrought-iron I or any
+other architect could conceive of," said the Idiot. "The structure would
+stand up, too."
+
+"You call that architecture, do you?" said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Yes," said the Idiot, "of the renaissance order. But that, of course,
+you term idiocy--and maybe it is. I like to be that kind of an idiot. I
+do not claim to be able to build a cathedral, however. I don't suppose
+I could even build a boarding-house like this, but what I should like to
+do in architecture would be to put up a $5000 dwelling-house for $5000.
+That's a thing that has never been done, and I think I might be able to
+do it. If I did, I'd patent the plan and make a fortune. Then I should
+like to know enough about the science of planning a building to find out
+whether my model hotel is practicable or not."
+
+"You have a model hotel in your mind, eh?" said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"It must be a very small hotel if it's in his mind," said the Doctor.
+
+"That's tantamount to saying that it isn't anywhere," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Well, it's a great hotel just the same," said the Idiot. "Although I
+presume it would be expensive to build. It would have movable rooms, in
+the first place. Each room would be constructed like an elevator, with
+appliances at hand for moving it up and down. The great thing about this
+would be that persons could have a room on any floor they wanted it, so
+long as they got the room in the beginning. A second advantage would lie
+in the fact, that if you were sleeping in a room next door to another in
+which there was a crying baby, you could pull the rope and go up two or
+three flights until you were free from the noise. Then in case of fire
+the room in which the fire started could be lowered into a sliding tank
+large enough to immerse the whole thing in, which I should have
+constructed in the cellar. If the whole building were to catch fire,
+there would be no loss of life, because all the rooms could be lowered
+to the ground-floor, and the occupants could step right out upon solid
+ground. Then again, if you were down on the ground-floor, and desired to
+get an extended view of the surrounding country, it would be easy to
+raise your room to the desired elevation. Why, there's no end to the
+advantages to be gained from such an arrangement."
+
+"It's a fine idea," said Mr. Pedagog, "and one worthy of your mammoth
+intellect. It couldn't possibly cost more than a million of dollars to
+erect such a hotel, could it?"
+
+"No," said the Idiot. "And that is cheap alongside some of the hotels
+they are putting up nowadays."
+
+"It could be built on less than four hundred acres of ground, too,
+I presume?" said the Bibliomaniac, with a wink at the Doctor.
+
+"Certainly," said the Idiot, meekly.
+
+"And if anybody fell sick in one of the rooms," said the Doctor, "and
+needed a change of air, you could have a tower over each, I suppose, so
+that the room could be elevated high enough to secure the different
+quality in the ether?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," said the Idiot. "Although that would add materially to the
+expense. A scarlet-fever patient, however, in a hotel like that could
+very easily be isolated from the rest of the house by the maintenance of
+what might be called the hospital floor."
+
+"Superb!" said the Doctor. "I wonder you haven't spoken to some
+architectural friend about it."
+
+"I have," said the Idiot. "You must remember that young fellow with a
+black mustache I had here to dinner last Saturday night."
+
+"Yes, I remember him," said the Doctor. "Is he an architect?"
+
+"He is--and a good one. He can take a brown-stone dwelling and turn it
+into a colonial mansion with a pot of yellow paint. He's a wonder. I
+submitted the idea to him."
+
+"And what was his verdict?"
+
+"I don't like to say," said the Idiot, blushing a little.
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed Mr. Pedagog. "I shouldn't think you would like to say.
+I guess we know what he said."
+
+"I doubt it," said the Idiot; "but if you guess right, I'll tell you."
+
+"He said you had better go and live in a lunatic asylum," said Mr.
+Pedagog, with a chuckle.
+
+"Not he," returned the Idiot, nibbling at his biscuit. "On the contrary.
+He advised me to stop living in one. He said contact with the rest of you
+was affecting my brain."
+
+This time Mr. Pedagog did not laugh, but mistaking his coffee-cup for a
+piece of toast, bit a small section out of its rim; and in the midst of
+Mrs. Pedagog's expostulation, which followed the School-Master's careless
+error, the Idiot and the Genial Old Gentleman departed, with smiles on
+their faces which were almost visible at the back of their respective
+necks.
+
+[Illustration: THEY DEPARTED]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+"Hullo!" said the Idiot, as he began his breakfast. "This isn't Friday
+morning, is it? I thought it was Tuesday."
+
+"So it is Tuesday," put in the School-Master.
+
+"Then this fish is a little extra treat, is it?" observed the Idiot,
+turning with a smile to the landlady.
+
+"Fish? That isn't fish, sir," returned the good lady. "That is liver."
+
+"Oh, is it?" said the Idiot, apologetically. "Excuse me, my dear Mrs.
+Pedagog. I thought from its resistance that it was fried sole. Have you
+a hatchet handy?" he added, turning to the maid.
+
+"My piece is tender enough. I can't see what you want," said the
+School-Master, coldly.
+
+"I'd like your piece," replied the Idiot, suavely. "That is, if it really
+is tender enough."
+
+"Don't pay any attention to him, my dear," said the School-Master to the
+landlady, whose ire was so very much aroused that she was about to make
+known her sentiments on certain subjects.
+
+"No, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "don't pay any attention to me, I
+beg of you. Anything that could add to the jealousy of Mr. Pedagog would
+redound to the discomfort of all of us. Besides, I really do not object
+to the liver. I need not eat it. And as for staying my appetite, I always
+stop on my way down-town after breakfast for a bite or two anyhow."
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"I wonder why it is," began the Idiot, after tasting his coffee--"I
+wonder why it is Friday is fish-day all over the world, anyhow? Do you
+happen to be learned enough in piscatorial science to enlighten me on
+that point, Doctor?"
+
+"No," returned the physician, gruffly. "I've never looked into the
+matter."
+
+"I guess it's because Friday is an unlucky day," said the Idiot. "Just
+think of all the unlucky things that may happen before and after eating
+fish, as well as during the process. In the first place, before eating,
+you go off and fish all day, and have no luck--don't catch a thing. You
+fall in the water perhaps, and lose your watch, or your fish-hook
+catches in your coat-tails, with the result that you come near casting
+yourself instead of the fly into the brook or the pond, as the case may
+be. Perhaps the hook doesn't stop with the coat-tails, but goes on in,
+and catches you. That's awfully unlucky, especially when the hook is made
+of unusually barby barbed wire.
+
+[Illustration: "YOU FISH ALL DAY, AND HAVE NO LUCK"]
+
+"Then, again, you may go fishing on somebody else's preserves, and get
+arrested, and sent to jail overnight, and hauled up the next morning, and
+have to pay ten dollars fine for poaching. Think of Mr. Pedagog being
+fined ten dollars for poaching! Awfully unfortunate!"
+
+"Kindly leave me out of your calculations," returned Mr. Pedagog, with a
+flush of indignation.
+
+"Certainly, if you wish it," said the Idiot. "We'll hand Mr. Brief over
+to the police, and let _him_ be fined for poaching on somebody else's
+preserves--although that's sort of impossible, too, because Mrs. Pedagog
+never lets us see preserves of any kind."
+
+"We had brandied peaches last Sunday night," said the landlady,
+indignantly.
+
+"Oh yes, so we did," returned the Idiot. "That must have been what the
+Bibliomaniac had taken," he added, turning to the genial gentleman who
+occasionally imbibed. "You know, we thought he'd been--ah--he'd been
+absorbing."
+
+"To what do you refer?" asked the Bibliomaniac, curtly.
+
+"To the brandied peaches," returned the Idiot. "Do not press me further,
+please, because we like you, old fellow, and I don't believe anybody
+noticed it but ourselves."
+
+"Noticed what? I want to know what you noticed and when you noticed it,"
+said the Bibliomaniac, savagely. "I don't want any nonsense, either. I
+just want a plain statement of facts. What did you notice?"
+
+"Well, if you must have it," said the Idiot, slowly, "my friend who
+imbibes and I were rather pained on Sunday night to observe that
+you--that you had evidently taken something rather stronger than cold
+water, tea, or Mr. Pedagog's opinions."
+
+"It's a libel, sir!--a gross libel!" retorted the Bibliomaniac. "How did
+I show it? That's what I want to know. How--did--I--show--it? Speak up
+quick, and loud too. How did I show it?"
+
+"Well, you went up-stairs after tea."
+
+"Yes, sir, I did."
+
+"And my friend who imbibes and I were left down in the front hall, and
+while we were talking there you put your head over the banisters and
+asked, 'Who's that down there?' Remember that?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I do. And you replied, 'Mr. Auburnose and myself.'"
+
+"Yes. And then you asked, 'Who are the other two?'"
+
+"Well, I did. What of it?"
+
+"Mr. Auburnose and I were there alone. That's what of it. Now I put a
+charitable construction on the matter and say it was the peaches, when
+you fly off the handle like one of Mrs. Pedagog's coffee-cups."
+
+"Sir!" roared the Bibliomaniac, jumping from his chair. "You are the
+greatest idiot I know."
+
+"Sir!" returned the Idiot, "you flatter me."
+
+But the Bibliomaniac was not there to hear. He had rushed from the room,
+and during the deep silence that ensued he could be heard throwing things
+about in the chamber overhead, and in a very few moments the banging of
+the front door and scurrying down the brown-stone steps showed that he
+had gone out of doors to cool off.
+
+[Illustration: HE COULD BE HEARD THROWING THINGS ABOUT]
+
+"It is too bad," said the Idiot, after a while, "that he has such a
+quick temper. It doesn't do a bit of good to get mad that way. He'll be
+uncomfortable all day long, and over what? Just because I attempted to
+say a good word for him, and announce the restoration of my confidence in
+his temperance qualities, he cuts up a high-jinks that makes everybody
+uncomfortable.
+
+"But to resume about this fish business," continued the Idiot. "Fish--"
+
+"Oh, fish be hanged!" said the Doctor, impatiently. "We've had enough of
+fish."
+
+"Very well," returned the idiot; "as you wish. Hanging isn't the best
+treatment for fish, but we'll let that go. I never cared for the finny
+tribe myself, and if Mrs. Pedagog can be induced to do it, I for one am
+in favor of keeping shad, shark, and shrimps out of the house
+altogether."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The Idiot was unusually thoughtful--a fact which made the School-Master
+and the Bibliomaniac unusually nervous. Their stock criticism of him was
+that he was thoughtless; and yet when he so far forgot his natural
+propensities as to meditate, they did not like it. It made them uneasy.
+They had a haunting fear that he was conspiring with himself against
+them, and no man, not even a callous school-master or a confirmed
+bibliomaniac, enjoys feeling that he is the object of a conspiracy. The
+thing to do, then, upon this occasion, seemed obviously to interrupt his
+train of thought--to put obstructions upon his mental track, as it were,
+and ditch the express, which they feared was getting up steam at that
+moment to run them down.
+
+"You don't seem quite yourself this morning, sir," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Don't I?" queried the Idiot. "And whom do I seem to be?"
+
+"I mean that you seem to have something on your mind that worries you,"
+said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"No, I haven't anything on my mind," returned the Idiot. "I was thinking
+about you and Mr. Pedagog--which implies a thought not likely to use up
+much of my gray matter."
+
+"Do you think your head holds any gray matter?" put in the Doctor.
+
+"Rather verdant, I should say," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Green, gray, or pink," said the Idiot, "choose your color. It does
+not affect the fact that I was thinking about the Bibliomaniac and Mr.
+Pedagog. I have a great scheme in hand, which only requires capital
+and the assistance of those two gentlemen to launch it on the sea of
+prosperity. If any of you gentlemen want to get rich and die in comfort
+as the owner of your homes, now is your chance."
+
+"In what particular line of business is your scheme?" asked Mr.
+Whitechoker. He had often felt that he would like to die in comfort,
+and to own a little house, even if it had a large mortgage on it.
+
+"Journalism," said the Idiot. "There is a pile of money to be made out
+of journalism, particularly if you happen to strike a new idea. Ideas
+count."
+
+"How far up do your ideas count--up to five?" questioned Mr. Pedagog,
+with a tinge of sarcasm in his tone.
+
+"I don't know about that," returned the Idiot. "The idea I have hold
+of now, however, will count up into the millions if it can only be set
+going, and before each one of those millions will stand a big capital S
+with two black lines drawn vertically through it--in other words, my idea
+holds dollars, but to get the crop you've got to sow the seed. Plant a
+thousand dollars in my idea, and next year you'll reap two thousand.
+Plant that, and next year you'll have four thousand, and so on. At that
+rate millions come easy."
+
+"I'll give you a dollar for the idea," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"No, I don't want to sell. You'll do to help develop the scheme. You'll
+make a first-rate tool, but you aren't the workman to manage the tool. I
+will go as far as to say, however, that without you and Mr. Pedagog, or
+your equivalents in the animal kingdom, the idea isn't worth the fabulous
+sum you offer."
+
+"You have quite aroused my interest," said Mr. Whitechoker. "Do you
+propose to start a new paper?"
+
+"You are a good guesser," replied the Idiot. "That is a part of the
+scheme--but it isn't the idea. I propose to start a new paper in
+accordance with the plan which the idea contains."
+
+"Is it to be a magazine, or a comic paper, or what?" asked the
+Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Neither. It's a daily."
+
+"That's nonsense," said Mr. Pedagog, putting his spoon into the
+condensed-milk can by mistake. "There isn't a single scheme in daily
+journalism that hasn't been tried--except printing an evening paper in
+the morning."
+
+"That's been tried," said the Idiot. "I know of an evening paper the
+second edition of which is published at mid-day. That's an old dodge, and
+there's money in it, too--money that will never be got out of it. But I
+really have a grand scheme. So many of our dailies, you know, go in for
+every horrid detail of daily events that people are beginning to tire of
+them. They contain practically the same things day after day. So many
+columns of murder, so many beautiful suicides, so much sport, a modicum
+of general intelligence, plenty of fires, no end of embezzlements,
+financial news, advertisements, and head-lines. Events, like history,
+repeat themselves, until people have grown weary of them. They want
+something new. For instance, if you read in your morning paper that
+a man has shot another man, you know that the man who was shot was an
+inoffensive person who never injured a soul, stood high in the community
+in which he lived, and leaves a widow with four children. On the other
+hand, you know without reading the account that the murderer shot his
+victim in self-defence, and was apprehended by the detectives late last
+night; that his counsel forbid him to talk to the reporters, and that it
+is rumored that he comes of a good family living in New England.
+
+"If a breach of trust is committed, you know that the defaulter was the
+last man of whom such an act would be suspected, and, except in the one
+detail of its location and sect, that he was prominent in some church.
+You can calculate to a cent how much has been stolen by a glance at the
+amount of space devoted to the account of the crime. Loaf of bread, two
+lines. Thousand dollars, ten lines. Hundred thousand dollars,
+half-column. Million dollars, a full column. Five million dollars,
+half the front page, wood-cut of the embezzler, and two editorials, one
+leader and one paragraph.
+
+"And so with everything. We are creatures of habit. The expected always
+happens, and newspapers are dull because the events they chronicle are
+dull."
+
+"Granting the truth of this," put in the School-Master, "what do you
+propose to do?"
+
+"Get up a newspaper that will devote its space to telling what hasn't
+happened."
+
+"That's been done," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"To a much more limited extent than we think," returned the Idiot. "It
+has never been done consistently and truthfully."
+
+"I fail to see how a newspaper can be made to prevaricate truthfully,"
+asserted Mr. Whitechoker. To tell the truth, he was greatly disappointed
+with the idea, because he could not in the nature of things become one of
+its beneficiaries.
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS NOT MURDERED"]
+
+"I haven't suggested prevarication," said the Idiot. "Put on your front
+page, for instance, an item like this: 'George Bronson, colored, aged
+twenty-nine, a resident of Thompson Street, was caught cheating at poker
+last night. He was not murdered.' There you tell what has not happened.
+There is a variety about it. It has the charm of the unexpected. Then you
+might say: 'Curious incident on Wall Street yesterday. So-and-so, who
+was caught on the bear side of the market with 10,000 shares of J. B. &
+S. K. W., paid off all his obligations in full, and retired from business
+with $1,000,000 clear.' Or we might say, 'Superintendent Smithers, of the
+St. Goliath's Sunday-school, who is also cashier in the Forty-eighth
+National Bank, has not absconded with $4,000,000.'"
+
+[Illustration: "SUPERINTENDENT SMITHERS HAS NOT ABSCONDED"]
+
+"Oh, that's a rich idea," put in the School-Master. "You'd earn
+$1,000,000 in libel suits the first year."
+
+"No, you wouldn't, either," said the Idiot. "You don't libel a man
+when you say he hasn't murdered anybody. Quite the contrary, you call
+attention to his conspicuous virtue. You are in reality commending those
+who refrain from criminal practice, instead of delighting those who are
+fond of departing from the paths of Christianity by giving them
+notoriety."
+
+"But I fail to see in what respect Mr. Pedagog and I are essential to
+your scheme," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"I must confess to some curiosity on my own part on that point," added
+the School-Master.
+
+"Why, it's perfectly clear," returned the Idiot, with a conciliating
+smile as he prepared to depart. "You both know so much that isn't so,
+that I rather rely on you to fill up."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+A new boarder had joined the circle about Mrs. Pedagog's breakfast-table.
+He had what the Idiot called a three-ply name--which was Richard
+Henderson Warren--and he was by profession a poet. Whether it was this
+that made it necessary for him to board or not, the rewards of the muse
+being rather slender, was known only to himself, and he showed no
+disposition to enlighten his fellow-boarders on the subject. His success
+as a poet Mrs. Pedagog found it hard to gauge; for while the postman left
+almost daily numerous letters, the envelopes of which showed that they
+came from the various periodicals of the day, it was never exactly clear
+whether or not the missives contained remittances or rejected
+manuscripts, though the fact that Mr. Warren was the only boarder in the
+house who had requested to have a waste-basket added to the furniture of
+his room seemed to indicate that they contained the latter. To this
+request Mrs. Pedagog had gladly acceded, because she had a notion that
+therein at some time or another would be found a clew to the new
+boarder's past history--or possibly some evidence of such duplicity
+as the good lady suspected he might be guilty of. She had read that Byron
+was profligate, and that Poe was addicted to drink, and she was impressed
+with the idea that poets generally were bad men, and she regarded the
+waste-basket as a possible means of protecting herself against any such
+idiosyncrasies of her new-found genius as would operate to her
+disadvantage if not looked after in time.
+
+This waste-basket she made it her daily duty to empty, and in the privacy
+of her own room. Half-finished "ballads, songs, and snatches" she perused
+before consigning them to the flames or to the large jute bag in the
+cellar, for which the ragman called two or three times a year. Once Mrs.
+Pedagog's heart almost stopped beating when she found at the bottom of
+the basket a printed slip beginning, "_The Editor regrets that the
+enclosed lines are unavailable_," and closing with about thirteen
+reasons, any one or all of which might have been the main cause of the
+poet's disappointment. Had it not been for the kindly clause in the
+printed slip that insinuated in graceful terms that this rejection did
+not imply a lack of literary merit in the contribution itself, the good
+lady, knowing well that there was even less money to be made from
+rejected than from accepted poetry, would have been inclined to request
+the poet to vacate the premises. The very next day, however, she was glad
+she had not requested the resignation of the poet from the laureateship
+of her house; for the same basket gave forth another printed slip from
+another editor, begging the poet to accept the enclosed check, with
+thanks for his contribution, and asking him to deposit it as soon as
+practicable--which was pleasing enough, since it implied that the poet
+was the possessor of a bank account.
+
+Now Mrs. Pedagog was consumed with curiosity to know for how large a sum
+the check called--which desire was gratified a few days later, when the
+inspired boarder paid his week's bill with three one-dollar bills and a
+check, signed by a well-known publisher, for two dollars.
+
+[Illustration: THE INSPIRED BOARDER PAID HIS BILL]
+
+By the boarders themselves the poet was regarded with much interest.
+The School-Master had read one or two of his effusions in the Fireside
+Corner of the journal he received weekly from his home up in New
+England--effusions which showed no little merit, as well as indicating
+that Mr. Warren wrote for a literary syndicate; Mr. Whitechoker had known
+of him as the young man who was to have written a Christmas carol for his
+Sunday-school a year before, and who had finished and presented the
+manuscript shortly after New-Year's day; while to the Idiot, Mr. Warren's
+name was familiar as that of a frequent contributor to the funny papers
+of the day.
+
+"I was very much amused by your poem in the last number of the
+_Observer_, Mr. Warren," said the Idiot, as they sat down to breakfast
+together.
+
+"Were you, indeed?" returned Mr. Warren. "I am sorry to hear that, for it
+was intended to be a serious effort."
+
+"Of course it was, Mr. Warren, and so it appeared," said the
+School-Master, with an indignant glance at the Idiot. "It was a very
+dignified and stately bit of work, and I must congratulate you upon it."
+
+"I didn't mean to give offence," said the Idiot. "I've read so much of
+yours that was purely humorous that I believe I'd laugh at a dirge if you
+should write one; but I really thought your lines in the _Observer_ were
+a burlesque. You had the same thought that Rossetti expresses in 'The
+Woodspurge':
+
+   'The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
+    Shaken out dead from tree to hill;
+    I had walked on at the wind's will,
+    I sat now, for the wind was still.'
+
+That's Rossetti, if you remember. Slightly suggestive of 'Blow Ye Winds
+of the Morning! Blow! Blow! Blow!' but more or less pleasing."
+
+"I recall the poem you speak of," said Warren, with dignity; "but the
+true poet, sir--and I hope I have some claim to be considered as
+such--never so far forgets himself as to burlesque his masters."
+
+"Well, I don't know what to call it, then, when a poet takes the same
+thought that has previously been used by his masters and makes a funny
+poem--"
+
+"But," returned the Poet, warmly, "it was not a funny poem."
+
+"It made me laugh," retorted the Idiot, "and that is more than half the
+professedly funny poems we get nowadays can do. Therefore I say it was a
+funny poem, and I don't see how you can deny that it was a burlesque of
+Rossetti."
+
+"Well, I do deny it _in toto_."
+
+"I don't know anything about denying it _in toto_," rejoined the Idiot,
+"but I'd deny it in print if I were you. I know plenty of people who
+think it was a burlesque, and I overheard one man say--he is a Rossetti
+crank--that you ought to be ashamed of yourself for writing it."
+
+"There is no use of discussing the matter further," said the Poet. "I am
+innocent of any such intent as you have ascribed to me, and if people say
+I have burlesqued Rossetti they say what is not true."
+
+"Did you ever read that little poem of Swinburne's called 'The Boy at the
+Gate'?" asked the Idiot, to change the subject.
+
+"I have no recollection of it," said the Poet, shortly.
+
+"The name sounds familiar," put in Mr. Whitechoker, anxious not to be
+left out of a literary discussion.
+
+"I have read it, but I forget just how it goes," vouchsafed the
+School-Master, forgetting for a moment the Robert Elsmere episode and its
+lesson.
+
+"It goes something like this," said the Idiot:
+
+   "Sombre and sere the slim sycamore sighs;
+    Lushly the lithe leaves lie low o'er the land;
+    Whistles the wind with its whisperings wise,
+    Grewsomely gloomy and garishly grand.
+    So doth the sycamore solemnly stand,
+    Wearily watching in wondering wait;
+    So it has stood for six centuries, and
+    Still it is waiting the boy at the gate."
+
+"No; I never read the poem," said Mr. Whitechoker, "but I'd know it was
+Swinburne in a minute. He has such a command of alliterative language."
+
+"Yes," said the Poet, with an uneasy glance at the Idiot. "It is
+Swinburnian; but what was the poem about?"
+
+"'The boy at the gate,'" said the Idiot. "The idea was that the sycamore
+was standing there for centuries waiting for the boy who never turns up."
+
+"It really is a beautiful thought," put in Mr. Whitechoker. "It is, I
+presume, an allegory to contrast faithful devotion and constancy with
+unfaithfulness and fickleness. Such thoughts occur only to the wholly
+gifted. It is only to the poetic temperament that the conception of such
+a thought can come coupled with the ability to voice it in fitting terms.
+There is a grandeur about the lines the Idiot has quoted that betrays the
+master-mind."
+
+"Very true," said the School-Master, "and I take this opportunity to say
+that I am most agreeably surprised in the Idiot. It is no small thing
+even to be able to repeat a poet's lines so carefully, and with so great
+lucidity, and so accurately, as I can testify that he has just done."
+
+"Don't be too pleased, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot, dryly. "I only
+wanted to show Mr. Warren that you and Mr. Whitechoker, mines of
+information though you are, have not as yet worked up a corner on
+knowledge to the exclusion of the rest of us." And with these words the
+Idiot left the table.
+
+"He is a queer fellow," said the School-Master. "He is full of pretence
+and hollowness, but he is sometimes almost brilliant."
+
+"What you say is very true," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I think he has just
+escaped being a smart man. I wish we could take him in hand, Mr. Pedagog,
+and make him more of a fellow than he is."
+
+Later in the day the Poet met the Idiot on the stairs. "I say," he said,
+"I've looked all through Swinburne, and I can't find that poem."
+
+"I know you can't," returned the Idiot, "because it isn't there.
+Swinburne never wrote it. It was a little thing of my own. I was only
+trying to get a rise out of Mr. Pedagog and his Reverence with it. You
+have frequently appeared impressed by the undoubtedly impressive manner
+of these two gentlemen. I wanted to show you what their opinions were
+worth."
+
+[Illustration: "I KNOW YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE IT ISN'T THERE"]
+
+"Thank you," returned the Poet, with a smile. "Don't you want to go
+into partnership with me and write for the funny papers? It would be
+a splendid thing for me--your ideas are so original."
+
+"And I can see fun in everything, too," said the Idiot, thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes," returned the Poet. "Even in my serious poems."
+
+Which remark made the Idiot blush a little, but he soon recovered his
+composure and made a firm friend of the Poet.
+
+The first fruits of the partnership have not yet appeared, however.
+
+As for Messrs. Whitechoker and Pedagog, when they learned how they had
+been deceived, they were so indignant that they did not speak to the
+Idiot for a week.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+It was Sunday morning, and Mr. Whitechoker, as was his wont on the first
+day of the week, appeared at the breakfast table severe as to his mien.
+
+"Working on Sunday weighs on his mind," the Idiot said to the
+Bibliomaniac, "but I don't see why it should. The luxury of rest
+that he allows himself the other six days of the week is surely an
+atonement for the hours of labor he puts in on Sunday."
+
+But it was not this that on Sunday mornings weighed on the mind of the
+Reverend Mr. Whitechoker. He appeared more serious of visage then because
+he had begun to think of late that his fellow-boarders lived too much in
+the present, and ignored almost totally that which might be expected to
+come. He had been revolving in his mind for several weeks the question as
+to whether it was or was not his Christian duty to attempt to influence
+the lives of these men with whom the chances of life had brought him in
+contact. He had finally settled it to his own satisfaction that it was
+his duty so to do, and he had resolved, as far as lay in his power, to
+direct the conversation at Sunday morning's breakfast into spiritual
+rather than into temporal matters.
+
+So, as Mrs. Pedagog was pouring the coffee, Mr. Whitechoker began:
+
+"Do you gentlemen ever pause in your every-day labors and thought to let
+your minds rest upon the future--the possibilities it has in store for
+us, the consequences which--"
+
+"No mush, thank you," said the Idiot. Then turning to Mr. Whitechoker, he
+added: "I can't answer for the other gentlemen at this board, but I can
+assure you, Mr. Whitechoker, that I often do so. It was only last night,
+sir, that my genial friend who imbibes and I were discussing the future
+and its possibilities, and I venture to assert that there is no more
+profitable food for reflection anywhere in the larders of the mind than
+that."
+
+"Larders of the mind is excellent," said the School-Master, with a touch
+of sarcasm in his voice. "Perhaps you would not mind opening the door to
+your mental pantry, and letting us peep within at the stores you keep
+there. I am sure that on the subject in hand your views cannot fail to be
+original as well as edifying."
+
+"I am also sure," said Mr. Whitechoker, somewhat surprised to hear the
+Idiot speak as he did, having sometimes ventured to doubt if that
+flippant-minded young man ever reflected on the serious side of life--"I
+am also sure that it is most gratifying to hear that you have done some
+thinking on the subject."
+
+"I am glad you are gratified, Mr. Whitechoker," replied the Idiot, "but
+I am far from taking undue credit to myself because I reflect upon the
+future and its possibilities. I do not see how any man can fail to be
+interested in the subject, particularly when he considers the great
+strides science has made in the last twenty years."
+
+"I fail to see," said the School-Master, "what the strides of science
+have to do with it."
+
+"You fail to see so often, Mr. Pedagog," returned the Idiot, "that I
+would advise your eyes to make an assignment in favor of your pupils."
+
+"I must confess," put in Mr. Whitechoker, blandly, "that I too am
+somewhat--er--somewhat--"
+
+"Somewhat up a tree as to science's connection with the future?" queried
+the Idiot.
+
+"You have my meaning, but hardly the phraseology I should have chosen,"
+replied the minister.
+
+"My style is rather epigrammatic," said the Idiot, suavely. "I appreciate
+the flattery implied by your noticing it. But science has everything to
+do with it. It is science that is going to make the future great. It is
+science that has annihilated distance, and the annihilation has just
+begun. Twenty years ago it was hardly possible for a man standing on one
+side of the street to make himself heard on the other, the acoustic
+properties of the atmosphere not being what they should be. To-day
+you can stand in the pulpit of your church, and by means of certain
+scientific apparatus make yourself heard in Boston, New Orleans, or San
+Francisco. Has this no bearing on the future? The time will come, Mr.
+Whitechoker, when your missionaries will be able to sit in their
+comfortable rectories, and ring up the heathen in foreign climes, and
+convert them over the telephone, without running the slightest danger of
+falling into the soup, which expression I use in its literal rather than
+in its metaphorical sense."
+
+[Illustration: "YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HEARD IN SAN FRANCISCO"]
+
+"But--" interrupted Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"Now wait, please," said the Idiot. "If science can annihilate degrees of
+distance, who shall say that before many days science may not annihilate
+degrees of time? If San Francisco, thousands of miles distant, can be
+brought within range of the ear, why cannot 1990 be brought before the
+mind's eye? And if 1990 can be brought before the mind's eye, what is to
+prevent the invention of a prophetograph which shall enable us to cast a
+horoscope which shall reach all around eternity and half-way back, if not
+further?"
+
+[Illustration: THE PROPHETOGRAPH]
+
+"You do not understand me," said Mr. Whitechoker. "When I speak of the
+future, I do not mean the temporal future."
+
+"I know exactly what you mean," said the Idiot. "I've dealt in futures,
+and I am familiar with all kinds. It is you, sir, that do not understand
+me. My claim is perfectly plausible, and in its results is bound to make
+the world better. Do you suppose that any man who, by the aid of my
+prophetograph, sees that on a certain date in the future he will be
+hanged for murder is going to fail to provide himself with an alibi in
+regard to that particular murder, and must we not admit that having
+provided himself with that alibi he will of necessity avoid bloodshed,
+and so avoid the gallows? That's reasonable. So in regard to all the
+thousand and one other peccadilloes that go to make this life a sinful
+one. Science, by a purely logical advance along the lines already mapped
+out for itself, and in part already traversed, will enable men to avoid
+the pitfalls and reap only the windfalls of life; we shall all see what
+terrible consequences await on a single misstep, and we shall not make
+the misstep. Can you still claim that science and the future have nothing
+to do with each other?"
+
+"You are talking of matters purely temporal," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I
+have reference to our spiritual future."
+
+"And the two," observed the Idiot, "are so closely allied that we cannot
+separate them. The proverb about looking after the pennies and letting
+the pounds take care of themselves applies here. I believe that if I take
+care of my temporal future--which, by-the-way, does not exist--my
+spiritual future will take care of itself; and if science places the
+hereafter before us--and you admit that even now it is before us--all we
+have to do is to take advantage of our opportunities, and mend our lives
+accordingly."
+
+"But if science shows you what is to come," said the School-Master, "it
+must show your fate with perfect accuracy, or it ceases to be science, in
+which event your entertaining notions as to reform and so on are entirely
+fallacious."
+
+"Not at all," said the Idiot. "We are approaching the time when science,
+which is much more liberal than any other branch of knowledge, will
+sacrifice even truth itself for the good of mankind."
+
+"You ought to start a paradox company," suggested the Doctor.
+
+"Either that or make himself the nucleus of an insane asylum," observed
+the School-Master, viciously. "I never knew a man with such maniacal
+views as those we have heard this morning."
+
+"There is a great deal, Mr. Pedagog, that you have never known," returned
+the Idiot. "Stick by me, and you'll die with a mind richly stored."
+
+Whereat the School-Master left the table with such manifest impatience
+that Mr. Whitechoker was sorry he had started the conversation.
+
+The genial gentleman who occasionally imbibed and the Idiot withdrew to
+the latter's room, where the former observed:
+
+"What are you driving at, anyhow? Where did you get those crazy ideas?"
+
+"I ate a Welsh-rarebit last night, and dreamed 'em," returned the Idiot.
+
+"I thought as much," said his companion. "What deuced fine things dreams
+are, anyhow!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Breakfast was very nearly over, and it was of such exceptionally good
+quality that very few remarks had been made. Finally the ball was set
+rolling by the Lawyer.
+
+"How many packs of cigarettes do you smoke a day?" he asked, as the Idiot
+took one from his pocket and placed it at the side of his coffee-cup.
+
+"Never more than forty-six," said the Idiot. "Why? Do you think of
+starting a cigarette stand?"
+
+"Not at all," said Mr. Brief. "I was only wondering what chance you had
+to live to maturity, that's all. Your maturity period will be in about
+eight hundred and sixty years from now, the way I calculate, and it
+seemed to me that, judging from the number of cigarettes you smoke, you
+were not likely to last through more than two or three of those years."
+
+"Oh, I expect to live longer than that," said the Idiot. "I think I'm
+good for at least four years. Don't you, Doctor?"
+
+"I decline to have anything to say about your case," retorted the Doctor,
+whose feeling towards the Idiot was not surpassingly affectionate.
+
+"In that event I shall probably live five years more," said the Idiot.
+
+The Doctor's lip curled, but he remained silent.
+
+"You'll live," put in Mr. Pedagog, with a chuckle. "The good die young."
+
+"How did you happen to keep alive all this time then, Mr. Pedagog?" asked
+the Idiot.
+
+"I have always eschewed tobacco in every form, for one thing," said Mr.
+Pedagog.
+
+"I am surprised," put in the Idiot. "That's really a bad habit, and I
+marvel greatly that you should have done it."
+
+The School-Master frowned, and looked at the Idiot over the rims of his
+glasses, as was his wont when he was intent upon getting explanations.
+
+"Done what?" he asked, severely.
+
+"Chewed tobacco," replied the Idiot. "You just said that one of the
+things that has kept you lingering in this vale of tears was that you
+have always chewed tobacco. I never did that, and I never shall do it,
+because I deem it a detestable diversion."
+
+"I didn't say anything of the sort," retorted Mr. Pedagog, getting red in
+the face. "I never said that I chewed tobacco in any form."
+
+"Oh, come!" said the Idiot, with well-feigned impatience, "what's the use
+of talking that way? We all heard what you said, and I have no doubt that
+it came as a shock to every member of this assemblage. It certainly was a
+shock to me, because, with all my weaknesses and bad habits, I think
+tobacco-chewing unutterably bad. The worst part of it is that you chew it
+in every form. A man who chews chewing-tobacco only may some time throw
+off the habit, but when one gets to be such a victim to it that he chews
+up cigars and cigarettes and plugs of pipe tobacco, it seems to me he is
+incurable. It is not only a bad habit then; it amounts to a vice."
+
+Mr. Pedagog was getting apoplectic. "You know well enough that I never
+said the words you attribute to me," he said, sternly.
+
+"Really, Mr. Pedagog," returned the Idiot, with an irritating shake of
+his head, as if he were confidentially hinting to the School-Master to
+keep quiet--"really you pain me by these futile denials. Nobody forced
+you into the confession. You made it entirely of your own volition. Now
+I ask you, as a man and brother, what's the use of saying anything more
+about it? We believe you to be a person of the strictest veracity, but
+when you say a thing before a tableful of listeners one minute, and deny
+it the next, we are forced to one of two conclusions, neither of which is
+pleasing. We must conclude that either, repenting your confession, you
+sacrifice the truth, or that the habit to which you have confessed has
+entirely destroyed your perception of the moral question involved. Undue
+use of tobacco has, I believe, driven men crazy. Opium-eating has
+destroyed all regard for truth in one whose word had always been regarded
+as good as a government bond. I presume the undue use of tobacco can
+accomplish the same sad result. By-the-way, did you ever try opium?"
+
+"Opium is ruin," said the Doctor, Mr. Pedagog's indignation being so
+great that he seemed to be unable to find the words he was evidently
+desirous of hurling at the Idiot.
+
+"It is, indeed," said the Idiot. "I knew a man once who smoked one little
+pipeful of it, and, while under its influence, sat down at his table and
+wrote a story of the supernatural order that was so good that everybody
+said he must have stolen it from Poe or some other master of the weird,
+and now nobody will have anything to do with him. Tobacco, however, in
+the sane use of it, is a good thing. I don't know of anything that is
+more satisfying to the tired man than to lie back on a sofa, of an
+evening, and puff clouds of smoke and rings into the air. One of the
+finest dreams I ever had came from smoking. I had blown a great mountain
+of smoke out into the room, and it seemed to become real, and I climbed
+to its summit and saw the most beautiful country at my feet--a country in
+which all men were happy, where there were no troubles of any kind, where
+no whim was left ungratified, where jealousies were not, and where every
+man who made more than enough to live on paid the surplus into the common
+treasury for the use of those who hadn't made quite enough. It was a
+national realization of the golden rule, and I maintain that if smoking
+were bad nothing so good, even in the abstract form of an idea, could
+come out of it."
+
+"That's a very nice thought," said the Poet. "I'd like to put that into
+verse. The idea of a people dividing up their surplus of wealth among the
+less successful strugglers is beautiful."
+
+"You can have it," said the Idiot, with a pleased smile. "I don't write
+poetry of that kind myself unless I work hard, and I've found that when
+the poet works hard he produces poems that read hard. You are welcome to
+it. Another time I was dreaming over my cigar, after a day of the hardest
+kind of trouble at the office. Everything had gone wrong with me, and I
+was blue as indigo. I came home here, lit a cigar, and threw myself down
+upon my bed and began to puff. I felt like a man in a deep pit, out of
+which there was no way of getting. I closed my eyes for a second, and to
+all intents and purposes I lay in that pit. And then what did tobacco do
+for me? Why, it lifted me right out of my prison. I thought I was sitting
+on a rock down in the depths. The stars twinkled tantalizingly above me.
+They invited me to freedom, knowing that freedom was not attainable. Then
+I blew a ring of smoke from my mouth, and it began to rise slowly at
+first, and then, catching in a current of air, it flew upward more
+rapidly, widening constantly, until it disappeared in the darkness above.
+Then I had a thought. I filled my mouth as full of smoke as possible, and
+blew forth the greatest ring you ever saw, and as it started to rise I
+grasped it in my two hands. It struggled beneath my weight, lengthened
+out into an elliptical link, and broke, and let me down with a dull thud.
+Then I made two rings, grasping one with my left hand and the other with
+my right--"
+
+[Illustration: "I GRASPED IT IN MY TWO HANDS"]
+
+"And they lifted you out of the pit, I suppose?" sneered the
+Bibliomaniac.
+
+"I do not say that they did," said the Idiot, calmly. "But I do know that
+when I opened my eyes I wasn't in the pit any longer, but up-stairs in my
+hall-bedroom."
+
+"How awfully mysterious!" said the Doctor, satirically.
+
+"Well, I don't approve of smoking," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I agree with
+the London divine who says it is the pastime of perdition. It is not
+prompted by natural instincts. It is only the habit of artificial
+civilization. Dogs and horses and birds get along without it. Why
+shouldn't man?"
+
+"Hear! hear!" cried Mr. Pedagog, clapping his hands approvingly.
+
+"Where? where?" put in the Idiot. "That's a great argument. Dog's don't
+put up in boarding-houses. Is the boarding-house, therefore, the result
+of a degraded, artificial civilization? I have seen educated horses that
+didn't smoke, but I have never seen an educated horse, or an uneducated
+one, for that matter, that had even had the chance to smoke, or the kind
+of mouth that would enable him to do it in case he had the chance. I
+have also observed that horses don't read books, that birds don't eat
+mutton-chops, that dogs don't go to the opera, that donkeys don't play
+the piano--at least, four-legged donkeys don't--so you might as well
+argue that since horses, dogs, birds, and donkeys get along without
+literature, music, mutton-chops, and piano-playing--"
+
+"You've covered music," put in the Lawyer, who liked to be precise.
+
+"True; but piano-playing isn't always music," returned the Idiot.
+"You might as well argue because the beasts and the birds do without
+these things man ought to. Fish don't smoke, neither do they join the
+police-force, therefore man should neither smoke nor become a guardian
+of the peace."
+
+[Illustration: "PIANO-PLAYING ISN'T ALWAYS MUSIC"]
+
+"Nevertheless it is a pastime of perdition," insisted Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"No, it isn't," retorted the Idiot. "Smoking is the business of
+perdition. It smokes because it has to."
+
+"There! there!" remonstrated Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"You mean hear! hear! I presume," said the Idiot.
+
+"I mean that you have said enough!" remarked Mr. Pedagog, sharply.
+
+"Very well," said the Idiot. "If I have convinced you all I am satisfied,
+not to say gratified. But really, Mr. Pedagog," he added, rising to leave
+the room, "if I were you I'd give up the practice of chewing--"
+
+"Hold on a minute, Mr. Idiot," said Mr. Whitechoker, interrupting. He was
+desirous that Mr. Pedagog should not be further irritated. "Let me ask
+you one question. Does your old father smoke?"
+
+"No," said the Idiot, leaning easily over the back of his chair--"no.
+What of it?"
+
+"Nothing at all--except that perhaps if he could get along without it you
+might," suggested the clergyman.
+
+"He couldn't get along without it if he knew what good tobacco was," said
+the Idiot.
+
+"Then why don't you introduce him to it?" asked the Minister.
+
+"Because I do not wish to make him unhappy," returned the Idiot, softly.
+"He thinks his seventy years have been the happiest years that any mortal
+ever had, and if now in his seventy-first year he discovered that during
+the whole period of his manhood he had been deprived through ignorance of
+so great a blessing as a good cigar, he'd become like the rest of us,
+living in anticipation of delights to come, and not finding approximate
+bliss in living over the past. Trust me, my dear Mr. Whitechoker, to look
+after him. He and my mother and my life are all I have."
+
+The Idiot left the room, and Mr. Pedagog put in a greater part of the
+next half-hour in making personal statements to the remaining boarders to
+the effect that the word he used was eschewed, and not the one attributed
+to him by the Idiot.
+
+Strange to say, most of them were already aware of that fact.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+"The progress of invention in this country has been very remarkable,"
+said Mr. Pedagog, as he turned his attention from a scientific weekly he
+had been reading to a towering pile of buckwheat cakes that Mary had just
+brought in. "An Englishman has just discovered a means by which a ship in
+distress at sea can write for help on the clouds."
+
+"Extraordinary!" said Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"It might be more so," observed the Idiot, coaxing the platterful of
+cakes out of the School-Master's reach by a dexterous movement of his
+hand. "And it will be more so some day. The time is coming when the
+moon itself will be used by some enterprising American to advertise his
+soap business. I haven't any doubt that the next fifty years will develop
+a stereopticon by means of which a picture of a certain brand of cigar
+may be projected through space until it seems to be held between the
+teeth of the man in the moon, with a printed legend below it stating
+that this is _Tooforfivers Best, Rolled from Hand-made Tobacco, Warranted
+not to Crock or Fade, and for sale by All Tobacconists at Eighteen for a
+Dime_."
+
+[Illustration: "THE MOON ITSELF WILL BE USED"]
+
+"You would call that an advance in invention, eh?" asked the
+School-Master.
+
+"Why not?" queried the Idiot.
+
+"Do you consider the invention which would enable man to debase nature to
+the level of an advertising medium an advance?"
+
+"I should not consider the use of the moon for the dissemination of good
+news a debasement. If the cigars were good--and I have no doubt that some
+one will yet invent a cheap cigar that is good--it would benefit the
+human race to be acquainted with that fact. I think sometimes that the
+advertisements in the newspapers and the periodicals of the day are of
+more value to the public than the reading-matter, so-called, that stands
+next to them. I don't see why you should sneer at advertising. I should
+never have known you, for instance, Mr. Pedagog, had it not been for Mrs.
+Pedagog's advertisement offering board and lodging to single gentlemen
+for a consideration. Nor would you have met Mrs. Smithers, now your
+estimable wife, yourself, had it not been for that advertisement. Why,
+then, do you sneer at the ladder upon which you have in a sense climbed
+to your present happiness? You are ungrateful."
+
+"How you do ramify!" said Mr. Pedagog. "I believe there is no subject in
+the world which you cannot connect in some way or another with every
+other subject in the world. A discussion of the merits of Shakespeare's
+sonnets could be turned by your dexterous tongue in five minutes into a
+quarrel over the comparative merits of cider and cod-liver oil as
+beverages, with you, the chances are, the advocate of cod-liver oil as
+a steady drink."
+
+"Well, I must say," said the Idiot, with a smile, "it has been my
+experience that cod-liver oil is steadier than cider. The cod-liver
+oils I have had the pleasure of absorbing have been evenly vile, while
+the ciders that I have drank have been of a variety of goodness, badness,
+and indifferentness which has brought me to the point where I never touch
+it. But to return to inventions, since you desire to limit our discussion
+to a single subject, I think it is about the most interesting field of
+speculation imaginable."
+
+"There you are right," said Mr. Pedagog, approvingly. "There is
+absolutely no limit to the possibilities involved. It is almost within
+the range of possibilities that some man may yet invent a buckwheat cake
+that will satisfy your abnormal craving for that delicacy, which the
+present total output of this table seems unable to do."
+
+Here Mr. Pedagog turned to his wife, and added: "My dear, will you
+request the cook hereafter to prepare individual cakes for us? The Idiot
+has so far monopolized all that have as yet appeared."
+
+"It appears to me," said the Idiot at this point, "that _you_ are the
+ramifier, Mr. Pedagog. Nevertheless, ramify as much as you please. I can
+follow you--at a safe distance, of course--in the discussion of anything,
+from Edison to flapjacks. I think your suggestion regarding individual
+cakes is a good one. We might all have separate griddles, upon which
+Gladys, the cook, can prepare them, and on these griddles might be cast
+in bold relief the crest of each member of this household, so that every
+man's cake should, by an easy process in the making, come off the fire
+indelibly engraved with the evidence of its destiny. Mr. Pedagog's iron,
+for instance, might have upon it a school-book rampant, or a large head
+in the same condition. Mr. Whitechoker's cake-mark might be a pulpit
+rampant, based upon a vestryman dormant. The Doctor might have a lozengy
+shield with a suitable tincture, while my genial friend who occasionally
+imbibes could have a barry shield surmounted by a small effigy of
+Gambrinus."
+
+"You appear to know something of heraldry," said the poet, with a look of
+surprise.
+
+"I know something of everything," said the Idiot, complacently.
+
+"It's a pity you don't know everything about something," sneered the
+Doctor.
+
+"I would suggest," said the School-Master, dryly, "that a little rampant
+jackass would make a good crest for your cakes."
+
+"That's a very good idea," said the Idiot. "I do not know but that a
+jackass rampant would be about as comprehensive of my virtues as anything
+I might select. The jackass is a combination of all the best qualities.
+He is determined. He minds his own business. He doesn't indulge in
+flippant conversation. He is useful. Has no vices, never pretends to be
+anything but a jackass, and most respectfully declines to be ridden by
+Tom, Dick, and Harry. I accept the suggestion of Mr. Pedagog with thanks.
+But we are still ramifying. Let us get back to inventions. Now I fully
+believe that the time is coming when some inventive genius will devise a
+method whereby intellect can be given to those who haven't any. I believe
+that the time is coming when the secrets of the universe will be yielded
+up to man by nature."
+
+[Illustration: "DECLINES TO BE RIDDEN"]
+
+"And then?" queried Mr. Brief.
+
+"Then some man will try to improve on the secrets of the universe. He
+will try to invent an apparatus by means of which the rotation of the
+world may be made faster or slower, according to his will. If he has but
+one day, for instance, in which to do a stated piece of work, and he
+needs two, he will put on some patent brake and slow the world up until
+the distance travelled in one hour shall be reduced one-half, so that one
+hour under the old system will be equivalent to two; or if he is
+anticipating some joy, some diversion in the future, the same smart
+person will find a way to increase the speed of the earth so that the
+hours will be like minutes. Then he'll begin fooling with gravitation,
+and he will discover a new-fashioned lodestone, which can be carried in
+one's hat to counter-act the influence of the centre of gravity when one
+falls out of a window or off a precipice, the result of which will be
+that the person who falls off one of these high places will drop down
+slowly, and not with the rapidity which at the present day is responsible
+for the dreadful outcome of accidents of that sort. Then, finally--"
+
+"You pretend to be able to penetrate to the finality, do you?" asked the
+Clergyman.
+
+"Why not? It is as easy to imagine the finality as it is to go half-way
+there," returned the Idiot. "Finally he will tackle some elementary
+principle of nature, and he'll blow the world to smithereens."
+
+There was silence at the table. This at least seemed to be a tenable
+theory. That man should have the temerity to take liberties with
+elementary principles was quite within reason, man being an animal of
+rare conceit, and that the result would bring about destruction was not
+at all at variance with probability.
+
+"I believe it's happened once or twice already," said the Idiot.
+
+"Do you really?" asked Mr. Pedagog, with a show of interest. "Upon what
+do you base this belief?"
+
+"Well, take Africa," said the Idiot. "Take North America. What do we
+find? We find in the sands of the Sahara a great statue, which we call
+the Sphinx, and about which we know nothing, except that it is there and
+that it keeps its mouth shut. We find marvellous creations in engineering
+that to-day surpass anything that we can do. The Sphinx, when discovered,
+was covered by sand. Now I believe that at one time there were people
+much further advanced in science than ourselves, who made these wonderful
+things, who knew how to do things that we don't even dream of doing, and
+I believe that they, like this creature I have predicted, got fooling
+with the centre of gravity, and that the world slipped its moorings for a
+period of time, during which time it tumbled topsy-turvey into space, and
+that banks and banks of sand and water and ice thrown out of position
+simply swept on and over the whole surface of the globe continuously
+until the earth got into the grip of the rest of the universe once more
+and started along in a new orbit. We know that where we are high and dry
+to-day the ocean must once have rolled. We know that where the world is
+now all sunshine and flowers great glaciers stood. What caused all this
+change? Nothing else, in my judgment, than the monkeying of man with the
+forces of nature. The poles changed, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit
+that, if the north pole were ever found and could be thawed out, we
+should find embedded in that great sea of ice evidences of a former
+civilization, just as in the Saharan waste evidences of the same thing
+have been found. I know of a place out West that is literally strewn with
+oyster-shells, and yet no man living has the slightest idea how they came
+there. It may have been the Massachusetts Bay of a pre-historic time, for
+all we know. It may have been an antediluvian Coney Island, for all the
+world knows. Who shall say that this little upset of mine found here an
+oyster-bed, shook all the oysters out of their bed into space, and left
+their clothes high and dry in a locality which, but for those garments,
+would seem never to have known the oyster in his prime? Off in
+Westchester County, on the top of a high hill, lies a rock, and in the
+uppermost portion of that rock is a so-called pot-hole, made by nothing
+else than the dropping of water of a brook and the swirling of pebbles
+therein. It is now beyond the reach of anything in the shape of water
+save that which falls from the heavens. It is certain that this pot-hole
+was never made by a boy with a watering-pot, by a hired man with a hose,
+by a workman with a drill, or by any rain-storm that ever fell in
+Westchester County. There must at some time or another have been a
+stream there; and as streams do not flow uphill and bore pot-holes on
+mountain-tops, there must have been a valley there. Some great cataclysm
+took place. For that cataclysm nature must be held responsible mainly.
+But what prompted nature to raise hob with Westchester County millions of
+years ago, and to let it sleep like Rip Van Winkle ever since? Nature
+isn't a freak. She is depicted as a woman, but in spite of that she is
+not whimsical. She does not act upon impulses. There must have been some
+cause for her behavior in turning valleys into hills, in transforming
+huge cities into wastes of sand, and oyster-beds into shell quarries; and
+it is my belief that man was the contributing cause. He tapped the earth
+for natural gas; he bored in and he bored out, and he bored nature to
+death, and then nature rose up and smote him and his cities and his
+oyster-beds, and she'll do it again unless we go slow."
+
+"There is a great deal in what you say," said Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"Very true," said Mrs. Pedagog. "But I wish he'd stop saying it. The last
+three dozen cakes have got cold as ice while he was talking, and I can't
+afford such reckless waste."
+
+"Nor we, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, with a pleasant smile; "for, as I
+was saying to the Bibliomaniac this morning, your buckwheat cakes are, to
+my mind, the very highest development of our modern civilization, and to
+have even one of them wasted seems to me to be a crime against Nature
+herself, for which a second, third, or fourth shaking up of this earth
+would be an inadequate punishment."
+
+This remark so pleased Mrs. Pedagog that she ordered the cook to send up
+a fresh lot of cakes; and the guests, after eating them, adjourned to
+their various duties with light hearts, and digestions occupied with work
+of great importance.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+"I wonder what would have happened if Columbus had not discovered
+America?" said the Bibliomaniac, as the company prepared to partake of
+the morning meal.
+
+"He would have gone home disappointed," said the Idiot, with a look of
+surprise on his face, which seemed to indicate that in his opinion the
+Bibliomaniac was very dull-witted not to have solved the problem for
+himself. "He would have gone home disappointed, and we would now be
+foreigners, like most other Americans. Mr. Pedagog would doubtless be
+instructing the young scions of the aristocracy of Tipperary, Mr.
+Whitechoker would be Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bibliomaniac would be
+raising bulbs in Holland, and----"
+
+[Illustration: "THE BIBLIOMANIAC WOULD BE RAISING BULBS"]
+
+"And you would be wandering about with the other wild men of Borneo at
+the present time," put in the School-Master.
+
+"No," said the Idiot. "Not quite. I should be dividing my time up between
+Holland, France, Switzerland, and Spain."
+
+"You are an international sort of Idiot, eh?" queried the Lawyer, with a
+chuckle at his own wit.
+
+"Say rather a cosmopolitan Idiot," said the Idiot. "Among my ancestors
+I number individuals of various nations, though I suppose that if we go
+back far enough we were all in the same boat as far as that is concerned.
+One of my great-great-grandfathers was a Scotchman, one of them was a
+Dutchman, another was a Spaniard, a fourth was a Frenchman. What the
+others were I don't know. It's a nuisance looking up one's ancestors,
+I think. They increase so as you go back into the past. Every man
+has had two grandfathers, four great-grandfathers, eight
+great-great-grandfathers, sixteen great-great-great-grandfathers,
+thirty-two fathers raised to the fourth power of great-grandness, and
+so on, increasing in number as you go further back, until it is hardly
+possible for any one to throw a brick into the pages of history without
+hitting somebody who is more or less responsible for his existence. I
+dare say there is a streak of Julius C�sar in me, and I haven't a doubt
+that if our friend Mr. Pedagog here were to take the trouble to
+investigate, he would find that C�sar and Cassius and Brutus could be
+numbered among his early progenitors--and now that I think of it,
+I must say that in my estimation he is an unusually amiable man,
+considering how diverse the nature of these men were. Think of it for
+a minute. Here a man unites in himself C�sar and Cassius and Brutus,
+two of whom killed the third, and then, having quarrelled together,
+went out upon a battle-field and slaughtered themselves, after making
+extemporaneous remarks, for which this miserable world gives Shakespeare
+all the credit. It's worse than the case of a friend of mine, one of
+whose grandfathers was French and the other German."
+
+"How did it affect him?" asked Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"It made him distrust himself," said the Idiot, with a smile, "and for
+that reason he never could get on in the world. When his Teutonic nature
+suggested that he do something, his Gallic blood would rise up and spoil
+everything, and _vice versa_. He was eternally quarrelling with himself.
+He was a victim to internal disorder of the worst sort."
+
+"And what, pray, finally became of him?" asked the Clergyman.
+
+"He shot himself in a duel," returned the Idiot, with a wink at the
+genial old gentleman who occasionally imbibed. "It was very sad."
+
+"I've known sadder things," said Mr. Pedagog, wearily. "Your elaborate
+jokes, for instance. They are enough to make strong men weep."
+
+"You flatter me, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "I have never in all my
+experience as a cracker of jests made a man laugh until he cried, but I
+hope to some day. But, really, do you know I think Columbus is an
+immensely overrated man. If you come down to it, what did he do? He went
+out to sea in a ship and sailed for three months, and when he least
+expected it ran slam-bang up against the Western Hemisphere. It was like
+shooting at a barn door with a Gatling gun. He was bound to hit it sooner
+or later."
+
+"You don't give him any credit for tenacity of purpose or good judgment,
+then?" asked Mr. Brief.
+
+"Of course I do. Plenty of it. He stuck to his ship like a hero who
+didn't know how to swim. His judgment was great. He had too much sense
+to go back to Spain without any news of something, because he fully
+understood that unless he had something to show for the trip, there would
+have been a great laugh on Queen Isabella for selling her jewels to
+provide for a ninety-day yacht cruise for him and a lot of common
+sailors, which would never have done. So he kept on and on, and finally
+some unknown lookout up in the bow discovered America. Then Columbus
+went home and told everybody that if it hadn't been for his own eagle eye
+emigration wouldn't have been invented, and world's fairs would have been
+local institutions. Then they got up a parade in which the King and Queen
+graciously took part, and Columbus became a great man. Meanwhile the
+unknown lookout who did discover the land was knocking about the town and
+thinking he was a very lucky fellow to get an extra glass of grog. It
+wasn't anything more than the absolute justice of fate that caused the
+new land to be named America and not Columbia. It really ought to have
+been named after that fellow up in the bow."
+
+"But, my dear Idiot," put in the Bibliomaniac, "the scheme itself was
+Columbus's own. He evolved the theory that the earth is round like a
+ball."
+
+"To quote Mr. Pedagog--" began the Idiot.
+
+"You can't quote me in your own favor," snapped the School-Master.
+
+"Wait until I have finished," said the Idiot. "I was only going to quote
+you by saying 'Tutt!' that's all; and so I repeat, in the words of Mr.
+Pedagog, tutt, tutt! Evolved the theory? Why, man, how could he help
+evolving the theory? There was the sun rising in the east every morning
+and setting in the west every night. What else was there to believe? That
+somebody put the sun out every night, and sneaked back east with it under
+cover of darkness?"
+
+"But you forget that the wise men of the day laughed at his idea," said
+Mr. Pedagog, surveying the Idiot after the fashion of a man who has dealt
+an adversary a stinging blow.
+
+"That only proves what I have always said," replied the Idiot. "Wise men
+can't find fun in anything but stern facts. Wise men always do laugh at
+truth. Whenever I advance some new proposition, you sit up there next to
+Mrs. Pedagog and indulge in tutt-tutterances of the most intolerant sort.
+If you had been one of the wise men of Columbus's time there isn't any
+doubt in my mind that when Columbus said the earth was round, you'd have
+remarked tutt, tutt, in Spanish." There was silence for a minute, and
+then the Idiot began again. "There's another point about this whole
+business that makes me tired," he said. "It only goes to prove the
+conceit of these Europeans. Here was a great continent inhabited by
+countless people. A European comes over here and is said to be the
+discoverer of America and is glorified. Statues of him are scattered
+broad-cast all over the world. Pictures of him are printed in the
+newspapers and magazines. A dozen different varieties of portraits of
+him are printed on postage-stamps as big as circus posters--and all for
+what? Because he discovered a land that millions of Indians had known
+about for centuries. On the other hand, when Columbus goes back to Spain
+several of the native Americans trust their precious lives to his old
+tubs. One of these savages must have been the first American to discover
+Europe. Where are the statues of the Indian who discovered Europe? Where
+are the postage-stamps showing how he looked on the day when Europe first
+struck his vision? Where is anybody spending a billion of dollars getting
+up a world's fair in commemoration of Lo's discovery of Europe?"
+
+"He didn't know it was Europe," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Columbus didn't know this was America," retorted the Idiot. "In fact,
+Columbus didn't know anything. He didn't know any better than to write a
+letter to Queen Isabella and mail it in a keg that never turned up. He
+didn't even know how to steer his old boat into a real solid continent,
+instead of getting ten days on the island. He was an awfully wise man. He
+saw an island swarming with Indians, and said, 'Why, this must be India!'
+And worst of all, if his pictures mean anything, he didn't even know
+enough to choose his face and stick to it. Don't talk Columbus to me
+unless you want to prove that luck is the greatest factor of success."
+
+[Illustration: "DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH TO CHOOSE HIS OWN FACE"]
+
+"Ill-luck is sometimes a factor of success," said Mr. Pedagog. "You are a
+success as an Idiot, which appears to me to be extremely unfortunate."
+
+"I don't know about that," said the Idiot. "I adapt myself to my company,
+and of course--"
+
+"Then you are a school-master among school-masters, a lawyer among
+lawyers, and so forth?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"What are you when your company is made up of widely diverse characters?"
+asked Mr. Brief before the Idiot had a chance to reply to the
+Bibliomaniac's question.
+
+"I try to be a widely diverse character myself."
+
+"And, trying to sit on many stools, fall and become just an Idiot," said
+Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"That's according to the way you look at it. I put my company to the test
+in the crucible of my mind. I analyze the characters of all about me, and
+whatever quality predominates in the precipitate, that I become. Thus in
+the presence of my employer and his office-boy I become a mixture of
+both--something of the employer, something of an office-boy. I run
+errands for my employer, and boss the office-boy. With you gentlemen I
+go through the same process. The Bibliomaniac, the School-Master, Mr.
+Brief, and the rest of you have been cast into the crucible, and I have
+tried to approximate the result."
+
+"And are an Idiot," said the School-Master.
+
+"It is your own name for me, gentlemen," returned the Idiot. "I presume
+you have recognized your composite self, and have chosen the title
+accordingly."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You were a little hard on me this morning, weren't you?" asked the
+genial old gentleman who occasionally imbibed, that evening, when he and
+the Idiot were discussing the morning's chat. "I didn't like to say
+anything about it, but I don't think you ought to have thrown me into the
+crucible with the rest."
+
+"I wish you had spoken," said the Idiot, warmly. "It would have given me
+a chance to say that the grain of sense that once or twice a year leavens
+the lump of my idiocy is directly due to the ingredient furnished by
+yourself. Here's to you, old man. If you and I lived alone together, what
+a wise man I should be!"
+
+And then the genial old gentleman went to the cupboard and got out a
+bottle of port-wine that he had been preserving in cobwebs for ten years.
+This he opened, and as he did so he said, "I've been keeping this for
+years, my boy. It was dedicated in my youth to the thirst of the first
+man who truly appreciated me. Take it all."
+
+"I'll divide with you," returned the Idiot, with a smile. "For really,
+old fellow, I think you--ah--I think you appreciate yourself as much as
+I do."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+"I wonder what it costs to run a flat?" said the Idiot, stirring his
+coffee with the salt-spoon--a proceeding which seemed to indicate that he
+was thinking of something else.
+
+"Don't you keep an expense account?" asked the Bibliomaniac, slyly.
+
+"Hee-hee!" laughed Mrs. Pedagog.
+
+"First-rate joke," said the Idiot, with a smile. "But really, now,
+I should like to know for how little an apartment could be run. I am
+interested."
+
+Mrs. Pedagog stopped laughing at once. The Idiot's words were ominous.
+She did not always like his views, but she did like his money, and she
+was not at all anxious to lose him as a boarder.
+
+"It's very expensive," she said, firmly. "I shouldn't ever advise any
+one to undertake living in a flat. Rents are high. Butcher bills are
+enormous, because the butchers have to pay commissions, not only to the
+cook, so that she'll use twice as much lard as she can, and give away
+three or four times as much to the poor as she ought, but janitors have
+to be seen to, and elevator-boys, and all that. Groceries come high for
+the same reason. Oh, no! Flat life isn't the life for anybody, I say.
+Give me a good, first-class boarding-house. Am I not right, John?"
+
+[Illustration: "JANITORS HAVE TO BE SEEN TO"]
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Pedagog. "Every time. I lived in a flat once,
+and it was an awful nuisance. Above me lived a dancing-master who gave
+lessons at every hour of the day in the room directly over my study,
+so that I was always being disturbed at my work, while below me was a
+music-teacher who was practising all night, so that I could hardly sleep.
+Worst of all, on the same floor with me was a miserable person of
+convivial tendencies, who always mistook my door for his when he came
+home after midnight, and who gave some quite estimable people two
+floors below to believe that it was I, and not he, who sang comic songs
+between three and four o'clock in the morning. There has not been too
+much love lost between the Idiot and myself, but I cannot be so
+vindictive as to recommend him to live in a flat."
+
+"I can bear testimony to the same effect," put in Mr. Brief, who was two
+weeks in arrears, and anxious to conciliate his landlady.
+
+"Testimony to the effect that Mr. Pedagog sang comic songs in the early
+morning?" said the Idiot. "Nonsense! I don't believe it. I have lived in
+this house for two years with Mr. Pedagog, and I've never heard him raise
+his voice in song yet."
+
+"I didn't mean anything of the sort," retorted Mr. Brief. "You know I
+didn't."
+
+"Don't apologize to me," said the Idiot. "Apologize to Mr. Pedagog. He is
+the man you have wronged."
+
+"What did he say?" put in Mr. Pedagog, with a stern look at Mr. Brief. "I
+didn't hear what he said."
+
+"I didn't say anything," said the lawyer, "except that I could bear
+testimony to the effect that your experience with flat life was similar
+to mine. This young person, with his customary nerve, tries to make it
+appear that I said you sang comic songs in the early morning."
+
+"I try to do nothing of the sort," said the Idiot. "I simply expressed my
+belief that in spite of what you said Mr. Pedagog was innocent, and I do
+so because my experience with him has taught me that he is not the kind
+of man who would do that sort of thing. He has neither time, voice, nor
+inclination. He has an ear--two of them, in fact--and an impressionable
+mind, but--"
+
+"Oh, tutt!" interrupted the School-Master. "When I need a defender, you
+may spare yourself the trouble of flying to my rescue."
+
+"I know I _may_," said the Idiot, "but with me it's a question of can and
+can't. I'm willing to attack you personally, but while I live no other
+shall do so. Wherefore I tell Mr. Brief plainly, and to his face, that if
+he says you ever sang a comic song he says what is not so. You might hum
+one, but sing it--never!"
+
+"We were talking of flats, I believe," said Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"Yes," said the Idiot, "and these persons have changed it from flat talk
+to sharp talk."
+
+"Well, anyhow," put in Mr. Brief, "I lived in a flat once, and it was
+anything but pleasant. I lost a case once for the simple and only reason
+that I lived in a flat. It was a case that required a great deal of
+strategy on my part, and I invited my client to my home to unfold my plan
+of action. I got interested in the scheme as I unfolded it, and spoke in
+my usual impassioned manner, as though addressing a jury, and, would you
+believe it, the opposing counsel happened to be visiting a friend on the
+next floor, and my eloquence floated up through the air-shaft, and gave
+our whole plan of action away. We were routed on the point we had
+supposed would pierce the enemy's armor and lay him at our feet, for the
+wholly simple reason that that abominable air-shaft had made my strategic
+move a matter of public knowledge."
+
+[Illustration: "MY ELOQUENCE FLOATED UP THE AIR-SHAFT"]
+
+"That's a good idea for a play," said the Idiot. "A roaring farce could
+be built up on that basis. Villain and accomplice on one floor, innocent
+victim on floor above. Plot floats up air-shaft. Innocent victim
+overhears; villain and accomplice say 'ha ha' for three acts and take
+a back seat in the fourth, with a grand transformation showing the
+conspirators in the county jail as a finale. Write it up with lots of
+live-stock wandering in and out, bring in janitors and elevator-boys
+and butchers, show up some of the humors of flat life, if there be any
+such, call it _A Hole in the Flat_, and put it on the stage. Nine hundred
+nights is the very shortest run it could have, which at fifty dollars a
+night for the author is $45,000 in good hard dollars. Mr. Poet, the idea
+is yours for a fiver. Say the word."
+
+"Thanks," said the Poet, with a smile; "I'm not a dramatist."
+
+"Then I'll have to do it myself," said the Idiot. "And if I do, good-bye
+Shakespeare."
+
+"That's so," said Mr. Pedagog. "Nothing could more effectually ruin the
+dramatic art than to have you write a play. People, seeing your work,
+would say, here, this will never do. The stage must be discouraged at all
+costs. A hypocrite throws the ministry into disgrace, an ignoramus brings
+shame upon education, and an unpopular lawyer gives the bar a bad name. I
+think you are just the man to ruin Shakespeare."
+
+"Then I'll give up my ambition to become a playwright and stick to
+idiocy," said the Idiot. "But to come back to flats. Your feeling in
+regard to them is entirely different from that of a friend of mine, who
+has lived in one for ten years. He thinks flat life is ideal. His
+children can't fall down-stairs, because there aren't any stairs to fall
+down. His roof never leaks, because he hasn't any roof to leak; and when
+he and his family want to go off anywhere, all he has to do is to lock
+his front door and go. Burglars never climb into his front window,
+because they are all eight flights up. Damp cellars don't trouble him,
+because they are too far down to do him any injury, even if they
+overflow. The cares of house-keeping are reduced to a minimum. His cook
+doesn't spend all her time in the front area flirting with the postman,
+because there isn't any front area to his flat; and in a social way his
+wife is most delightfully situated, because most of her friends live in
+the same building, and instead of having to hire a carriage to go calling
+in, all she has to do is to take the elevator and go from one floor to
+another. If he pines for a change of scene, he is high enough up in the
+air to get it by looking out of his windows, over the tops of other
+buildings, into the green fields to the north, or looking westward into
+the State of New Jersey. Instead of taking a drive through the Park, or
+a walk, all he and his wife need to do is to take a telescope and follow
+some little sylvan path with their eyes. Then, as for expense, he finds
+that he saves money by means of a co-operative scheme. For instance, if
+he wants shad for dinner, and he and his wife cannot eat a whole one, he
+goes shares on the shad and its cost with his neighbors above and below."
+
+"Yes, and his neighbors above and below borrow tea and eggs and butter
+and ice and other things whenever they run short, so that in that way he
+loses all he saves," said Mr. Pedagog, resolved not to give in.
+
+"He does if he isn't smart," said the Idiot. "I thought of that myself,
+and asked him about it, and he told me that he kept account of all that,
+and always made it a point after some neighbor had borrowed two pounds
+of butter from him to send in before the week was over and borrow three
+pounds of butter from the neighbor. So far his books show that he is
+sixteen pounds of butter, seven pounds of tea, one bottle of vanilla
+extract, and a ton of ice ahead of the whole house. He is six eggs and
+a box of matches behind in his egg and match account, but under the
+circumstances I think he can afford it."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Pedagog, anxious to know the worst, "why--er--why are
+you so interested?"
+
+"Well," said the Idiot, slowly, "I--er--I am contemplating a change, Mrs.
+Pedagog--a change that would fill me--I say it sincerely, too--with
+regret if--" The Idiot paused a minute, and his eye swept fondly about
+the table. His voice was getting a little husky too, Mr. Whitechoker
+noticed. "It would fill me with regret, I say, if it were not that
+in taking up house-keeping I am--I am to have the assistance of a
+better-half."
+
+"What??" cried the Bibliomaniac. "You? You are going to be--to be
+married?"
+
+"Why not?" said the Idiot. "Imitation is the sincerest flattery. Mr.
+Pedagog marries, and I am going to flatter him as sincerely as I can by
+following in his footsteps."
+
+"May I--may we ask to whom?" asked Mrs. Pedagog, softly.
+
+"Certainly," said the Idiot. "To Mr. Barlow's daughter. Mr. Barlow is--or
+was--my employer."
+
+"Was? Is he not now? Are you going out of business?" asked Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"No; but, you see, when I went to see Mr. Barlow in the matter, he told
+me that he liked me very much, and he had no doubt I would make a good
+husband for his daughter, but, after all, he added that I was nothing
+but a confidential clerk on a small salary, and he thought his daughter
+could do better."
+
+"She couldn't find a better fellow, Mr. Idiot," said Mrs. Pedagog, and
+Mr. Pedagog rose to the occasion by nodding his entire acquiescence in
+the statement.
+
+"Thank you very much," said the Idiot. "That was precisely what I told
+Mr. Barlow, and I suggested a scheme to him by which his sole objection
+could be got around."
+
+"You would start in business for yourself?" said Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"In a sense, yes," said the Idiot. "Only the way I put it was that a good
+confidential clerk would make a good partner for him, and he, after
+thinking it over, thought I was right."
+
+"It certainly was a characteristically novel way out of the dilemma,"
+said Mr. Brief, with a smile.
+
+"I thought so myself, and so did he, so it was all arranged. On the 1st
+of next month I enter the firm, and on the 15th I am--ah--to be married."
+
+The company warmly congratulated the Idiot upon his good-fortune, and he
+shortly left the room, more overcome by their felicitations than he had
+been by their arguments in the past.
+
+The few days left passed quickly by, and there came a breakfast at Mrs.
+Pedagog's house that was a mixture of joy and sadness--joy for his
+happiness, sadness that that table should know the Idiot no more.
+
+Among the wedding-gifts was a handsomely bound series of volumes,
+including a cyclop�dia, a dictionary, and a little tome of poems, the
+first output of the Poet. These came together, with a card inscribed,
+"From your Friends of the Breakfast Table," of whom the Idiot said, when
+Mrs. Idiot asked for information:
+
+"They, my dear, next to yourself and my parents, are the dearest friends
+I ever had. We must have them up to breakfast some morning."
+
+"Breakfast?" queried Mrs. Idiot.
+
+"Yes, my dear," he replied, simply. "I should be afraid to meet them at
+any other meal. I am always at my best at breakfast, and they--well, they
+never are."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
+
+
+Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica.
+
+Mr. Bangs is probably the generator of more hearty, healthful, purely
+good-humored laughs than any other half-dozen men of our country
+to-day.--_Interior_, Chicago.
+
+
+The Idiot.
+
+"The Idiot," continues to be as amusing and as triumphantly bright in the
+volume called after his name as in "Coffee and Repartee."--_Evangelist_,
+N. Y.
+
+
+The Water Ghost, and Others.
+
+The funny side of the ghost genre is brought out with originality, and,
+considering the morbidity that surrounds the subject, it is a wholesome
+thing to offer the public a series of tales letting in the sunlight of
+laughter.--_Hartford Courant_.
+
+
+Three Weeks in Politics.
+
+The funny story is most graphically told, and he who can read this
+narrative of a campaigner's trials without laughing must be a stoic
+indeed.--_Philadelphia Bulletin_.
+
+
+Coffee and Repartee.
+
+
+Is delightfully free from conventionality; is breezy, witty, and
+possessed of an originality both genial and refreshing.--_Saturday
+Evening Gazette_, Boston.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDIOT***
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Idiot, by John Kendrick Bangs</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Idiot</p>
+<p>Author: John Kendrick Bangs</p>
+<p>Release Date: July 20, 2006  [eBook #18881]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDIOT***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net/)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+
+<h1>THE IDIOT</h1>
+
+<h2>BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS</h2>
+
+<h3>AUTHOR OF "COFFEE AND REPARTEE" "THE WATER GHOST, AND OTHERS" "THREE
+WEEKS IN POLITICS" ETC.</h3>
+
+<h3>ILLUSTRATED</h3>
+
+<h3>NEW YORK<br />
+HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br />
+1895</h3>
+
+<h3>Copyright, 1895, by <span class="smcap">Harper &amp; Brothers</span></h3>
+
+
+<h3><i>All rights reserved.</i></h3>
+
+<h3>TO WILLIAM K. OTIS</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#I">I</a><br />
+<a href="#II">II</a><br />
+<a href="#III">III</a><br />
+<a href="#IV">IV</a><br />
+<a href="#V">V</a><br />
+<a href="#VI">VI</a><br />
+<a href="#VII">VII</a><br />
+<a href="#VIII">VIII</a><br />
+<a href="#IX">IX</a><br />
+<a href="#X">X</a><br />
+<a href="#XI">XI</a><br />
+<a href="#XII">XII</a><br />
+<a href="#BY_JOHN_KENDRICK_BANGS">BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+<p><a href="#gs002">"THE NUISANCE OF HAVING TO PAY"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs003">"SHE COULD NOT POSSIBLY GET ABOARD AGAIN"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs001">"CERTAINLY. I ASKED FOR ANOTHER CUP"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs004">"DEMANDS TICKETS FOR TWO"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs005">"THEY ARE GIVEN TO REHEARSING AT ALL HOURS"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs006">"'HA! HA! I HAVE HIM NOW!'"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs007">"HAS YOUR FRIEND COMPLETED HIS ARTICLE ON OLD JOKES?"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs008">THEY DEPARTED</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs009">"YOU FISH ALL DAY, AND HAVE NO LUCK"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs010">HE COULD BE HEARD THROWING THINGS ABOUT</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs011">"HE WAS NOT MURDERED"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs012">"SUPERINTENDENT SMITHERS HAS NOT ABSCONDED"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs013">THE INSPIRED BOARDER PAID HIS BILL</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs014">"I KNOW YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE IT ISN'T THERE"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs015">"YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HEARD IN SAN FRANCISCO"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs016">THE PROPHETOGRAPH</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs017">"I GRASPED IT IN MY TWO HANDS"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs018">"PIANO-PLAYING ISN'T ALWAYS MUSIC"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs019">"THE MOON ITSELF WILL BE USED"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs020">"DECLINES TO BE RIDDEN"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs021">"THE BIBLIOMANIAC WOULD BE RAISING BULBS"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs022">"DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH TO CHOOSE HIS OWN FACE"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs023">"JANITORS HAVE TO BE SEEN TO"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#gs024">"MY ELOQUENCE FLOATED UP THE AIR-SHAFT"</a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_IDIOT" id="THE_IDIOT"></a>THE IDIOT</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>For some weeks after the happy event which transformed the popular Mrs.
+Smithers into the charming Mrs. John Pedagog all went well at that lady's
+select home for single gentlemen. It was only proper that during the
+honey-moon, at least, of the happy couple hostilities between the Idiot
+and his fellow-boarders should cease. It was expecting too much of
+mankind, however, to look for a continued armistice, and the morning
+arrived when Nature once more reasserted herself, and trouble began. Just
+what it was that prompted the remark no one knows, but it happened that
+the Idiot did say that he thought that, after all, life on a canal-boat
+had its advantages. Mr. Pedagog, who had come into the dining-room in a
+slightly irritable frame of mind, induced perhaps by Mrs. Pedagog's
+insistence that as he was now part proprietor of the house he should be
+a little more prompt in making his contributions towards its maintenance,
+chose to take the remark as implying a reflection upon the way things
+were managed in the household.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" he said. "I had hoped that your habit of airing your idiotic
+views had been put aside for once and for all."</p>
+
+<p>"Very absurd hope, my dear sir," observed the Idiot. "Views that are not
+aired become musty. Why shouldn't I give them an atmospheric opportunity
+once in a while?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because they are the sort of views to which suffocation is the most
+appropriate end," snapped the School-Master. "Any man who asserts, as you
+have asserted, that life on a canal-boat has its advantages, ought to go
+further, and prove his sincerity by living on one."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't afford it," said the Idiot, meekly. "It isn't cheap by any
+manner of means. In the first place, you can't live happily on a
+canal-boat unless you can afford to keep horses. In fact, canal-boat life
+is a combination of the most expensive luxuries, since it combines
+yachting and driving with domesticity. Nevertheless, if you will put your
+mind on it, you will find that with a canal-boat for your home you can do
+a great many things that you can't do with a house."</p>
+
+<p>"I decline to put my mind on a canal-boat," said Mr. Pedagog, sharply,
+passing his coffee back to Mrs. Pedagog for another lump of sugar,
+thereby contributing to that good lady's discomfiture, since before their
+marriage the mere fact that the coffee had been poured by her fair hand
+had given it all the sweetness it needed; or at least that was what the
+School-Master had said, and more than once at that.</p>
+
+<p>"You are under no obligation to do so," the Idiot returned. "Though if I
+had a mind like yours I'd put it on a canal-boat and have it towed away
+somewhere out of sight. These other gentlemen, however, I think, will
+agree with me when I say that the mere fact that a canal-boat can be
+moved about the country, and is in no sense a fixture anywhere, shows
+that as a dwelling-place it is superior to a house. Take this house, for
+instance. This neighborhood used to be the best in town. It is still far
+from being the worst neighborhood in town, but it is, as it has been for
+several years, deteriorating. The establishment of a Turkish bath on one
+corner and a grocery-store on the other has taken away much of that air
+of refinement which characterized it when the block was devoted to
+residential purposes entirely. Now just suppose for a moment that this
+street were a canal, and that this house were a canal-boat. The canal
+could run down as much as it pleased, the neighborhood could deteriorate
+eternally, but it could not affect the value of this house as the home of
+refined people as long as it was possible to hitch up a team of horses to
+the front stoop and tow it into a better locality. I'd like to wager
+every man at this table that Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't take five minutes to
+make up her mind to tow this house up to a spot near Central Park, if it
+were a canal-boat and the streets were water instead of a mixture of
+water, sand, and Belgian blocks."</p>
+
+<p>"No takers," said the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"Tutt-tutt-tutt," ejaculated Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs002" id="gs002"></a>
+<img src="images/gs002.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"THE NUISANCE OF HAVING TO PAY"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+<p>"You seem to lose sight of another fact," said the Idiot, warming up to
+his subject. "If man had had the sense in the beginning to adopt the
+canal-boat system of life, and we were used to that sort of thing, it
+would not be so hard upon us in summer-time, when we have to live in
+hotels in order that we and our families may reap the benefits of a
+period of country life. We could simply drive off to that section of the
+country where we desired to be. Hotels would not be needed if a man could
+take his house along with him into the fields, and one phase of life
+which has more bad than good in it would be entirely obliterated. There
+is nothing more disturbing to the serenity of a domestic man's mind than
+the artificial manner of living that prevails in most summer hotels. The
+nuisance of having to pay bills every Monday morning under the penalty of
+losing one's luggage would be obviated, and all the comforts of home
+would be directly within reach. The trouble incident upon getting the
+trunks packed and the children ready for a long day's journey by rail,
+and the fatigue arising from such a journey, would be reduced to a
+minimum. The troubles attendant upon going into a far country, and
+leaving one's house in the sole charge of a lot of servants for a month
+or two every year, would be done away with entirely; and if at any time
+it became necessary to discharge one of these servants, she could be put
+off the boat in an instant, and then the boat could be pushed out into
+the middle of the canal, so that the discharged domestic could not
+possibly get aboard again and take her revenge by smashing your crockery
+and fixtures. That is one of the worst features of living in a stationary
+house. You are entirely at the mercy of vindictive servants. They know
+precisely where you live, and you cannot escape them. They can come back
+when there is no man around, and raise several varieties of Ned with your
+wife and children. With a movable house, such as the canal-boat would be,
+you could always go off and leave your family in perfect safety."</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs003" id="gs003"></a>
+<img src="images/gs003.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"SHE COULD NOT POSSIBLY GET ABOARD AGAIN"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"How about safety in a storm?" asked the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"Safety in a storm?" echoed the Idiot. "That seems an absurd sort of a
+question to one who knows anything about canal-boats. I, for one, never
+heard of a canal-boat being seriously damaged in a storm as long as it
+was anchored in the canal proper. It certainly isn't any more dangerous
+to be in a canal-boat in a storm than it is to be in a house that
+offers resistance to the winds, and is shaken from roof to cellar at
+every blast. More houses have been blown from their foundations than
+canal-boats sunk, provided ordinary care has been taken to protect
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think the canal-boat would be healthy?" asked the Doctor. "How
+about dampness and all that?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is a professional question," returned the Idiot, "which I think you
+could answer better than I. I don't see why a canal-boat shouldn't be
+healthy, however. The dampness would not amount to very much. It would be
+outside of one's dwelling, and not within it, as is the case with so many
+houses. A canal-boat having no cellar could not have a damp one, and if
+by some untoward circumstance it should spring a leak, the water could
+be pumped out at once and the leak plugged up. However this might be,
+I'll offer another wager to this board on that point, and that is that
+more people die in houses than on canal-boats."</p>
+
+<p>"We'd rather give you our money right out," retorted the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said the Idiot. "But I don't need money. I don't like money.
+Money is responsible for more extravagance than any other commodity in
+existence. Besides, it and I are not intimate enough to get along very
+well together, and when I have any I immediately do my level best to rid
+myself of it. But to return to our canal-boat, I note a look of
+disapproval in Mr. Whitechoker's eyes. He doesn't seem to think any
+more of my scheme than do the rest of you&mdash;which I regret, since I
+believe that he would be the gainer if land edifices were supplanted by
+the canal system as proposed by myself. Take church on a rainy morning,
+for instance. A great many people stay at home from church on rainy
+mornings just because they do not want to venture out in the wet. Suppose
+we all lived in canal-boats? Would not people be deprived of this flimsy
+pretext for staying at home if their homes could be towed up to the
+church door? Or, better yet, granting that the churches followed out the
+same plan, and were themselves constructed like canal-boats, how easy it
+would be for the sexton to drive the church around the town and collect
+the absentees. In the same manner it would be glorious for men like
+ourselves, who have to go to their daily toil. For a consideration, Mrs.
+Pedagog could have us driven to our various places of business every
+morning, returning for us in the evening. Think how fine it would be for
+me, for instance, instead of having to come home every night in an
+overcrowded elevated train or on a cable-car, to have the office-boy come
+and announce, 'Mrs. Pedagog's Select Home for Gentlemen is at the door,
+Mr. Idiot.' I could step right out of my office into my charming little
+bedroom up in the bow, and the time usually expended on the cars could be
+devoted to dressing for tea. Then we could stop in at the court-house for
+our legal friend; and as for Doctor Capsule, wouldn't he revel in driving
+this boarding-house about town on his daily rounds among his patients?"</p>
+
+<p>"What would become of my office hours?" asked the Doctor. "If this house
+were whirling giddily all about the city from morning until night, I
+don't know what would become of my office patients."</p>
+
+<p>"They might die a little sooner or live a little longer, that is all,"
+said the Idiot. "If they weren't able to find the house at all, however,
+I think it would be better for us, for much as I admire you, Doctor, I
+think your office hours are a nuisance to the rest of us. I had to elbow
+my way out of the house this morning between a double line of sufferers
+from mumps and influenza, and other pleasingly afflicted patients of
+yours, and I didn't like it very much."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe they liked it much either," returned the Doctor. "One
+man with a sprained ankle told me about you. You shoved him in passing."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you can apologize to him in my behalf," returned the Idiot; "but
+you might add that he must expect very much the same treatment whenever
+he and a boy with mumps stand between me and the door. Sprained ankles
+aren't contagious, and I preferred shoving him to the other alternative."</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor was silent, and the Idiot rose to go. "Where will the house be
+this evening about six-thirty, Mrs. Pedagog?" he asked, as he pushed his
+chair back from the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Where? Why, here, of course," returned the landlady.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes&mdash;of course," observed the Idiot, with an impatient gesture.
+"How foolish of me! I've really been so wrapped up in my canal-boat ideal
+that I came to believe that it might possibly be real and not a dream,
+after all. I almost believed that perhaps I should find that the house
+had been towed somewhere up into Westchester County on my return, so that
+we might all escape the city's tax on personal property, which I am told
+is unusually high this year."</p>
+
+<p>With which sally the Idiot kissed his hand to Mr. Pedagog and retired
+from the scene.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Let's write a book," suggested the Idiot, as he took his place at the
+board and unfolded his napkin.</p>
+
+<p>"What about?" asked the Doctor, with a smile at the idea of the Idiot's
+thinking of embarking on literary pursuits.</p>
+
+<p>"About four hundred pages long," said the Idiot. "I feel inspired."</p>
+
+<p>"You are inspired," said the School-Master. "In your way you are a
+genius. I really never heard of such a variegated Idiot as you are in all
+my experience, and that means a great deal, I can tell you, for in the
+course of my career as an instructor of youth I have encountered many
+idiots."</p>
+
+<p>"Were they idiots before or after having drank at the fount of your
+learning?" asked the Idiot, placidly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pedagog glared, and the Idiot was apparently satisfied. To make Mr.
+Pedagog glare appeared to be one of the chiefest of his ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>"You will kindly remember, Mr. Idiot," said Mrs. Pedagog at this point,
+"that Mr. Pedagog is my husband, and such insinuations at my table are
+distinctly out of place."</p>
+
+<p>"I ask your pardon, Mrs. Pedagog," rejoined the offender, meekly.
+"Nevertheless, as apart from the question in hand as to whether Mr.
+Pedagog inspires idiocy or not, I should like to get the views of this
+gathering on the point you make regarding the table. <i>Is</i> this your
+table? Is it not rather the table of those who sit about it to regale
+their inner man with the good things under which I remember once or twice
+in my life to have heard it groan? To my mind, the latter is the truth.
+It is <i>our</i> table, because we buy it, and I am forced to believe that
+some of us pay for it. I am prepared to admit that if Mr. Brief, for
+instance, is delinquent in his weekly payments, his interest in the table
+reverts to you until he shall have liquidated, and he is not privileged
+to say a word that you do not approve of; but I, for instance, who since
+January 1st have been compelled to pay in advance, am at least sole
+lessee, and for the time being proprietor of the portion for which I have
+paid. You have sold it to me. I have entered into possession, and while
+in possession, as a matter of right and not on sufferance, haven't I the
+privilege of freedom of speech?"</p>
+
+<p>"You certainly exercise the privilege whether you have it or not,"
+snapped Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I believe in exercise," said the Idiot. "Exercise brings strength,
+and if exercising the privilege is going to strengthen it, exercise it I
+shall, if I have to hire a gymnasium for the purpose. But to return to
+Mrs. Pedagog's remark. It brings up another question that has more or
+less interested me. Because Mrs. Smithers married Mr. Pedagog, do we lose
+all of our rights in Mr. Pedagog? Before the happy event that reduced our
+number from ten to nine&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We are still ten, are we not?" asked Mr. Whitechoker, counting the
+guests.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if Mr. Pedagog and the late Mrs. Smithers have become one," said the
+Idiot. "But, as I was saying, before the happy event that reduced our
+number from ten to nine we were permitted to address our friend Pedagog
+in any terms we saw fit, and whenever he became sufficiently interested
+to indulge in repartee we were privileged to return it. Have we
+relinquished that privilege? I don't remember to have done so."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a question worthy of your giant intellect," said Mr. Pedagog,
+scornfully. "For myself, I do not at all object to anything you may
+choose to say to me or of me. Your assaults are to me as water is to a
+duck's back."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry," said the Idiot. "I hate family disagreements, and here we
+have Mrs. Pedagog taking one side and Mr. Pedagog the other. But whatever
+decision may ultimately be reached, of one thing Mrs. Pedagog must be
+assured. I on principle side against Mr. Pedagog, and if it be the wish
+of my good landlady that I shall refrain from playing intellectual
+battledore and shuttlecock with her husband, whom we all revere, I
+certainly shall refrain. Hereafter if I indulge in anything that in any
+sense resembles repartee with our landlord, I wish it distinctly
+understood that an apology goes with it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, my boy," said the School-Master. "You mean well. You
+are a little new, that's all, and we all understand you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand him," growled the Doctor, still smarting under the
+recollection of former breakfast-table discomfitures. "I wish we could
+get him translated."</p>
+
+<p>"If you prescribed for me once or twice I think it likely I should be
+translated in short order," retorted the Idiot. "I wonder how I'd go
+translated into French?"</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't be expressed in French," put in the Lawyer. "It would take
+some barbarian tongue to do you justice."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said the Idiot. "Proceed. Do me justice."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't begin to," said Mr. Brief, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I thought," said the Idiot. "That's the reason why you
+always do me such great injustice. You lawyers always have to be doing
+something, even if it is only holding down a chair so that it won't blow
+out of your office window. If you haven't any justice to mete out, you
+take another tack and dispense injustice with lavish hand. However, I'll
+forgive you if you'll tell me one thing. What's libel, Mr. Brief?"</p>
+
+<p>"None of your business," growled the Lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"A very good general definition," said the Idiot, approvingly. "If
+there's any business in the world that I should hate to have known as
+mine it is that of libel. I think, however, your definition is not
+definite. What I wanted to know was just how far I could go with remarks
+at this table and be safe from prosecution."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody would ever prosecute you, for two reasons," said the lawyer. "In
+a civil action for money damages a verdict against you for ten cents
+wouldn't be worth a rap, because the chances are you couldn't pay. In a
+criminal action your conviction would be a bad thing, because you would
+be likely to prove a corrupting influence in any jail in creation.
+Besides, you'd be safe before a jury, anyhow. You are just the sort of
+idiot that the intelligent jurors of to-day admire, and they'd acquit you
+of any crime. A man has a right to a trial at the hands of a jury of his
+peers. I don't think even in a jury-box twelve idiots equal to yourself
+could be found, so don't worry."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks. Have a cigarette?" said the Idiot, tossing one over to the
+Lawyer. "It's all I have. If I had a half-dollar I should pay you for
+your opinion; but since I haven't, I offer you my all. The temperature of
+my coffee seems to have fallen, Mrs. Pedagog. Will you kindly let me have
+another cup?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said Mrs. Pedagog. "Mary, get the Idiot another cup."</p>
+
+<p>Mary did as she was told, placing the empty bit of china at Mrs.
+Pedagog's side.</p>
+
+<p>"It is for the Idiot, Mary," said Mrs. Pedagog, coldly. "Take it to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Empty, ma'am?" asked the maid.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Mary," said the Idiot, perceiving Mrs. Pedagog's point. "I
+asked for another cup, not for more coffee."</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs001" id="gs001"></a>
+<img src="images/gs001.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"CERTAINLY. I ASKED FOR ANOTHER CUP"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Mrs. Pedagog smiled quietly at her own joke. At hair-splitting she could
+give the Idiot points.</p>
+
+<p>"I am surprised that Mary should have thought I wanted more coffee,"
+continued the Idiot, in an aggrieved tone. "It shows that she too thinks
+me out of my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not out of your mind," said the Bibliomaniac. "It would be a
+good thing if you were. In replenishing your mental supply you might have
+the luck to get better quality."</p>
+
+<p>"I probably should have the luck," said the Idiot. "I have had a great
+store of it in my life. From the very start I have had luck. When I think
+that I was born myself, and not you, I feel as if I had had more than my
+share of good-fortune&mdash;more luck than the law allows. How much luck does
+the law allow, Mr. Brief?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bosh!" said Mr. Brief, with a scornful wave of his hand, as if he
+were ridding himself of a troublesome gnat. "Don't bother me with such
+mind-withering questions."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said the Idiot. "I'll ask you an easier one. Why does not
+the world recognize matrimony?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Whitechoker started. Here, indeed, was a novel proposition.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;must confess," said he, "that of all the idiotic questions
+I&mdash;er&mdash;I have ever had the honor of hearing asked that takes the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Cake?" suggested the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;palm!" said Mr. Whitechoker, severely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps so," said the Idiot. "But matrimony is the science, or the
+art, or whatever you call it, of making two people one, is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly is," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But what of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"The world does not recognize the unity," said the Idiot. "Take our good
+proprietors, for instance. They were made one by yourself, Mr.
+Whitechoker. I had the pleasure of being an usher at the ceremony,
+yielding the position of best man gracefully, as is my wont, to the
+Bibliomaniac. He was best man, but not the better man, by a simple
+process of reasoning. Now no one at this board disputes that Mr. and Mrs.
+Pedagog are one, but how about the world? Mr. Pedagog takes Mrs. Pedagog
+to a concert. Are they one there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" asked Mr. Brief.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I want to know&mdash;why not? The world, as represented by the
+ticket-taker at the door, says they are not&mdash;or implies that they are
+not, by demanding tickets for two. They attempt to travel out to Niagara
+Falls. The railroad people charge them two fares; the hackman charges
+them two fares; the hotel bills are made out for two people. It is the
+same wherever they go in the world, and I regret to say that even in our
+own home there is a disposition to regard them as two. When I spoke of
+there being nine persons here instead of ten, Mr. Whitechoker himself
+disputed my point&mdash;and yet it was not so much his fault as the fault of
+Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog themselves. Mrs. Pedagog seems to cast doubt upon
+the unity by providing two separate chairs for the two halves that make
+up the charming entirety. Two cups are provided for their coffee. Two
+forks, two knives, two spoons, two portions of all the delicacies of the
+season which are lavished upon us out of season&mdash;generally after it&mdash;fall
+to their lot. They do not object to being called a happy <i>couple</i>, when
+they should be known as a happy single. Now what I want to know is why
+the world does not accept the shrinkage which has been pronounced valid
+by the church and is recognized by the individual? Can any one here tell
+me that?"</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs004" id="gs004"></a>
+<img src="images/gs004.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"DEMANDS TICKETS FOR TWO"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>No one could, apparently. At least no one endeavored to. The Idiot looked
+inquiringly at all, and then, receiving no reply to his question, he rose
+from the table.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," he said, as he started to leave the room&mdash;"I think we ought to
+write that book. If we made it up of the things you people don't know, it
+would be one of the greatest books of the century. At any rate, it would
+be great enough in bulk to fill the biggest library in America."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p>"I wish I were beginning life all over again," said the Idiot one spring
+morning, as he took his accustomed place at Mrs. Pedagog's table.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you were," said Mr. Pedagog from behind his newspaper. "Then your
+parents would have you shut up in a nursery, and it is even conceivable
+that you would be receiving those disciplinary attentions with a slipper
+that you seem to me so frequently to deserve, were you at this present
+moment in the nursery stage of your development."</p>
+
+<p>"My!" ejaculated the Idiot. "What a wonder you are, Mr. Pedagog! It is a
+good thing you are not a justice in a criminal court."</p>
+
+<p>"And what, may I venture to ask," said Mr. Pedagog, glancing at the Idiot
+over his spectacles&mdash;"what has given rise to that extraordinary remark,
+the connection of which with anything that has been said or done this
+morning is distinctly not apparent?"</p>
+
+<p>"I only meant that a man who was so given over to long sentences as you
+are would probably make too severe a judge in a criminal court," replied
+the Idiot, meekly. "Do you make use of the same phraseology in the
+class-room that you dazzle us with, I should like to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"And why not, pray?" said Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"No special reason," said the Idiot; "only it does seem to me that an
+instructor of youth ought to be more careful in his choice of adverbs
+than you appear to be. Of course Doctor Bolus here is under no obligation
+to speak more grammatically or correctly than he does. People call him in
+to prescribe, not to indulge in rhetorical periods, and he can write his
+prescriptions in a sort of intuitive Latin and nobody be the wiser, but
+you, who are said to be sowing the seeds of knowledge in the brain of
+youth, should be more careful."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear the grammarian talk!" returned Mr. Pedagog. "Listen to this
+embryonic Samuel Johnson the Second. What have I said that so offends the
+linguistic taste of Lindley Murray, Jun.?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," returned the Idiot. "I cannot say that you have said anything.
+I never heard you say anything in my life; but while you can no doubt
+find good authority for making use of the words 'distinctly not
+apparent,' you ought not to throw such phrases around carelessly. The
+thing which is distinct is apparent, therefore to say 'distinctly not
+apparent' to a mind that is not given to analysis sounds strange. You
+might as well say of a beautiful girl that she is plainly pretty, meaning
+of course that she is evidently pretty; but those who are unacquainted
+with the idiomatic peculiarities of your speech might ask you if you
+meant that she was pretty in a plain sort of way. Suppose, too, you were
+writing a novel, and, in a desire to give your reader a fair idea of the
+personal appearance of a homely but good creature, you should say, 'It
+cannot be denied that Rosamond Follansbee was pretty plain?' It wouldn't
+take a very grave error of the types to change your entire meaning. To
+save a line on a page, for instance, it might become necessary to
+eliminate a single word; and if that word should chance to be the word
+'plain' in the sentence I have given, your homely but good person would
+be set down as being undeniably pretty. Which shows, it seems to me, that
+too great care cannot be exercised in the making of selections from our
+vocabu&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are the worst I <i>ever</i> knew!" snapped Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"Which only proves," observed the Idiot, "that you have not heeded the
+Scriptural injunction that you should know thyself. Are those buckwheat
+cakes or doilies?"</p>
+
+<p>Whether the question was heard or not is not known. It certainly was not
+answered, and silence reigned for a few minutes. Finally Mrs. Pedagog
+spoke, and in the manner of one who was somewhat embarrassed. "I am in an
+embarrassing position," said she.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" said the Idiot, <i>sotto-voce</i>, to the genial gentleman who
+occasionally imbibed. "There is hope for the landlady yet. If she can be
+embarrassed she is still human&mdash;a condition I was beginning to think she
+wotted not of."</p>
+
+<p>"She whatted what?" queried the genial gentleman, not quite catching the
+Idiot's words.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," returned the Idiot. "Let's hear how she ever came to be
+embarrassed."</p>
+
+<p>"I have had an application for my first-floor suite, and I don't know
+whether I ought to accept it or not," said the landlady.</p>
+
+<p>"She has a conscience, too," whispered the Idiot; and then he added,
+aloud, "And wherein lies the difficulty, Mrs. Pedagog?"</p>
+
+<p>"The applicant is an actor; Junius Brutus Davenport is his name."</p>
+
+<p>"A tragedian or a comedian?" asked the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"Or first walking gentleman, who knows every railroad tie in the
+country?" put in the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"That I do not know," returned the landlady. "His name sounds familiar
+enough, though. I thought perhaps some of you gentlemen might know of
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard of Junius Brutus," observed the Doctor, chuckling slightly
+at his own humor, "and I've heard of Davenport, but Junius Brutus
+Davenport is a combination with which I am not familiar."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't see why it should make any difference whether the man is a
+tragedian, or a comedian, or a familiar figure to railroad men," said Mr.
+Whitechoker, firmly. "In any event, he would be an extremely objec&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It makes a great deal of difference," said the Idiot. "I've met
+tragedians, and I've met comedians, and I've met New York Central stars,
+and I can assure you they each represent a distinct type. The tragedians,
+as a rule, are quiet meek individuals, with soft low voices, in private
+life. They are more timid than otherwise, though essentially amiable.
+I knew a tragedian once who, after killing seventeen Indians, a
+road-agent, and a gross of cowboys between eight and ten <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>
+every night for sixteen weeks, working six nights a week, was afraid of a
+mild little soft-shell crab that lay defenceless on a plate before him on
+the evening of the seventh night of the last week. Tragedians make
+agreeable companions, I can tell you; and if J. Brutus Davenport is a
+tragedian, I think Mrs. Pedagog would do well to let him have the suite,
+provided, of course, that he pays for it in advance."</p>
+
+<p>"I was about to observe, when our friend interrupted me," said Mr.
+Whitechoker, with dignity, "that in any event an actor at this board
+would be to me an extremely objec&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now the comedians," resumed the Idiot, ignoring Mr. Whitechoker's
+remark&mdash;"the comedians are very different. They are twice as bloodthirsty
+as the murderers of the drama, and, worse than that, they are given to
+rehearsing at all hours of the day and night. A tragedian is a hard
+character only on the stage, but the comedian is the comedian always.
+If we had one of those fellows in our midst, it would not be very long
+before we became part of the drama ourselves. Mrs. Pedagog would find
+herself embarrassed once an hour, instead of, as at present, once a
+century. Mr. Whitechoker would hear of himself as having appeared by
+proxy in a roaring farce before our comedian had been with us two months.
+The wise sayings of our friend the School-Master would be spoken nightly
+from the stage, to the immense delight of the gallery gods, and to the
+edification of the orchestra circle, who would wonder how so much
+information could have got into the world and they not know it before.
+The out-of-town papers would literally teem with witty extracts from our
+comedian's plays, which we should immediately recognize as the dicta of
+my poor self."</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs005" id="gs005"></a>
+<img src="images/gs005.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"THEY ARE GIVEN TO REHEARSING AT ALL HOURS"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"All of which," put in Mr. Whitechoker, "but proves the truth of my
+assertion that such a person would be an extremely objec&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then, as I said before," continued the Idiot, "he is continually
+rehearsing, and his objectionableness as a fellow-boarder would be
+greater or less, according to his play. If he were impersonating a
+shiftless wanderer, who shows remarkable bravery at a hotel fire, we
+should have to be prepared at any time to hear the fire-engines rushing
+up to the front door, and to see our comedian scaling the fire-escape
+with Mrs. Pedagog and her account-books in his arms, simply in the line
+of rehearsal. If he were impersonating a detective after a criminal
+masquerading as a good citizen, the School-Master would be startled some
+night by a hoarse voice at his key-hole exclaiming: 'Ha! ha! I have him
+now. There is no escape save by the back window, and that's so covered
+o'er with dust 'twere suffocation sure to try it.' I hesitate to say what
+would happen if he were a tank comedian."</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs006" id="gs006"></a>
+<img src="images/gs006.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"'HA! HA! I HAVE HIM NOW!'"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Perhaps," said Mr. Whitechoker, with a trifle more impatience than was
+compatible with his calling&mdash;"perhaps you will hesitate long enough for
+me to state what I have been trying to state ever since this soliloquy
+of yours began&mdash;that in any event, whether this person be a tragedian, or
+a comedian, or a walking gentleman, or a riding gentleman in a circus, I
+object to his being admitted to this circle, and I deem it well to say
+right here that as he comes in at the front door I go out at the back. As
+a clergyman, I do not approve of the stage."</p>
+
+<p>"That ought to settle it," said the Idiot. "Mr. Whitechoker is too good
+a friend to us all here for us to compel him to go out of that back door
+into the rather limited market-garden Mrs. Pedagog keeps in the yard. My
+indirect plea for the admission of Mr. Junius Brutus Davenport was based
+entirely upon my desire to see this circle completed or nearer completion
+than it is at present. We have all the professions represented here but
+the stage, and why exclude it, granting that no one objects? The men
+whose lives are given over to the amusement of mankind, and who are
+willing to place themselves in the most outrageous situations night after
+night in order that we may for the time being seem to be lifted out of
+the unpleasant situations into which we have got ourselves, are in my
+opinion doing a noble work. The theatre enables us to woo forgetfulness
+of self successfully for a few brief hours, and I have seen the time when
+an hour or two of relief from actual cares has resulted in great good.
+Nevertheless, the gentleman is not elected; and if Mrs. Pedagog will
+kindly refill my cup, I will ask you to join me in draining a toast to
+the health of the pastor of this flock, whose conscience, paradoxical as
+it may seem, is the most frequently worn and yet the least thread-bare
+of the consciences represented at this table."</p>
+
+<p>This easy settlement of her difficulty was so pleasing to Mrs. Pedagog
+that the Idiot's request was graciously acceded to, and Mr. Whitechoker's
+health was drank in coffee, after which the Idiot requested the genial
+gentleman who occasionally imbibed to join him privately in eating
+buckwheat cakes to the health of Mr. Davenport.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't any doubt that he is worthy of the attention," he said; "and
+if you will lend me the money to buy the tickets, I'll take you around
+to the Criterion to-night, where he is playing. I don't know whether he
+plays Hamlet or A Hole in the Roof; but, at any rate, we can have a good
+time between the acts."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>"I see the men are at work on the pavements this morning," said the
+School-Master, gazing out through the window at a number of laborers at
+work in the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the Idiot, calmly, "and I think Mrs. Pedagog ought to sue the
+Department of Public Works for libel. If she hasn't a case no maligned
+person ever had."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you saying, sir?" queried the landlady, innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," returned the Idiot, pointing out into the street, "that you
+ought to sue the Department of Public Works for libel. They've got their
+sign right up against your house. <i>No Thorough Fare</i> is what it says.
+That's libel, isn't it, Mr. Brief?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is certainly a fatal criticism of a boarding-house," observed Mr.
+Brief, with a twinkle in his eye, "but Mrs. Pedagog could hardly secure
+damages on that score."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about that," returned the Idiot. "As I understand it, it is
+an old maxim of the law that the greater the truth the greater the libel.
+Mrs. Pedagog ought to receive a million&mdash;&mdash;By-the-way, what have we this
+morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have steak and fried potatoes, sir," replied Mrs. Pedagog, frigidly.
+"And I desire to add, that one who criticises the table as much as you do
+would do well to get his meals outside."</p>
+
+<p>"That, Mrs. Pedagog, is not the point. The difficulty I find here lies in
+getting my meals inside," said the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary, you may bring in the mush," observed Mrs. Pedagog, pursing her
+lips, as she always did when she wished to show that she was offended.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mary," put in the School-Master; "let us have the mush as quickly
+as possible&mdash;and may it not be quite such mushy mush as the remarks we
+have just been favored with by our talented friend the Idiot."</p>
+
+<p>"You overwhelm me with your compliments, Mr. Pedagog," replied the Idiot,
+cheerfully. "A flatterer like you should live in a flat."</p>
+
+<p>"Has your friend completed his article on old jokes yet?" queried the
+Bibliomaniac, with a smile and some apparent irrelevance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs007" id="gs007"></a>
+<img src="images/gs007.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"HAS YOUR FRIEND COMPLETED HIS ARTICLE ON OLD JOKES?"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Yes and no," said the Idiot. "He has completed his labors on it by
+giving it up. He is a very thorough sort of a fellow, and he intended
+to make the article comprehensive, but he found he couldn't, because,
+judging from comments of men like you, for instance, he was forced to
+conclude that there never was a <i>new</i> joke. But, as I was saying the
+other morning&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really remember what you say?" sneered Mr. Pedagog. "You must
+have a great memory for trifles."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir, I shall never forget you," said the Idiot. "But to revert to what
+I was saying the other morning, I'd like to begin life all over again, so
+that I could prepare myself for the profession of architecture. It's the
+greatest profession in the world, and one which is surest to bring
+immortality to its successful follower. A man may write a splendid book,
+and become a great man for a while and within certain limits, but the
+chances are that some other man will come along later and supplant him.
+Then the book's sale will die out after a time, and with this will come
+a diminution of its author's reputation, in extent anyway. An actor or a
+great preacher becomes only a name after his death, but the architect who
+builds a cathedral or a fine public building really erects a monument to
+his own memory."</p>
+
+<p>"He does if he can build it so that it will stay up," said the
+Bibliomaniac. "I think you, however, are better off as you are. If you
+had a more extended reputation or a lasting name you would probably be
+locked up in some retreat; or if you were not, posterity would want to
+know why."</p>
+
+<p>"I am locked up in a retreat of Nature's making," said the Idiot, with a
+sigh. "Nature has set around me certain limitations which, while they are
+not material, might as well be so as far as my ability to soar above them
+is concerned&mdash;and it's well she has. If it were otherwise, my life would
+not be safe or bearable in this company. As it is, I am happy and not at
+all afraid of the effects your jealousy of me might entail if I were any
+better than the rest of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I like that," said Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would," said the Idiot. "That's why I said it. I aim to
+please, and for once seem to have hit the bull's-eye. Mary, kindly break
+open this biscuit for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ideas on the subject of architecture that you so desire to
+become an architect?" queried Mr. Whitechoker, who was always full of
+sympathy for aspiring natures.</p>
+
+<p>"A few," said the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pedagog laughed outright.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's test his ideas," he said, in an amused way. "Take a cathedral, for
+instance. Suppose, Mr. Idiot, a man should come to you and say: 'Idiot,
+we have a fund of $800,000 in our hands, actual cash. We think of
+building a cathedral, and we think of employing you to draw up our plans.
+Give us some idea of what we should do.' Do you mean to tell me that you
+could say anything reasonable or intelligent to that man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that depends upon what you call reasonable and intelligent. I have
+never been able to find out what you mean by those terms," the Idiot
+answered, slowly. "But I could tell him something that I consider
+reasonable and intelligent."</p>
+
+<p>"From your own point of view, then, as to reasonableness and
+intelligence, what should you say to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd make him out a plan providing for the investment of his $800,000 in
+five-per-cent, gold bonds, which would bring him in an income of $40,000
+a year; after which I should call his attention to the fact that $40,000
+a year would enable him to take 10,000 poor children out of this
+sweltering city into the country, to romp and drink fresh milk and eat
+wholesome food for two weeks every summer from now until the end of time,
+which would build up a human structure that might be of more benefit to
+the world than any pile of bricks, marble, and wrought-iron I or any
+other architect could conceive of," said the Idiot. "The structure would
+stand up, too."</p>
+
+<p>"You call that architecture, do you?" said Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the Idiot, "of the renaissance order. But that, of course,
+you term idiocy&mdash;and maybe it is. I like to be that kind of an idiot. I
+do not claim to be able to build a cathedral, however. I don't suppose
+I could even build a boarding-house like this, but what I should like to
+do in architecture would be to put up a $5000 dwelling-house for $5000.
+That's a thing that has never been done, and I think I might be able to
+do it. If I did, I'd patent the plan and make a fortune. Then I should
+like to know enough about the science of planning a building to find out
+whether my model hotel is practicable or not."</p>
+
+<p>"You have a model hotel in your mind, eh?" said the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be a very small hotel if it's in his mind," said the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"That's tantamount to saying that it isn't anywhere," said Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's a great hotel just the same," said the Idiot. "Although I
+presume it would be expensive to build. It would have movable rooms, in
+the first place. Each room would be constructed like an elevator, with
+appliances at hand for moving it up and down. The great thing about this
+would be that persons could have a room on any floor they wanted it, so
+long as they got the room in the beginning. A second advantage would lie
+in the fact, that if you were sleeping in a room next door to another in
+which there was a crying baby, you could pull the rope and go up two or
+three flights until you were free from the noise. Then in case of fire
+the room in which the fire started could be lowered into a sliding tank
+large enough to immerse the whole thing in, which I should have
+constructed in the cellar. If the whole building were to catch fire,
+there would be no loss of life, because all the rooms could be lowered
+to the ground-floor, and the occupants could step right out upon solid
+ground. Then again, if you were down on the ground-floor, and desired to
+get an extended view of the surrounding country, it would be easy to
+raise your room to the desired elevation. Why, there's no end to the
+advantages to be gained from such an arrangement."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a fine idea," said Mr. Pedagog, "and one worthy of your mammoth
+intellect. It couldn't possibly cost more than a million of dollars to
+erect such a hotel, could it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the Idiot. "And that is cheap alongside some of the hotels
+they are putting up nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>"It could be built on less than four hundred acres of ground, too,
+I presume?" said the Bibliomaniac, with a wink at the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said the Idiot, meekly.</p>
+
+<p>"And if anybody fell sick in one of the rooms," said the Doctor, "and
+needed a change of air, you could have a tower over each, I suppose, so
+that the room could be elevated high enough to secure the different
+quality in the ether?"</p>
+
+<p>"Undoubtedly," said the Idiot. "Although that would add materially to the
+expense. A scarlet-fever patient, however, in a hotel like that could
+very easily be isolated from the rest of the house by the maintenance of
+what might be called the hospital floor."</p>
+
+<p>"Superb!" said the Doctor. "I wonder you haven't spoken to some
+architectural friend about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I have," said the Idiot. "You must remember that young fellow with a
+black mustache I had here to dinner last Saturday night."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I remember him," said the Doctor. "Is he an architect?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is&mdash;and a good one. He can take a brown-stone dwelling and turn it
+into a colonial mansion with a pot of yellow paint. He's a wonder. I
+submitted the idea to him."</p>
+
+<p>"And what was his verdict?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like to say," said the Idiot, blushing a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! ha!" laughed Mr. Pedagog. "I shouldn't think you would like to say.
+I guess we know what he said."</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt it," said the Idiot; "but if you guess right, I'll tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"He said you had better go and live in a lunatic asylum," said Mr.
+Pedagog, with a chuckle.</p>
+
+<p>"Not he," returned the Idiot, nibbling at his biscuit. "On the contrary.
+He advised me to stop living in one. He said contact with the rest of you
+was affecting my brain."</p>
+
+<p>This time Mr. Pedagog did not laugh, but mistaking his coffee-cup for a
+piece of toast, bit a small section out of its rim; and in the midst of
+Mrs. Pedagog's expostulation, which followed the School-Master's careless
+error, the Idiot and the Genial Old Gentleman departed, with smiles on
+their faces which were almost visible at the back of their respective
+necks.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs008" id="gs008"></a>
+<img src="images/gs008.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THEY DEPARTED</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Hullo!" said the Idiot, as he began his breakfast. "This isn't Friday
+morning, is it? I thought it was Tuesday."</p>
+
+<p>"So it is Tuesday," put in the School-Master.</p>
+
+<p>"Then this fish is a little extra treat, is it?" observed the Idiot,
+turning with a smile to the landlady.</p>
+
+<p>"Fish? That isn't fish, sir," returned the good lady. "That is liver."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, is it?" said the Idiot, apologetically. "Excuse me, my dear Mrs.
+Pedagog. I thought from its resistance that it was fried sole. Have you
+a hatchet handy?" he added, turning to the maid.</p>
+
+<p>"My piece is tender enough. I can't see what you want," said the
+School-Master, coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like your piece," replied the Idiot, suavely. "That is, if it really
+is tender enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't pay any attention to him, my dear," said the School-Master to the
+landlady, whose ire was so very much aroused that she was about to make
+known her sentiments on certain subjects.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "don't pay any attention to me, I
+beg of you. Anything that could add to the jealousy of Mr. Pedagog would
+redound to the discomfort of all of us. Besides, I really do not object
+to the liver. I need not eat it. And as for staying my appetite, I always
+stop on my way down-town after breakfast for a bite or two anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder why it is," began the Idiot, after tasting his coffee&mdash;"I
+wonder why it is Friday is fish-day all over the world, anyhow? Do you
+happen to be learned enough in piscatorial science to enlighten me on
+that point, Doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," returned the physician, gruffly. "I've never looked into the
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it's because Friday is an unlucky day," said the Idiot. "Just
+think of all the unlucky things that may happen before and after eating
+fish, as well as during the process. In the first place, before eating,
+you go off and fish all day, and have no luck&mdash;don't catch a thing. You
+fall in the water perhaps, and lose your watch, or your fish-hook
+catches in your coat-tails, with the result that you come near casting
+yourself instead of the fly into the brook or the pond, as the case may
+be. Perhaps the hook doesn't stop with the coat-tails, but goes on in,
+and catches you. That's awfully unlucky, especially when the hook is made
+of unusually barby barbed wire.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs009" id="gs009"></a>
+<img src="images/gs009.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"YOU FISH ALL DAY, AND HAVE NO LUCK"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Then, again, you may go fishing on somebody else's preserves, and get
+arrested, and sent to jail overnight, and hauled up the next morning, and
+have to pay ten dollars fine for poaching. Think of Mr. Pedagog being
+fined ten dollars for poaching! Awfully unfortunate!"</p>
+
+<p>"Kindly leave me out of your calculations," returned Mr. Pedagog, with a
+flush of indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, if you wish it," said the Idiot. "We'll hand Mr. Brief over
+to the police, and let <i>him</i> be fined for poaching on somebody else's
+preserves&mdash;although that's sort of impossible, too, because Mrs. Pedagog
+never lets us see preserves of any kind."</p>
+
+<p>"We had brandied peaches last Sunday night," said the landlady,
+indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, so we did," returned the Idiot. "That must have been what the
+Bibliomaniac had taken," he added, turning to the genial gentleman who
+occasionally imbibed. "You know, we thought he'd been&mdash;ah&mdash;he'd been
+absorbing."</p>
+
+<p>"To what do you refer?" asked the Bibliomaniac, curtly.</p>
+
+<p>"To the brandied peaches," returned the Idiot. "Do not press me further,
+please, because we like you, old fellow, and I don't believe anybody
+noticed it but ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Noticed what? I want to know what you noticed and when you noticed it,"
+said the Bibliomaniac, savagely. "I don't want any nonsense, either. I
+just want a plain statement of facts. What did you notice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you must have it," said the Idiot, slowly, "my friend who
+imbibes and I were rather pained on Sunday night to observe that
+you&mdash;that you had evidently taken something rather stronger than cold
+water, tea, or Mr. Pedagog's opinions."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a libel, sir!&mdash;a gross libel!" retorted the Bibliomaniac. "How did
+I show it? That's what I want to know. How&mdash;did&mdash;I&mdash;show&mdash;it? Speak up
+quick, and loud too. How did I show it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you went up-stairs after tea."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, I did."</p>
+
+<p>"And my friend who imbibes and I were left down in the front hall, and
+while we were talking there you put your head over the banisters and
+asked, 'Who's that down there?' Remember that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, I do. And you replied, 'Mr. Auburnose and myself.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And then you asked, 'Who are the other two?'"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I did. What of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Auburnose and I were there alone. That's what of it. Now I put a
+charitable construction on the matter and say it was the peaches, when
+you fly off the handle like one of Mrs. Pedagog's coffee-cups."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir!" roared the Bibliomaniac, jumping from his chair. "You are the
+greatest idiot I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir!" returned the Idiot, "you flatter me."</p>
+
+<p>But the Bibliomaniac was not there to hear. He had rushed from the room,
+and during the deep silence that ensued he could be heard throwing things
+about in the chamber overhead, and in a very few moments the banging of
+the front door and scurrying down the brown-stone steps showed that he
+had gone out of doors to cool off.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs010" id="gs010"></a>
+<img src="images/gs010.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>HE COULD BE HEARD THROWING THINGS ABOUT</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"It is too bad," said the Idiot, after a while, "that he has such a
+quick temper. It doesn't do a bit of good to get mad that way. He'll be
+uncomfortable all day long, and over what? Just because I attempted to
+say a good word for him, and announce the restoration of my confidence in
+his temperance qualities, he cuts up a high-jinks that makes everybody
+uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"But to resume about this fish business," continued the Idiot. "Fish&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, fish be hanged!" said the Doctor, impatiently. "We've had enough of
+fish."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," returned the idiot; "as you wish. Hanging isn't the best
+treatment for fish, but we'll let that go. I never cared for the finny
+tribe myself, and if Mrs. Pedagog can be induced to do it, I for one am
+in favor of keeping shad, shark, and shrimps out of the house
+altogether."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Idiot was unusually thoughtful&mdash;a fact which made the School-Master
+and the Bibliomaniac unusually nervous. Their stock criticism of him was
+that he was thoughtless; and yet when he so far forgot his natural
+propensities as to meditate, they did not like it. It made them uneasy.
+They had a haunting fear that he was conspiring with himself against
+them, and no man, not even a callous school-master or a confirmed
+bibliomaniac, enjoys feeling that he is the object of a conspiracy. The
+thing to do, then, upon this occasion, seemed obviously to interrupt his
+train of thought&mdash;to put obstructions upon his mental track, as it were,
+and ditch the express, which they feared was getting up steam at that
+moment to run them down.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't seem quite yourself this morning, sir," said the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't I?" queried the Idiot. "And whom do I seem to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that you seem to have something on your mind that worries you,"
+said the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I haven't anything on my mind," returned the Idiot. "I was thinking
+about you and Mr. Pedagog&mdash;which implies a thought not likely to use up
+much of my gray matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think your head holds any gray matter?" put in the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather verdant, I should say," said Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"Green, gray, or pink," said the Idiot, "choose your color. It does
+not affect the fact that I was thinking about the Bibliomaniac and Mr.
+Pedagog. I have a great scheme in hand, which only requires capital
+and the assistance of those two gentlemen to launch it on the sea of
+prosperity. If any of you gentlemen want to get rich and die in comfort
+as the owner of your homes, now is your chance."</p>
+
+<p>"In what particular line of business is your scheme?" asked Mr.
+Whitechoker. He had often felt that he would like to die in comfort,
+and to own a little house, even if it had a large mortgage on it.</p>
+
+<p>"Journalism," said the Idiot. "There is a pile of money to be made out
+of journalism, particularly if you happen to strike a new idea. Ideas
+count."</p>
+
+<p>"How far up do your ideas count&mdash;up to five?" questioned Mr. Pedagog,
+with a tinge of sarcasm in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about that," returned the Idiot. "The idea I have hold
+of now, however, will count up into the millions if it can only be set
+going, and before each one of those millions will stand a big capital S
+with two black lines drawn vertically through it&mdash;in other words, my idea
+holds dollars, but to get the crop you've got to sow the seed. Plant a
+thousand dollars in my idea, and next year you'll reap two thousand.
+Plant that, and next year you'll have four thousand, and so on. At that
+rate millions come easy."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give you a dollar for the idea," said the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't want to sell. You'll do to help develop the scheme. You'll
+make a first-rate tool, but you aren't the workman to manage the tool. I
+will go as far as to say, however, that without you and Mr. Pedagog, or
+your equivalents in the animal kingdom, the idea isn't worth the fabulous
+sum you offer."</p>
+
+<p>"You have quite aroused my interest," said Mr. Whitechoker. "Do you
+propose to start a new paper?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are a good guesser," replied the Idiot. "That is a part of the
+scheme&mdash;but it isn't the idea. I propose to start a new paper in
+accordance with the plan which the idea contains."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it to be a magazine, or a comic paper, or what?" asked the
+Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"Neither. It's a daily."</p>
+
+<p>"That's nonsense," said Mr. Pedagog, putting his spoon into the
+condensed-milk can by mistake. "There isn't a single scheme in daily
+journalism that hasn't been tried&mdash;except printing an evening paper in
+the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"That's been tried," said the Idiot. "I know of an evening paper the
+second edition of which is published at mid-day. That's an old dodge, and
+there's money in it, too&mdash;money that will never be got out of it. But I
+really have a grand scheme. So many of our dailies, you know, go in for
+every horrid detail of daily events that people are beginning to tire of
+them. They contain practically the same things day after day. So many
+columns of murder, so many beautiful suicides, so much sport, a modicum
+of general intelligence, plenty of fires, no end of embezzlements,
+financial news, advertisements, and head-lines. Events, like history,
+repeat themselves, until people have grown weary of them. They want
+something new. For instance, if you read in your morning paper that
+a man has shot another man, you know that the man who was shot was an
+inoffensive person who never injured a soul, stood high in the community
+in which he lived, and leaves a widow with four children. On the other
+hand, you know without reading the account that the murderer shot his
+victim in self-defence, and was apprehended by the detectives late last
+night; that his counsel forbid him to talk to the reporters, and that it
+is rumored that he comes of a good family living in New England.</p>
+
+<p>"If a breach of trust is committed, you know that the defaulter was the
+last man of whom such an act would be suspected, and, except in the one
+detail of its location and sect, that he was prominent in some church.
+You can calculate to a cent how much has been stolen by a glance at the
+amount of space devoted to the account of the crime. Loaf of bread, two
+lines. Thousand dollars, ten lines. Hundred thousand dollars,
+half-column. Million dollars, a full column. Five million dollars,
+half the front page, wood-cut of the embezzler, and two editorials, one
+leader and one paragraph.</p>
+
+<p>"And so with everything. We are creatures of habit. The expected always
+happens, and newspapers are dull because the events they chronicle are
+dull."</p>
+
+<p>"Granting the truth of this," put in the School-Master, "what do you
+propose to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Get up a newspaper that will devote its space to telling what hasn't
+happened."</p>
+
+<p>"That's been done," said the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"To a much more limited extent than we think," returned the Idiot. "It
+has never been done consistently and truthfully."</p>
+
+<p>"I fail to see how a newspaper can be made to prevaricate truthfully,"
+asserted Mr. Whitechoker. To tell the truth, he was greatly disappointed
+with the idea, because he could not in the nature of things become one of
+its beneficiaries.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs011" id="gs011"></a>
+<img src="images/gs011.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"HE WAS NOT MURDERED"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"I haven't suggested prevarication," said the Idiot. "Put on your front
+page, for instance, an item like this: 'George Bronson, colored, aged
+twenty-nine, a resident of Thompson Street, was caught cheating at poker
+last night. He was not murdered.' There you tell what has not happened.
+There is a variety about it. It has the charm of the unexpected. Then you
+might say: 'Curious incident on Wall Street yesterday. So-and-so, who
+was caught on the bear side of the market with 10,000 shares of J. B. &amp;
+S. K. W., paid off all his obligations in full, and retired from business
+with $1,000,000 clear.' Or we might say, 'Superintendent Smithers, of the
+St. Goliath's Sunday-school, who is also cashier in the Forty-eighth
+National Bank, has not absconded with $4,000,000.'"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs012" id="gs012"></a>
+<img src="images/gs012.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"SUPERINTENDENT SMITHERS HAS NOT ABSCONDED"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"Oh, that's a rich idea," put in the School-Master. "You'd earn
+$1,000,000 in libel suits the first year."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you wouldn't, either," said the Idiot. "You don't libel a man
+when you say he hasn't murdered anybody. Quite the contrary, you call
+attention to his conspicuous virtue. You are in reality commending those
+who refrain from criminal practice, instead of delighting those who are
+fond of departing from the paths of Christianity by giving them
+notoriety."</p>
+
+<p>"But I fail to see in what respect Mr. Pedagog and I are essential to
+your scheme," said the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"I must confess to some curiosity on my own part on that point," added
+the School-Master.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's perfectly clear," returned the Idiot, with a conciliating
+smile as he prepared to depart. "You both know so much that isn't so,
+that I rather rely on you to fill up."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>A new boarder had joined the circle about Mrs. Pedagog's breakfast-table.
+He had what the Idiot called a three-ply name&mdash;which was Richard
+Henderson Warren&mdash;and he was by profession a poet. Whether it was this
+that made it necessary for him to board or not, the rewards of the muse
+being rather slender, was known only to himself, and he showed no
+disposition to enlighten his fellow-boarders on the subject. His success
+as a poet Mrs. Pedagog found it hard to gauge; for while the postman left
+almost daily numerous letters, the envelopes of which showed that they
+came from the various periodicals of the day, it was never exactly clear
+whether or not the missives contained remittances or rejected
+manuscripts, though the fact that Mr. Warren was the only boarder in the
+house who had requested to have a waste-basket added to the furniture of
+his room seemed to indicate that they contained the latter. To this
+request Mrs. Pedagog had gladly acceded, because she had a notion that
+therein at some time or another would be found a clew to the new
+boarder's past history&mdash;or possibly some evidence of such duplicity
+as the good lady suspected he might be guilty of. She had read that Byron
+was profligate, and that Poe was addicted to drink, and she was impressed
+with the idea that poets generally were bad men, and she regarded the
+waste-basket as a possible means of protecting herself against any such
+idiosyncrasies of her new-found genius as would operate to her
+disadvantage if not looked after in time.</p>
+
+<p>This waste-basket she made it her daily duty to empty, and in the privacy
+of her own room. Half-finished "ballads, songs, and snatches" she perused
+before consigning them to the flames or to the large jute bag in the
+cellar, for which the ragman called two or three times a year. Once Mrs.
+Pedagog's heart almost stopped beating when she found at the bottom of
+the basket a printed slip beginning, "<i>The Editor regrets that the
+enclosed lines are unavailable</i>," and closing with about thirteen
+reasons, any one or all of which might have been the main cause of the
+poet's disappointment. Had it not been for the kindly clause in the
+printed slip that insinuated in graceful terms that this rejection did
+not imply a lack of literary merit in the contribution itself, the good
+lady, knowing well that there was even less money to be made from
+rejected than from accepted poetry, would have been inclined to request
+the poet to vacate the premises. The very next day, however, she was glad
+she had not requested the resignation of the poet from the laureateship
+of her house; for the same basket gave forth another printed slip from
+another editor, begging the poet to accept the enclosed check, with
+thanks for his contribution, and asking him to deposit it as soon as
+practicable&mdash;which was pleasing enough, since it implied that the poet
+was the possessor of a bank account.</p>
+
+<p>Now Mrs. Pedagog was consumed with curiosity to know for how large a sum
+the check called&mdash;which desire was gratified a few days later, when the
+inspired boarder paid his week's bill with three one-dollar bills and a
+check, signed by a well-known publisher, for two dollars.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs013" id="gs013"></a>
+<img src="images/gs013.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE INSPIRED BOARDER PAID HIS BILL</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>By the boarders themselves the poet was regarded with much interest.
+The School-Master had read one or two of his effusions in the Fireside
+Corner of the journal he received weekly from his home up in New
+England&mdash;effusions which showed no little merit, as well as indicating
+that Mr. Warren wrote for a literary syndicate; Mr. Whitechoker had known
+of him as the young man who was to have written a Christmas carol for his
+Sunday-school a year before, and who had finished and presented the
+manuscript shortly after New-Year's day; while to the Idiot, Mr. Warren's
+name was familiar as that of a frequent contributor to the funny papers
+of the day.</p>
+
+<p>"I was very much amused by your poem in the last number of the
+<i>Observer</i>, Mr. Warren," said the Idiot, as they sat down to breakfast
+together.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you, indeed?" returned Mr. Warren. "I am sorry to hear that, for it
+was intended to be a serious effort."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it was, Mr. Warren, and so it appeared," said the
+School-Master, with an indignant glance at the Idiot. "It was a very
+dignified and stately bit of work, and I must congratulate you upon it."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean to give offence," said the Idiot. "I've read so much of
+yours that was purely humorous that I believe I'd laugh at a dirge if you
+should write one; but I really thought your lines in the <i>Observer</i> were
+a burlesque. You had the same thought that Rossetti expresses in 'The
+Woodspurge':</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shaken out dead from tree to hill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had walked on at the wind's will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sat now, for the wind was still.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That's Rossetti, if you remember. Slightly suggestive of 'Blow Ye Winds
+of the Morning! Blow! Blow! Blow!' but more or less pleasing."</p>
+
+<p>"I recall the poem you speak of," said Warren, with dignity; "but the
+true poet, sir&mdash;and I hope I have some claim to be considered as
+such&mdash;never so far forgets himself as to burlesque his masters."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know what to call it, then, when a poet takes the same
+thought that has previously been used by his masters and makes a funny
+poem&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But," returned the Poet, warmly, "it was not a funny poem."</p>
+
+<p>"It made me laugh," retorted the Idiot, "and that is more than half the
+professedly funny poems we get nowadays can do. Therefore I say it was a
+funny poem, and I don't see how you can deny that it was a burlesque of
+Rossetti."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do deny it <i>in toto</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about denying it <i>in toto</i>," rejoined the Idiot,
+"but I'd deny it in print if I were you. I know plenty of people who
+think it was a burlesque, and I overheard one man say&mdash;he is a Rossetti
+crank&mdash;that you ought to be ashamed of yourself for writing it."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no use of discussing the matter further," said the Poet. "I am
+innocent of any such intent as you have ascribed to me, and if people say
+I have burlesqued Rossetti they say what is not true."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever read that little poem of Swinburne's called 'The Boy at the
+Gate'?" asked the Idiot, to change the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no recollection of it," said the Poet, shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"The name sounds familiar," put in Mr. Whitechoker, anxious not to be
+left out of a literary discussion.</p>
+
+<p>"I have read it, but I forget just how it goes," vouchsafed the
+School-Master, forgetting for a moment the Robert Elsmere episode and its
+lesson.</p>
+
+<p>"It goes something like this," said the Idiot:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sombre and sere the slim sycamore sighs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lushly the lithe leaves lie low o'er the land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whistles the wind with its whisperings wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grewsomely gloomy and garishly grand.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So doth the sycamore solemnly stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wearily watching in wondering wait;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So it has stood for six centuries, and<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still it is waiting the boy at the gate."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"No; I never read the poem," said Mr. Whitechoker, "but I'd know it was
+Swinburne in a minute. He has such a command of alliterative language."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the Poet, with an uneasy glance at the Idiot. "It is
+Swinburnian; but what was the poem about?"</p>
+
+<p>"'The boy at the gate,'" said the Idiot. "The idea was that the sycamore
+was standing there for centuries waiting for the boy who never turns up."</p>
+
+<p>"It really is a beautiful thought," put in Mr. Whitechoker. "It is, I
+presume, an allegory to contrast faithful devotion and constancy with
+unfaithfulness and fickleness. Such thoughts occur only to the wholly
+gifted. It is only to the poetic temperament that the conception of such
+a thought can come coupled with the ability to voice it in fitting terms.
+There is a grandeur about the lines the Idiot has quoted that betrays the
+master-mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Very true," said the School-Master, "and I take this opportunity to say
+that I am most agreeably surprised in the Idiot. It is no small thing
+even to be able to repeat a poet's lines so carefully, and with so great
+lucidity, and so accurately, as I can testify that he has just done."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be too pleased, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot, dryly. "I only
+wanted to show Mr. Warren that you and Mr. Whitechoker, mines of
+information though you are, have not as yet worked up a corner on
+knowledge to the exclusion of the rest of us." And with these words the
+Idiot left the table.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a queer fellow," said the School-Master. "He is full of pretence
+and hollowness, but he is sometimes almost brilliant."</p>
+
+<p>"What you say is very true," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I think he has just
+escaped being a smart man. I wish we could take him in hand, Mr. Pedagog,
+and make him more of a fellow than he is."</p>
+
+<p>Later in the day the Poet met the Idiot on the stairs. "I say," he said,
+"I've looked all through Swinburne, and I can't find that poem."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you can't," returned the Idiot, "because it isn't there.
+Swinburne never wrote it. It was a little thing of my own. I was only
+trying to get a rise out of Mr. Pedagog and his Reverence with it. You
+have frequently appeared impressed by the undoubtedly impressive manner
+of these two gentlemen. I wanted to show you what their opinions were
+worth."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs014" id="gs014"></a>
+<img src="images/gs014.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"I KNOW YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE IT ISN'T THERE"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"Thank you," returned the Poet, with a smile. "Don't you want to go
+into partnership with me and write for the funny papers? It would be
+a splendid thing for me&mdash;your ideas are so original."</p>
+
+<p>"And I can see fun in everything, too," said the Idiot, thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," returned the Poet. "Even in my serious poems."</p>
+
+<p>Which remark made the Idiot blush a little, but he soon recovered his
+composure and made a firm friend of the Poet.</p>
+
+<p>The first fruits of the partnership have not yet appeared, however.</p>
+
+<p>As for Messrs. Whitechoker and Pedagog, when they learned how they had
+been deceived, they were so indignant that they did not speak to the
+Idiot for a week.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was Sunday morning, and Mr. Whitechoker, as was his wont on the first
+day of the week, appeared at the breakfast table severe as to his mien.</p>
+
+<p>"Working on Sunday weighs on his mind," the Idiot said to the
+Bibliomaniac, "but I don't see why it should. The luxury of rest
+that he allows himself the other six days of the week is surely an
+atonement for the hours of labor he puts in on Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>But it was not this that on Sunday mornings weighed on the mind of the
+Reverend Mr. Whitechoker. He appeared more serious of visage then because
+he had begun to think of late that his fellow-boarders lived too much in
+the present, and ignored almost totally that which might be expected to
+come. He had been revolving in his mind for several weeks the question as
+to whether it was or was not his Christian duty to attempt to influence
+the lives of these men with whom the chances of life had brought him in
+contact. He had finally settled it to his own satisfaction that it was
+his duty so to do, and he had resolved, as far as lay in his power, to
+direct the conversation at Sunday morning's breakfast into spiritual
+rather than into temporal matters.</p>
+
+<p>So, as Mrs. Pedagog was pouring the coffee, Mr. Whitechoker began:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you gentlemen ever pause in your every-day labors and thought to let
+your minds rest upon the future&mdash;the possibilities it has in store for
+us, the consequences which&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No mush, thank you," said the Idiot. Then turning to Mr. Whitechoker, he
+added: "I can't answer for the other gentlemen at this board, but I can
+assure you, Mr. Whitechoker, that I often do so. It was only last night,
+sir, that my genial friend who imbibes and I were discussing the future
+and its possibilities, and I venture to assert that there is no more
+profitable food for reflection anywhere in the larders of the mind than
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Larders of the mind is excellent," said the School-Master, with a touch
+of sarcasm in his voice. "Perhaps you would not mind opening the door to
+your mental pantry, and letting us peep within at the stores you keep
+there. I am sure that on the subject in hand your views cannot fail to be
+original as well as edifying."</p>
+
+<p>"I am also sure," said Mr. Whitechoker, somewhat surprised to hear the
+Idiot speak as he did, having sometimes ventured to doubt if that
+flippant-minded young man ever reflected on the serious side of life&mdash;"I
+am also sure that it is most gratifying to hear that you have done some
+thinking on the subject."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you are gratified, Mr. Whitechoker," replied the Idiot, "but
+I am far from taking undue credit to myself because I reflect upon the
+future and its possibilities. I do not see how any man can fail to be
+interested in the subject, particularly when he considers the great
+strides science has made in the last twenty years."</p>
+
+<p>"I fail to see," said the School-Master, "what the strides of science
+have to do with it."</p>
+
+<p>"You fail to see so often, Mr. Pedagog," returned the Idiot, "that I
+would advise your eyes to make an assignment in favor of your pupils."</p>
+
+<p>"I must confess," put in Mr. Whitechoker, blandly, "that I too am
+somewhat&mdash;er&mdash;somewhat&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Somewhat up a tree as to science's connection with the future?" queried
+the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"You have my meaning, but hardly the phraseology I should have chosen,"
+replied the minister.</p>
+
+<p>"My style is rather epigrammatic," said the Idiot, suavely. "I appreciate
+the flattery implied by your noticing it. But science has everything to
+do with it. It is science that is going to make the future great. It is
+science that has annihilated distance, and the annihilation has just
+begun. Twenty years ago it was hardly possible for a man standing on one
+side of the street to make himself heard on the other, the acoustic
+properties of the atmosphere not being what they should be. To-day
+you can stand in the pulpit of your church, and by means of certain
+scientific apparatus make yourself heard in Boston, New Orleans, or San
+Francisco. Has this no bearing on the future? The time will come, Mr.
+Whitechoker, when your missionaries will be able to sit in their
+comfortable rectories, and ring up the heathen in foreign climes, and
+convert them over the telephone, without running the slightest danger of
+falling into the soup, which expression I use in its literal rather than
+in its metaphorical sense."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs015" id="gs015"></a>
+<img src="images/gs015.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HEARD IN SAN FRANCISCO"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"But&mdash;" interrupted Mr. Whitechoker.</p>
+
+<p>"Now wait, please," said the Idiot. "If science can annihilate degrees of
+distance, who shall say that before many days science may not annihilate
+degrees of time? If San Francisco, thousands of miles distant, can be
+brought within range of the ear, why cannot 1990 be brought before the
+mind's eye? And if 1990 can be brought before the mind's eye, what is to
+prevent the invention of a prophetograph which shall enable us to cast a
+horoscope which shall reach all around eternity and half-way back, if not
+further?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs016" id="gs016"></a>
+<img src="images/gs016.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE PROPHETOGRAPH</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"You do not understand me," said Mr. Whitechoker. "When I speak of the
+future, I do not mean the temporal future."</p>
+
+<p>"I know exactly what you mean," said the Idiot. "I've dealt in futures,
+and I am familiar with all kinds. It is you, sir, that do not understand
+me. My claim is perfectly plausible, and in its results is bound to make
+the world better. Do you suppose that any man who, by the aid of my
+prophetograph, sees that on a certain date in the future he will be
+hanged for murder is going to fail to provide himself with an alibi in
+regard to that particular murder, and must we not admit that having
+provided himself with that alibi he will of necessity avoid bloodshed,
+and so avoid the gallows? That's reasonable. So in regard to all the
+thousand and one other peccadilloes that go to make this life a sinful
+one. Science, by a purely logical advance along the lines already mapped
+out for itself, and in part already traversed, will enable men to avoid
+the pitfalls and reap only the windfalls of life; we shall all see what
+terrible consequences await on a single misstep, and we shall not make
+the misstep. Can you still claim that science and the future have nothing
+to do with each other?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are talking of matters purely temporal," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I
+have reference to our spiritual future."</p>
+
+<p>"And the two," observed the Idiot, "are so closely allied that we cannot
+separate them. The proverb about looking after the pennies and letting
+the pounds take care of themselves applies here. I believe that if I take
+care of my temporal future&mdash;which, by-the-way, does not exist&mdash;my
+spiritual future will take care of itself; and if science places the
+hereafter before us&mdash;and you admit that even now it is before us&mdash;all we
+have to do is to take advantage of our opportunities, and mend our lives
+accordingly."</p>
+
+<p>"But if science shows you what is to come," said the School-Master, "it
+must show your fate with perfect accuracy, or it ceases to be science, in
+which event your entertaining notions as to reform and so on are entirely
+fallacious."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," said the Idiot. "We are approaching the time when science,
+which is much more liberal than any other branch of knowledge, will
+sacrifice even truth itself for the good of mankind."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to start a paradox company," suggested the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Either that or make himself the nucleus of an insane asylum," observed
+the School-Master, viciously. "I never knew a man with such maniacal
+views as those we have heard this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a great deal, Mr. Pedagog, that you have never known," returned
+the Idiot. "Stick by me, and you'll die with a mind richly stored."</p>
+
+<p>Whereat the School-Master left the table with such manifest impatience
+that Mr. Whitechoker was sorry he had started the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>The genial gentleman who occasionally imbibed and the Idiot withdrew to
+the latter's room, where the former observed:</p>
+
+<p>"What are you driving at, anyhow? Where did you get those crazy ideas?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ate a Welsh-rarebit last night, and dreamed 'em," returned the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought as much," said his companion. "What deuced fine things dreams
+are, anyhow!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Breakfast was very nearly over, and it was of such exceptionally good
+quality that very few remarks had been made. Finally the ball was set
+rolling by the Lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"How many packs of cigarettes do you smoke a day?" he asked, as the Idiot
+took one from his pocket and placed it at the side of his coffee-cup.</p>
+
+<p>"Never more than forty-six," said the Idiot. "Why? Do you think of
+starting a cigarette stand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," said Mr. Brief. "I was only wondering what chance you had
+to live to maturity, that's all. Your maturity period will be in about
+eight hundred and sixty years from now, the way I calculate, and it
+seemed to me that, judging from the number of cigarettes you smoke, you
+were not likely to last through more than two or three of those years."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I expect to live longer than that," said the Idiot. "I think I'm
+good for at least four years. Don't you, Doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"I decline to have anything to say about your case," retorted the Doctor,
+whose feeling towards the Idiot was not surpassingly affectionate.</p>
+
+<p>"In that event I shall probably live five years more," said the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor's lip curled, but he remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll live," put in Mr. Pedagog, with a chuckle. "The good die young."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you happen to keep alive all this time then, Mr. Pedagog?" asked
+the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"I have always eschewed tobacco in every form, for one thing," said Mr.
+Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"I am surprised," put in the Idiot. "That's really a bad habit, and I
+marvel greatly that you should have done it."</p>
+
+<p>The School-Master frowned, and looked at the Idiot over the rims of his
+glasses, as was his wont when he was intent upon getting explanations.</p>
+
+<p>"Done what?" he asked, severely.</p>
+
+<p>"Chewed tobacco," replied the Idiot. "You just said that one of the
+things that has kept you lingering in this vale of tears was that you
+have always chewed tobacco. I never did that, and I never shall do it,
+because I deem it a detestable diversion."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say anything of the sort," retorted Mr. Pedagog, getting red in
+the face. "I never said that I chewed tobacco in any form."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come!" said the Idiot, with well-feigned impatience, "what's the use
+of talking that way? We all heard what you said, and I have no doubt that
+it came as a shock to every member of this assemblage. It certainly was a
+shock to me, because, with all my weaknesses and bad habits, I think
+tobacco-chewing unutterably bad. The worst part of it is that you chew it
+in every form. A man who chews chewing-tobacco only may some time throw
+off the habit, but when one gets to be such a victim to it that he chews
+up cigars and cigarettes and plugs of pipe tobacco, it seems to me he is
+incurable. It is not only a bad habit then; it amounts to a vice."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pedagog was getting apoplectic. "You know well enough that I never
+said the words you attribute to me," he said, sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Mr. Pedagog," returned the Idiot, with an irritating shake of
+his head, as if he were confidentially hinting to the School-Master to
+keep quiet&mdash;"really you pain me by these futile denials. Nobody forced
+you into the confession. You made it entirely of your own volition. Now
+I ask you, as a man and brother, what's the use of saying anything more
+about it? We believe you to be a person of the strictest veracity, but
+when you say a thing before a tableful of listeners one minute, and deny
+it the next, we are forced to one of two conclusions, neither of which is
+pleasing. We must conclude that either, repenting your confession, you
+sacrifice the truth, or that the habit to which you have confessed has
+entirely destroyed your perception of the moral question involved. Undue
+use of tobacco has, I believe, driven men crazy. Opium-eating has
+destroyed all regard for truth in one whose word had always been regarded
+as good as a government bond. I presume the undue use of tobacco can
+accomplish the same sad result. By-the-way, did you ever try opium?"</p>
+
+<p>"Opium is ruin," said the Doctor, Mr. Pedagog's indignation being so
+great that he seemed to be unable to find the words he was evidently
+desirous of hurling at the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"It is, indeed," said the Idiot. "I knew a man once who smoked one little
+pipeful of it, and, while under its influence, sat down at his table and
+wrote a story of the supernatural order that was so good that everybody
+said he must have stolen it from Poe or some other master of the weird,
+and now nobody will have anything to do with him. Tobacco, however, in
+the sane use of it, is a good thing. I don't know of anything that is
+more satisfying to the tired man than to lie back on a sofa, of an
+evening, and puff clouds of smoke and rings into the air. One of the
+finest dreams I ever had came from smoking. I had blown a great mountain
+of smoke out into the room, and it seemed to become real, and I climbed
+to its summit and saw the most beautiful country at my feet&mdash;a country in
+which all men were happy, where there were no troubles of any kind, where
+no whim was left ungratified, where jealousies were not, and where every
+man who made more than enough to live on paid the surplus into the common
+treasury for the use of those who hadn't made quite enough. It was a
+national realization of the golden rule, and I maintain that if smoking
+were bad nothing so good, even in the abstract form of an idea, could
+come out of it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a very nice thought," said the Poet. "I'd like to put that into
+verse. The idea of a people dividing up their surplus of wealth among the
+less successful strugglers is beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"You can have it," said the Idiot, with a pleased smile. "I don't write
+poetry of that kind myself unless I work hard, and I've found that when
+the poet works hard he produces poems that read hard. You are welcome to
+it. Another time I was dreaming over my cigar, after a day of the hardest
+kind of trouble at the office. Everything had gone wrong with me, and I
+was blue as indigo. I came home here, lit a cigar, and threw myself down
+upon my bed and began to puff. I felt like a man in a deep pit, out of
+which there was no way of getting. I closed my eyes for a second, and to
+all intents and purposes I lay in that pit. And then what did tobacco do
+for me? Why, it lifted me right out of my prison. I thought I was sitting
+on a rock down in the depths. The stars twinkled tantalizingly above me.
+They invited me to freedom, knowing that freedom was not attainable. Then
+I blew a ring of smoke from my mouth, and it began to rise slowly at
+first, and then, catching in a current of air, it flew upward more
+rapidly, widening constantly, until it disappeared in the darkness above.
+Then I had a thought. I filled my mouth as full of smoke as possible, and
+blew forth the greatest ring you ever saw, and as it started to rise I
+grasped it in my two hands. It struggled beneath my weight, lengthened
+out into an elliptical link, and broke, and let me down with a dull thud.
+Then I made two rings, grasping one with my left hand and the other with
+my right&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs017" id="gs017"></a>
+<img src="images/gs017.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"I GRASPED IT IN MY TWO HANDS"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"And they lifted you out of the pit, I suppose?" sneered the
+Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not say that they did," said the Idiot, calmly. "But I do know that
+when I opened my eyes I wasn't in the pit any longer, but up-stairs in my
+hall-bedroom."</p>
+
+<p>"How awfully mysterious!" said the Doctor, satirically.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't approve of smoking," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I agree with
+the London divine who says it is the pastime of perdition. It is not
+prompted by natural instincts. It is only the habit of artificial
+civilization. Dogs and horses and birds get along without it. Why
+shouldn't man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hear! hear!" cried Mr. Pedagog, clapping his hands approvingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Where? where?" put in the Idiot. "That's a great argument. Dog's don't
+put up in boarding-houses. Is the boarding-house, therefore, the result
+of a degraded, artificial civilization? I have seen educated horses that
+didn't smoke, but I have never seen an educated horse, or an uneducated
+one, for that matter, that had even had the chance to smoke, or the kind
+of mouth that would enable him to do it in case he had the chance. I
+have also observed that horses don't read books, that birds don't eat
+mutton-chops, that dogs don't go to the opera, that donkeys don't play
+the piano&mdash;at least, four-legged donkeys don't&mdash;so you might as well
+argue that since horses, dogs, birds, and donkeys get along without
+literature, music, mutton-chops, and piano-playing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You've covered music," put in the Lawyer, who liked to be precise.</p>
+
+<p>"True; but piano-playing isn't always music," returned the Idiot.
+"You might as well argue because the beasts and the birds do without
+these things man ought to. Fish don't smoke, neither do they join the
+police-force, therefore man should neither smoke nor become a guardian
+of the peace."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs018" id="gs018"></a>
+<img src="images/gs018.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"PIANO-PLAYING ISN'T ALWAYS MUSIC"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Nevertheless it is a pastime of perdition," insisted Mr. Whitechoker.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it isn't," retorted the Idiot. "Smoking is the business of
+perdition. It smokes because it has to."</p>
+
+<p>"There! there!" remonstrated Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean hear! hear! I presume," said the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that you have said enough!" remarked Mr. Pedagog, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said the Idiot. "If I have convinced you all I am satisfied,
+not to say gratified. But really, Mr. Pedagog," he added, rising to leave
+the room, "if I were you I'd give up the practice of chewing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on a minute, Mr. Idiot," said Mr. Whitechoker, interrupting. He was
+desirous that Mr. Pedagog should not be further irritated. "Let me ask
+you one question. Does your old father smoke?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the Idiot, leaning easily over the back of his chair&mdash;"no.
+What of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing at all&mdash;except that perhaps if he could get along without it you
+might," suggested the clergyman.</p>
+
+<p>"He couldn't get along without it if he knew what good tobacco was," said
+the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why don't you introduce him to it?" asked the Minister.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I do not wish to make him unhappy," returned the Idiot, softly.
+"He thinks his seventy years have been the happiest years that any mortal
+ever had, and if now in his seventy-first year he discovered that during
+the whole period of his manhood he had been deprived through ignorance of
+so great a blessing as a good cigar, he'd become like the rest of us,
+living in anticipation of delights to come, and not finding approximate
+bliss in living over the past. Trust me, my dear Mr. Whitechoker, to look
+after him. He and my mother and my life are all I have."</p>
+
+<p>The Idiot left the room, and Mr. Pedagog put in a greater part of the
+next half-hour in making personal statements to the remaining boarders to
+the effect that the word he used was eschewed, and not the one attributed
+to him by the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>Strange to say, most of them were already aware of that fact.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+
+<p>"The progress of invention in this country has been very remarkable,"
+said Mr. Pedagog, as he turned his attention from a scientific weekly he
+had been reading to a towering pile of buckwheat cakes that Mary had just
+brought in. "An Englishman has just discovered a means by which a ship in
+distress at sea can write for help on the clouds."</p>
+
+<p>"Extraordinary!" said Mr. Whitechoker.</p>
+
+<p>"It might be more so," observed the Idiot, coaxing the platterful of
+cakes out of the School-Master's reach by a dexterous movement of his
+hand. "And it will be more so some day. The time is coming when the
+moon itself will be used by some enterprising American to advertise his
+soap business. I haven't any doubt that the next fifty years will develop
+a stereopticon by means of which a picture of a certain brand of cigar
+may be projected through space until it seems to be held between the
+teeth of the man in the moon, with a printed legend below it stating
+that this is <i>Tooforfivers Best, Rolled from Hand-made Tobacco, Warranted
+not to Crock or Fade, and for sale by All Tobacconists at Eighteen for a
+Dime</i>."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs019" id="gs019"></a>
+<img src="images/gs019.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"THE MOON ITSELF WILL BE USED"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"You would call that an advance in invention, eh?" asked the
+School-Master.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" queried the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you consider the invention which would enable man to debase nature to
+the level of an advertising medium an advance?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should not consider the use of the moon for the dissemination of good
+news a debasement. If the cigars were good&mdash;and I have no doubt that some
+one will yet invent a cheap cigar that is good&mdash;it would benefit the
+human race to be acquainted with that fact. I think sometimes that the
+advertisements in the newspapers and the periodicals of the day are of
+more value to the public than the reading-matter, so-called, that stands
+next to them. I don't see why you should sneer at advertising. I should
+never have known you, for instance, Mr. Pedagog, had it not been for Mrs.
+Pedagog's advertisement offering board and lodging to single gentlemen
+for a consideration. Nor would you have met Mrs. Smithers, now your
+estimable wife, yourself, had it not been for that advertisement. Why,
+then, do you sneer at the ladder upon which you have in a sense climbed
+to your present happiness? You are ungrateful."</p>
+
+<p>"How you do ramify!" said Mr. Pedagog. "I believe there is no subject in
+the world which you cannot connect in some way or another with every
+other subject in the world. A discussion of the merits of Shakespeare's
+sonnets could be turned by your dexterous tongue in five minutes into a
+quarrel over the comparative merits of cider and cod-liver oil as
+beverages, with you, the chances are, the advocate of cod-liver oil as
+a steady drink."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must say," said the Idiot, with a smile, "it has been my
+experience that cod-liver oil is steadier than cider. The cod-liver
+oils I have had the pleasure of absorbing have been evenly vile, while
+the ciders that I have drank have been of a variety of goodness, badness,
+and indifferentness which has brought me to the point where I never touch
+it. But to return to inventions, since you desire to limit our discussion
+to a single subject, I think it is about the most interesting field of
+speculation imaginable."</p>
+
+<p>"There you are right," said Mr. Pedagog, approvingly. "There is
+absolutely no limit to the possibilities involved. It is almost within
+the range of possibilities that some man may yet invent a buckwheat cake
+that will satisfy your abnormal craving for that delicacy, which the
+present total output of this table seems unable to do."</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Pedagog turned to his wife, and added: "My dear, will you
+request the cook hereafter to prepare individual cakes for us? The Idiot
+has so far monopolized all that have as yet appeared."</p>
+
+<p>"It appears to me," said the Idiot at this point, "that <i>you</i> are the
+ramifier, Mr. Pedagog. Nevertheless, ramify as much as you please. I can
+follow you&mdash;at a safe distance, of course&mdash;in the discussion of anything,
+from Edison to flapjacks. I think your suggestion regarding individual
+cakes is a good one. We might all have separate griddles, upon which
+Gladys, the cook, can prepare them, and on these griddles might be cast
+in bold relief the crest of each member of this household, so that every
+man's cake should, by an easy process in the making, come off the fire
+indelibly engraved with the evidence of its destiny. Mr. Pedagog's iron,
+for instance, might have upon it a school-book rampant, or a large head
+in the same condition. Mr. Whitechoker's cake-mark might be a pulpit
+rampant, based upon a vestryman dormant. The Doctor might have a lozengy
+shield with a suitable tincture, while my genial friend who occasionally
+imbibes could have a barry shield surmounted by a small effigy of
+Gambrinus."</p>
+
+<p>"You appear to know something of heraldry," said the poet, with a look of
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"I know something of everything," said the Idiot, complacently.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity you don't know everything about something," sneered the
+Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"I would suggest," said the School-Master, dryly, "that a little rampant
+jackass would make a good crest for your cakes."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a very good idea," said the Idiot. "I do not know but that a
+jackass rampant would be about as comprehensive of my virtues as anything
+I might select. The jackass is a combination of all the best qualities.
+He is determined. He minds his own business. He doesn't indulge in
+flippant conversation. He is useful. Has no vices, never pretends to be
+anything but a jackass, and most respectfully declines to be ridden by
+Tom, Dick, and Harry. I accept the suggestion of Mr. Pedagog with thanks.
+But we are still ramifying. Let us get back to inventions. Now I fully
+believe that the time is coming when some inventive genius will devise a
+method whereby intellect can be given to those who haven't any. I believe
+that the time is coming when the secrets of the universe will be yielded
+up to man by nature."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs020" id="gs020"></a>
+<img src="images/gs020.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"DECLINES TO BE RIDDEN"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"And then?" queried Mr. Brief.</p>
+
+<p>"Then some man will try to improve on the secrets of the universe. He
+will try to invent an apparatus by means of which the rotation of the
+world may be made faster or slower, according to his will. If he has but
+one day, for instance, in which to do a stated piece of work, and he
+needs two, he will put on some patent brake and slow the world up until
+the distance travelled in one hour shall be reduced one-half, so that one
+hour under the old system will be equivalent to two; or if he is
+anticipating some joy, some diversion in the future, the same smart
+person will find a way to increase the speed of the earth so that the
+hours will be like minutes. Then he'll begin fooling with gravitation,
+and he will discover a new-fashioned lodestone, which can be carried in
+one's hat to counter-act the influence of the centre of gravity when one
+falls out of a window or off a precipice, the result of which will be
+that the person who falls off one of these high places will drop down
+slowly, and not with the rapidity which at the present day is responsible
+for the dreadful outcome of accidents of that sort. Then, finally&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You pretend to be able to penetrate to the finality, do you?" asked the
+Clergyman.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? It is as easy to imagine the finality as it is to go half-way
+there," returned the Idiot. "Finally he will tackle some elementary
+principle of nature, and he'll blow the world to smithereens."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence at the table. This at least seemed to be a tenable
+theory. That man should have the temerity to take liberties with
+elementary principles was quite within reason, man being an animal of
+rare conceit, and that the result would bring about destruction was not
+at all at variance with probability.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it's happened once or twice already," said the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really?" asked Mr. Pedagog, with a show of interest. "Upon what
+do you base this belief?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, take Africa," said the Idiot. "Take North America. What do we
+find? We find in the sands of the Sahara a great statue, which we call
+the Sphinx, and about which we know nothing, except that it is there and
+that it keeps its mouth shut. We find marvellous creations in engineering
+that to-day surpass anything that we can do. The Sphinx, when discovered,
+was covered by sand. Now I believe that at one time there were people
+much further advanced in science than ourselves, who made these wonderful
+things, who knew how to do things that we don't even dream of doing, and
+I believe that they, like this creature I have predicted, got fooling
+with the centre of gravity, and that the world slipped its moorings for a
+period of time, during which time it tumbled topsy-turvey into space, and
+that banks and banks of sand and water and ice thrown out of position
+simply swept on and over the whole surface of the globe continuously
+until the earth got into the grip of the rest of the universe once more
+and started along in a new orbit. We know that where we are high and dry
+to-day the ocean must once have rolled. We know that where the world is
+now all sunshine and flowers great glaciers stood. What caused all this
+change? Nothing else, in my judgment, than the monkeying of man with the
+forces of nature. The poles changed, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit
+that, if the north pole were ever found and could be thawed out, we
+should find embedded in that great sea of ice evidences of a former
+civilization, just as in the Saharan waste evidences of the same thing
+have been found. I know of a place out West that is literally strewn with
+oyster-shells, and yet no man living has the slightest idea how they came
+there. It may have been the Massachusetts Bay of a pre-historic time, for
+all we know. It may have been an antediluvian Coney Island, for all the
+world knows. Who shall say that this little upset of mine found here an
+oyster-bed, shook all the oysters out of their bed into space, and left
+their clothes high and dry in a locality which, but for those garments,
+would seem never to have known the oyster in his prime? Off in
+Westchester County, on the top of a high hill, lies a rock, and in the
+uppermost portion of that rock is a so-called pot-hole, made by nothing
+else than the dropping of water of a brook and the swirling of pebbles
+therein. It is now beyond the reach of anything in the shape of water
+save that which falls from the heavens. It is certain that this pot-hole
+was never made by a boy with a watering-pot, by a hired man with a hose,
+by a workman with a drill, or by any rain-storm that ever fell in
+Westchester County. There must at some time or another have been a
+stream there; and as streams do not flow uphill and bore pot-holes on
+mountain-tops, there must have been a valley there. Some great cataclysm
+took place. For that cataclysm nature must be held responsible mainly.
+But what prompted nature to raise hob with Westchester County millions of
+years ago, and to let it sleep like Rip Van Winkle ever since? Nature
+isn't a freak. She is depicted as a woman, but in spite of that she is
+not whimsical. She does not act upon impulses. There must have been some
+cause for her behavior in turning valleys into hills, in transforming
+huge cities into wastes of sand, and oyster-beds into shell quarries; and
+it is my belief that man was the contributing cause. He tapped the earth
+for natural gas; he bored in and he bored out, and he bored nature to
+death, and then nature rose up and smote him and his cities and his
+oyster-beds, and she'll do it again unless we go slow."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a great deal in what you say," said Mr. Whitechoker.</p>
+
+<p>"Very true," said Mrs. Pedagog. "But I wish he'd stop saying it. The last
+three dozen cakes have got cold as ice while he was talking, and I can't
+afford such reckless waste."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor we, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, with a pleasant smile; "for, as I
+was saying to the Bibliomaniac this morning, your buckwheat cakes are, to
+my mind, the very highest development of our modern civilization, and to
+have even one of them wasted seems to me to be a crime against Nature
+herself, for which a second, third, or fourth shaking up of this earth
+would be an inadequate punishment."</p>
+
+<p>This remark so pleased Mrs. Pedagog that she ordered the cook to send up
+a fresh lot of cakes; and the guests, after eating them, adjourned to
+their various duties with light hearts, and digestions occupied with work
+of great importance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>"I wonder what would have happened if Columbus had not discovered
+America?" said the Bibliomaniac, as the company prepared to partake of
+the morning meal.</p>
+
+<p>"He would have gone home disappointed," said the Idiot, with a look of
+surprise on his face, which seemed to indicate that in his opinion the
+Bibliomaniac was very dull-witted not to have solved the problem for
+himself. "He would have gone home disappointed, and we would now be
+foreigners, like most other Americans. Mr. Pedagog would doubtless be
+instructing the young scions of the aristocracy of Tipperary, Mr.
+Whitechoker would be Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bibliomaniac would be
+raising bulbs in Holland, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs021" id="gs021"></a>
+<img src="images/gs021.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"THE BIBLIOMANIAC WOULD BE RAISING BULBS"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"And you would be wandering about with the other wild men of Borneo at
+the present time," put in the School-Master.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the Idiot. "Not quite. I should be dividing my time up between
+Holland, France, Switzerland, and Spain."</p>
+
+<p>"You are an international sort of Idiot, eh?" queried the Lawyer, with a
+chuckle at his own wit.</p>
+
+<p>"Say rather a cosmopolitan Idiot," said the Idiot. "Among my ancestors
+I number individuals of various nations, though I suppose that if we go
+back far enough we were all in the same boat as far as that is concerned.
+One of my great-great-grandfathers was a Scotchman, one of them was a
+Dutchman, another was a Spaniard, a fourth was a Frenchman. What the
+others were I don't know. It's a nuisance looking up one's ancestors,
+I think. They increase so as you go back into the past. Every man
+has had two grandfathers, four great-grandfathers, eight
+great-great-grandfathers, sixteen great-great-great-grandfathers,
+thirty-two fathers raised to the fourth power of great-grandness, and
+so on, increasing in number as you go further back, until it is hardly
+possible for any one to throw a brick into the pages of history without
+hitting somebody who is more or less responsible for his existence. I
+dare say there is a streak of Julius C&aelig;sar in me, and I haven't a doubt
+that if our friend Mr. Pedagog here were to take the trouble to
+investigate, he would find that C&aelig;sar and Cassius and Brutus could be
+numbered among his early progenitors&mdash;and now that I think of it,
+I must say that in my estimation he is an unusually amiable man,
+considering how diverse the nature of these men were. Think of it for
+a minute. Here a man unites in himself C&aelig;sar and Cassius and Brutus,
+two of whom killed the third, and then, having quarrelled together,
+went out upon a battle-field and slaughtered themselves, after making
+extemporaneous remarks, for which this miserable world gives Shakespeare
+all the credit. It's worse than the case of a friend of mine, one of
+whose grandfathers was French and the other German."</p>
+
+<p>"How did it affect him?" asked Mr. Whitechoker.</p>
+
+<p>"It made him distrust himself," said the Idiot, with a smile, "and for
+that reason he never could get on in the world. When his Teutonic nature
+suggested that he do something, his Gallic blood would rise up and spoil
+everything, and <i>vice versa</i>. He was eternally quarrelling with himself.
+He was a victim to internal disorder of the worst sort."</p>
+
+<p>"And what, pray, finally became of him?" asked the Clergyman.</p>
+
+<p>"He shot himself in a duel," returned the Idiot, with a wink at the
+genial old gentleman who occasionally imbibed. "It was very sad."</p>
+
+<p>"I've known sadder things," said Mr. Pedagog, wearily. "Your elaborate
+jokes, for instance. They are enough to make strong men weep."</p>
+
+<p>"You flatter me, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "I have never in all my
+experience as a cracker of jests made a man laugh until he cried, but I
+hope to some day. But, really, do you know I think Columbus is an
+immensely overrated man. If you come down to it, what did he do? He went
+out to sea in a ship and sailed for three months, and when he least
+expected it ran slam-bang up against the Western Hemisphere. It was like
+shooting at a barn door with a Gatling gun. He was bound to hit it sooner
+or later."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't give him any credit for tenacity of purpose or good judgment,
+then?" asked Mr. Brief.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I do. Plenty of it. He stuck to his ship like a hero who
+didn't know how to swim. His judgment was great. He had too much sense
+to go back to Spain without any news of something, because he fully
+understood that unless he had something to show for the trip, there would
+have been a great laugh on Queen Isabella for selling her jewels to
+provide for a ninety-day yacht cruise for him and a lot of common
+sailors, which would never have done. So he kept on and on, and finally
+some unknown lookout up in the bow discovered America. Then Columbus
+went home and told everybody that if it hadn't been for his own eagle eye
+emigration wouldn't have been invented, and world's fairs would have been
+local institutions. Then they got up a parade in which the King and Queen
+graciously took part, and Columbus became a great man. Meanwhile the
+unknown lookout who did discover the land was knocking about the town and
+thinking he was a very lucky fellow to get an extra glass of grog. It
+wasn't anything more than the absolute justice of fate that caused the
+new land to be named America and not Columbia. It really ought to have
+been named after that fellow up in the bow."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear Idiot," put in the Bibliomaniac, "the scheme itself was
+Columbus's own. He evolved the theory that the earth is round like a
+ball."</p>
+
+<p>"To quote Mr. Pedagog&mdash;" began the Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't quote me in your own favor," snapped the School-Master.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait until I have finished," said the Idiot. "I was only going to quote
+you by saying 'Tutt!' that's all; and so I repeat, in the words of Mr.
+Pedagog, tutt, tutt! Evolved the theory? Why, man, how could he help
+evolving the theory? There was the sun rising in the east every morning
+and setting in the west every night. What else was there to believe? That
+somebody put the sun out every night, and sneaked back east with it under
+cover of darkness?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you forget that the wise men of the day laughed at his idea," said
+Mr. Pedagog, surveying the Idiot after the fashion of a man who has dealt
+an adversary a stinging blow.</p>
+
+<p>"That only proves what I have always said," replied the Idiot. "Wise men
+can't find fun in anything but stern facts. Wise men always do laugh at
+truth. Whenever I advance some new proposition, you sit up there next to
+Mrs. Pedagog and indulge in tutt-tutterances of the most intolerant sort.
+If you had been one of the wise men of Columbus's time there isn't any
+doubt in my mind that when Columbus said the earth was round, you'd have
+remarked tutt, tutt, in Spanish." There was silence for a minute, and
+then the Idiot began again. "There's another point about this whole
+business that makes me tired," he said. "It only goes to prove the
+conceit of these Europeans. Here was a great continent inhabited by
+countless people. A European comes over here and is said to be the
+discoverer of America and is glorified. Statues of him are scattered
+broad-cast all over the world. Pictures of him are printed in the
+newspapers and magazines. A dozen different varieties of portraits of
+him are printed on postage-stamps as big as circus posters&mdash;and all for
+what? Because he discovered a land that millions of Indians had known
+about for centuries. On the other hand, when Columbus goes back to Spain
+several of the native Americans trust their precious lives to his old
+tubs. One of these savages must have been the first American to discover
+Europe. Where are the statues of the Indian who discovered Europe? Where
+are the postage-stamps showing how he looked on the day when Europe first
+struck his vision? Where is anybody spending a billion of dollars getting
+up a world's fair in commemoration of Lo's discovery of Europe?"</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't know it was Europe," said the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"Columbus didn't know this was America," retorted the Idiot. "In fact,
+Columbus didn't know anything. He didn't know any better than to write a
+letter to Queen Isabella and mail it in a keg that never turned up. He
+didn't even know how to steer his old boat into a real solid continent,
+instead of getting ten days on the island. He was an awfully wise man. He
+saw an island swarming with Indians, and said, 'Why, this must be India!'
+And worst of all, if his pictures mean anything, he didn't even know
+enough to choose his face and stick to it. Don't talk Columbus to me
+unless you want to prove that luck is the greatest factor of success."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs022" id="gs022"></a>
+<img src="images/gs022.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH TO CHOOSE HIS OWN FACE"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"Ill-luck is sometimes a factor of success," said Mr. Pedagog. "You are a
+success as an Idiot, which appears to me to be extremely unfortunate."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about that," said the Idiot. "I adapt myself to my company,
+and of course&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are a school-master among school-masters, a lawyer among
+lawyers, and so forth?" queried the Bibliomaniac.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you when your company is made up of widely diverse characters?"
+asked Mr. Brief before the Idiot had a chance to reply to the
+Bibliomaniac's question.</p>
+
+<p>"I try to be a widely diverse character myself."</p>
+
+<p>"And, trying to sit on many stools, fall and become just an Idiot," said
+Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"That's according to the way you look at it. I put my company to the test
+in the crucible of my mind. I analyze the characters of all about me, and
+whatever quality predominates in the precipitate, that I become. Thus in
+the presence of my employer and his office-boy I become a mixture of
+both&mdash;something of the employer, something of an office-boy. I run
+errands for my employer, and boss the office-boy. With you gentlemen I
+go through the same process. The Bibliomaniac, the School-Master, Mr.
+Brief, and the rest of you have been cast into the crucible, and I have
+tried to approximate the result."</p>
+
+<p>"And are an Idiot," said the School-Master.</p>
+
+<p>"It is your own name for me, gentlemen," returned the Idiot. "I presume
+you have recognized your composite self, and have chosen the title
+accordingly."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"You were a little hard on me this morning, weren't you?" asked the
+genial old gentleman who occasionally imbibed, that evening, when he and
+the Idiot were discussing the morning's chat. "I didn't like to say
+anything about it, but I don't think you ought to have thrown me into the
+crucible with the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you had spoken," said the Idiot, warmly. "It would have given me
+a chance to say that the grain of sense that once or twice a year leavens
+the lump of my idiocy is directly due to the ingredient furnished by
+yourself. Here's to you, old man. If you and I lived alone together, what
+a wise man I should be!"</p>
+
+<p>And then the genial old gentleman went to the cupboard and got out a
+bottle of port-wine that he had been preserving in cobwebs for ten years.
+This he opened, and as he did so he said, "I've been keeping this for
+years, my boy. It was dedicated in my youth to the thirst of the first
+man who truly appreciated me. Take it all."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll divide with you," returned the Idiot, with a smile. "For really,
+old fellow, I think you&mdash;ah&mdash;I think you appreciate yourself as much as
+I do."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>"I wonder what it costs to run a flat?" said the Idiot, stirring his
+coffee with the salt-spoon&mdash;a proceeding which seemed to indicate that he
+was thinking of something else.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you keep an expense account?" asked the Bibliomaniac, slyly.</p>
+
+<p>"Hee-hee!" laughed Mrs. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"First-rate joke," said the Idiot, with a smile. "But really, now,
+I should like to know for how little an apartment could be run. I am
+interested."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pedagog stopped laughing at once. The Idiot's words were ominous.
+She did not always like his views, but she did like his money, and she
+was not at all anxious to lose him as a boarder.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very expensive," she said, firmly. "I shouldn't ever advise any
+one to undertake living in a flat. Rents are high. Butcher bills are
+enormous, because the butchers have to pay commissions, not only to the
+cook, so that she'll use twice as much lard as she can, and give away
+three or four times as much to the poor as she ought, but janitors have
+to be seen to, and elevator-boys, and all that. Groceries come high for
+the same reason. Oh, no! Flat life isn't the life for anybody, I say.
+Give me a good, first-class boarding-house. Am I not right, John?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs023" id="gs023"></a>
+<img src="images/gs023.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"JANITORS HAVE TO BE SEEN TO"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Pedagog. "Every time. I lived in a flat once,
+and it was an awful nuisance. Above me lived a dancing-master who gave
+lessons at every hour of the day in the room directly over my study,
+so that I was always being disturbed at my work, while below me was a
+music-teacher who was practising all night, so that I could hardly sleep.
+Worst of all, on the same floor with me was a miserable person of
+convivial tendencies, who always mistook my door for his when he came
+home after midnight, and who gave some quite estimable people two
+floors below to believe that it was I, and not he, who sang comic songs
+between three and four o'clock in the morning. There has not been too
+much love lost between the Idiot and myself, but I cannot be so
+vindictive as to recommend him to live in a flat."</p>
+
+<p>"I can bear testimony to the same effect," put in Mr. Brief, who was two
+weeks in arrears, and anxious to conciliate his landlady.</p>
+
+<p>"Testimony to the effect that Mr. Pedagog sang comic songs in the early
+morning?" said the Idiot. "Nonsense! I don't believe it. I have lived in
+this house for two years with Mr. Pedagog, and I've never heard him raise
+his voice in song yet."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean anything of the sort," retorted Mr. Brief. "You know I
+didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't apologize to me," said the Idiot. "Apologize to Mr. Pedagog. He is
+the man you have wronged."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?" put in Mr. Pedagog, with a stern look at Mr. Brief. "I
+didn't hear what he said."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say anything," said the lawyer, "except that I could bear
+testimony to the effect that your experience with flat life was similar
+to mine. This young person, with his customary nerve, tries to make it
+appear that I said you sang comic songs in the early morning."</p>
+
+<p>"I try to do nothing of the sort," said the Idiot. "I simply expressed my
+belief that in spite of what you said Mr. Pedagog was innocent, and I do
+so because my experience with him has taught me that he is not the kind
+of man who would do that sort of thing. He has neither time, voice, nor
+inclination. He has an ear&mdash;two of them, in fact&mdash;and an impressionable
+mind, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, tutt!" interrupted the School-Master. "When I need a defender, you
+may spare yourself the trouble of flying to my rescue."</p>
+
+<p>"I know I <i>may</i>," said the Idiot, "but with me it's a question of can and
+can't. I'm willing to attack you personally, but while I live no other
+shall do so. Wherefore I tell Mr. Brief plainly, and to his face, that if
+he says you ever sang a comic song he says what is not so. You might hum
+one, but sing it&mdash;never!"</p>
+
+<p>"We were talking of flats, I believe," said Mr. Whitechoker.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the Idiot, "and these persons have changed it from flat talk
+to sharp talk."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyhow," put in Mr. Brief, "I lived in a flat once, and it was
+anything but pleasant. I lost a case once for the simple and only reason
+that I lived in a flat. It was a case that required a great deal of
+strategy on my part, and I invited my client to my home to unfold my plan
+of action. I got interested in the scheme as I unfolded it, and spoke in
+my usual impassioned manner, as though addressing a jury, and, would you
+believe it, the opposing counsel happened to be visiting a friend on the
+next floor, and my eloquence floated up through the air-shaft, and gave
+our whole plan of action away. We were routed on the point we had
+supposed would pierce the enemy's armor and lay him at our feet, for the
+wholly simple reason that that abominable air-shaft had made my strategic
+move a matter of public knowledge."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="gs024" id="gs024"></a>
+<img src="images/gs024.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"MY ELOQUENCE FLOATED UP THE AIR-SHAFT"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"That's a good idea for a play," said the Idiot. "A roaring farce could
+be built up on that basis. Villain and accomplice on one floor, innocent
+victim on floor above. Plot floats up air-shaft. Innocent victim
+overhears; villain and accomplice say 'ha ha' for three acts and take
+a back seat in the fourth, with a grand transformation showing the
+conspirators in the county jail as a finale. Write it up with lots of
+live-stock wandering in and out, bring in janitors and elevator-boys
+and butchers, show up some of the humors of flat life, if there be any
+such, call it <i>A Hole in the Flat</i>, and put it on the stage. Nine hundred
+nights is the very shortest run it could have, which at fifty dollars a
+night for the author is $45,000 in good hard dollars. Mr. Poet, the idea
+is yours for a fiver. Say the word."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," said the Poet, with a smile; "I'm not a dramatist."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll have to do it myself," said the Idiot. "And if I do, good-bye
+Shakespeare."</p>
+
+<p>"That's so," said Mr. Pedagog. "Nothing could more effectually ruin the
+dramatic art than to have you write a play. People, seeing your work,
+would say, here, this will never do. The stage must be discouraged at all
+costs. A hypocrite throws the ministry into disgrace, an ignoramus brings
+shame upon education, and an unpopular lawyer gives the bar a bad name. I
+think you are just the man to ruin Shakespeare."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll give up my ambition to become a playwright and stick to
+idiocy," said the Idiot. "But to come back to flats. Your feeling in
+regard to them is entirely different from that of a friend of mine, who
+has lived in one for ten years. He thinks flat life is ideal. His
+children can't fall down-stairs, because there aren't any stairs to fall
+down. His roof never leaks, because he hasn't any roof to leak; and when
+he and his family want to go off anywhere, all he has to do is to lock
+his front door and go. Burglars never climb into his front window,
+because they are all eight flights up. Damp cellars don't trouble him,
+because they are too far down to do him any injury, even if they
+overflow. The cares of house-keeping are reduced to a minimum. His cook
+doesn't spend all her time in the front area flirting with the postman,
+because there isn't any front area to his flat; and in a social way his
+wife is most delightfully situated, because most of her friends live in
+the same building, and instead of having to hire a carriage to go calling
+in, all she has to do is to take the elevator and go from one floor to
+another. If he pines for a change of scene, he is high enough up in the
+air to get it by looking out of his windows, over the tops of other
+buildings, into the green fields to the north, or looking westward into
+the State of New Jersey. Instead of taking a drive through the Park, or
+a walk, all he and his wife need to do is to take a telescope and follow
+some little sylvan path with their eyes. Then, as for expense, he finds
+that he saves money by means of a co-operative scheme. For instance, if
+he wants shad for dinner, and he and his wife cannot eat a whole one, he
+goes shares on the shad and its cost with his neighbors above and below."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and his neighbors above and below borrow tea and eggs and butter
+and ice and other things whenever they run short, so that in that way he
+loses all he saves," said Mr. Pedagog, resolved not to give in.</p>
+
+<p>"He does if he isn't smart," said the Idiot. "I thought of that myself,
+and asked him about it, and he told me that he kept account of all that,
+and always made it a point after some neighbor had borrowed two pounds
+of butter from him to send in before the week was over and borrow three
+pounds of butter from the neighbor. So far his books show that he is
+sixteen pounds of butter, seven pounds of tea, one bottle of vanilla
+extract, and a ton of ice ahead of the whole house. He is six eggs and
+a box of matches behind in his egg and match account, but under the
+circumstances I think he can afford it."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Mrs. Pedagog, anxious to know the worst, "why&mdash;er&mdash;why are
+you so interested?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the Idiot, slowly, "I&mdash;er&mdash;I am contemplating a change, Mrs.
+Pedagog&mdash;a change that would fill me&mdash;I say it sincerely, too&mdash;with
+regret if&mdash;" The Idiot paused a minute, and his eye swept fondly about
+the table. His voice was getting a little husky too, Mr. Whitechoker
+noticed. "It would fill me with regret, I say, if it were not that
+in taking up house-keeping I am&mdash;I am to have the assistance of a
+better-half."</p>
+
+<p>"What??" cried the Bibliomaniac. "You? You are going to be&mdash;to be
+married?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" said the Idiot. "Imitation is the sincerest flattery. Mr.
+Pedagog marries, and I am going to flatter him as sincerely as I can by
+following in his footsteps."</p>
+
+<p>"May I&mdash;may we ask to whom?" asked Mrs. Pedagog, softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said the Idiot. "To Mr. Barlow's daughter. Mr. Barlow is&mdash;or
+was&mdash;my employer."</p>
+
+<p>"Was? Is he not now? Are you going out of business?" asked Mr. Pedagog.</p>
+
+<p>"No; but, you see, when I went to see Mr. Barlow in the matter, he told
+me that he liked me very much, and he had no doubt I would make a good
+husband for his daughter, but, after all, he added that I was nothing
+but a confidential clerk on a small salary, and he thought his daughter
+could do better."</p>
+
+<p>"She couldn't find a better fellow, Mr. Idiot," said Mrs. Pedagog, and
+Mr. Pedagog rose to the occasion by nodding his entire acquiescence in
+the statement.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much," said the Idiot. "That was precisely what I told
+Mr. Barlow, and I suggested a scheme to him by which his sole objection
+could be got around."</p>
+
+<p>"You would start in business for yourself?" said Mr. Whitechoker.</p>
+
+<p>"In a sense, yes," said the Idiot. "Only the way I put it was that a good
+confidential clerk would make a good partner for him, and he, after
+thinking it over, thought I was right."</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly was a characteristically novel way out of the dilemma,"
+said Mr. Brief, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought so myself, and so did he, so it was all arranged. On the 1st
+of next month I enter the firm, and on the 15th I am&mdash;ah&mdash;to be married."</p>
+
+<p>The company warmly congratulated the Idiot upon his good-fortune, and he
+shortly left the room, more overcome by their felicitations than he had
+been by their arguments in the past.</p>
+
+<p>The few days left passed quickly by, and there came a breakfast at Mrs.
+Pedagog's house that was a mixture of joy and sadness&mdash;joy for his
+happiness, sadness that that table should know the Idiot no more.</p>
+
+<p>Among the wedding-gifts was a handsomely bound series of volumes,
+including a cyclop&aelig;dia, a dictionary, and a little tome of poems, the
+first output of the Poet. These came together, with a card inscribed,
+"From your Friends of the Breakfast Table," of whom the Idiot said, when
+Mrs. Idiot asked for information:</p>
+
+<p>"They, my dear, next to yourself and my parents, are the dearest friends
+I ever had. We must have them up to breakfast some morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Breakfast?" queried Mrs. Idiot.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my dear," he replied, simply. "I should be afraid to meet them at
+any other meal. I am always at my best at breakfast, and they&mdash;well, they
+never are."</p>
+
+
+<p>THE END</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BY_JOHN_KENDRICK_BANGS" id="BY_JOHN_KENDRICK_BANGS"></a>BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS</h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Mr. Bangs is probably the generator of more hearty, healthful, purely
+good-humored laughs than any other half-dozen men of our country
+to-day.&mdash;<i>Interior</i>, Chicago.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Idiot</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Idiot," continues to be as amusing and as triumphantly bright in the
+volume called after his name as in "Coffee and Repartee."&mdash;<i>Evangelist</i>,
+N. Y.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Water Ghost</span>, and Others.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The funny side of the ghost genre is brought out with originality, and,
+considering the morbidity that surrounds the subject, it is a wholesome
+thing to offer the public a series of tales letting in the sunlight of
+laughter.&mdash;<i>Hartford Courant</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Three Weeks in Politics</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The funny story is most graphically told, and he who can read this
+narrative of a campaigner's trials without laughing must be a stoic
+indeed.&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Bulletin</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Coffee and Repartee</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Is delightfully free from conventionality; is breezy, witty, and
+possessed of an originality both genial and refreshing.&mdash;<i>Saturday
+Evening Gazette</i>, Boston.</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDIOT***</p>
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@@ -0,0 +1,3007 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Idiot, by John Kendrick Bangs
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Idiot
+
+
+Author: John Kendrick Bangs
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 20, 2006  [eBook #18881]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDIOT***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg
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+
+
+
+THE IDIOT
+
+by
+
+JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
+
+Author of "Coffee and Repartee" "The Water Ghost, and Others" "Three
+Weeks in Politics" Etc.
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+1895
+Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers.
+All rights reserved.
+
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM K. OTIS
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+   "CERTAINLY. I ASKED FOR ANOTHER CUP"
+
+   "THE NUISANCE OF HAVING TO PAY"
+
+   "SHE COULD NOT POSSIBLY GET ABOARD AGAIN"
+
+   "DEMANDS TICKETS FOR TWO"
+
+   "THEY ARE GIVEN TO REHEARSING AT ALL HOURS"
+
+   "'HA! HA! I HAVE HIM NOW!'"
+
+   "HAS YOUR FRIEND COMPLETED HIS ARTICLE ON OLD JOKES?"
+
+   THEY DEPARTED
+
+   "YOU FISH ALL DAY, AND HAVE NO LUCK"
+
+   HE COULD BE HEARD THROWING THINGS ABOUT
+
+   "HE WAS NOT MURDERED"
+
+   "SUPERINTENDENT SMITHERS HAS NOT ABSCONDED"
+
+   THE INSPIRED BOARDER PAID HIS BILL
+
+   "I KNOW YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE IT ISN'T THERE"
+
+   "YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HEARD IN SAN FRANCISCO"
+
+   THE PROPHETOGRAPH
+
+   "I GRASPED IT IN MY TWO HANDS"
+
+   "PIANO-PLAYING ISN'T ALWAYS MUSIC"
+
+   "THE MOON ITSELF WILL BE USED"
+
+   "DECLINES TO BE RIDDEN"
+
+   "THE BIBLIOMANIAC WOULD BE RAISING BULBS"
+
+   "DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH TO CHOOSE HIS OWN FACE"
+
+   "JANITORS HAVE TO BE SEEN TO"
+
+   "MY ELOQUENCE FLOATED UP THE AIR-SHAFT"
+
+
+
+
+THE IDIOT
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+For some weeks after the happy event which transformed the popular Mrs.
+Smithers into the charming Mrs. John Pedagog all went well at that lady's
+select home for single gentlemen. It was only proper that during the
+honey-moon, at least, of the happy couple hostilities between the Idiot
+and his fellow-boarders should cease. It was expecting too much of
+mankind, however, to look for a continued armistice, and the morning
+arrived when Nature once more reasserted herself, and trouble began. Just
+what it was that prompted the remark no one knows, but it happened that
+the Idiot did say that he thought that, after all, life on a canal-boat
+had its advantages. Mr. Pedagog, who had come into the dining-room in a
+slightly irritable frame of mind, induced perhaps by Mrs. Pedagog's
+insistence that as he was now part proprietor of the house he should be
+a little more prompt in making his contributions towards its maintenance,
+chose to take the remark as implying a reflection upon the way things
+were managed in the household.
+
+"Humph!" he said. "I had hoped that your habit of airing your idiotic
+views had been put aside for once and for all."
+
+"Very absurd hope, my dear sir," observed the Idiot. "Views that are not
+aired become musty. Why shouldn't I give them an atmospheric opportunity
+once in a while?"
+
+"Because they are the sort of views to which suffocation is the most
+appropriate end," snapped the School-Master. "Any man who asserts, as you
+have asserted, that life on a canal-boat has its advantages, ought to go
+further, and prove his sincerity by living on one."
+
+"I can't afford it," said the Idiot, meekly. "It isn't cheap by any
+manner of means. In the first place, you can't live happily on a
+canal-boat unless you can afford to keep horses. In fact, canal-boat life
+is a combination of the most expensive luxuries, since it combines
+yachting and driving with domesticity. Nevertheless, if you will put your
+mind on it, you will find that with a canal-boat for your home you can do
+a great many things that you can't do with a house."
+
+"I decline to put my mind on a canal-boat," said Mr. Pedagog, sharply,
+passing his coffee back to Mrs. Pedagog for another lump of sugar,
+thereby contributing to that good lady's discomfiture, since before their
+marriage the mere fact that the coffee had been poured by her fair hand
+had given it all the sweetness it needed; or at least that was what the
+School-Master had said, and more than once at that.
+
+"You are under no obligation to do so," the Idiot returned. "Though if I
+had a mind like yours I'd put it on a canal-boat and have it towed away
+somewhere out of sight. These other gentlemen, however, I think, will
+agree with me when I say that the mere fact that a canal-boat can be
+moved about the country, and is in no sense a fixture anywhere, shows
+that as a dwelling-place it is superior to a house. Take this house, for
+instance. This neighborhood used to be the best in town. It is still far
+from being the worst neighborhood in town, but it is, as it has been for
+several years, deteriorating. The establishment of a Turkish bath on one
+corner and a grocery-store on the other has taken away much of that air
+of refinement which characterized it when the block was devoted to
+residential purposes entirely. Now just suppose for a moment that this
+street were a canal, and that this house were a canal-boat. The canal
+could run down as much as it pleased, the neighborhood could deteriorate
+eternally, but it could not affect the value of this house as the home of
+refined people as long as it was possible to hitch up a team of horses to
+the front stoop and tow it into a better locality. I'd like to wager
+every man at this table that Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't take five minutes to
+make up her mind to tow this house up to a spot near Central Park, if it
+were a canal-boat and the streets were water instead of a mixture of
+water, sand, and Belgian blocks."
+
+"No takers," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Tutt-tutt-tutt," ejaculated Mr. Pedagog.
+
+[Illustration: "THE NUISANCE OF HAVING TO PAY"]
+
+"You seem to lose sight of another fact," said the Idiot, warming up to
+his subject. "If man had had the sense in the beginning to adopt the
+canal-boat system of life, and we were used to that sort of thing, it
+would not be so hard upon us in summer-time, when we have to live in
+hotels in order that we and our families may reap the benefits of a
+period of country life. We could simply drive off to that section of the
+country where we desired to be. Hotels would not be needed if a man could
+take his house along with him into the fields, and one phase of life
+which has more bad than good in it would be entirely obliterated. There
+is nothing more disturbing to the serenity of a domestic man's mind than
+the artificial manner of living that prevails in most summer hotels. The
+nuisance of having to pay bills every Monday morning under the penalty of
+losing one's luggage would be obviated, and all the comforts of home
+would be directly within reach. The trouble incident upon getting the
+trunks packed and the children ready for a long day's journey by rail,
+and the fatigue arising from such a journey, would be reduced to a
+minimum. The troubles attendant upon going into a far country, and
+leaving one's house in the sole charge of a lot of servants for a month
+or two every year, would be done away with entirely; and if at any time
+it became necessary to discharge one of these servants, she could be put
+off the boat in an instant, and then the boat could be pushed out into
+the middle of the canal, so that the discharged domestic could not
+possibly get aboard again and take her revenge by smashing your crockery
+and fixtures. That is one of the worst features of living in a stationary
+house. You are entirely at the mercy of vindictive servants. They know
+precisely where you live, and you cannot escape them. They can come back
+when there is no man around, and raise several varieties of Ned with your
+wife and children. With a movable house, such as the canal-boat would be,
+you could always go off and leave your family in perfect safety."
+
+[Illustration: "SHE COULD NOT POSSIBLY GET ABOARD AGAIN"]
+
+"How about safety in a storm?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Safety in a storm?" echoed the Idiot. "That seems an absurd sort of a
+question to one who knows anything about canal-boats. I, for one, never
+heard of a canal-boat being seriously damaged in a storm as long as it
+was anchored in the canal proper. It certainly isn't any more dangerous
+to be in a canal-boat in a storm than it is to be in a house that
+offers resistance to the winds, and is shaken from roof to cellar at
+every blast. More houses have been blown from their foundations than
+canal-boats sunk, provided ordinary care has been taken to protect
+them."
+
+"And you think the canal-boat would be healthy?" asked the Doctor. "How
+about dampness and all that?"
+
+"That is a professional question," returned the Idiot, "which I think you
+could answer better than I. I don't see why a canal-boat shouldn't be
+healthy, however. The dampness would not amount to very much. It would be
+outside of one's dwelling, and not within it, as is the case with so many
+houses. A canal-boat having no cellar could not have a damp one, and if
+by some untoward circumstance it should spring a leak, the water could
+be pumped out at once and the leak plugged up. However this might be,
+I'll offer another wager to this board on that point, and that is that
+more people die in houses than on canal-boats."
+
+"We'd rather give you our money right out," retorted the Doctor.
+
+"Thank you," said the Idiot. "But I don't need money. I don't like money.
+Money is responsible for more extravagance than any other commodity in
+existence. Besides, it and I are not intimate enough to get along very
+well together, and when I have any I immediately do my level best to rid
+myself of it. But to return to our canal-boat, I note a look of
+disapproval in Mr. Whitechoker's eyes. He doesn't seem to think any
+more of my scheme than do the rest of you--which I regret, since I
+believe that he would be the gainer if land edifices were supplanted by
+the canal system as proposed by myself. Take church on a rainy morning,
+for instance. A great many people stay at home from church on rainy
+mornings just because they do not want to venture out in the wet. Suppose
+we all lived in canal-boats? Would not people be deprived of this flimsy
+pretext for staying at home if their homes could be towed up to the
+church door? Or, better yet, granting that the churches followed out the
+same plan, and were themselves constructed like canal-boats, how easy it
+would be for the sexton to drive the church around the town and collect
+the absentees. In the same manner it would be glorious for men like
+ourselves, who have to go to their daily toil. For a consideration, Mrs.
+Pedagog could have us driven to our various places of business every
+morning, returning for us in the evening. Think how fine it would be for
+me, for instance, instead of having to come home every night in an
+overcrowded elevated train or on a cable-car, to have the office-boy come
+and announce, 'Mrs. Pedagog's Select Home for Gentlemen is at the door,
+Mr. Idiot.' I could step right out of my office into my charming little
+bedroom up in the bow, and the time usually expended on the cars could be
+devoted to dressing for tea. Then we could stop in at the court-house for
+our legal friend; and as for Doctor Capsule, wouldn't he revel in driving
+this boarding-house about town on his daily rounds among his patients?"
+
+"What would become of my office hours?" asked the Doctor. "If this house
+were whirling giddily all about the city from morning until night, I
+don't know what would become of my office patients."
+
+"They might die a little sooner or live a little longer, that is all,"
+said the Idiot. "If they weren't able to find the house at all, however,
+I think it would be better for us, for much as I admire you, Doctor, I
+think your office hours are a nuisance to the rest of us. I had to elbow
+my way out of the house this morning between a double line of sufferers
+from mumps and influenza, and other pleasingly afflicted patients of
+yours, and I didn't like it very much."
+
+"I don't believe they liked it much either," returned the Doctor. "One
+man with a sprained ankle told me about you. You shoved him in passing."
+
+"Well, you can apologize to him in my behalf," returned the Idiot; "but
+you might add that he must expect very much the same treatment whenever
+he and a boy with mumps stand between me and the door. Sprained ankles
+aren't contagious, and I preferred shoving him to the other alternative."
+
+The Doctor was silent, and the Idiot rose to go. "Where will the house be
+this evening about six-thirty, Mrs. Pedagog?" he asked, as he pushed his
+chair back from the table.
+
+"Where? Why, here, of course," returned the landlady.
+
+"Why, yes--of course," observed the Idiot, with an impatient gesture.
+"How foolish of me! I've really been so wrapped up in my canal-boat ideal
+that I came to believe that it might possibly be real and not a dream,
+after all. I almost believed that perhaps I should find that the house
+had been towed somewhere up into Westchester County on my return, so that
+we might all escape the city's tax on personal property, which I am told
+is unusually high this year."
+
+With which sally the Idiot kissed his hand to Mr. Pedagog and retired
+from the scene.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"Let's write a book," suggested the Idiot, as he took his place at the
+board and unfolded his napkin.
+
+"What about?" asked the Doctor, with a smile at the idea of the Idiot's
+thinking of embarking on literary pursuits.
+
+"About four hundred pages long," said the Idiot. "I feel inspired."
+
+"You are inspired," said the School-Master. "In your way you are a
+genius. I really never heard of such a variegated Idiot as you are in all
+my experience, and that means a great deal, I can tell you, for in the
+course of my career as an instructor of youth I have encountered many
+idiots."
+
+"Were they idiots before or after having drank at the fount of your
+learning?" asked the Idiot, placidly.
+
+Mr. Pedagog glared, and the Idiot was apparently satisfied. To make Mr.
+Pedagog glare appeared to be one of the chiefest of his ambitions.
+
+"You will kindly remember, Mr. Idiot," said Mrs. Pedagog at this point,
+"that Mr. Pedagog is my husband, and such insinuations at my table are
+distinctly out of place."
+
+"I ask your pardon, Mrs. Pedagog," rejoined the offender, meekly.
+"Nevertheless, as apart from the question in hand as to whether Mr.
+Pedagog inspires idiocy or not, I should like to get the views of this
+gathering on the point you make regarding the table. _Is_ this your
+table? Is it not rather the table of those who sit about it to regale
+their inner man with the good things under which I remember once or twice
+in my life to have heard it groan? To my mind, the latter is the truth.
+It is _our_ table, because we buy it, and I am forced to believe that
+some of us pay for it. I am prepared to admit that if Mr. Brief, for
+instance, is delinquent in his weekly payments, his interest in the table
+reverts to you until he shall have liquidated, and he is not privileged
+to say a word that you do not approve of; but I, for instance, who since
+January 1st have been compelled to pay in advance, am at least sole
+lessee, and for the time being proprietor of the portion for which I have
+paid. You have sold it to me. I have entered into possession, and while
+in possession, as a matter of right and not on sufferance, haven't I the
+privilege of freedom of speech?"
+
+"You certainly exercise the privilege whether you have it or not,"
+snapped Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Well, I believe in exercise," said the Idiot. "Exercise brings strength,
+and if exercising the privilege is going to strengthen it, exercise it I
+shall, if I have to hire a gymnasium for the purpose. But to return to
+Mrs. Pedagog's remark. It brings up another question that has more or
+less interested me. Because Mrs. Smithers married Mr. Pedagog, do we lose
+all of our rights in Mr. Pedagog? Before the happy event that reduced our
+number from ten to nine--"
+
+"We are still ten, are we not?" asked Mr. Whitechoker, counting the
+guests.
+
+"Not if Mr. Pedagog and the late Mrs. Smithers have become one," said the
+Idiot. "But, as I was saying, before the happy event that reduced our
+number from ten to nine we were permitted to address our friend Pedagog
+in any terms we saw fit, and whenever he became sufficiently interested
+to indulge in repartee we were privileged to return it. Have we
+relinquished that privilege? I don't remember to have done so."
+
+"It's a question worthy of your giant intellect," said Mr. Pedagog,
+scornfully. "For myself, I do not at all object to anything you may
+choose to say to me or of me. Your assaults are to me as water is to a
+duck's back."
+
+"I am sorry," said the Idiot. "I hate family disagreements, and here we
+have Mrs. Pedagog taking one side and Mr. Pedagog the other. But whatever
+decision may ultimately be reached, of one thing Mrs. Pedagog must be
+assured. I on principle side against Mr. Pedagog, and if it be the wish
+of my good landlady that I shall refrain from playing intellectual
+battledore and shuttlecock with her husband, whom we all revere, I
+certainly shall refrain. Hereafter if I indulge in anything that in any
+sense resembles repartee with our landlord, I wish it distinctly
+understood that an apology goes with it."
+
+"That's all right, my boy," said the School-Master. "You mean well. You
+are a little new, that's all, and we all understand you."
+
+"I don't understand him," growled the Doctor, still smarting under the
+recollection of former breakfast-table discomfitures. "I wish we could
+get him translated."
+
+"If you prescribed for me once or twice I think it likely I should be
+translated in short order," retorted the Idiot. "I wonder how I'd go
+translated into French?"
+
+"You couldn't be expressed in French," put in the Lawyer. "It would take
+some barbarian tongue to do you justice."
+
+"Very well," said the Idiot. "Proceed. Do me justice."
+
+"I can't begin to," said Mr. Brief, angrily.
+
+"That's what I thought," said the Idiot. "That's the reason why you
+always do me such great injustice. You lawyers always have to be doing
+something, even if it is only holding down a chair so that it won't blow
+out of your office window. If you haven't any justice to mete out, you
+take another tack and dispense injustice with lavish hand. However, I'll
+forgive you if you'll tell me one thing. What's libel, Mr. Brief?"
+
+"None of your business," growled the Lawyer.
+
+"A very good general definition," said the Idiot, approvingly. "If
+there's any business in the world that I should hate to have known as
+mine it is that of libel. I think, however, your definition is not
+definite. What I wanted to know was just how far I could go with remarks
+at this table and be safe from prosecution."
+
+"Nobody would ever prosecute you, for two reasons," said the lawyer. "In
+a civil action for money damages a verdict against you for ten cents
+wouldn't be worth a rap, because the chances are you couldn't pay. In a
+criminal action your conviction would be a bad thing, because you would
+be likely to prove a corrupting influence in any jail in creation.
+Besides, you'd be safe before a jury, anyhow. You are just the sort of
+idiot that the intelligent jurors of to-day admire, and they'd acquit you
+of any crime. A man has a right to a trial at the hands of a jury of his
+peers. I don't think even in a jury-box twelve idiots equal to yourself
+could be found, so don't worry."
+
+"Thanks. Have a cigarette?" said the Idiot, tossing one over to the
+Lawyer. "It's all I have. If I had a half-dollar I should pay you for
+your opinion; but since I haven't, I offer you my all. The temperature of
+my coffee seems to have fallen, Mrs. Pedagog. Will you kindly let me have
+another cup?"
+
+"Certainly," said Mrs. Pedagog. "Mary, get the Idiot another cup."
+
+Mary did as she was told, placing the empty bit of china at Mrs.
+Pedagog's side.
+
+"It is for the Idiot, Mary," said Mrs. Pedagog, coldly. "Take it to him."
+
+"Empty, ma'am?" asked the maid.
+
+"Certainly, Mary," said the Idiot, perceiving Mrs. Pedagog's point. "I
+asked for another cup, not for more coffee."
+
+[Illustration: "CERTAINLY. I ASKED FOR ANOTHER CUP"]
+
+Mrs. Pedagog smiled quietly at her own joke. At hair-splitting she could
+give the Idiot points.
+
+"I am surprised that Mary should have thought I wanted more coffee,"
+continued the Idiot, in an aggrieved tone. "It shows that she too thinks
+me out of my mind."
+
+"You are not out of your mind," said the Bibliomaniac. "It would be a
+good thing if you were. In replenishing your mental supply you might have
+the luck to get better quality."
+
+"I probably should have the luck," said the Idiot. "I have had a great
+store of it in my life. From the very start I have had luck. When I think
+that I was born myself, and not you, I feel as if I had had more than my
+share of good-fortune--more luck than the law allows. How much luck does
+the law allow, Mr. Brief?"
+
+"Bosh!" said Mr. Brief, with a scornful wave of his hand, as if he
+were ridding himself of a troublesome gnat. "Don't bother me with such
+mind-withering questions."
+
+"All right," said the Idiot. "I'll ask you an easier one. Why does not
+the world recognize matrimony?"
+
+Mr. Whitechoker started. Here, indeed, was a novel proposition.
+
+"I--I--must confess," said he, "that of all the idiotic questions
+I--er--I have ever had the honor of hearing asked that takes the--"
+
+"Cake?" suggested the Idiot.
+
+"--palm!" said Mr. Whitechoker, severely.
+
+"Well, perhaps so," said the Idiot. "But matrimony is the science, or the
+art, or whatever you call it, of making two people one, is it not?"
+
+"It certainly is," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But what of it?"
+
+"The world does not recognize the unity," said the Idiot. "Take our good
+proprietors, for instance. They were made one by yourself, Mr.
+Whitechoker. I had the pleasure of being an usher at the ceremony,
+yielding the position of best man gracefully, as is my wont, to the
+Bibliomaniac. He was best man, but not the better man, by a simple
+process of reasoning. Now no one at this board disputes that Mr. and Mrs.
+Pedagog are one, but how about the world? Mr. Pedagog takes Mrs. Pedagog
+to a concert. Are they one there?"
+
+"Why not?" asked Mr. Brief.
+
+"That's what I want to know--why not? The world, as represented by the
+ticket-taker at the door, says they are not--or implies that they are
+not, by demanding tickets for two. They attempt to travel out to Niagara
+Falls. The railroad people charge them two fares; the hackman charges
+them two fares; the hotel bills are made out for two people. It is the
+same wherever they go in the world, and I regret to say that even in our
+own home there is a disposition to regard them as two. When I spoke of
+there being nine persons here instead of ten, Mr. Whitechoker himself
+disputed my point--and yet it was not so much his fault as the fault of
+Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog themselves. Mrs. Pedagog seems to cast doubt upon
+the unity by providing two separate chairs for the two halves that make
+up the charming entirety. Two cups are provided for their coffee. Two
+forks, two knives, two spoons, two portions of all the delicacies of the
+season which are lavished upon us out of season--generally after it--fall
+to their lot. They do not object to being called a happy _couple_, when
+they should be known as a happy single. Now what I want to know is why
+the world does not accept the shrinkage which has been pronounced valid
+by the church and is recognized by the individual? Can any one here tell
+me that?"
+
+[Illustration: "DEMANDS TICKETS FOR TWO"]
+
+No one could, apparently. At least no one endeavored to. The Idiot looked
+inquiringly at all, and then, receiving no reply to his question, he rose
+from the table.
+
+"I think," he said, as he started to leave the room--"I think we ought to
+write that book. If we made it up of the things you people don't know, it
+would be one of the greatest books of the century. At any rate, it would
+be great enough in bulk to fill the biggest library in America."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+"I wish I were beginning life all over again," said the Idiot one spring
+morning, as he took his accustomed place at Mrs. Pedagog's table.
+
+"I wish you were," said Mr. Pedagog from behind his newspaper. "Then your
+parents would have you shut up in a nursery, and it is even conceivable
+that you would be receiving those disciplinary attentions with a slipper
+that you seem to me so frequently to deserve, were you at this present
+moment in the nursery stage of your development."
+
+"My!" ejaculated the Idiot. "What a wonder you are, Mr. Pedagog! It is a
+good thing you are not a justice in a criminal court."
+
+"And what, may I venture to ask," said Mr. Pedagog, glancing at the Idiot
+over his spectacles--"what has given rise to that extraordinary remark,
+the connection of which with anything that has been said or done this
+morning is distinctly not apparent?"
+
+"I only meant that a man who was so given over to long sentences as you
+are would probably make too severe a judge in a criminal court," replied
+the Idiot, meekly. "Do you make use of the same phraseology in the
+class-room that you dazzle us with, I should like to know?"
+
+"And why not, pray?" said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"No special reason," said the Idiot; "only it does seem to me that an
+instructor of youth ought to be more careful in his choice of adverbs
+than you appear to be. Of course Doctor Bolus here is under no obligation
+to speak more grammatically or correctly than he does. People call him in
+to prescribe, not to indulge in rhetorical periods, and he can write his
+prescriptions in a sort of intuitive Latin and nobody be the wiser, but
+you, who are said to be sowing the seeds of knowledge in the brain of
+youth, should be more careful."
+
+"Hear the grammarian talk!" returned Mr. Pedagog. "Listen to this
+embryonic Samuel Johnson the Second. What have I said that so offends the
+linguistic taste of Lindley Murray, Jun.?"
+
+"Nothing," returned the Idiot. "I cannot say that you have said anything.
+I never heard you say anything in my life; but while you can no doubt
+find good authority for making use of the words 'distinctly not
+apparent,' you ought not to throw such phrases around carelessly. The
+thing which is distinct is apparent, therefore to say 'distinctly not
+apparent' to a mind that is not given to analysis sounds strange. You
+might as well say of a beautiful girl that she is plainly pretty, meaning
+of course that she is evidently pretty; but those who are unacquainted
+with the idiomatic peculiarities of your speech might ask you if you
+meant that she was pretty in a plain sort of way. Suppose, too, you were
+writing a novel, and, in a desire to give your reader a fair idea of the
+personal appearance of a homely but good creature, you should say, 'It
+cannot be denied that Rosamond Follansbee was pretty plain?' It wouldn't
+take a very grave error of the types to change your entire meaning. To
+save a line on a page, for instance, it might become necessary to
+eliminate a single word; and if that word should chance to be the word
+'plain' in the sentence I have given, your homely but good person would
+be set down as being undeniably pretty. Which shows, it seems to me, that
+too great care cannot be exercised in the making of selections from our
+vocabu--"
+
+"You are the worst I _ever_ knew!" snapped Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Which only proves," observed the Idiot, "that you have not heeded the
+Scriptural injunction that you should know thyself. Are those buckwheat
+cakes or doilies?"
+
+Whether the question was heard or not is not known. It certainly was not
+answered, and silence reigned for a few minutes. Finally Mrs. Pedagog
+spoke, and in the manner of one who was somewhat embarrassed. "I am in an
+embarrassing position," said she.
+
+"Good!" said the Idiot, _sotto-voce_, to the genial gentleman who
+occasionally imbibed. "There is hope for the landlady yet. If she can be
+embarrassed she is still human--a condition I was beginning to think she
+wotted not of."
+
+"She whatted what?" queried the genial gentleman, not quite catching the
+Idiot's words.
+
+"Never mind," returned the Idiot. "Let's hear how she ever came to be
+embarrassed."
+
+"I have had an application for my first-floor suite, and I don't know
+whether I ought to accept it or not," said the landlady.
+
+"She has a conscience, too," whispered the Idiot; and then he added,
+aloud, "And wherein lies the difficulty, Mrs. Pedagog?"
+
+"The applicant is an actor; Junius Brutus Davenport is his name."
+
+"A tragedian or a comedian?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Or first walking gentleman, who knows every railroad tie in the
+country?" put in the Idiot.
+
+"That I do not know," returned the landlady. "His name sounds familiar
+enough, though. I thought perhaps some of you gentlemen might know of
+him."
+
+"I have heard of Junius Brutus," observed the Doctor, chuckling slightly
+at his own humor, "and I've heard of Davenport, but Junius Brutus
+Davenport is a combination with which I am not familiar."
+
+"Well, I can't see why it should make any difference whether the man is a
+tragedian, or a comedian, or a familiar figure to railroad men," said Mr.
+Whitechoker, firmly. "In any event, he would be an extremely objec--"
+
+"It makes a great deal of difference," said the Idiot. "I've met
+tragedians, and I've met comedians, and I've met New York Central stars,
+and I can assure you they each represent a distinct type. The tragedians,
+as a rule, are quiet meek individuals, with soft low voices, in private
+life. They are more timid than otherwise, though essentially amiable.
+I knew a tragedian once who, after killing seventeen Indians, a
+road-agent, and a gross of cowboys between eight and ten P.M.
+every night for sixteen weeks, working six nights a week, was afraid of a
+mild little soft-shell crab that lay defenceless on a plate before him on
+the evening of the seventh night of the last week. Tragedians make
+agreeable companions, I can tell you; and if J. Brutus Davenport is a
+tragedian, I think Mrs. Pedagog would do well to let him have the suite,
+provided, of course, that he pays for it in advance."
+
+"I was about to observe, when our friend interrupted me," said Mr.
+Whitechoker, with dignity, "that in any event an actor at this board
+would be to me an extremely objec--"
+
+"Now the comedians," resumed the Idiot, ignoring Mr. Whitechoker's
+remark--"the comedians are very different. They are twice as bloodthirsty
+as the murderers of the drama, and, worse than that, they are given to
+rehearsing at all hours of the day and night. A tragedian is a hard
+character only on the stage, but the comedian is the comedian always.
+If we had one of those fellows in our midst, it would not be very long
+before we became part of the drama ourselves. Mrs. Pedagog would find
+herself embarrassed once an hour, instead of, as at present, once a
+century. Mr. Whitechoker would hear of himself as having appeared by
+proxy in a roaring farce before our comedian had been with us two months.
+The wise sayings of our friend the School-Master would be spoken nightly
+from the stage, to the immense delight of the gallery gods, and to the
+edification of the orchestra circle, who would wonder how so much
+information could have got into the world and they not know it before.
+The out-of-town papers would literally teem with witty extracts from our
+comedian's plays, which we should immediately recognize as the dicta of
+my poor self."
+
+[Illustration: "THEY ARE GIVEN TO REHEARSING AT ALL HOURS"]
+
+"All of which," put in Mr. Whitechoker, "but proves the truth of my
+assertion that such a person would be an extremely objec--"
+
+"Then, as I said before," continued the Idiot, "he is continually
+rehearsing, and his objectionableness as a fellow-boarder would be
+greater or less, according to his play. If he were impersonating a
+shiftless wanderer, who shows remarkable bravery at a hotel fire, we
+should have to be prepared at any time to hear the fire-engines rushing
+up to the front door, and to see our comedian scaling the fire-escape
+with Mrs. Pedagog and her account-books in his arms, simply in the line
+of rehearsal. If he were impersonating a detective after a criminal
+masquerading as a good citizen, the School-Master would be startled some
+night by a hoarse voice at his key-hole exclaiming: 'Ha! ha! I have him
+now. There is no escape save by the back window, and that's so covered
+o'er with dust 'twere suffocation sure to try it.' I hesitate to say what
+would happen if he were a tank comedian."
+
+[Illustration: "'HA! HA! I HAVE HIM NOW!'"]
+
+"Perhaps," said Mr. Whitechoker, with a trifle more impatience than was
+compatible with his calling--"perhaps you will hesitate long enough for
+me to state what I have been trying to state ever since this soliloquy
+of yours began--that in any event, whether this person be a tragedian, or
+a comedian, or a walking gentleman, or a riding gentleman in a circus, I
+object to his being admitted to this circle, and I deem it well to say
+right here that as he comes in at the front door I go out at the back. As
+a clergyman, I do not approve of the stage."
+
+"That ought to settle it," said the Idiot. "Mr. Whitechoker is too good
+a friend to us all here for us to compel him to go out of that back door
+into the rather limited market-garden Mrs. Pedagog keeps in the yard. My
+indirect plea for the admission of Mr. Junius Brutus Davenport was based
+entirely upon my desire to see this circle completed or nearer completion
+than it is at present. We have all the professions represented here but
+the stage, and why exclude it, granting that no one objects? The men
+whose lives are given over to the amusement of mankind, and who are
+willing to place themselves in the most outrageous situations night after
+night in order that we may for the time being seem to be lifted out of
+the unpleasant situations into which we have got ourselves, are in my
+opinion doing a noble work. The theatre enables us to woo forgetfulness
+of self successfully for a few brief hours, and I have seen the time when
+an hour or two of relief from actual cares has resulted in great good.
+Nevertheless, the gentleman is not elected; and if Mrs. Pedagog will
+kindly refill my cup, I will ask you to join me in draining a toast to
+the health of the pastor of this flock, whose conscience, paradoxical as
+it may seem, is the most frequently worn and yet the least thread-bare
+of the consciences represented at this table."
+
+This easy settlement of her difficulty was so pleasing to Mrs. Pedagog
+that the Idiot's request was graciously acceded to, and Mr. Whitechoker's
+health was drank in coffee, after which the Idiot requested the genial
+gentleman who occasionally imbibed to join him privately in eating
+buckwheat cakes to the health of Mr. Davenport.
+
+"I haven't any doubt that he is worthy of the attention," he said; "and
+if you will lend me the money to buy the tickets, I'll take you around
+to the Criterion to-night, where he is playing. I don't know whether he
+plays Hamlet or A Hole in the Roof; but, at any rate, we can have a good
+time between the acts."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+"I see the men are at work on the pavements this morning," said the
+School-Master, gazing out through the window at a number of laborers at
+work in the street.
+
+"Yes," said the Idiot, calmly, "and I think Mrs. Pedagog ought to sue the
+Department of Public Works for libel. If she hasn't a case no maligned
+person ever had."
+
+"What are you saying, sir?" queried the landlady, innocently.
+
+"I say," returned the Idiot, pointing out into the street, "that you
+ought to sue the Department of Public Works for libel. They've got their
+sign right up against your house. _No Thorough Fare_ is what it says.
+That's libel, isn't it, Mr. Brief?"
+
+"It is certainly a fatal criticism of a boarding-house," observed Mr.
+Brief, with a twinkle in his eye, "but Mrs. Pedagog could hardly secure
+damages on that score."
+
+"I don't know about that," returned the Idiot. "As I understand it, it is
+an old maxim of the law that the greater the truth the greater the libel.
+Mrs. Pedagog ought to receive a million----By-the-way, what have we this
+morning?"
+
+"We have steak and fried potatoes, sir," replied Mrs. Pedagog, frigidly.
+"And I desire to add, that one who criticises the table as much as you do
+would do well to get his meals outside."
+
+"That, Mrs. Pedagog, is not the point. The difficulty I find here lies in
+getting my meals inside," said the Idiot.
+
+"Mary, you may bring in the mush," observed Mrs. Pedagog, pursing her
+lips, as she always did when she wished to show that she was offended.
+
+"Yes, Mary," put in the School-Master; "let us have the mush as quickly
+as possible--and may it not be quite such mushy mush as the remarks we
+have just been favored with by our talented friend the Idiot."
+
+"You overwhelm me with your compliments, Mr. Pedagog," replied the Idiot,
+cheerfully. "A flatterer like you should live in a flat."
+
+"Has your friend completed his article on old jokes yet?" queried the
+Bibliomaniac, with a smile and some apparent irrelevance.
+
+[Illustration: "HAS YOUR FRIEND COMPLETED HIS ARTICLE ON OLD JOKES?"]
+
+"Yes and no," said the Idiot. "He has completed his labors on it by
+giving it up. He is a very thorough sort of a fellow, and he intended
+to make the article comprehensive, but he found he couldn't, because,
+judging from comments of men like you, for instance, he was forced to
+conclude that there never was a _new_ joke. But, as I was saying the
+other morning----"
+
+"Do you really remember what you say?" sneered Mr. Pedagog. "You must
+have a great memory for trifles."
+
+"Sir, I shall never forget you," said the Idiot. "But to revert to what
+I was saying the other morning, I'd like to begin life all over again, so
+that I could prepare myself for the profession of architecture. It's the
+greatest profession in the world, and one which is surest to bring
+immortality to its successful follower. A man may write a splendid book,
+and become a great man for a while and within certain limits, but the
+chances are that some other man will come along later and supplant him.
+Then the book's sale will die out after a time, and with this will come
+a diminution of its author's reputation, in extent anyway. An actor or a
+great preacher becomes only a name after his death, but the architect who
+builds a cathedral or a fine public building really erects a monument to
+his own memory."
+
+"He does if he can build it so that it will stay up," said the
+Bibliomaniac. "I think you, however, are better off as you are. If you
+had a more extended reputation or a lasting name you would probably be
+locked up in some retreat; or if you were not, posterity would want to
+know why."
+
+"I am locked up in a retreat of Nature's making," said the Idiot, with a
+sigh. "Nature has set around me certain limitations which, while they are
+not material, might as well be so as far as my ability to soar above them
+is concerned--and it's well she has. If it were otherwise, my life would
+not be safe or bearable in this company. As it is, I am happy and not at
+all afraid of the effects your jealousy of me might entail if I were any
+better than the rest of you."
+
+"I like that," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"I thought you would," said the Idiot. "That's why I said it. I aim to
+please, and for once seem to have hit the bull's-eye. Mary, kindly break
+open this biscuit for me."
+
+"Have you ideas on the subject of architecture that you so desire to
+become an architect?" queried Mr. Whitechoker, who was always full of
+sympathy for aspiring natures.
+
+"A few," said the Idiot.
+
+Mr. Pedagog laughed outright.
+
+"Let's test his ideas," he said, in an amused way. "Take a cathedral, for
+instance. Suppose, Mr. Idiot, a man should come to you and say: 'Idiot,
+we have a fund of $800,000 in our hands, actual cash. We think of
+building a cathedral, and we think of employing you to draw up our plans.
+Give us some idea of what we should do.' Do you mean to tell me that you
+could say anything reasonable or intelligent to that man?"
+
+"Well, that depends upon what you call reasonable and intelligent. I have
+never been able to find out what you mean by those terms," the Idiot
+answered, slowly. "But I could tell him something that I consider
+reasonable and intelligent."
+
+"From your own point of view, then, as to reasonableness and
+intelligence, what should you say to him?"
+
+"I'd make him out a plan providing for the investment of his $800,000 in
+five-per-cent, gold bonds, which would bring him in an income of $40,000
+a year; after which I should call his attention to the fact that $40,000
+a year would enable him to take 10,000 poor children out of this
+sweltering city into the country, to romp and drink fresh milk and eat
+wholesome food for two weeks every summer from now until the end of time,
+which would build up a human structure that might be of more benefit to
+the world than any pile of bricks, marble, and wrought-iron I or any
+other architect could conceive of," said the Idiot. "The structure would
+stand up, too."
+
+"You call that architecture, do you?" said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Yes," said the Idiot, "of the renaissance order. But that, of course,
+you term idiocy--and maybe it is. I like to be that kind of an idiot. I
+do not claim to be able to build a cathedral, however. I don't suppose
+I could even build a boarding-house like this, but what I should like to
+do in architecture would be to put up a $5000 dwelling-house for $5000.
+That's a thing that has never been done, and I think I might be able to
+do it. If I did, I'd patent the plan and make a fortune. Then I should
+like to know enough about the science of planning a building to find out
+whether my model hotel is practicable or not."
+
+"You have a model hotel in your mind, eh?" said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"It must be a very small hotel if it's in his mind," said the Doctor.
+
+"That's tantamount to saying that it isn't anywhere," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Well, it's a great hotel just the same," said the Idiot. "Although I
+presume it would be expensive to build. It would have movable rooms, in
+the first place. Each room would be constructed like an elevator, with
+appliances at hand for moving it up and down. The great thing about this
+would be that persons could have a room on any floor they wanted it, so
+long as they got the room in the beginning. A second advantage would lie
+in the fact, that if you were sleeping in a room next door to another in
+which there was a crying baby, you could pull the rope and go up two or
+three flights until you were free from the noise. Then in case of fire
+the room in which the fire started could be lowered into a sliding tank
+large enough to immerse the whole thing in, which I should have
+constructed in the cellar. If the whole building were to catch fire,
+there would be no loss of life, because all the rooms could be lowered
+to the ground-floor, and the occupants could step right out upon solid
+ground. Then again, if you were down on the ground-floor, and desired to
+get an extended view of the surrounding country, it would be easy to
+raise your room to the desired elevation. Why, there's no end to the
+advantages to be gained from such an arrangement."
+
+"It's a fine idea," said Mr. Pedagog, "and one worthy of your mammoth
+intellect. It couldn't possibly cost more than a million of dollars to
+erect such a hotel, could it?"
+
+"No," said the Idiot. "And that is cheap alongside some of the hotels
+they are putting up nowadays."
+
+"It could be built on less than four hundred acres of ground, too,
+I presume?" said the Bibliomaniac, with a wink at the Doctor.
+
+"Certainly," said the Idiot, meekly.
+
+"And if anybody fell sick in one of the rooms," said the Doctor, "and
+needed a change of air, you could have a tower over each, I suppose, so
+that the room could be elevated high enough to secure the different
+quality in the ether?"
+
+"Undoubtedly," said the Idiot. "Although that would add materially to the
+expense. A scarlet-fever patient, however, in a hotel like that could
+very easily be isolated from the rest of the house by the maintenance of
+what might be called the hospital floor."
+
+"Superb!" said the Doctor. "I wonder you haven't spoken to some
+architectural friend about it."
+
+"I have," said the Idiot. "You must remember that young fellow with a
+black mustache I had here to dinner last Saturday night."
+
+"Yes, I remember him," said the Doctor. "Is he an architect?"
+
+"He is--and a good one. He can take a brown-stone dwelling and turn it
+into a colonial mansion with a pot of yellow paint. He's a wonder. I
+submitted the idea to him."
+
+"And what was his verdict?"
+
+"I don't like to say," said the Idiot, blushing a little.
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed Mr. Pedagog. "I shouldn't think you would like to say.
+I guess we know what he said."
+
+"I doubt it," said the Idiot; "but if you guess right, I'll tell you."
+
+"He said you had better go and live in a lunatic asylum," said Mr.
+Pedagog, with a chuckle.
+
+"Not he," returned the Idiot, nibbling at his biscuit. "On the contrary.
+He advised me to stop living in one. He said contact with the rest of you
+was affecting my brain."
+
+This time Mr. Pedagog did not laugh, but mistaking his coffee-cup for a
+piece of toast, bit a small section out of its rim; and in the midst of
+Mrs. Pedagog's expostulation, which followed the School-Master's careless
+error, the Idiot and the Genial Old Gentleman departed, with smiles on
+their faces which were almost visible at the back of their respective
+necks.
+
+[Illustration: THEY DEPARTED]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+"Hullo!" said the Idiot, as he began his breakfast. "This isn't Friday
+morning, is it? I thought it was Tuesday."
+
+"So it is Tuesday," put in the School-Master.
+
+"Then this fish is a little extra treat, is it?" observed the Idiot,
+turning with a smile to the landlady.
+
+"Fish? That isn't fish, sir," returned the good lady. "That is liver."
+
+"Oh, is it?" said the Idiot, apologetically. "Excuse me, my dear Mrs.
+Pedagog. I thought from its resistance that it was fried sole. Have you
+a hatchet handy?" he added, turning to the maid.
+
+"My piece is tender enough. I can't see what you want," said the
+School-Master, coldly.
+
+"I'd like your piece," replied the Idiot, suavely. "That is, if it really
+is tender enough."
+
+"Don't pay any attention to him, my dear," said the School-Master to the
+landlady, whose ire was so very much aroused that she was about to make
+known her sentiments on certain subjects.
+
+"No, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "don't pay any attention to me, I
+beg of you. Anything that could add to the jealousy of Mr. Pedagog would
+redound to the discomfort of all of us. Besides, I really do not object
+to the liver. I need not eat it. And as for staying my appetite, I always
+stop on my way down-town after breakfast for a bite or two anyhow."
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"I wonder why it is," began the Idiot, after tasting his coffee--"I
+wonder why it is Friday is fish-day all over the world, anyhow? Do you
+happen to be learned enough in piscatorial science to enlighten me on
+that point, Doctor?"
+
+"No," returned the physician, gruffly. "I've never looked into the
+matter."
+
+"I guess it's because Friday is an unlucky day," said the Idiot. "Just
+think of all the unlucky things that may happen before and after eating
+fish, as well as during the process. In the first place, before eating,
+you go off and fish all day, and have no luck--don't catch a thing. You
+fall in the water perhaps, and lose your watch, or your fish-hook
+catches in your coat-tails, with the result that you come near casting
+yourself instead of the fly into the brook or the pond, as the case may
+be. Perhaps the hook doesn't stop with the coat-tails, but goes on in,
+and catches you. That's awfully unlucky, especially when the hook is made
+of unusually barby barbed wire.
+
+[Illustration: "YOU FISH ALL DAY, AND HAVE NO LUCK"]
+
+"Then, again, you may go fishing on somebody else's preserves, and get
+arrested, and sent to jail overnight, and hauled up the next morning, and
+have to pay ten dollars fine for poaching. Think of Mr. Pedagog being
+fined ten dollars for poaching! Awfully unfortunate!"
+
+"Kindly leave me out of your calculations," returned Mr. Pedagog, with a
+flush of indignation.
+
+"Certainly, if you wish it," said the Idiot. "We'll hand Mr. Brief over
+to the police, and let _him_ be fined for poaching on somebody else's
+preserves--although that's sort of impossible, too, because Mrs. Pedagog
+never lets us see preserves of any kind."
+
+"We had brandied peaches last Sunday night," said the landlady,
+indignantly.
+
+"Oh yes, so we did," returned the Idiot. "That must have been what the
+Bibliomaniac had taken," he added, turning to the genial gentleman who
+occasionally imbibed. "You know, we thought he'd been--ah--he'd been
+absorbing."
+
+"To what do you refer?" asked the Bibliomaniac, curtly.
+
+"To the brandied peaches," returned the Idiot. "Do not press me further,
+please, because we like you, old fellow, and I don't believe anybody
+noticed it but ourselves."
+
+"Noticed what? I want to know what you noticed and when you noticed it,"
+said the Bibliomaniac, savagely. "I don't want any nonsense, either. I
+just want a plain statement of facts. What did you notice?"
+
+"Well, if you must have it," said the Idiot, slowly, "my friend who
+imbibes and I were rather pained on Sunday night to observe that
+you--that you had evidently taken something rather stronger than cold
+water, tea, or Mr. Pedagog's opinions."
+
+"It's a libel, sir!--a gross libel!" retorted the Bibliomaniac. "How did
+I show it? That's what I want to know. How--did--I--show--it? Speak up
+quick, and loud too. How did I show it?"
+
+"Well, you went up-stairs after tea."
+
+"Yes, sir, I did."
+
+"And my friend who imbibes and I were left down in the front hall, and
+while we were talking there you put your head over the banisters and
+asked, 'Who's that down there?' Remember that?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I do. And you replied, 'Mr. Auburnose and myself.'"
+
+"Yes. And then you asked, 'Who are the other two?'"
+
+"Well, I did. What of it?"
+
+"Mr. Auburnose and I were there alone. That's what of it. Now I put a
+charitable construction on the matter and say it was the peaches, when
+you fly off the handle like one of Mrs. Pedagog's coffee-cups."
+
+"Sir!" roared the Bibliomaniac, jumping from his chair. "You are the
+greatest idiot I know."
+
+"Sir!" returned the Idiot, "you flatter me."
+
+But the Bibliomaniac was not there to hear. He had rushed from the room,
+and during the deep silence that ensued he could be heard throwing things
+about in the chamber overhead, and in a very few moments the banging of
+the front door and scurrying down the brown-stone steps showed that he
+had gone out of doors to cool off.
+
+[Illustration: HE COULD BE HEARD THROWING THINGS ABOUT]
+
+"It is too bad," said the Idiot, after a while, "that he has such a
+quick temper. It doesn't do a bit of good to get mad that way. He'll be
+uncomfortable all day long, and over what? Just because I attempted to
+say a good word for him, and announce the restoration of my confidence in
+his temperance qualities, he cuts up a high-jinks that makes everybody
+uncomfortable.
+
+"But to resume about this fish business," continued the Idiot. "Fish--"
+
+"Oh, fish be hanged!" said the Doctor, impatiently. "We've had enough of
+fish."
+
+"Very well," returned the idiot; "as you wish. Hanging isn't the best
+treatment for fish, but we'll let that go. I never cared for the finny
+tribe myself, and if Mrs. Pedagog can be induced to do it, I for one am
+in favor of keeping shad, shark, and shrimps out of the house
+altogether."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The Idiot was unusually thoughtful--a fact which made the School-Master
+and the Bibliomaniac unusually nervous. Their stock criticism of him was
+that he was thoughtless; and yet when he so far forgot his natural
+propensities as to meditate, they did not like it. It made them uneasy.
+They had a haunting fear that he was conspiring with himself against
+them, and no man, not even a callous school-master or a confirmed
+bibliomaniac, enjoys feeling that he is the object of a conspiracy. The
+thing to do, then, upon this occasion, seemed obviously to interrupt his
+train of thought--to put obstructions upon his mental track, as it were,
+and ditch the express, which they feared was getting up steam at that
+moment to run them down.
+
+"You don't seem quite yourself this morning, sir," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Don't I?" queried the Idiot. "And whom do I seem to be?"
+
+"I mean that you seem to have something on your mind that worries you,"
+said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"No, I haven't anything on my mind," returned the Idiot. "I was thinking
+about you and Mr. Pedagog--which implies a thought not likely to use up
+much of my gray matter."
+
+"Do you think your head holds any gray matter?" put in the Doctor.
+
+"Rather verdant, I should say," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Green, gray, or pink," said the Idiot, "choose your color. It does
+not affect the fact that I was thinking about the Bibliomaniac and Mr.
+Pedagog. I have a great scheme in hand, which only requires capital
+and the assistance of those two gentlemen to launch it on the sea of
+prosperity. If any of you gentlemen want to get rich and die in comfort
+as the owner of your homes, now is your chance."
+
+"In what particular line of business is your scheme?" asked Mr.
+Whitechoker. He had often felt that he would like to die in comfort,
+and to own a little house, even if it had a large mortgage on it.
+
+"Journalism," said the Idiot. "There is a pile of money to be made out
+of journalism, particularly if you happen to strike a new idea. Ideas
+count."
+
+"How far up do your ideas count--up to five?" questioned Mr. Pedagog,
+with a tinge of sarcasm in his tone.
+
+"I don't know about that," returned the Idiot. "The idea I have hold
+of now, however, will count up into the millions if it can only be set
+going, and before each one of those millions will stand a big capital S
+with two black lines drawn vertically through it--in other words, my idea
+holds dollars, but to get the crop you've got to sow the seed. Plant a
+thousand dollars in my idea, and next year you'll reap two thousand.
+Plant that, and next year you'll have four thousand, and so on. At that
+rate millions come easy."
+
+"I'll give you a dollar for the idea," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"No, I don't want to sell. You'll do to help develop the scheme. You'll
+make a first-rate tool, but you aren't the workman to manage the tool. I
+will go as far as to say, however, that without you and Mr. Pedagog, or
+your equivalents in the animal kingdom, the idea isn't worth the fabulous
+sum you offer."
+
+"You have quite aroused my interest," said Mr. Whitechoker. "Do you
+propose to start a new paper?"
+
+"You are a good guesser," replied the Idiot. "That is a part of the
+scheme--but it isn't the idea. I propose to start a new paper in
+accordance with the plan which the idea contains."
+
+"Is it to be a magazine, or a comic paper, or what?" asked the
+Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Neither. It's a daily."
+
+"That's nonsense," said Mr. Pedagog, putting his spoon into the
+condensed-milk can by mistake. "There isn't a single scheme in daily
+journalism that hasn't been tried--except printing an evening paper in
+the morning."
+
+"That's been tried," said the Idiot. "I know of an evening paper the
+second edition of which is published at mid-day. That's an old dodge, and
+there's money in it, too--money that will never be got out of it. But I
+really have a grand scheme. So many of our dailies, you know, go in for
+every horrid detail of daily events that people are beginning to tire of
+them. They contain practically the same things day after day. So many
+columns of murder, so many beautiful suicides, so much sport, a modicum
+of general intelligence, plenty of fires, no end of embezzlements,
+financial news, advertisements, and head-lines. Events, like history,
+repeat themselves, until people have grown weary of them. They want
+something new. For instance, if you read in your morning paper that
+a man has shot another man, you know that the man who was shot was an
+inoffensive person who never injured a soul, stood high in the community
+in which he lived, and leaves a widow with four children. On the other
+hand, you know without reading the account that the murderer shot his
+victim in self-defence, and was apprehended by the detectives late last
+night; that his counsel forbid him to talk to the reporters, and that it
+is rumored that he comes of a good family living in New England.
+
+"If a breach of trust is committed, you know that the defaulter was the
+last man of whom such an act would be suspected, and, except in the one
+detail of its location and sect, that he was prominent in some church.
+You can calculate to a cent how much has been stolen by a glance at the
+amount of space devoted to the account of the crime. Loaf of bread, two
+lines. Thousand dollars, ten lines. Hundred thousand dollars,
+half-column. Million dollars, a full column. Five million dollars,
+half the front page, wood-cut of the embezzler, and two editorials, one
+leader and one paragraph.
+
+"And so with everything. We are creatures of habit. The expected always
+happens, and newspapers are dull because the events they chronicle are
+dull."
+
+"Granting the truth of this," put in the School-Master, "what do you
+propose to do?"
+
+"Get up a newspaper that will devote its space to telling what hasn't
+happened."
+
+"That's been done," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"To a much more limited extent than we think," returned the Idiot. "It
+has never been done consistently and truthfully."
+
+"I fail to see how a newspaper can be made to prevaricate truthfully,"
+asserted Mr. Whitechoker. To tell the truth, he was greatly disappointed
+with the idea, because he could not in the nature of things become one of
+its beneficiaries.
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS NOT MURDERED"]
+
+"I haven't suggested prevarication," said the Idiot. "Put on your front
+page, for instance, an item like this: 'George Bronson, colored, aged
+twenty-nine, a resident of Thompson Street, was caught cheating at poker
+last night. He was not murdered.' There you tell what has not happened.
+There is a variety about it. It has the charm of the unexpected. Then you
+might say: 'Curious incident on Wall Street yesterday. So-and-so, who
+was caught on the bear side of the market with 10,000 shares of J. B. &
+S. K. W., paid off all his obligations in full, and retired from business
+with $1,000,000 clear.' Or we might say, 'Superintendent Smithers, of the
+St. Goliath's Sunday-school, who is also cashier in the Forty-eighth
+National Bank, has not absconded with $4,000,000.'"
+
+[Illustration: "SUPERINTENDENT SMITHERS HAS NOT ABSCONDED"]
+
+"Oh, that's a rich idea," put in the School-Master. "You'd earn
+$1,000,000 in libel suits the first year."
+
+"No, you wouldn't, either," said the Idiot. "You don't libel a man
+when you say he hasn't murdered anybody. Quite the contrary, you call
+attention to his conspicuous virtue. You are in reality commending those
+who refrain from criminal practice, instead of delighting those who are
+fond of departing from the paths of Christianity by giving them
+notoriety."
+
+"But I fail to see in what respect Mr. Pedagog and I are essential to
+your scheme," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"I must confess to some curiosity on my own part on that point," added
+the School-Master.
+
+"Why, it's perfectly clear," returned the Idiot, with a conciliating
+smile as he prepared to depart. "You both know so much that isn't so,
+that I rather rely on you to fill up."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+A new boarder had joined the circle about Mrs. Pedagog's breakfast-table.
+He had what the Idiot called a three-ply name--which was Richard
+Henderson Warren--and he was by profession a poet. Whether it was this
+that made it necessary for him to board or not, the rewards of the muse
+being rather slender, was known only to himself, and he showed no
+disposition to enlighten his fellow-boarders on the subject. His success
+as a poet Mrs. Pedagog found it hard to gauge; for while the postman left
+almost daily numerous letters, the envelopes of which showed that they
+came from the various periodicals of the day, it was never exactly clear
+whether or not the missives contained remittances or rejected
+manuscripts, though the fact that Mr. Warren was the only boarder in the
+house who had requested to have a waste-basket added to the furniture of
+his room seemed to indicate that they contained the latter. To this
+request Mrs. Pedagog had gladly acceded, because she had a notion that
+therein at some time or another would be found a clew to the new
+boarder's past history--or possibly some evidence of such duplicity
+as the good lady suspected he might be guilty of. She had read that Byron
+was profligate, and that Poe was addicted to drink, and she was impressed
+with the idea that poets generally were bad men, and she regarded the
+waste-basket as a possible means of protecting herself against any such
+idiosyncrasies of her new-found genius as would operate to her
+disadvantage if not looked after in time.
+
+This waste-basket she made it her daily duty to empty, and in the privacy
+of her own room. Half-finished "ballads, songs, and snatches" she perused
+before consigning them to the flames or to the large jute bag in the
+cellar, for which the ragman called two or three times a year. Once Mrs.
+Pedagog's heart almost stopped beating when she found at the bottom of
+the basket a printed slip beginning, "_The Editor regrets that the
+enclosed lines are unavailable_," and closing with about thirteen
+reasons, any one or all of which might have been the main cause of the
+poet's disappointment. Had it not been for the kindly clause in the
+printed slip that insinuated in graceful terms that this rejection did
+not imply a lack of literary merit in the contribution itself, the good
+lady, knowing well that there was even less money to be made from
+rejected than from accepted poetry, would have been inclined to request
+the poet to vacate the premises. The very next day, however, she was glad
+she had not requested the resignation of the poet from the laureateship
+of her house; for the same basket gave forth another printed slip from
+another editor, begging the poet to accept the enclosed check, with
+thanks for his contribution, and asking him to deposit it as soon as
+practicable--which was pleasing enough, since it implied that the poet
+was the possessor of a bank account.
+
+Now Mrs. Pedagog was consumed with curiosity to know for how large a sum
+the check called--which desire was gratified a few days later, when the
+inspired boarder paid his week's bill with three one-dollar bills and a
+check, signed by a well-known publisher, for two dollars.
+
+[Illustration: THE INSPIRED BOARDER PAID HIS BILL]
+
+By the boarders themselves the poet was regarded with much interest.
+The School-Master had read one or two of his effusions in the Fireside
+Corner of the journal he received weekly from his home up in New
+England--effusions which showed no little merit, as well as indicating
+that Mr. Warren wrote for a literary syndicate; Mr. Whitechoker had known
+of him as the young man who was to have written a Christmas carol for his
+Sunday-school a year before, and who had finished and presented the
+manuscript shortly after New-Year's day; while to the Idiot, Mr. Warren's
+name was familiar as that of a frequent contributor to the funny papers
+of the day.
+
+"I was very much amused by your poem in the last number of the
+_Observer_, Mr. Warren," said the Idiot, as they sat down to breakfast
+together.
+
+"Were you, indeed?" returned Mr. Warren. "I am sorry to hear that, for it
+was intended to be a serious effort."
+
+"Of course it was, Mr. Warren, and so it appeared," said the
+School-Master, with an indignant glance at the Idiot. "It was a very
+dignified and stately bit of work, and I must congratulate you upon it."
+
+"I didn't mean to give offence," said the Idiot. "I've read so much of
+yours that was purely humorous that I believe I'd laugh at a dirge if you
+should write one; but I really thought your lines in the _Observer_ were
+a burlesque. You had the same thought that Rossetti expresses in 'The
+Woodspurge':
+
+   'The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
+    Shaken out dead from tree to hill;
+    I had walked on at the wind's will,
+    I sat now, for the wind was still.'
+
+That's Rossetti, if you remember. Slightly suggestive of 'Blow Ye Winds
+of the Morning! Blow! Blow! Blow!' but more or less pleasing."
+
+"I recall the poem you speak of," said Warren, with dignity; "but the
+true poet, sir--and I hope I have some claim to be considered as
+such--never so far forgets himself as to burlesque his masters."
+
+"Well, I don't know what to call it, then, when a poet takes the same
+thought that has previously been used by his masters and makes a funny
+poem--"
+
+"But," returned the Poet, warmly, "it was not a funny poem."
+
+"It made me laugh," retorted the Idiot, "and that is more than half the
+professedly funny poems we get nowadays can do. Therefore I say it was a
+funny poem, and I don't see how you can deny that it was a burlesque of
+Rossetti."
+
+"Well, I do deny it _in toto_."
+
+"I don't know anything about denying it _in toto_," rejoined the Idiot,
+"but I'd deny it in print if I were you. I know plenty of people who
+think it was a burlesque, and I overheard one man say--he is a Rossetti
+crank--that you ought to be ashamed of yourself for writing it."
+
+"There is no use of discussing the matter further," said the Poet. "I am
+innocent of any such intent as you have ascribed to me, and if people say
+I have burlesqued Rossetti they say what is not true."
+
+"Did you ever read that little poem of Swinburne's called 'The Boy at the
+Gate'?" asked the Idiot, to change the subject.
+
+"I have no recollection of it," said the Poet, shortly.
+
+"The name sounds familiar," put in Mr. Whitechoker, anxious not to be
+left out of a literary discussion.
+
+"I have read it, but I forget just how it goes," vouchsafed the
+School-Master, forgetting for a moment the Robert Elsmere episode and its
+lesson.
+
+"It goes something like this," said the Idiot:
+
+   "Sombre and sere the slim sycamore sighs;
+    Lushly the lithe leaves lie low o'er the land;
+    Whistles the wind with its whisperings wise,
+    Grewsomely gloomy and garishly grand.
+    So doth the sycamore solemnly stand,
+    Wearily watching in wondering wait;
+    So it has stood for six centuries, and
+    Still it is waiting the boy at the gate."
+
+"No; I never read the poem," said Mr. Whitechoker, "but I'd know it was
+Swinburne in a minute. He has such a command of alliterative language."
+
+"Yes," said the Poet, with an uneasy glance at the Idiot. "It is
+Swinburnian; but what was the poem about?"
+
+"'The boy at the gate,'" said the Idiot. "The idea was that the sycamore
+was standing there for centuries waiting for the boy who never turns up."
+
+"It really is a beautiful thought," put in Mr. Whitechoker. "It is, I
+presume, an allegory to contrast faithful devotion and constancy with
+unfaithfulness and fickleness. Such thoughts occur only to the wholly
+gifted. It is only to the poetic temperament that the conception of such
+a thought can come coupled with the ability to voice it in fitting terms.
+There is a grandeur about the lines the Idiot has quoted that betrays the
+master-mind."
+
+"Very true," said the School-Master, "and I take this opportunity to say
+that I am most agreeably surprised in the Idiot. It is no small thing
+even to be able to repeat a poet's lines so carefully, and with so great
+lucidity, and so accurately, as I can testify that he has just done."
+
+"Don't be too pleased, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot, dryly. "I only
+wanted to show Mr. Warren that you and Mr. Whitechoker, mines of
+information though you are, have not as yet worked up a corner on
+knowledge to the exclusion of the rest of us." And with these words the
+Idiot left the table.
+
+"He is a queer fellow," said the School-Master. "He is full of pretence
+and hollowness, but he is sometimes almost brilliant."
+
+"What you say is very true," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I think he has just
+escaped being a smart man. I wish we could take him in hand, Mr. Pedagog,
+and make him more of a fellow than he is."
+
+Later in the day the Poet met the Idiot on the stairs. "I say," he said,
+"I've looked all through Swinburne, and I can't find that poem."
+
+"I know you can't," returned the Idiot, "because it isn't there.
+Swinburne never wrote it. It was a little thing of my own. I was only
+trying to get a rise out of Mr. Pedagog and his Reverence with it. You
+have frequently appeared impressed by the undoubtedly impressive manner
+of these two gentlemen. I wanted to show you what their opinions were
+worth."
+
+[Illustration: "I KNOW YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE IT ISN'T THERE"]
+
+"Thank you," returned the Poet, with a smile. "Don't you want to go
+into partnership with me and write for the funny papers? It would be
+a splendid thing for me--your ideas are so original."
+
+"And I can see fun in everything, too," said the Idiot, thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes," returned the Poet. "Even in my serious poems."
+
+Which remark made the Idiot blush a little, but he soon recovered his
+composure and made a firm friend of the Poet.
+
+The first fruits of the partnership have not yet appeared, however.
+
+As for Messrs. Whitechoker and Pedagog, when they learned how they had
+been deceived, they were so indignant that they did not speak to the
+Idiot for a week.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+It was Sunday morning, and Mr. Whitechoker, as was his wont on the first
+day of the week, appeared at the breakfast table severe as to his mien.
+
+"Working on Sunday weighs on his mind," the Idiot said to the
+Bibliomaniac, "but I don't see why it should. The luxury of rest
+that he allows himself the other six days of the week is surely an
+atonement for the hours of labor he puts in on Sunday."
+
+But it was not this that on Sunday mornings weighed on the mind of the
+Reverend Mr. Whitechoker. He appeared more serious of visage then because
+he had begun to think of late that his fellow-boarders lived too much in
+the present, and ignored almost totally that which might be expected to
+come. He had been revolving in his mind for several weeks the question as
+to whether it was or was not his Christian duty to attempt to influence
+the lives of these men with whom the chances of life had brought him in
+contact. He had finally settled it to his own satisfaction that it was
+his duty so to do, and he had resolved, as far as lay in his power, to
+direct the conversation at Sunday morning's breakfast into spiritual
+rather than into temporal matters.
+
+So, as Mrs. Pedagog was pouring the coffee, Mr. Whitechoker began:
+
+"Do you gentlemen ever pause in your every-day labors and thought to let
+your minds rest upon the future--the possibilities it has in store for
+us, the consequences which--"
+
+"No mush, thank you," said the Idiot. Then turning to Mr. Whitechoker, he
+added: "I can't answer for the other gentlemen at this board, but I can
+assure you, Mr. Whitechoker, that I often do so. It was only last night,
+sir, that my genial friend who imbibes and I were discussing the future
+and its possibilities, and I venture to assert that there is no more
+profitable food for reflection anywhere in the larders of the mind than
+that."
+
+"Larders of the mind is excellent," said the School-Master, with a touch
+of sarcasm in his voice. "Perhaps you would not mind opening the door to
+your mental pantry, and letting us peep within at the stores you keep
+there. I am sure that on the subject in hand your views cannot fail to be
+original as well as edifying."
+
+"I am also sure," said Mr. Whitechoker, somewhat surprised to hear the
+Idiot speak as he did, having sometimes ventured to doubt if that
+flippant-minded young man ever reflected on the serious side of life--"I
+am also sure that it is most gratifying to hear that you have done some
+thinking on the subject."
+
+"I am glad you are gratified, Mr. Whitechoker," replied the Idiot, "but
+I am far from taking undue credit to myself because I reflect upon the
+future and its possibilities. I do not see how any man can fail to be
+interested in the subject, particularly when he considers the great
+strides science has made in the last twenty years."
+
+"I fail to see," said the School-Master, "what the strides of science
+have to do with it."
+
+"You fail to see so often, Mr. Pedagog," returned the Idiot, "that I
+would advise your eyes to make an assignment in favor of your pupils."
+
+"I must confess," put in Mr. Whitechoker, blandly, "that I too am
+somewhat--er--somewhat--"
+
+"Somewhat up a tree as to science's connection with the future?" queried
+the Idiot.
+
+"You have my meaning, but hardly the phraseology I should have chosen,"
+replied the minister.
+
+"My style is rather epigrammatic," said the Idiot, suavely. "I appreciate
+the flattery implied by your noticing it. But science has everything to
+do with it. It is science that is going to make the future great. It is
+science that has annihilated distance, and the annihilation has just
+begun. Twenty years ago it was hardly possible for a man standing on one
+side of the street to make himself heard on the other, the acoustic
+properties of the atmosphere not being what they should be. To-day
+you can stand in the pulpit of your church, and by means of certain
+scientific apparatus make yourself heard in Boston, New Orleans, or San
+Francisco. Has this no bearing on the future? The time will come, Mr.
+Whitechoker, when your missionaries will be able to sit in their
+comfortable rectories, and ring up the heathen in foreign climes, and
+convert them over the telephone, without running the slightest danger of
+falling into the soup, which expression I use in its literal rather than
+in its metaphorical sense."
+
+[Illustration: "YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HEARD IN SAN FRANCISCO"]
+
+"But--" interrupted Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"Now wait, please," said the Idiot. "If science can annihilate degrees of
+distance, who shall say that before many days science may not annihilate
+degrees of time? If San Francisco, thousands of miles distant, can be
+brought within range of the ear, why cannot 1990 be brought before the
+mind's eye? And if 1990 can be brought before the mind's eye, what is to
+prevent the invention of a prophetograph which shall enable us to cast a
+horoscope which shall reach all around eternity and half-way back, if not
+further?"
+
+[Illustration: THE PROPHETOGRAPH]
+
+"You do not understand me," said Mr. Whitechoker. "When I speak of the
+future, I do not mean the temporal future."
+
+"I know exactly what you mean," said the Idiot. "I've dealt in futures,
+and I am familiar with all kinds. It is you, sir, that do not understand
+me. My claim is perfectly plausible, and in its results is bound to make
+the world better. Do you suppose that any man who, by the aid of my
+prophetograph, sees that on a certain date in the future he will be
+hanged for murder is going to fail to provide himself with an alibi in
+regard to that particular murder, and must we not admit that having
+provided himself with that alibi he will of necessity avoid bloodshed,
+and so avoid the gallows? That's reasonable. So in regard to all the
+thousand and one other peccadilloes that go to make this life a sinful
+one. Science, by a purely logical advance along the lines already mapped
+out for itself, and in part already traversed, will enable men to avoid
+the pitfalls and reap only the windfalls of life; we shall all see what
+terrible consequences await on a single misstep, and we shall not make
+the misstep. Can you still claim that science and the future have nothing
+to do with each other?"
+
+"You are talking of matters purely temporal," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I
+have reference to our spiritual future."
+
+"And the two," observed the Idiot, "are so closely allied that we cannot
+separate them. The proverb about looking after the pennies and letting
+the pounds take care of themselves applies here. I believe that if I take
+care of my temporal future--which, by-the-way, does not exist--my
+spiritual future will take care of itself; and if science places the
+hereafter before us--and you admit that even now it is before us--all we
+have to do is to take advantage of our opportunities, and mend our lives
+accordingly."
+
+"But if science shows you what is to come," said the School-Master, "it
+must show your fate with perfect accuracy, or it ceases to be science, in
+which event your entertaining notions as to reform and so on are entirely
+fallacious."
+
+"Not at all," said the Idiot. "We are approaching the time when science,
+which is much more liberal than any other branch of knowledge, will
+sacrifice even truth itself for the good of mankind."
+
+"You ought to start a paradox company," suggested the Doctor.
+
+"Either that or make himself the nucleus of an insane asylum," observed
+the School-Master, viciously. "I never knew a man with such maniacal
+views as those we have heard this morning."
+
+"There is a great deal, Mr. Pedagog, that you have never known," returned
+the Idiot. "Stick by me, and you'll die with a mind richly stored."
+
+Whereat the School-Master left the table with such manifest impatience
+that Mr. Whitechoker was sorry he had started the conversation.
+
+The genial gentleman who occasionally imbibed and the Idiot withdrew to
+the latter's room, where the former observed:
+
+"What are you driving at, anyhow? Where did you get those crazy ideas?"
+
+"I ate a Welsh-rarebit last night, and dreamed 'em," returned the Idiot.
+
+"I thought as much," said his companion. "What deuced fine things dreams
+are, anyhow!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Breakfast was very nearly over, and it was of such exceptionally good
+quality that very few remarks had been made. Finally the ball was set
+rolling by the Lawyer.
+
+"How many packs of cigarettes do you smoke a day?" he asked, as the Idiot
+took one from his pocket and placed it at the side of his coffee-cup.
+
+"Never more than forty-six," said the Idiot. "Why? Do you think of
+starting a cigarette stand?"
+
+"Not at all," said Mr. Brief. "I was only wondering what chance you had
+to live to maturity, that's all. Your maturity period will be in about
+eight hundred and sixty years from now, the way I calculate, and it
+seemed to me that, judging from the number of cigarettes you smoke, you
+were not likely to last through more than two or three of those years."
+
+"Oh, I expect to live longer than that," said the Idiot. "I think I'm
+good for at least four years. Don't you, Doctor?"
+
+"I decline to have anything to say about your case," retorted the Doctor,
+whose feeling towards the Idiot was not surpassingly affectionate.
+
+"In that event I shall probably live five years more," said the Idiot.
+
+The Doctor's lip curled, but he remained silent.
+
+"You'll live," put in Mr. Pedagog, with a chuckle. "The good die young."
+
+"How did you happen to keep alive all this time then, Mr. Pedagog?" asked
+the Idiot.
+
+"I have always eschewed tobacco in every form, for one thing," said Mr.
+Pedagog.
+
+"I am surprised," put in the Idiot. "That's really a bad habit, and I
+marvel greatly that you should have done it."
+
+The School-Master frowned, and looked at the Idiot over the rims of his
+glasses, as was his wont when he was intent upon getting explanations.
+
+"Done what?" he asked, severely.
+
+"Chewed tobacco," replied the Idiot. "You just said that one of the
+things that has kept you lingering in this vale of tears was that you
+have always chewed tobacco. I never did that, and I never shall do it,
+because I deem it a detestable diversion."
+
+"I didn't say anything of the sort," retorted Mr. Pedagog, getting red in
+the face. "I never said that I chewed tobacco in any form."
+
+"Oh, come!" said the Idiot, with well-feigned impatience, "what's the use
+of talking that way? We all heard what you said, and I have no doubt that
+it came as a shock to every member of this assemblage. It certainly was a
+shock to me, because, with all my weaknesses and bad habits, I think
+tobacco-chewing unutterably bad. The worst part of it is that you chew it
+in every form. A man who chews chewing-tobacco only may some time throw
+off the habit, but when one gets to be such a victim to it that he chews
+up cigars and cigarettes and plugs of pipe tobacco, it seems to me he is
+incurable. It is not only a bad habit then; it amounts to a vice."
+
+Mr. Pedagog was getting apoplectic. "You know well enough that I never
+said the words you attribute to me," he said, sternly.
+
+"Really, Mr. Pedagog," returned the Idiot, with an irritating shake of
+his head, as if he were confidentially hinting to the School-Master to
+keep quiet--"really you pain me by these futile denials. Nobody forced
+you into the confession. You made it entirely of your own volition. Now
+I ask you, as a man and brother, what's the use of saying anything more
+about it? We believe you to be a person of the strictest veracity, but
+when you say a thing before a tableful of listeners one minute, and deny
+it the next, we are forced to one of two conclusions, neither of which is
+pleasing. We must conclude that either, repenting your confession, you
+sacrifice the truth, or that the habit to which you have confessed has
+entirely destroyed your perception of the moral question involved. Undue
+use of tobacco has, I believe, driven men crazy. Opium-eating has
+destroyed all regard for truth in one whose word had always been regarded
+as good as a government bond. I presume the undue use of tobacco can
+accomplish the same sad result. By-the-way, did you ever try opium?"
+
+"Opium is ruin," said the Doctor, Mr. Pedagog's indignation being so
+great that he seemed to be unable to find the words he was evidently
+desirous of hurling at the Idiot.
+
+"It is, indeed," said the Idiot. "I knew a man once who smoked one little
+pipeful of it, and, while under its influence, sat down at his table and
+wrote a story of the supernatural order that was so good that everybody
+said he must have stolen it from Poe or some other master of the weird,
+and now nobody will have anything to do with him. Tobacco, however, in
+the sane use of it, is a good thing. I don't know of anything that is
+more satisfying to the tired man than to lie back on a sofa, of an
+evening, and puff clouds of smoke and rings into the air. One of the
+finest dreams I ever had came from smoking. I had blown a great mountain
+of smoke out into the room, and it seemed to become real, and I climbed
+to its summit and saw the most beautiful country at my feet--a country in
+which all men were happy, where there were no troubles of any kind, where
+no whim was left ungratified, where jealousies were not, and where every
+man who made more than enough to live on paid the surplus into the common
+treasury for the use of those who hadn't made quite enough. It was a
+national realization of the golden rule, and I maintain that if smoking
+were bad nothing so good, even in the abstract form of an idea, could
+come out of it."
+
+"That's a very nice thought," said the Poet. "I'd like to put that into
+verse. The idea of a people dividing up their surplus of wealth among the
+less successful strugglers is beautiful."
+
+"You can have it," said the Idiot, with a pleased smile. "I don't write
+poetry of that kind myself unless I work hard, and I've found that when
+the poet works hard he produces poems that read hard. You are welcome to
+it. Another time I was dreaming over my cigar, after a day of the hardest
+kind of trouble at the office. Everything had gone wrong with me, and I
+was blue as indigo. I came home here, lit a cigar, and threw myself down
+upon my bed and began to puff. I felt like a man in a deep pit, out of
+which there was no way of getting. I closed my eyes for a second, and to
+all intents and purposes I lay in that pit. And then what did tobacco do
+for me? Why, it lifted me right out of my prison. I thought I was sitting
+on a rock down in the depths. The stars twinkled tantalizingly above me.
+They invited me to freedom, knowing that freedom was not attainable. Then
+I blew a ring of smoke from my mouth, and it began to rise slowly at
+first, and then, catching in a current of air, it flew upward more
+rapidly, widening constantly, until it disappeared in the darkness above.
+Then I had a thought. I filled my mouth as full of smoke as possible, and
+blew forth the greatest ring you ever saw, and as it started to rise I
+grasped it in my two hands. It struggled beneath my weight, lengthened
+out into an elliptical link, and broke, and let me down with a dull thud.
+Then I made two rings, grasping one with my left hand and the other with
+my right--"
+
+[Illustration: "I GRASPED IT IN MY TWO HANDS"]
+
+"And they lifted you out of the pit, I suppose?" sneered the
+Bibliomaniac.
+
+"I do not say that they did," said the Idiot, calmly. "But I do know that
+when I opened my eyes I wasn't in the pit any longer, but up-stairs in my
+hall-bedroom."
+
+"How awfully mysterious!" said the Doctor, satirically.
+
+"Well, I don't approve of smoking," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I agree with
+the London divine who says it is the pastime of perdition. It is not
+prompted by natural instincts. It is only the habit of artificial
+civilization. Dogs and horses and birds get along without it. Why
+shouldn't man?"
+
+"Hear! hear!" cried Mr. Pedagog, clapping his hands approvingly.
+
+"Where? where?" put in the Idiot. "That's a great argument. Dog's don't
+put up in boarding-houses. Is the boarding-house, therefore, the result
+of a degraded, artificial civilization? I have seen educated horses that
+didn't smoke, but I have never seen an educated horse, or an uneducated
+one, for that matter, that had even had the chance to smoke, or the kind
+of mouth that would enable him to do it in case he had the chance. I
+have also observed that horses don't read books, that birds don't eat
+mutton-chops, that dogs don't go to the opera, that donkeys don't play
+the piano--at least, four-legged donkeys don't--so you might as well
+argue that since horses, dogs, birds, and donkeys get along without
+literature, music, mutton-chops, and piano-playing--"
+
+"You've covered music," put in the Lawyer, who liked to be precise.
+
+"True; but piano-playing isn't always music," returned the Idiot.
+"You might as well argue because the beasts and the birds do without
+these things man ought to. Fish don't smoke, neither do they join the
+police-force, therefore man should neither smoke nor become a guardian
+of the peace."
+
+[Illustration: "PIANO-PLAYING ISN'T ALWAYS MUSIC"]
+
+"Nevertheless it is a pastime of perdition," insisted Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"No, it isn't," retorted the Idiot. "Smoking is the business of
+perdition. It smokes because it has to."
+
+"There! there!" remonstrated Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"You mean hear! hear! I presume," said the Idiot.
+
+"I mean that you have said enough!" remarked Mr. Pedagog, sharply.
+
+"Very well," said the Idiot. "If I have convinced you all I am satisfied,
+not to say gratified. But really, Mr. Pedagog," he added, rising to leave
+the room, "if I were you I'd give up the practice of chewing--"
+
+"Hold on a minute, Mr. Idiot," said Mr. Whitechoker, interrupting. He was
+desirous that Mr. Pedagog should not be further irritated. "Let me ask
+you one question. Does your old father smoke?"
+
+"No," said the Idiot, leaning easily over the back of his chair--"no.
+What of it?"
+
+"Nothing at all--except that perhaps if he could get along without it you
+might," suggested the clergyman.
+
+"He couldn't get along without it if he knew what good tobacco was," said
+the Idiot.
+
+"Then why don't you introduce him to it?" asked the Minister.
+
+"Because I do not wish to make him unhappy," returned the Idiot, softly.
+"He thinks his seventy years have been the happiest years that any mortal
+ever had, and if now in his seventy-first year he discovered that during
+the whole period of his manhood he had been deprived through ignorance of
+so great a blessing as a good cigar, he'd become like the rest of us,
+living in anticipation of delights to come, and not finding approximate
+bliss in living over the past. Trust me, my dear Mr. Whitechoker, to look
+after him. He and my mother and my life are all I have."
+
+The Idiot left the room, and Mr. Pedagog put in a greater part of the
+next half-hour in making personal statements to the remaining boarders to
+the effect that the word he used was eschewed, and not the one attributed
+to him by the Idiot.
+
+Strange to say, most of them were already aware of that fact.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+"The progress of invention in this country has been very remarkable,"
+said Mr. Pedagog, as he turned his attention from a scientific weekly he
+had been reading to a towering pile of buckwheat cakes that Mary had just
+brought in. "An Englishman has just discovered a means by which a ship in
+distress at sea can write for help on the clouds."
+
+"Extraordinary!" said Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"It might be more so," observed the Idiot, coaxing the platterful of
+cakes out of the School-Master's reach by a dexterous movement of his
+hand. "And it will be more so some day. The time is coming when the
+moon itself will be used by some enterprising American to advertise his
+soap business. I haven't any doubt that the next fifty years will develop
+a stereopticon by means of which a picture of a certain brand of cigar
+may be projected through space until it seems to be held between the
+teeth of the man in the moon, with a printed legend below it stating
+that this is _Tooforfivers Best, Rolled from Hand-made Tobacco, Warranted
+not to Crock or Fade, and for sale by All Tobacconists at Eighteen for a
+Dime_."
+
+[Illustration: "THE MOON ITSELF WILL BE USED"]
+
+"You would call that an advance in invention, eh?" asked the
+School-Master.
+
+"Why not?" queried the Idiot.
+
+"Do you consider the invention which would enable man to debase nature to
+the level of an advertising medium an advance?"
+
+"I should not consider the use of the moon for the dissemination of good
+news a debasement. If the cigars were good--and I have no doubt that some
+one will yet invent a cheap cigar that is good--it would benefit the
+human race to be acquainted with that fact. I think sometimes that the
+advertisements in the newspapers and the periodicals of the day are of
+more value to the public than the reading-matter, so-called, that stands
+next to them. I don't see why you should sneer at advertising. I should
+never have known you, for instance, Mr. Pedagog, had it not been for Mrs.
+Pedagog's advertisement offering board and lodging to single gentlemen
+for a consideration. Nor would you have met Mrs. Smithers, now your
+estimable wife, yourself, had it not been for that advertisement. Why,
+then, do you sneer at the ladder upon which you have in a sense climbed
+to your present happiness? You are ungrateful."
+
+"How you do ramify!" said Mr. Pedagog. "I believe there is no subject in
+the world which you cannot connect in some way or another with every
+other subject in the world. A discussion of the merits of Shakespeare's
+sonnets could be turned by your dexterous tongue in five minutes into a
+quarrel over the comparative merits of cider and cod-liver oil as
+beverages, with you, the chances are, the advocate of cod-liver oil as
+a steady drink."
+
+"Well, I must say," said the Idiot, with a smile, "it has been my
+experience that cod-liver oil is steadier than cider. The cod-liver
+oils I have had the pleasure of absorbing have been evenly vile, while
+the ciders that I have drank have been of a variety of goodness, badness,
+and indifferentness which has brought me to the point where I never touch
+it. But to return to inventions, since you desire to limit our discussion
+to a single subject, I think it is about the most interesting field of
+speculation imaginable."
+
+"There you are right," said Mr. Pedagog, approvingly. "There is
+absolutely no limit to the possibilities involved. It is almost within
+the range of possibilities that some man may yet invent a buckwheat cake
+that will satisfy your abnormal craving for that delicacy, which the
+present total output of this table seems unable to do."
+
+Here Mr. Pedagog turned to his wife, and added: "My dear, will you
+request the cook hereafter to prepare individual cakes for us? The Idiot
+has so far monopolized all that have as yet appeared."
+
+"It appears to me," said the Idiot at this point, "that _you_ are the
+ramifier, Mr. Pedagog. Nevertheless, ramify as much as you please. I can
+follow you--at a safe distance, of course--in the discussion of anything,
+from Edison to flapjacks. I think your suggestion regarding individual
+cakes is a good one. We might all have separate griddles, upon which
+Gladys, the cook, can prepare them, and on these griddles might be cast
+in bold relief the crest of each member of this household, so that every
+man's cake should, by an easy process in the making, come off the fire
+indelibly engraved with the evidence of its destiny. Mr. Pedagog's iron,
+for instance, might have upon it a school-book rampant, or a large head
+in the same condition. Mr. Whitechoker's cake-mark might be a pulpit
+rampant, based upon a vestryman dormant. The Doctor might have a lozengy
+shield with a suitable tincture, while my genial friend who occasionally
+imbibes could have a barry shield surmounted by a small effigy of
+Gambrinus."
+
+"You appear to know something of heraldry," said the poet, with a look of
+surprise.
+
+"I know something of everything," said the Idiot, complacently.
+
+"It's a pity you don't know everything about something," sneered the
+Doctor.
+
+"I would suggest," said the School-Master, dryly, "that a little rampant
+jackass would make a good crest for your cakes."
+
+"That's a very good idea," said the Idiot. "I do not know but that a
+jackass rampant would be about as comprehensive of my virtues as anything
+I might select. The jackass is a combination of all the best qualities.
+He is determined. He minds his own business. He doesn't indulge in
+flippant conversation. He is useful. Has no vices, never pretends to be
+anything but a jackass, and most respectfully declines to be ridden by
+Tom, Dick, and Harry. I accept the suggestion of Mr. Pedagog with thanks.
+But we are still ramifying. Let us get back to inventions. Now I fully
+believe that the time is coming when some inventive genius will devise a
+method whereby intellect can be given to those who haven't any. I believe
+that the time is coming when the secrets of the universe will be yielded
+up to man by nature."
+
+[Illustration: "DECLINES TO BE RIDDEN"]
+
+"And then?" queried Mr. Brief.
+
+"Then some man will try to improve on the secrets of the universe. He
+will try to invent an apparatus by means of which the rotation of the
+world may be made faster or slower, according to his will. If he has but
+one day, for instance, in which to do a stated piece of work, and he
+needs two, he will put on some patent brake and slow the world up until
+the distance travelled in one hour shall be reduced one-half, so that one
+hour under the old system will be equivalent to two; or if he is
+anticipating some joy, some diversion in the future, the same smart
+person will find a way to increase the speed of the earth so that the
+hours will be like minutes. Then he'll begin fooling with gravitation,
+and he will discover a new-fashioned lodestone, which can be carried in
+one's hat to counter-act the influence of the centre of gravity when one
+falls out of a window or off a precipice, the result of which will be
+that the person who falls off one of these high places will drop down
+slowly, and not with the rapidity which at the present day is responsible
+for the dreadful outcome of accidents of that sort. Then, finally--"
+
+"You pretend to be able to penetrate to the finality, do you?" asked the
+Clergyman.
+
+"Why not? It is as easy to imagine the finality as it is to go half-way
+there," returned the Idiot. "Finally he will tackle some elementary
+principle of nature, and he'll blow the world to smithereens."
+
+There was silence at the table. This at least seemed to be a tenable
+theory. That man should have the temerity to take liberties with
+elementary principles was quite within reason, man being an animal of
+rare conceit, and that the result would bring about destruction was not
+at all at variance with probability.
+
+"I believe it's happened once or twice already," said the Idiot.
+
+"Do you really?" asked Mr. Pedagog, with a show of interest. "Upon what
+do you base this belief?"
+
+"Well, take Africa," said the Idiot. "Take North America. What do we
+find? We find in the sands of the Sahara a great statue, which we call
+the Sphinx, and about which we know nothing, except that it is there and
+that it keeps its mouth shut. We find marvellous creations in engineering
+that to-day surpass anything that we can do. The Sphinx, when discovered,
+was covered by sand. Now I believe that at one time there were people
+much further advanced in science than ourselves, who made these wonderful
+things, who knew how to do things that we don't even dream of doing, and
+I believe that they, like this creature I have predicted, got fooling
+with the centre of gravity, and that the world slipped its moorings for a
+period of time, during which time it tumbled topsy-turvey into space, and
+that banks and banks of sand and water and ice thrown out of position
+simply swept on and over the whole surface of the globe continuously
+until the earth got into the grip of the rest of the universe once more
+and started along in a new orbit. We know that where we are high and dry
+to-day the ocean must once have rolled. We know that where the world is
+now all sunshine and flowers great glaciers stood. What caused all this
+change? Nothing else, in my judgment, than the monkeying of man with the
+forces of nature. The poles changed, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit
+that, if the north pole were ever found and could be thawed out, we
+should find embedded in that great sea of ice evidences of a former
+civilization, just as in the Saharan waste evidences of the same thing
+have been found. I know of a place out West that is literally strewn with
+oyster-shells, and yet no man living has the slightest idea how they came
+there. It may have been the Massachusetts Bay of a pre-historic time, for
+all we know. It may have been an antediluvian Coney Island, for all the
+world knows. Who shall say that this little upset of mine found here an
+oyster-bed, shook all the oysters out of their bed into space, and left
+their clothes high and dry in a locality which, but for those garments,
+would seem never to have known the oyster in his prime? Off in
+Westchester County, on the top of a high hill, lies a rock, and in the
+uppermost portion of that rock is a so-called pot-hole, made by nothing
+else than the dropping of water of a brook and the swirling of pebbles
+therein. It is now beyond the reach of anything in the shape of water
+save that which falls from the heavens. It is certain that this pot-hole
+was never made by a boy with a watering-pot, by a hired man with a hose,
+by a workman with a drill, or by any rain-storm that ever fell in
+Westchester County. There must at some time or another have been a
+stream there; and as streams do not flow uphill and bore pot-holes on
+mountain-tops, there must have been a valley there. Some great cataclysm
+took place. For that cataclysm nature must be held responsible mainly.
+But what prompted nature to raise hob with Westchester County millions of
+years ago, and to let it sleep like Rip Van Winkle ever since? Nature
+isn't a freak. She is depicted as a woman, but in spite of that she is
+not whimsical. She does not act upon impulses. There must have been some
+cause for her behavior in turning valleys into hills, in transforming
+huge cities into wastes of sand, and oyster-beds into shell quarries; and
+it is my belief that man was the contributing cause. He tapped the earth
+for natural gas; he bored in and he bored out, and he bored nature to
+death, and then nature rose up and smote him and his cities and his
+oyster-beds, and she'll do it again unless we go slow."
+
+"There is a great deal in what you say," said Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"Very true," said Mrs. Pedagog. "But I wish he'd stop saying it. The last
+three dozen cakes have got cold as ice while he was talking, and I can't
+afford such reckless waste."
+
+"Nor we, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, with a pleasant smile; "for, as I
+was saying to the Bibliomaniac this morning, your buckwheat cakes are, to
+my mind, the very highest development of our modern civilization, and to
+have even one of them wasted seems to me to be a crime against Nature
+herself, for which a second, third, or fourth shaking up of this earth
+would be an inadequate punishment."
+
+This remark so pleased Mrs. Pedagog that she ordered the cook to send up
+a fresh lot of cakes; and the guests, after eating them, adjourned to
+their various duties with light hearts, and digestions occupied with work
+of great importance.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+"I wonder what would have happened if Columbus had not discovered
+America?" said the Bibliomaniac, as the company prepared to partake of
+the morning meal.
+
+"He would have gone home disappointed," said the Idiot, with a look of
+surprise on his face, which seemed to indicate that in his opinion the
+Bibliomaniac was very dull-witted not to have solved the problem for
+himself. "He would have gone home disappointed, and we would now be
+foreigners, like most other Americans. Mr. Pedagog would doubtless be
+instructing the young scions of the aristocracy of Tipperary, Mr.
+Whitechoker would be Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bibliomaniac would be
+raising bulbs in Holland, and----"
+
+[Illustration: "THE BIBLIOMANIAC WOULD BE RAISING BULBS"]
+
+"And you would be wandering about with the other wild men of Borneo at
+the present time," put in the School-Master.
+
+"No," said the Idiot. "Not quite. I should be dividing my time up between
+Holland, France, Switzerland, and Spain."
+
+"You are an international sort of Idiot, eh?" queried the Lawyer, with a
+chuckle at his own wit.
+
+"Say rather a cosmopolitan Idiot," said the Idiot. "Among my ancestors
+I number individuals of various nations, though I suppose that if we go
+back far enough we were all in the same boat as far as that is concerned.
+One of my great-great-grandfathers was a Scotchman, one of them was a
+Dutchman, another was a Spaniard, a fourth was a Frenchman. What the
+others were I don't know. It's a nuisance looking up one's ancestors,
+I think. They increase so as you go back into the past. Every man
+has had two grandfathers, four great-grandfathers, eight
+great-great-grandfathers, sixteen great-great-great-grandfathers,
+thirty-two fathers raised to the fourth power of great-grandness, and
+so on, increasing in number as you go further back, until it is hardly
+possible for any one to throw a brick into the pages of history without
+hitting somebody who is more or less responsible for his existence. I
+dare say there is a streak of Julius Caesar in me, and I haven't a doubt
+that if our friend Mr. Pedagog here were to take the trouble to
+investigate, he would find that Caesar and Cassius and Brutus could be
+numbered among his early progenitors--and now that I think of it,
+I must say that in my estimation he is an unusually amiable man,
+considering how diverse the nature of these men were. Think of it for
+a minute. Here a man unites in himself Caesar and Cassius and Brutus,
+two of whom killed the third, and then, having quarrelled together,
+went out upon a battle-field and slaughtered themselves, after making
+extemporaneous remarks, for which this miserable world gives Shakespeare
+all the credit. It's worse than the case of a friend of mine, one of
+whose grandfathers was French and the other German."
+
+"How did it affect him?" asked Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"It made him distrust himself," said the Idiot, with a smile, "and for
+that reason he never could get on in the world. When his Teutonic nature
+suggested that he do something, his Gallic blood would rise up and spoil
+everything, and _vice versa_. He was eternally quarrelling with himself.
+He was a victim to internal disorder of the worst sort."
+
+"And what, pray, finally became of him?" asked the Clergyman.
+
+"He shot himself in a duel," returned the Idiot, with a wink at the
+genial old gentleman who occasionally imbibed. "It was very sad."
+
+"I've known sadder things," said Mr. Pedagog, wearily. "Your elaborate
+jokes, for instance. They are enough to make strong men weep."
+
+"You flatter me, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "I have never in all my
+experience as a cracker of jests made a man laugh until he cried, but I
+hope to some day. But, really, do you know I think Columbus is an
+immensely overrated man. If you come down to it, what did he do? He went
+out to sea in a ship and sailed for three months, and when he least
+expected it ran slam-bang up against the Western Hemisphere. It was like
+shooting at a barn door with a Gatling gun. He was bound to hit it sooner
+or later."
+
+"You don't give him any credit for tenacity of purpose or good judgment,
+then?" asked Mr. Brief.
+
+"Of course I do. Plenty of it. He stuck to his ship like a hero who
+didn't know how to swim. His judgment was great. He had too much sense
+to go back to Spain without any news of something, because he fully
+understood that unless he had something to show for the trip, there would
+have been a great laugh on Queen Isabella for selling her jewels to
+provide for a ninety-day yacht cruise for him and a lot of common
+sailors, which would never have done. So he kept on and on, and finally
+some unknown lookout up in the bow discovered America. Then Columbus
+went home and told everybody that if it hadn't been for his own eagle eye
+emigration wouldn't have been invented, and world's fairs would have been
+local institutions. Then they got up a parade in which the King and Queen
+graciously took part, and Columbus became a great man. Meanwhile the
+unknown lookout who did discover the land was knocking about the town and
+thinking he was a very lucky fellow to get an extra glass of grog. It
+wasn't anything more than the absolute justice of fate that caused the
+new land to be named America and not Columbia. It really ought to have
+been named after that fellow up in the bow."
+
+"But, my dear Idiot," put in the Bibliomaniac, "the scheme itself was
+Columbus's own. He evolved the theory that the earth is round like a
+ball."
+
+"To quote Mr. Pedagog--" began the Idiot.
+
+"You can't quote me in your own favor," snapped the School-Master.
+
+"Wait until I have finished," said the Idiot. "I was only going to quote
+you by saying 'Tutt!' that's all; and so I repeat, in the words of Mr.
+Pedagog, tutt, tutt! Evolved the theory? Why, man, how could he help
+evolving the theory? There was the sun rising in the east every morning
+and setting in the west every night. What else was there to believe? That
+somebody put the sun out every night, and sneaked back east with it under
+cover of darkness?"
+
+"But you forget that the wise men of the day laughed at his idea," said
+Mr. Pedagog, surveying the Idiot after the fashion of a man who has dealt
+an adversary a stinging blow.
+
+"That only proves what I have always said," replied the Idiot. "Wise men
+can't find fun in anything but stern facts. Wise men always do laugh at
+truth. Whenever I advance some new proposition, you sit up there next to
+Mrs. Pedagog and indulge in tutt-tutterances of the most intolerant sort.
+If you had been one of the wise men of Columbus's time there isn't any
+doubt in my mind that when Columbus said the earth was round, you'd have
+remarked tutt, tutt, in Spanish." There was silence for a minute, and
+then the Idiot began again. "There's another point about this whole
+business that makes me tired," he said. "It only goes to prove the
+conceit of these Europeans. Here was a great continent inhabited by
+countless people. A European comes over here and is said to be the
+discoverer of America and is glorified. Statues of him are scattered
+broad-cast all over the world. Pictures of him are printed in the
+newspapers and magazines. A dozen different varieties of portraits of
+him are printed on postage-stamps as big as circus posters--and all for
+what? Because he discovered a land that millions of Indians had known
+about for centuries. On the other hand, when Columbus goes back to Spain
+several of the native Americans trust their precious lives to his old
+tubs. One of these savages must have been the first American to discover
+Europe. Where are the statues of the Indian who discovered Europe? Where
+are the postage-stamps showing how he looked on the day when Europe first
+struck his vision? Where is anybody spending a billion of dollars getting
+up a world's fair in commemoration of Lo's discovery of Europe?"
+
+"He didn't know it was Europe," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Columbus didn't know this was America," retorted the Idiot. "In fact,
+Columbus didn't know anything. He didn't know any better than to write a
+letter to Queen Isabella and mail it in a keg that never turned up. He
+didn't even know how to steer his old boat into a real solid continent,
+instead of getting ten days on the island. He was an awfully wise man. He
+saw an island swarming with Indians, and said, 'Why, this must be India!'
+And worst of all, if his pictures mean anything, he didn't even know
+enough to choose his face and stick to it. Don't talk Columbus to me
+unless you want to prove that luck is the greatest factor of success."
+
+[Illustration: "DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH TO CHOOSE HIS OWN FACE"]
+
+"Ill-luck is sometimes a factor of success," said Mr. Pedagog. "You are a
+success as an Idiot, which appears to me to be extremely unfortunate."
+
+"I don't know about that," said the Idiot. "I adapt myself to my company,
+and of course--"
+
+"Then you are a school-master among school-masters, a lawyer among
+lawyers, and so forth?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"What are you when your company is made up of widely diverse characters?"
+asked Mr. Brief before the Idiot had a chance to reply to the
+Bibliomaniac's question.
+
+"I try to be a widely diverse character myself."
+
+"And, trying to sit on many stools, fall and become just an Idiot," said
+Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"That's according to the way you look at it. I put my company to the test
+in the crucible of my mind. I analyze the characters of all about me, and
+whatever quality predominates in the precipitate, that I become. Thus in
+the presence of my employer and his office-boy I become a mixture of
+both--something of the employer, something of an office-boy. I run
+errands for my employer, and boss the office-boy. With you gentlemen I
+go through the same process. The Bibliomaniac, the School-Master, Mr.
+Brief, and the rest of you have been cast into the crucible, and I have
+tried to approximate the result."
+
+"And are an Idiot," said the School-Master.
+
+"It is your own name for me, gentlemen," returned the Idiot. "I presume
+you have recognized your composite self, and have chosen the title
+accordingly."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You were a little hard on me this morning, weren't you?" asked the
+genial old gentleman who occasionally imbibed, that evening, when he and
+the Idiot were discussing the morning's chat. "I didn't like to say
+anything about it, but I don't think you ought to have thrown me into the
+crucible with the rest."
+
+"I wish you had spoken," said the Idiot, warmly. "It would have given me
+a chance to say that the grain of sense that once or twice a year leavens
+the lump of my idiocy is directly due to the ingredient furnished by
+yourself. Here's to you, old man. If you and I lived alone together, what
+a wise man I should be!"
+
+And then the genial old gentleman went to the cupboard and got out a
+bottle of port-wine that he had been preserving in cobwebs for ten years.
+This he opened, and as he did so he said, "I've been keeping this for
+years, my boy. It was dedicated in my youth to the thirst of the first
+man who truly appreciated me. Take it all."
+
+"I'll divide with you," returned the Idiot, with a smile. "For really,
+old fellow, I think you--ah--I think you appreciate yourself as much as
+I do."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+"I wonder what it costs to run a flat?" said the Idiot, stirring his
+coffee with the salt-spoon--a proceeding which seemed to indicate that he
+was thinking of something else.
+
+"Don't you keep an expense account?" asked the Bibliomaniac, slyly.
+
+"Hee-hee!" laughed Mrs. Pedagog.
+
+"First-rate joke," said the Idiot, with a smile. "But really, now,
+I should like to know for how little an apartment could be run. I am
+interested."
+
+Mrs. Pedagog stopped laughing at once. The Idiot's words were ominous.
+She did not always like his views, but she did like his money, and she
+was not at all anxious to lose him as a boarder.
+
+"It's very expensive," she said, firmly. "I shouldn't ever advise any
+one to undertake living in a flat. Rents are high. Butcher bills are
+enormous, because the butchers have to pay commissions, not only to the
+cook, so that she'll use twice as much lard as she can, and give away
+three or four times as much to the poor as she ought, but janitors have
+to be seen to, and elevator-boys, and all that. Groceries come high for
+the same reason. Oh, no! Flat life isn't the life for anybody, I say.
+Give me a good, first-class boarding-house. Am I not right, John?"
+
+[Illustration: "JANITORS HAVE TO BE SEEN TO"]
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Pedagog. "Every time. I lived in a flat once,
+and it was an awful nuisance. Above me lived a dancing-master who gave
+lessons at every hour of the day in the room directly over my study,
+so that I was always being disturbed at my work, while below me was a
+music-teacher who was practising all night, so that I could hardly sleep.
+Worst of all, on the same floor with me was a miserable person of
+convivial tendencies, who always mistook my door for his when he came
+home after midnight, and who gave some quite estimable people two
+floors below to believe that it was I, and not he, who sang comic songs
+between three and four o'clock in the morning. There has not been too
+much love lost between the Idiot and myself, but I cannot be so
+vindictive as to recommend him to live in a flat."
+
+"I can bear testimony to the same effect," put in Mr. Brief, who was two
+weeks in arrears, and anxious to conciliate his landlady.
+
+"Testimony to the effect that Mr. Pedagog sang comic songs in the early
+morning?" said the Idiot. "Nonsense! I don't believe it. I have lived in
+this house for two years with Mr. Pedagog, and I've never heard him raise
+his voice in song yet."
+
+"I didn't mean anything of the sort," retorted Mr. Brief. "You know I
+didn't."
+
+"Don't apologize to me," said the Idiot. "Apologize to Mr. Pedagog. He is
+the man you have wronged."
+
+"What did he say?" put in Mr. Pedagog, with a stern look at Mr. Brief. "I
+didn't hear what he said."
+
+"I didn't say anything," said the lawyer, "except that I could bear
+testimony to the effect that your experience with flat life was similar
+to mine. This young person, with his customary nerve, tries to make it
+appear that I said you sang comic songs in the early morning."
+
+"I try to do nothing of the sort," said the Idiot. "I simply expressed my
+belief that in spite of what you said Mr. Pedagog was innocent, and I do
+so because my experience with him has taught me that he is not the kind
+of man who would do that sort of thing. He has neither time, voice, nor
+inclination. He has an ear--two of them, in fact--and an impressionable
+mind, but--"
+
+"Oh, tutt!" interrupted the School-Master. "When I need a defender, you
+may spare yourself the trouble of flying to my rescue."
+
+"I know I _may_," said the Idiot, "but with me it's a question of can and
+can't. I'm willing to attack you personally, but while I live no other
+shall do so. Wherefore I tell Mr. Brief plainly, and to his face, that if
+he says you ever sang a comic song he says what is not so. You might hum
+one, but sing it--never!"
+
+"We were talking of flats, I believe," said Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"Yes," said the Idiot, "and these persons have changed it from flat talk
+to sharp talk."
+
+"Well, anyhow," put in Mr. Brief, "I lived in a flat once, and it was
+anything but pleasant. I lost a case once for the simple and only reason
+that I lived in a flat. It was a case that required a great deal of
+strategy on my part, and I invited my client to my home to unfold my plan
+of action. I got interested in the scheme as I unfolded it, and spoke in
+my usual impassioned manner, as though addressing a jury, and, would you
+believe it, the opposing counsel happened to be visiting a friend on the
+next floor, and my eloquence floated up through the air-shaft, and gave
+our whole plan of action away. We were routed on the point we had
+supposed would pierce the enemy's armor and lay him at our feet, for the
+wholly simple reason that that abominable air-shaft had made my strategic
+move a matter of public knowledge."
+
+[Illustration: "MY ELOQUENCE FLOATED UP THE AIR-SHAFT"]
+
+"That's a good idea for a play," said the Idiot. "A roaring farce could
+be built up on that basis. Villain and accomplice on one floor, innocent
+victim on floor above. Plot floats up air-shaft. Innocent victim
+overhears; villain and accomplice say 'ha ha' for three acts and take
+a back seat in the fourth, with a grand transformation showing the
+conspirators in the county jail as a finale. Write it up with lots of
+live-stock wandering in and out, bring in janitors and elevator-boys
+and butchers, show up some of the humors of flat life, if there be any
+such, call it _A Hole in the Flat_, and put it on the stage. Nine hundred
+nights is the very shortest run it could have, which at fifty dollars a
+night for the author is $45,000 in good hard dollars. Mr. Poet, the idea
+is yours for a fiver. Say the word."
+
+"Thanks," said the Poet, with a smile; "I'm not a dramatist."
+
+"Then I'll have to do it myself," said the Idiot. "And if I do, good-bye
+Shakespeare."
+
+"That's so," said Mr. Pedagog. "Nothing could more effectually ruin the
+dramatic art than to have you write a play. People, seeing your work,
+would say, here, this will never do. The stage must be discouraged at all
+costs. A hypocrite throws the ministry into disgrace, an ignoramus brings
+shame upon education, and an unpopular lawyer gives the bar a bad name. I
+think you are just the man to ruin Shakespeare."
+
+"Then I'll give up my ambition to become a playwright and stick to
+idiocy," said the Idiot. "But to come back to flats. Your feeling in
+regard to them is entirely different from that of a friend of mine, who
+has lived in one for ten years. He thinks flat life is ideal. His
+children can't fall down-stairs, because there aren't any stairs to fall
+down. His roof never leaks, because he hasn't any roof to leak; and when
+he and his family want to go off anywhere, all he has to do is to lock
+his front door and go. Burglars never climb into his front window,
+because they are all eight flights up. Damp cellars don't trouble him,
+because they are too far down to do him any injury, even if they
+overflow. The cares of house-keeping are reduced to a minimum. His cook
+doesn't spend all her time in the front area flirting with the postman,
+because there isn't any front area to his flat; and in a social way his
+wife is most delightfully situated, because most of her friends live in
+the same building, and instead of having to hire a carriage to go calling
+in, all she has to do is to take the elevator and go from one floor to
+another. If he pines for a change of scene, he is high enough up in the
+air to get it by looking out of his windows, over the tops of other
+buildings, into the green fields to the north, or looking westward into
+the State of New Jersey. Instead of taking a drive through the Park, or
+a walk, all he and his wife need to do is to take a telescope and follow
+some little sylvan path with their eyes. Then, as for expense, he finds
+that he saves money by means of a co-operative scheme. For instance, if
+he wants shad for dinner, and he and his wife cannot eat a whole one, he
+goes shares on the shad and its cost with his neighbors above and below."
+
+"Yes, and his neighbors above and below borrow tea and eggs and butter
+and ice and other things whenever they run short, so that in that way he
+loses all he saves," said Mr. Pedagog, resolved not to give in.
+
+"He does if he isn't smart," said the Idiot. "I thought of that myself,
+and asked him about it, and he told me that he kept account of all that,
+and always made it a point after some neighbor had borrowed two pounds
+of butter from him to send in before the week was over and borrow three
+pounds of butter from the neighbor. So far his books show that he is
+sixteen pounds of butter, seven pounds of tea, one bottle of vanilla
+extract, and a ton of ice ahead of the whole house. He is six eggs and
+a box of matches behind in his egg and match account, but under the
+circumstances I think he can afford it."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Pedagog, anxious to know the worst, "why--er--why are
+you so interested?"
+
+"Well," said the Idiot, slowly, "I--er--I am contemplating a change, Mrs.
+Pedagog--a change that would fill me--I say it sincerely, too--with
+regret if--" The Idiot paused a minute, and his eye swept fondly about
+the table. His voice was getting a little husky too, Mr. Whitechoker
+noticed. "It would fill me with regret, I say, if it were not that
+in taking up house-keeping I am--I am to have the assistance of a
+better-half."
+
+"What??" cried the Bibliomaniac. "You? You are going to be--to be
+married?"
+
+"Why not?" said the Idiot. "Imitation is the sincerest flattery. Mr.
+Pedagog marries, and I am going to flatter him as sincerely as I can by
+following in his footsteps."
+
+"May I--may we ask to whom?" asked Mrs. Pedagog, softly.
+
+"Certainly," said the Idiot. "To Mr. Barlow's daughter. Mr. Barlow is--or
+was--my employer."
+
+"Was? Is he not now? Are you going out of business?" asked Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"No; but, you see, when I went to see Mr. Barlow in the matter, he told
+me that he liked me very much, and he had no doubt I would make a good
+husband for his daughter, but, after all, he added that I was nothing
+but a confidential clerk on a small salary, and he thought his daughter
+could do better."
+
+"She couldn't find a better fellow, Mr. Idiot," said Mrs. Pedagog, and
+Mr. Pedagog rose to the occasion by nodding his entire acquiescence in
+the statement.
+
+"Thank you very much," said the Idiot. "That was precisely what I told
+Mr. Barlow, and I suggested a scheme to him by which his sole objection
+could be got around."
+
+"You would start in business for yourself?" said Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"In a sense, yes," said the Idiot. "Only the way I put it was that a good
+confidential clerk would make a good partner for him, and he, after
+thinking it over, thought I was right."
+
+"It certainly was a characteristically novel way out of the dilemma,"
+said Mr. Brief, with a smile.
+
+"I thought so myself, and so did he, so it was all arranged. On the 1st
+of next month I enter the firm, and on the 15th I am--ah--to be married."
+
+The company warmly congratulated the Idiot upon his good-fortune, and he
+shortly left the room, more overcome by their felicitations than he had
+been by their arguments in the past.
+
+The few days left passed quickly by, and there came a breakfast at Mrs.
+Pedagog's house that was a mixture of joy and sadness--joy for his
+happiness, sadness that that table should know the Idiot no more.
+
+Among the wedding-gifts was a handsomely bound series of volumes,
+including a cyclopaedia, a dictionary, and a little tome of poems, the
+first output of the Poet. These came together, with a card inscribed,
+"From your Friends of the Breakfast Table," of whom the Idiot said, when
+Mrs. Idiot asked for information:
+
+"They, my dear, next to yourself and my parents, are the dearest friends
+I ever had. We must have them up to breakfast some morning."
+
+"Breakfast?" queried Mrs. Idiot.
+
+"Yes, my dear," he replied, simply. "I should be afraid to meet them at
+any other meal. I am always at my best at breakfast, and they--well, they
+never are."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
+
+
+Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica.
+
+Mr. Bangs is probably the generator of more hearty, healthful, purely
+good-humored laughs than any other half-dozen men of our country
+to-day.--_Interior_, Chicago.
+
+
+The Idiot.
+
+"The Idiot," continues to be as amusing and as triumphantly bright in the
+volume called after his name as in "Coffee and Repartee."--_Evangelist_,
+N. Y.
+
+
+The Water Ghost, and Others.
+
+The funny side of the ghost genre is brought out with originality, and,
+considering the morbidity that surrounds the subject, it is a wholesome
+thing to offer the public a series of tales letting in the sunlight of
+laughter.--_Hartford Courant_.
+
+
+Three Weeks in Politics.
+
+The funny story is most graphically told, and he who can read this
+narrative of a campaigner's trials without laughing must be a stoic
+indeed.--_Philadelphia Bulletin_.
+
+
+Coffee and Repartee.
+
+
+Is delightfully free from conventionality; is breezy, witty, and
+possessed of an originality both genial and refreshing.--_Saturday
+Evening Gazette_, Boston.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDIOT***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:54:21 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:54:21 -0700
commit	4067a72b0ecc56fc0e66db27ab7b5044a9090d88 (patch)
tree	9f8e72db9f4e2e312d6c1a945f508e9624e3aba9