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padding: 1em; margin: 5em auto 5em auto; width: 30em;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Genial 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 Genial Idiot + His Views and Reviews + +Author: John Kendrick Bangs + +Release Date: February 17, 2011 [EBook #35302] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENIAL IDIOT *** + + + + +Produced by Beginners Projects and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<hr /> + +<h1>THE GENIAL IDIOT</h1> + +<hr class="hr3" /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="400" height="640" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<hr /> + +<p class="top center"><span class="tp1">THE</span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="tp-title">GENIAL IDIOT</span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="tp-sub">HIS VIEWS AND REVIEWS</span><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +BY<br /> +<br /> +<span class="author">JOHN KENDRICK BANGS</span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;"> +<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="150" height="186" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="center lh"><span class="pub1">HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS</span><br /> +<span class="pub2">NEW YORK AND LONDON</span><br /> +<span class="pub3">MCMVIII</span></p> + + + + +<div class="box"> +<h2><span class="smcap">Books by</span><br /> +JOHN KENDRICK BANGS</h2> + +<table summary="List of books"> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Genial Idiot.</span> 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2">$1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Three Weeks in Politics.</span> 32mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> .50</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Coffee and Repartee, and the Idiot.</span> +Illustrated. (In One Vol.) 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Coffee and Repartee.</span> 32mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> .50</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Water Ghost.</span> Illustrated. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica.</span> Ill’d. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Rebellious Heroine.</span> Illustrated. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">House-Boat on the Styx.</span> Ill’d. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Bicyclers</span>, <span class="smcap">A Dramatic Evening</span>, <span class="smcap">The +Fatal Message</span>, <span class="smcap">A Proposal Under +Difficulties</span>. (In One Vol.) 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Proposal Under Difficulties.</span> 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> .50</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Pursuit of the House-Boat.</span> Ill’d. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Paste Jewels.</span> Illustrated. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.00</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Ghosts I Have Met.</span> Illustrated. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Peeps at People.</span> Illustrated. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Dreamers.</span> Illustrated. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Enchanted Type-writer.</span> Ill’d. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Booming of Acre Hill.</span> Illustrated. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Cobwebs from a Library Corner.</span> 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> .50</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Idiot at Home.</span> Illustrated. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Over the Plum-Pudding.</span> Post 8vo, neto</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.15</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Bikey the Skicycle.</span> Illustrated. Post 8voo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.50</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Worsted Man.</span> Illustrated. 32mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> .50</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Mrs. Raffles.</span> Illustrated. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">R. Holmes & Co.</span> Illustrated. Post 8voo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Olympian Nights.</span> Illustrated. 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Inventions of the Idiot.</span> 16mo</td> +<td class="tdr2"> 1.25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="center" colspan="2">HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N. Y.</td> +</tr> +</table> +</div> + + +<p class="center">Copyright, 1908, by <span class="smcap">Harper & Brothers</span>.</p> + +<hr class="hr2" /> + +<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved.</i><br /> +Published October, 1908.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="contents" id="contents"></a>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<table summary="Contents"> +<tr> +<th class="thr1">CHAP.</th> +<th class="thr2" colspan="2">PAGE</th> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">I.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">He Discusses Maxims and Proverbs</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#i">3</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">II.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">He Discusses the Ideal Husband</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#ii"> 14</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">III.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Idiot’s Valentine</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#iii"> 27</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">IV.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">He Discusses Finance</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#iv"> 39</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">V.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">He Suggests a Comic Opera</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#v"> 52</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">VI.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">He Discusses Fame</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#vi"> 64</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">VII.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">On the Decadence of April-fool’s-day</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#vii"> 77</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">VIII.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Spring and Its Poetry</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#viii"> 88</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">IX.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">On Flat-hunting</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#ix"> 100</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">X.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Housemaid’s Union</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#x"> 112</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">XI.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Gentle Art of Boosting</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xi"> 123</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">XII.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">He Makes a Suggestion to the Poet</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xii"> 135</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">XIII.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">He Discusses the Music Cure</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xiii"> 147</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">XIV.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">He Defends Campaign Methods</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xiv"> 159</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">XV.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">On Short Courses at College</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xv"> 170</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">XVI.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Horse-show</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xvi"> 182</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">XVII.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Suggestion to Christmas Shoppers</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xvii"> 194</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="tdr">XVIII.</td> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">For a Happy Christmas</span></td> +<td class="tdr2"><a href="#xviii"> 205</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> +<a name="i" id="i"></a><span class="title">THE GENIAL IDIOT</span><br /> +<br /> +I<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">HE DISCUSSES MAXIMS AND PROVERBS</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">GOOD!” cried the Idiot, from behind the voluminous folds of the +magazine section of his Sunday newspaper. “Here’s a man after my own +heart. Professor Duff, of Glasgow University, has come out with a public +statement that the maxims and proverbs of our forefathers are largely +hocus-pocus and buncombe. I’ve always maintained that myself from the +moment I had my first copy-book lesson in which I had to scrawl the +line, ‘It’s a long lane that has no turning,’ twenty-four times. And +then that other absurd statement, ‘A stitch in the side is worth two in +the hand’—or something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> like it—I forget just how it goes—what +Tommy-rot that is.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I don’t know about that, Mr. Idiot,” said Mr. Whitechoker, +tapping his fingers together reflectively. “Certain great moral +principles are instilled into the minds of the young by the old proverbs +and maxims that remain with them forever, and become a potent influence +in the formation of character.”</p> + +<p>“I should like to agree with you, but I can’t,” said the Idiot. “I don’t +believe anything that is noble in the way of character was ever fostered +by such a statement as that it’s a long lane that has no turning. In the +first place, it isn’t necessarily true. I know a lane on my +grandfather’s farm that led from the hen-coop to the barn. There wasn’t +a turn nor a twist in it, and I know by actual measurement that it +wasn’t sixty feet long. You’ve got just as much right to say to a boy +that it’s a long nose that has no twisting, or a long leg that has no +pulling, or a long courtship that has no kissing. There’s infinitely +more truth in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> those last two than in the original model. The leg that’s +never pulled doesn’t go short in a stringent financial market, and a +courtship without a kiss, even if it lasted only five minutes, would be +too long for any self-respecting lover.”</p> + +<p>“I never thought of it in that way,” said Mr. Whitechoker. “Perhaps, +after all, the idea is ill-expressed in the original.”</p> + +<p>“Perfectly correct,” said the Idiot. “But even then, what? Suppose they +had put the thing right in the beginning and said ‘it’s a long lane that +has no ending.’ What’s the use of putting a thing like that in a +copy-book? A boy who didn’t know that without being told ought to be +spanked and put to bed. Why not tell him it’s a long well that has no +bottom, or a long dog that has no wagging, or a long railroad that has +no terminal facilities?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well,” interposed the Bibliomaniac, “what’s the use of being +captious? Out of a billion and a half wise saws you pick out one to jump +on. Because one is weak, all the rest must come down with a crash.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +“There are plenty of others, and the way they refute one another is to +me a constant source of delight,” said the Idiot. “There’s +‘Procrastination is the thief of time,’ for instance. That’s a clear +injunction to youth to get up and hustle, and he starts in with all the +impulsiveness of youth, and the first thing he knows—bang! he runs slap +into ‘Look before you leap,’ or ‘Second thoughts are best.’ That last is +what Samuel Johnson would have called a beaut. What superior claims the +second thought has over the first or the seventy-seventh thought, that +it should become axiomatic, I vow I can’t see. If it’s morality you’re +after I am dead against the teachings of that proverb. The second +thought is the open door to duplicity when it comes to a question of +morals. You ask a small boy, who has been in swimming when he ought to +have been at Sunday-school, why his shirt is wet. His first thought is +naturally to reply along the line of fact and say, ‘Why, because it fell +into the pond.’ But second thought comes along with visions of hard +spanking and a supperless bed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> store for him, and suggests the idea +that ‘There was a leak in the Sunday-school roof right over the place +where I was sitting,’ or, ‘I sat down on the teacher’s glass of water.’ +That’s the sort of thing second thought does in the matter of morals.</p> + +<p>“I admit, of course, that there are times when second thoughts are +better than first ones—for instance, if your first thought is to name +the baby Jimmie and Jimmie turns out to be a girl, it is better to obey +your second thought and call her Gladys or Samantha—but it is not +always so, and I object to the nerve of the broad, general statement +that it <em>is</em> so. Sometimes fifth thoughts are best. In science I guess +you’ll find that the man who thinks the seven hundred and ninety-seventh +thought along certain lines has got the last and best end of it. And so +it goes—out of the infinitesimal number of numbers, every mother’s son +of ’em may at the psychological moment have a claim to the supremacy, +but your self-sufficient old proverb-maker falls back behind the +impenetrable wall of his own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> conceit, and announces that because he has +nothing but second-hand thoughts, therefore the second thought is best, +and we, like a flock of sheep, follow this leader, and go blatting that +sentiment down through the ages as if it were proved beyond peradventure +by the sum total of human experience.”</p> + +<p>“Well, you needn’t get mad about it,” said the Lawyer. “I never said +it—so you can’t blame me.”</p> + +<p>“Still, there are some proverbs,” said Mr. Whitechoker, blandly, “that +we may not so summarily dismiss. Take, for instance, ‘You never miss the +water till the well runs dry.’”</p> + +<p>“One of the worst of the lot, Mr. Whitechoker,” said the Idiot. “I’ve +missed the water lots of times when the well was full as ever. You miss +the water when the pipes freeze up, don’t you? You—or rather I—I +sometimes miss the water like time at five o’clock in the morning after +a pleasant evening with some jovial friends, when there’s no end of it +in the well, but not a drop within reach of my fevered hand, and I +haven’t the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> energy to grope my way down-stairs to the ice-pitcher. +There’s more water in that proverb than tangible assets. From the +standpoint of veracity that’s one of the most immoral proverbs of the +lot—and if you came to apply it to the business world—oh, Lud! As a +rule, these days, you never <em>find</em> the water till the well has been +pumped dry and put in the hands of a receiver for the benefit of the +bond-holders. Fact is, all these water proverbs are to be regarded with +suspicion.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t recall any other,” said Mr. Whitechoker.</p> + +<p>“Well,” said the Idiot, “there’s one, and it’s the nerviest of ’em +all—‘Water never runs up hill.’ Ask any man in Wall Street how high the +water has run up in the last five years and see what he tells you. And +then, ‘You may drive a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink,’ +is another choice specimen of the Waterbury School of Philosophy. I know +a lot of human horses who have been driven to water lately, and such +drinkers as they have become! It’s really awful. If I knew the name of +that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> particular Maximilian who invented those water proverbs I’d do my +best to have him indicted for doing business without a license.”</p> + +<p>“It’s very unfortunate,” said Mr. Whitechoker, “that modern conditions +should so have upset the wisdom of the ancients.”</p> + +<p>“It is too bad,” said the Idiot. “And I am just as sorry about it as you +are; but, after all, the wisdom of the ancients, wise and wisdomatic as +it was, should not be permitted to put at nought all modern thought. Why +not adapt the wisdom of the ancients to modern conditions? You can’t +begin too soon, for new generations are constantly springing up, and I +know of no better outlet for reform than in these self-same Spencerian +proverbs which the poor kids have to copy, copy, copy, until they are +sick and tired of them. Now, in the writing-lessons, why not adapt your +means to your ends? Why make a beginner in penmanship write over and +over again, ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?’—which it +isn’t, by-the-way, to a man who is a good shot—when you can bear in on +his mind that ‘A dot on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> the I is worth two on the T’; or, for the +instruction of your school-teachers, why don’t you get up a proverb like +‘It’s a long lesson that has no learning’? Or if you are interested in +having your boy brought up to the strenuous life, why don’t you have him +make sixty copies of the aphorism, ‘A punch in the solar is worth six on +the nose?’ You tell your children never to whistle until they are out of +the woods. Now, where in the name of all that’s lovely should a boy +whistle if not in the woods? That’s where birds whistle. That’s where +the wind whistles. If nature whistles anywhere, it is in the woods. +Woods were made for whistling, and any man who ever sat over a big +log-fire in camp or in library who has not noticed that the logs +themselves whistle constantly—well, he is a pachyderm.”</p> + +<p>”Well, as far as I can reach a conclusion from all that you have said,“ +put in Mr. Whitechoker, “the point seems to be that the proverbs of the +ancients are not suited to modern conditions, and that you think they +should be revised.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +“Exactly,” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“It’s a splendid idea,” said Mr. Brief. “But, after all, you’ve got to +have something to begin on. Possibly,” he added, with a wink at the +Bibliomaniac, “you have a few concrete examples to show us what can be +done.”</p> + +<p>“Certainly,” said the Idiot. “Here is a list of them.”</p> + +<p>And as he rose up to depart he handed Mr. Brief a paper on which he had +written as follows:</p> + +<p>“You never find the water till the stock falls off twenty points.”</p> + +<p>“A stitch in time saves nothing at all at present tailors’ rates.”</p> + +<p>“You look after the pennies. Somebody else will deposit the pounds.”</p> + +<p>“It’s a long heiress that knows no yearning.”</p> + +<p>“Second thoughts are always second.”</p> + +<p>“Procrastination is the theme of gossips.”</p> + +<p>“Never put off to-day what you can put on day after to-morrow.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> +“Sufficient unto the day are the obligations of last month.”</p> + +<p>“One good swat deserves another.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>“By Jove!” said Mr. Brief, as he read them off, “you can’t go back on +any of ’em, can you?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said the Bibliomaniac; “that’s the great trouble with the Idiot. +Even with all his idiocy he is not always a perfect idiot.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +<a name="ii" id="ii"></a>II<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">HE DISCUSSES THE IDEAL HUSBAND</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">WELL, I see the Ideal Husband has broken out again,” said the Idiot, +after reading a short essay on that interesting but rare individual by +Gladys Waterbury Shrivelton of the Woman’s Page of the Squehawkett +<em>Gazoo</em>. “I’d hoped they had him locked up for good, he’s been so little +in evidence of late years.”</p> + +<p>“Why should you wish so estimable an individual to be locked up?” +demanded Mr. Pedagog, who, somehow or other, seemed to take the Idiot’s +suggestion as personal.</p> + +<p>“To keep his idealness from being shattered,” said the Idiot. “Nothing +against the gentleman himself, I can assure you. It would be a pity, I +think, once you have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> really found an Ideal Husband, to subject him to +the coarse influences of the world; to let him go forth into the madding +crowd and have the sweet idyllic bloom rubbed off by the attritions of +the vulgar. I feel about the Ideal Husband just as I do about a +beautiful peachblow vase which is too fragile, too delicate to be +brought into contact with the ordinary earthen-ware of society. The +earthen-ware isn’t harmed by bumping into the peachblow, but the +peachblow will inevitably turn up with a crack here and a nick there and +a hole somewhere else after such an encounter. If I were a woman and +suddenly discovered that I had an Ideal Husband, I think at my personal +sacrifice I’d present him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or immure +him in some other retreat where his perfection would remain forever +secure—say, up among the Egyptian mummies of the British Museum. We +cannot be too careful, Mr. Pedagog, of these rarely beautiful things +that are now and again vouchsafed to us.”</p> + +<p>“What is an Ideal Husband, anyhow?”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> asked Mr. Brief. “Has the recipe +for such an individual at last been discovered?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” put in Mrs. Pedagog, before the Idiot had a chance to reply, and +here the dear old landlady fixed her eyes firmly and affectionately upon +her spouse, the school-master. “I can tell you the recipe for the Ideal +Husband. Years, sixty-three—”</p> + +<p>“Sixty-two, my dear,” smiled Mr. Pedagog, “and—er—a fraction—verging +on sixty-three.”</p> + +<p>“Years, verging on sixty-three,” said Mrs. Pedagog, accepting the +correction. “Character developed by time and made secure. Eyes, blue; +disposition when vexed, vexatious; disposition when pleased, happy; +irritable from just cause; considerate always; calm exterior, heart of +gold; prompt in anger and quick in forgiveness; and only one old woman +in the world for him.”</p> + +<p>“A trifle bald-headed, but a true friend when needed, eh?” said the +Idiot.</p> + +<p>“I try to be,” said Mr. Pedagog, pleasantly complacent.</p> + +<p>“Well, you succeed in both,” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> +“For your trifling baldness is evident when you remove your hat, which, +like a true gentleman, you never fail to do at the breakfast-table, and, +after a fifteen years’ experience with you, I for one can say that I +have found you always the true friend when I needed you—I never told +how, without my solicitation and entirely upon your own initiative, you +once loaned me the money to pay Mrs. Pedagog’s bill over which she was +becoming anxious.”</p> + +<p>“John,” cried Mrs. Pedagog, severely, “did you ever do that?”</p> + +<p>“Well, my dear—er—only once, you know, and you were so relieved—” +began Mr. Pedagog.</p> + +<p>“You should have lent the money to me, John,” said Mrs. Pedagog, “and +then I should not have been compelled to dun the Idiot.”</p> + +<p>“I know, my dear, but you see I knew the Idiot would pay me back, and +perhaps—well, only perhaps, my love—you might not have thought of it,” +explained the school-master, with a slight show of embarrassment.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +“The Ideal Husband is ever truthful, too,” said the landlady, with a +smile as broad as any.</p> + +<p>“Well, it’s too bad, I think,” said the Lawyer, “that a man has to be +verging on sixty-three to be an Ideal Husband. I’m only forty-four, and +I should hate to think that if I should happen to get married within the +next two or three years my wife would have to wait at least fifteen +years before she could find me all that I ought to be. Moreover, I have +been told that I have black eyes.”</p> + +<p>“With the unerring precision of a trained legal mind,” said the Idiot, +“you have unwittingly put your finger on the crux of the whole matter, +Mr. Brief. Mrs. Pedagog has been describing <em>her</em> Ideal Husband, and I +am delighted to know that what I have always suspected to be the case is +in fact the truth: that <em>her</em> husband in her eyes is an ideal one. +That’s the way it ought to be, and that is why we have always found her +the sweetest of landladies, but because Mrs. Pedagog prefers Mr. Pedagog +in this race for supremacy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> in the domain of a woman’s heart is no +reason why you who are only bald-headed in your temper, like most of us, +should not prove to be equally the ideal of some other woman—in fact, +of several others. Women are not all alike. As a matter of fact, a +gentleman named Balzac, who was the Marie Corelli of his age in France, +once committed himself to the inference that no two women ever were +alike, so that, if you grant the truth of old Balzac’s inference, the +Ideal Husband will probably vary to the extent of the latest count of +the number of women in the world. So why give up hope because you are +only forty-nine?”</p> + +<p>“Forty-four,” corrected the Lawyer.</p> + +<p>“Pardon me—forty-four,” said the Idiot. “When you are in the roaring +forties, five or six years more or less do not really count. Lots of men +who are really only forty-two behave like sixty, and I know one old +duffer of forty-nine who has the manners of eighteen. The age question +does not really count.”</p> + +<p>“No—you are proof of that,” said the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> Bibliomaniac. “You have been +twenty-four years old for the last fifteen years.”</p> + +<p>“Thank you, Mr. Bib,” said the Idiot. “You are one of the few people in +the world who really understand me. I have tried to be twenty-four for +the past fifteen years, and if I have succeeded, so much the better for +me. It’s a beautiful age. You feel that you know so much when you’re +twenty-four. If it should turn out to be the answer to ‘How old is Ann?’ +the lady should be congratulated. But, as a matter of fact, you can be +an Ideal Husband at any old age.”</p> + +<p>“Humph! At seven, for instance?” drawled Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“Seven is not any old age,” retorted the Idiot. “It is a very certain +old youth. Nor does it depend upon the color of the eyes, so long as +they are neither green nor red. Nobody could ever make an Ideal Husband +out of a green-eyed man, or a chap given to the red eye, either—”</p> + +<p>“It all depends upon the kind of a man you are, eh?” said the +Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> +“Not a bit of it,” said the Idiot. “It depends on the kind of wife +you’ve got, and that’s why I say that the Ideal Husband varies to the +extent of the latest count of the women in the world. Take the case of +Mr. Pedagog here. Mrs. Pedagog accuses him of being an Ideal Husband, +and he, without any attempt at evasion, acknowledges the corn, like the +honorable gentleman he is. But can you imagine Mr. Pedagog being an +Ideal Husband to some lady in the Four Hundred, with a taste for grand +opera that strikes only on the box; with a love for Paris gowns that are +worth a fortune; with the midnight supper and cotillion after habit +firmly intrenched in her character; with an ambition to shine all summer +at Newport, all autumn at Lenox, all winter at New York, with a dash to +England and France in the merry, merry springtime? Do you suppose our +friend John Pedagog here would be in it with Tommie Goldilocks Van +Varick as the Ideal Husband of such a woman? Not on your life. Well, +then, take Tommie Goldilocks Van Varick, who’d be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> the Ideal Spouse of +this brilliant social light Mrs. Van Varick. How would he suit Mrs. +Pedagog, rising at eleven-thirty every day and yelling like mad for the +little blue bottle which clears the head from the left-over cobwebs of +yesterday; eating his egg and drinking his coffee with a furrow in his +brow almost as deep as the pallor of his cheek, and now and then making +a most awful grimace because the interior of his mouth feels like a +bargain day at the fur-counter of a department store; spending his +afternoon sitting in the window of the Hunky Dory Club ogling the +passers-by and making bets on such important questions as whether more +hansoms pass up the Avenue than down, or whether the proportion of +red-haired girls to white horses is as great between three and four <small>P.M.</small> +as between five and six—”</p> + +<p>“I don’t see how a woman could stand a man like that,” said Mrs. +Pedagog. “Indeed, I don’t see where his ideal qualities come in, anyhow, +Mr. Idiot. I think you are wrong in putting him among the Ideal Husbands +even for Mrs. Van Varick.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +“No, I am not wrong, for he is indeed the very essence of her ideal +because he doesn’t make her stand him,” said the Idiot. “He never +bothers Mrs. Van Varick at all. On the first of every month he sends her +a check for a good round sum with which she can pay her bills. He +presents her with a town house and a country house, and a Limousine car, +and all the furs she can possibly want; provides her with an opera-box, +and never fails, when he himself goes to the opera, to call upon her and +pay his respects like a gentleman. If she sustains heavy losses at +bridge, he makes them good, and when she gives a dinner to her set, or +to some distinguished social lion from other zoos, Van Varick is always +on hand to do the honors of his house, and what is supposed to be his +table. He and Mrs. Van Varick are on the most excellent terms; in fact, +he treats her with more respect than he does any other woman he knows, +never even suggesting the idea of a flirtation with her. In other words, +he does not interfere with her in any way, which is the only kind of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +man in the world she could be happy with.”</p> + +<p>“It’s perfectly awful!” cried Mrs. Pedagog. “If they never see each +other, what on earth did they ever get married for?”</p> + +<p>“Protection,” said the Idiot. “And it is perfectly splendid in its +results. Mrs. Van Varick, being married to so considerate an absentee, +is able to go about very much as she pleases backed with the influence +and affluence of the Van Varick name. This as plain little Miss Floyd +Poselthwaite she was unable to do. She has now an assured position, and +is protected against the chance of marrying a man who, unlike Van +Varick, would growl at her expenditures, object to her friends, and +insist upon coming home to dinner every night, and occasionally turn up +at breakfast.”</p> + +<p>“Sweet life,” said the Bibliomaniac. “And what does the Willieboy +husband get out of it?”</p> + +<p>“Pride, protection, and freedom,” said the Idiot. “He’s as proud as +Punch when he sees Mrs. Van V. swelling about town with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> her name kept +as standing matter in every society column in the country. His freedom +he enjoys, just as she enjoys hers. If he doesn’t turn up for six weeks +she never asks any questions, and so Van Varick can live on easy terms +with the truth. If he sits up all night over a game of cards, there’s +nobody to chide him for doing so, and—”</p> + +<p>“But where does his protection come in? That’s what I can’t see,” said +the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“It’s as plain as a pike-staff,” said the Idiot. “With Mrs. Van Varick +on the <em>tapis</em>, Tommie is safe from designing ladies who might marry him +for his money.”</p> + +<p>“Well, he’s a mighty poor ideal!” cried Mr. Pedagog.</p> + +<p>“He certainly would not do for Mrs. Pedagog,” said the Idiot. “But you +would yourself be no better for Mrs. Van Varick. The red Indian makes an +Ideal Husband for the squaw, but he’d never suit a daughter of the +British nobility any more than the Duke of Lacklands would make a good +husband for dusky little Minnehaha. So I say<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> what’s the use of +discussing the matter any further with the purpose of arbitrarily +settling on what it is that constitutes an Ideal Husband? We may all +hope to be considered such if we only find the girl that likes our +particular kind.”</p> + +<p>“Then,” said Mr. Brief, with a smile, “your advice to me is not to +despair, eh?”</p> + +<p>“That’s it,” said the Idiot. “I wouldn’t give up, if I were you. There’s +no telling when some one will come along to whom you appear to be the +perfect creature.”</p> + +<p>“Good!” cried Mr. Brief. “You are mighty kind. I don’t suppose you can +give me a hint as to how soon I may expect to meet the lady?”</p> + +<p>“Well—no, I can’t,” said the Idiot. “I don’t believe even Edison could +tell you about when to look for arrivals from Mars.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +<a name="iii" id="iii"></a>III<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">THE IDIOT’S VALENTINE</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">WELL, old man,” said the Poet, as the Idiot entered the breakfast-room +on the morning of Valentine’s day, “how did old St. Valentine treat you? +Any results worth speaking of?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, the usual lay-out,” returned the Idiot, languidly. “Nine hundred +and forty-two passionate declarations of undying affection from unknown +lady friends in all parts of the civilized world; one thousand three +hundred and twenty-four highly colored but somewhat insulting +intimations that I had better go ’way back and sit down from hitherto +unsuspected gentlemen friends scattered from Maine to California; one +small can of salt marked ‘St. Valentine to the Idiot,’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> with sundry +allusions to the proper medical treatment of the latter’s freshness, and +a small box containing a rubber bottle-stopper labelled ‘Cork up and +bust.’ I can’t complain.”</p> + +<p>“Well, you did come in for your share of it, didn’t you?” said Mr. +Brief.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the Idiot, “I think I got all that was coming to me, and I +wouldn’t have minded it if I hadn’t had to pay three dollars over-due +postage on ’em. I don’t bother much if some anonymous chap off in the +wilds of Kalikajoo takes the trouble to send me a funny picture of a +monkey grinding a hand-organ with ‘the loving regards of your brother,’ +or if somebody else who is afraid of becoming too fond of me sends me a +horse-chestnut with a line to the effect that here is one I haven’t +printed, I don’t feel like getting mad; but when I have to pay the +postage on the plaguey things it strikes me it is rubbing it in a little +too hard, and if I could find two or three of the senders I’d spend an +hour or two of my time banging their heads together.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +“I got off pretty well,” said the Bibliomaniac. “I only got one +valentine, and though it cast some doubt upon the quality of my love for +books, I found it quite amusing. I’ll read it to you.”</p> + +<p>Here the Bibliomaniac took a small paper from his pocket and read the +following lines:</p> + + +<div class="block22"> +<p class="center">“THE HUNGRY BIBLIOMANIAC</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“If only you would cut your books<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As often as your butter,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When people ask you what’s inside<br /></span> +<span class="i2">You wouldn’t sit and sputter.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The reading that hath made <em>you</em> full,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The reading that doth chain you,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is not from books, or woman’s looks,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But fresh from off the menu.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“What do you think +<a name="of" id="of"></a><ins title="Original has or">of</ins> that?” asked the Bibliomaniac, with a +chuckle, as he folded up his valentine and stowed it away in his pocket +once more.</p> + +<p>“I think I can spot the sender,” said the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> Idiot, fixing his eyes +sternly upon the Poet. “It takes genius to get up a rhyme like ‘men’ +and ‘chain you,’ and I know of only one man at this board or at any +other who is equal to the task.”</p> + +<p>“If you mean me,” retorted the Poet, flushing, “you are mightily +mistaken. I wouldn’t waste a rhyme like that on a personal valentine +when I could tack it on to the end of a sonnet and go out and sell it +for two-fifty.”</p> + +<p>“Then you didn’t do it, eh?” demanded the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“No. Did you?” asked the Poet, with his eyes twinkling.</p> + +<p>“Sir,” said the Idiot, “if I had done it, would I have had the +unblushing effrontery to say, as I just now did say, that its author was +a genius?”</p> + +<p>“Well, we’re square, anyhow,” said the Poet. “You cast me under +suspicion, to begin with, and it was only fair that I should whack back. +I got a valentine myself, and I suspect it was from the same hand. It +runs like this:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p> + +<div class="block23"> +<p class="center">“TO THE MINOR POET</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“You do not pluck the fairy flowers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That bloom on high Parnassus,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor do you gather thistles like<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Some of those mystic asses<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who browse about old Helicon<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In hope to fill their tummies;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yours rather are those dandy-lines—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gilt-topped chrysanthemummies—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Quite pleasant stuff<br /></span> +<span class="i4">That ends in fluff—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet when they are beholden<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make all the world look golden.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“Well,” ejaculated the Idiot, “I don’t see what there is in that to make +you angry. Seems to me there’s some very nice compliments in that. For +instance, your stuff when ’tis</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">‘beholden<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Makes all the world look golden,’<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>according to your anonymous correspondent. If he’d been vicious he might +have said something like this:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">‘—withal so supercilious<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They make the whole earth bilious.’”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>The Poet grinned. “I’m not complaining about it. It’s a mighty nice +little verse, I think, and my only regret is that I do not know who the +chap was who sent it. I’d like to thank him. I had an idea you might +help me,” he said, with a searching glance.</p> + +<p>“I will,” said the Idiot. “If the man who sent you that ever reveals his +identity to me I will tell him you fell all over yourself with joy on +receiving his tribute of admiration. How did you come out, Doctor?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, he remembered me, all right,” said the Doctor. “Quite in the same +vein, too, only he’s not so complimentary. He calls me ‘The Humane +Surgeon,’ and runs into rhyme after this fashion:</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“O, Doctor Blank’s a surgeon bold,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A surgeon most humane, sir;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And what he does is e’er devoid<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of ordinary pain, sir.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“If he were called to amputate<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A leg hurt by a bullet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He wouldn’t take a knife and cut—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But with his bill he’d pull it.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“He must have had some experience with you, Doctor,” said the Idiot. “In +fact, he knows you so well that I am inclined to think that the writer +of that valentine lives in this house, and it is just possible that the +culprit is seated at this table at this moment.”</p> + +<p>“I think it very likely,” said the Doctor, dryly. “He’s a fresh young +man, five feet ten inches in height—”</p> + +<p>“Pooh—pooh!” said the Idiot. “That’s the worst description of Mr. Brief +I ever heard. Mr. Brief, in the first place, is not a young man, and he +isn’t fresh—”</p> + +<p>“I didn’t mean Mr. Brief,” said the Doctor, significantly.</p> + +<p>“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself to intimate that Mr. +Whitechoker, a clergyman, would stoop to the writing of such a rhyme as +that,” cried the Idiot. “People nowadays seem to me to be utterly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +lacking in that respect for the cloth to which it is entitled. Mr. +Brief, if you really wrote that thing you owe it to Mr. Whitechoker to +own up and thus relieve him of the suspicion the Doctor has so +unblushingly cast upon him.”</p> + +<p>“I can prove an alibi,” said the Lawyer. “I could no more turn a rhyme +than I could play ‘Parsifal’ on a piano with one finger, and I wouldn’t +if I could. I judge, from what I know of the market value of poems these +days, that that valentine of the Doctor’s is worth about two dollars. It +would take me a century to write it, and inasmuch as my time is worth at +least five dollars a year it stands to reason that I would not put in +five hundred dollars’ worth of effort on a two-dollar job. So that lets +me out. By-the-way, I got one of these trifles myself. Want to hear it?”</p> + +<p>“I am just crazy to hear it,” said the Idiot. “If any man has reduced +you to poetry, Mr. Brief, he’s a great man. With all your many virtues, +you seem to me to fit into a poetical theme about as snugly as an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> +automobile with full power on in a china-shop. By all means let us have +it.”</p> + +<p>“This modern St. Valentine of ours has reduced the profession to verse +with a nicety that elicits my most profound admiration,” said Mr. Brief. +“Just listen to this:</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“The Lawyer is no wooer, yet<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To sue us is his whim.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Lawyer is no tailor, but<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We get our suits from him.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The longest things in all the world—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They are the Lawyer’s briefs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all the joys he gets in life<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Are other people’s griefs.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet spite of all the Lawyer’s faults<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He’s one point rather nice:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He’ll not remain lest you retain<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And <em>never gives</em> advice.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“The author of these valentines,” said the Doctor, “is to be spotted, +the way I diagnose the case, by his desire that professional people +should be constantly giving away their services. He objects to the +Doctor’s bill and he slaps sarcastically at the Lawyer because he +doesn’t <em>give</em> advice. That’s why I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> suspect the Idiot. He’s a +professional Idiot, and yet he gives his idiocy away.”</p> + +<p>“When did I ever give myself away?” demanded the Idiot. “You are talking +wildly, Doctor. The idea of your trying to drag me into this thing is +preposterous. Suppose you show down your valentine and see if it is in +my handwriting.”</p> + +<p>“Mine is typewritten,” said the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“So is mine,” said the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Mine, too,” said the Poet.</p> + +<p>“Same here,” said Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“Well, then,” said the Idiot, “I’m willing to write a page in my own +hand without any attempt to disguise it, and let any handwriting expert +decide as to whether there is the slightest resemblance between my +chirography and these typewritten sheets you hold in your hand.”</p> + +<p>“That’s fair enough,” said Mr. Whitechoker.</p> + +<p>“Besides,” persisted the Idiot, “I’ve received one of the things myself, +and it’ll make your hair curl, if you’ve got any.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> Typewritten like the +rest of ’em. Shall I read it?”</p> + +<p>By common consent the Idiot read the following:</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Idiot, zany, brain of hare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dolt and noodle past compare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Buncombe, bosh, and verbal slosh,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mind of nothing, full of josh,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Madman, donkey, dizzard-pate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">U. S. Zero Syndicate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dull, depressing, lack of wit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Incarnation of the nit.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Minus, numskull, drivelling baby,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Greenhorn, dunce, and dotard Gaby;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the queer and loony chorus<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Found in old Roget’s <em>Thesaurus</em>,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flat and crazy through and through,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That, O Idiot—that is you.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let me tell you, sir, in fine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><em>I</em> won’t be your Valentine.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“What do you think of that?” asked the Idiot, when he had finished. +“Wouldn’t that jar you?”</p> + +<p>“I think it’s perfectly horrid,” said Mrs. Pedagog. “Mary, pass the +pancakes to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> Idiot. Mr. Idiot, let me hand you a full cup of coffee. +John, hand the Idiot the syrup. Why, how a thing like that should be +allowed to go through the mails passes me!”</p> + +<p>And the others all agreed that the landlady’s indignation was justified, +because they were fond of the Idiot in spite of his faults. They would +not see him abused, at any rate.</p> + +<hr class="hr3" /> + +<p>“Say, old man,” said the Poet, later, “I really thought you sent those +other valentines until you read yours.”</p> + +<p>“I thought you would,” said the Idiot. “That’s the reason why I worked +up that awful one on myself. That relieves me of all suspicion.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +<a name="iv" id="iv"></a>IV<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">HE DISCUSSES FINANCE</span></h2> + + +<p class="cap">A MESSENGER had just brought a “collect” telegram for the Doctor, and +that gentleman, after going through all his pockets, and finding nothing +but a bunch of keys and a prescription-pad, made the natural inquiry:</p> + +<p>“Anybody got a quarter?”</p> + +<p>“I have,” said the Idiot. “One of the rare mintage of 1903, circulated +for a short time only and warranted good as new.”</p> + +<p>“I didn’t know the 1903 quarter was rare,” said the Bibliomaniac, who +prided himself on being a numismatist of rare ability. “Who told you the +1903 quarter was rare?”</p> + +<p>“My old friend, Experience,” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> +“What’s rare about it?” demanded the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Why—it’s what they call ready money, spot cash, the real thing with +the water squeezed out, selling at par on sight,” explained the Idiot. +“Millions of people never saw one, and under modern conditions it is +very difficult to amass them in any considerable quantity. What is +worse, even if you happen to get one of them it is next to impossible to +hang on to it without unusual effort. If you have a 1903 quarter in your +pocket, somehow or other the idea that it is in your possession seems to +communicate itself to others, and every effort is made to lure it away +from you on some pretext or other.”</p> + +<p>“Excuse me for interrupting this lecture of yours, Mr. Idiot,” said the +Doctor, amiably, “but would you mind lending me that quarter to pay this +messenger? I’ve left my change in my other clothes.”</p> + +<p>“What did I tell you?” cried the Idiot, triumphantly. “The words are no +sooner out of my mouth than they are verified. Hardly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> a minute elapses +from the time Doctor Capsule learns that I have that quarter before he +puts in an application for it.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I renew the application in spite of its rarity,” laughed the +Doctor. “It’s even rarer with me than it is with you. Shell out—there’s +a good chap.”</p> + +<p>“I will if you’ll put up a dollar for security,” said the Idiot, +extracting the coin from his pocket, “and give me a demand note at +thirty days for the quarter.”</p> + +<p>“I haven’t got a dollar,” said the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“Well, what other collateral have you to offer?” asked the Idiot. “I +won’t take buckwheat-cakes, or muffins, or your share of the sausages, +mind you. They come under the head of wild-cat securities—here to-day +and gone to-morrow.”</p> + +<p>“My, but you’re a Shylock!” ejaculated Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“Not a bit of it,” retorted the Idiot. “If I were Shylock I’d be willing +to take a steak for security, but there’s none of the pound of flesh +business about me. I simply proceed cautiously, like any modern +financial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> institution that intends to stay in the ring more than two +weeks. I’m not one of your fortnightly trust companies with an oak +table, an unpaid bill for office rent, and a patent reversible +disappearing president for its assets. I do business on the +national-bank principle: millions for the rich, but not one cent for the +man that needs the money.”</p> + +<p>“I tell you what I’ll do,” said the Doctor. “If you’ll lend me that +quarter, I won’t charge you a cent for my professional services next +time you need them.”</p> + +<p>“That’s a large offer, but I’m afraid of it,” replied the Idiot. “It +partakes of the nature of a speculation. It’s dealing in futures, which +is not a safe thing for a financial institution to do, I don’t care how +solid it is. You don’t catch the Chemistry National Bank lending money +to anybody on mere prospects, and, what is more, in my case, I’d have to +get sick to win out. No, Doctor, that proposition does not appeal to +me.”</p> + +<p>“Looks hopeless, doesn’t it,” said the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> Doctor. “Mary, tell the boy to +wait while I run up-stairs—”</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t do that,” said the Idiot, interrupting. “The matter can be +arranged in another way. I honestly don’t like to lend money, believing +with Polonius that it’s a bad thing to do. As the Governor of North +Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina, who owed him a hundred +dollars, ‘It’s a long time between payments on account,’ and that sort +of thing breaks up families, not to mention friendships. But I will +match you for it.”</p> + +<p>“How can I match when I haven’t anything to match with?” said the +Doctor, growing a trifle irritable.</p> + +<p>“You can match your credit against my quarter,” said the Idiot. “We can +make it a mental match—a sort of Christian Science gamble. What am I +thinking of, heads or tails?”</p> + +<p>“Heads,” said the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“By Jove, that’s hard luck!” ejaculated the Idiot. “You lose. I was +thinking of tails.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +“Oh, thunder!” cried the Doctor, impatiently.</p> + +<p>“Try it again, double or quits. What am I thinking of?” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“Heads,” repeated the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“Somebody must have told you. Heads it is. You win. We are quits, +Doctor,” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“But I am still without the quarter,” the physician observed.</p> + +<p>“Yep,” said the Idiot. “But there’s one more way out of it. I’ll buy the +telegram from you—C.O.D.”</p> + +<p>“Done,” said the Doctor, holding out the message. “Here’s your goods.”</p> + +<p>“And there’s your money,” said the Idiot, tossing the quarter across the +table. “If you want to buy this message back at any time within the next +sixty days, Doctor, I’ll give you the refusal of it without extra +charge.”</p> + +<p>And he folded the paper up and put it away in his pocketbook.</p> + +<p>“Do the banks really ask for so much security when they make a loan?” +asked the Poet.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> +“Hear him, will you!” cried the Idiot. “There’s your lucky man. He’s +never had to face a bank president in order to avoid the cold glances of +the grocer. No cashier ever asked him how many times he had been +sentenced to states-prison before he’d discount his note. Do they ask +security? Security isn’t the name for it. They demand a blockade, +establish a quarantine. They require the would-be debtor to build up a +wall as high as Chimborazo and as invulnerable as Gibraltar between them +and the loss before they will part with a dime. Why, they wouldn’t +discount a note to his own order for Andrew Carnegie for seventeen cents +without his indorsement. Do they ask security!”</p> + +<p>“Well, I didn’t know,” said the Poet. “I never had anything to do with +banks except as a small depositor in the savings-bank.”</p> + +<p>“Fortunate man,” said the Idiot. “I wish I could say as much. I borrowed +five hundred dollars once from a bank, and what the deuce do you suppose +they did?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know,” said the Poet. “What?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +“They made me pay it back,” said the Idiot, mournfully, “although I +needed it just as much when it was due as when I borrowed it. The +cashier was a friend of mine, too. But I got even with ’em. I refused to +borrow another cent from their darned old institution. They lost my +custom then and there. If it hadn’t been for that inconsiderate act I +should probably have gone on borrowing from them for years, and instead +of owing them nothing to-day, as I do, I should have been their debtor +to the tune of two or three thousand dollars.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t you take any stock in what the Idiot tells you in that matter, +Mr. Poet,” said Mr. Brief. “The national banks are perfectly justified +in protecting themselves as they do. If they didn’t demand collateral +security they’d be put out of business in fifteen minutes by people like +the Idiot, who consider it a hardship to have to pay up.”</p> + +<p>“As the lady said when she was asked the name of her favorite author, +‘Pshaw!’” retorted the Idiot. “Likewise fudge—a whole panful of fudges! +I don’t object to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> paying my debts; fact is, I know of no greater +pleasure. What I do object to is the kind of collateral the banks +demand. They always want something a man hasn’t got and, in most cases, +hasn’t any chance of getting. If I had a thousand-dollar bond I wouldn’t +need to borrow five hundred dollars, yet when I go to the bank and ask +for the five hundred the thousand-dollar bond is what they ask for.”</p> + +<p>“Not always,” said Mr. Brief. “If you can get your note indorsed you can +get the money.”</p> + +<p>“That’s true enough, but fellows like myself can’t always find a captain +of industry who is willing to take a long-shot to do the indorsing,” +said the Idiot. “Besides, under the indorsement plan you merely ask +another man to be responsible for your debt, and that isn’t fair. The +whole system is wrong. Every man to his own collateral, I say. Give me +the bank that will lend money to the chap that needs it on the security +of his own product. Mr. Whitechoker, say, is short on cash and long on +sermons. My<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> style of bank would take one barrel of his sermons and salt +’em down in the safe-deposit company as security for the money he needs. +The Poet here, finding the summer approaching and not a cent in hand to +replenish his wardrobe, should be able to secure an advance of two or +three hundred dollars on his sonnets, rondeaux, and lyrics—one dollar +for each two-and-a-half-dollar sonnet, and so on. The grocer should be +able to borrow money on his dried apples, his vinegar pickles, his +canned asparagus, and other non-perishable assets, such as dog-biscuit, +Roquefort cheese, and California raisins. The tailor seeking an +accommodation of five hundred dollars should not be asked how many times +he has been sentenced to jail for arson, and required to pay in ten +thousand shares of Steel common, in order to get his grip on the +currency, but should be approached appropriately and asked how many +pairs of trousers he is willing to pledge as security for the loan.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know where I would come in on that proposition,” said the +Doctor. “There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> are times when we physicians need money, too.”</p> + +<p>“Pooh!” said the Idiot. “You are not a non-producer. It doesn’t take a +very smart doctor these days to produce patients, does it? You could +assign your cases to the bank. One little case of hypochondria alone +ought to be a sufficient guarantee of a steady income for years, +properly managed. If you haven’t learned how to keep your patients in +such shape that they have to send for you two or three times a week, +you’d better go back to the medical school and fit yourself for your +real work in life. You never knew a plumber to be so careless of his +interests as to clean up a job all at once, and what the plumber is to +the household, the physician should be to the individual. Same way with +Mr. Brief. With the machinery of the law in its present shape there is +absolutely no excuse for a lawyer who settles any case inside of fifteen +years, by which time it is reasonable to suppose his client will get +into some new trouble that will keep him going as a paying concern for +fifteen more. There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> isn’t a field of human endeavor in which a man +applies himself industriously that does not produce something that +should be a negotiable security.”</p> + +<p>“How about burglars?” queried the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“I stand corrected,” said the Idiot. “The burglar is an exception, but +then he is an exception also at the banks. The expert burglar very +seldom leaves any security for what he gets at the banks, and so he +isn’t affected by the situation one way or the other.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well,” said Mr. Brief, rising, “it’s only a pipe-dream all the way +through. They might start in on such a proposition, but it would never +last. When you went in to borrow fifteen dollars, putting up your idiocy +as collateral, the emptiness of the whole scheme would reveal itself.”</p> + +<p>“You never can tell,” observed the Idiot. “Even under their present +system the banks have done worse than that.”</p> + +<p>“Never!” cried the Lawyer.</p> + +<p>“Yes, sir,” replied the Idiot. “Only the other day I saw in the papers +that a bank<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> out in Oklahoma had loaned a man ten thousand dollars on +sixty thousand shares of Hot Air preferred.”</p> + +<p>“And is that worse than Idiocy?” demanded Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“Infinitely,” said the Idiot. “If a bank lost fifteen dollars on my +idiocy it would be out ninety-nine hundred and eighty-five dollars less +than that Oklahoma institution is on its hot-air loan.”</p> + +<p>“Bosh! What’s Hot Air worth on the Exchange to-day?”</p> + +<p>“As a selling proposition, zero and commissions off,” said the Idiot. +“Fact is, they’ve changed its name. It is now known as International +Nitting.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +<a name="v" id="v"></a>V<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">HE SUGGESTS A COMIC OPERA</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">THERE’S a harvest for you,” said the Idiot, as he perused a recently +published criticism of a comic opera. “There have been thirty-nine new +comic operas produced this year and four of ’em were worth seeing. It is +very evident that the Gilbert and Sullivan industry hasn’t gone to the +wall whatever slumps other enterprises have suffered from.”</p> + +<p>“That is a goodly number,” said the Poet. “Thirty-nine, eh? I knew there +was a raft of them, but I had no idea there were as many as that.”</p> + +<p>“Why don’t you go in and do one, Mr. Poet?” suggested the Idiot. “They +tell me +<a name="its1" id="its1"></a><ins title="Original has its">it’s</ins> as easy as rolling off a log. All you’ve got<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> to do +is to forget all your ideas and remember all the old jokes you ever +heard, slap ’em together around a lot of dances, write two dozen lyrics +about some Googoo Belle, hire a composer, and there you are. Hanged if I +haven’t thought of writing one myself.”</p> + +<p>“I fancy it isn’t as easy as it looks,” observed the Poet. “It requires +just as much thought to be thoughtless as it does to be thoughtful.”</p> + +<p>“Nonsense,” said the Idiot. “I’d undertake the job cheerfully if some +manager would make it worth my while, and, what’s more, if I ever got +into the swing of the business I’ll bet I could turn out a libretto a +day for three days of the week for the next two months.”</p> + +<p>“If I had your confidence I’d try it,” laughed the Poet, “but, alas! in +making me Nature did not design a confidence man.”</p> + +<p>“Nonsense, again,” said the Idiot. “Any man who can get the editors to +print sonnets to ‘Diana’s Eyebrow,’ and little lyrics of Madison Square, +Longacre Square, Battery Place, and Boston Common, the way you do,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> has +a right to consider himself an adept at bunco. I tell you what I’ll do +with you: I’ll swap off my confidence for your lyrical facility, and see +what I can do. Why can’t we collaborate and get up a libretto for next +season? They tell me there’s large money in it.”</p> + +<p>“There certainly is if you catch on,” said the Poet. “Vastly more than +in any other kind of writing that I know. I don’t know but that I would +like to collaborate with you on something of the sort. What is your +idea?”</p> + +<p>“Mind’s a blank on the subject,” sighed the Idiot. “That’s the reason I +think I can turn the trick. As I said before, you don’t need ideas. +Better go without ’em. Just sit down and write.”</p> + +<p>“But you must have some kind of a story,” persisted the Poet.</p> + +<p>“Not to begin with,” said the Idiot. “Just write your choruses and +songs, slap in your jokes, fasten ’em together, and the thing is done. +First act, get your hero and heroine into trouble. Second act, get ’em +out.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +“And for the third?” queried the Poet.</p> + +<p>“Don’t have a third,” said the Idiot. “A third is always superfluous; +but, if you must have it, make up some kind of a vaudeville show and +stick it in between the first and second.”</p> + +<p>“Tush!” said the Bibliomaniac. “That would make a gay comic opera.”</p> + +<p>“Of course it would, Mr. Bib,” the Idiot agreed. “And that’s what we +want. If there’s anything in this world that I hate more than another it +is a sombre comic opera. I’ve been to a lot of ’em, and I give you my +word of honor that next to a funeral a comic opera that lacks gayety is +one of the most depressing functions known to modern science. Some of +’em are enough to make an undertaker weep with jealous rage. I went to +one of ’em last week called ‘The Skylark,’ with an old chum of mine who +is a surgeon. You can imagine what sort of a thing it was when I tell +you that after the first act he suggested we leave the theatre and come +back here and have some fun cutting my leg off. He vowed that if he +ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> went to another opera by the same people he’d take ether +beforehand.”</p> + +<p>“I shouldn’t think that would be necessary,” sneered the Bibliomaniac. +“If it was as bad as all that, why didn’t it put you to sleep?”</p> + +<p>“It did,” said the Idiot. “But the music kept waking us up again. There +was no escape from it except that of actual physical flight.”</p> + +<p>“Well, about this collaboration of ours,” suggested the Poet. “What do +you think we should do first?”</p> + +<p>“Write an opening chorus, of course,” said the Idiot. “What did you +suppose? A finale? Something like this:</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“If you want to know who we are,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Just ask the Evening Star,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As he smiles on high<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In the deep-blue sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With his tralala-la-la-la.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We are maidens sweet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With tripping feet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the googoo eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the skippity-hi’s,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the smile of the fair gazoo;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And you’ll find our names<br /></span> +<span class="i0">’Mongst the wondrous dames<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the Who’s Who-hoo-hoo-hoo.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“Get that sung with spirit by sixty-five ladies with blond wigs and gold +slippers, otherwise dressed up in the uniform of a troop of Russian +cavalry, and you’ve got your venture launched.”</p> + +<p>“Where can you find people like that?” asked the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“New York’s full of ’em,” replied the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“I don’t mean the people to act that sort of thing—but where would you +lay your scene?” explained the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Oh, any old place in the Pacific Ocean,” said the Idiot. “Make your own +geography—everybody else does. There’s a million islands out there of +one kind or another, and as defenceless as a two-weeks’-old infant. If +you want a real one, fish it out and fire ahead. If you don’t, make one +up for yourself and call it ‘The Isle of Piccolo,’ or something of that +sort. After you’ve got your chorus going, introduce your villain, who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> +should be a man with a deep bass voice and a piratical past. He’s the +chap who rules the roost and is going to marry the heroine to-morrow. +That will make a bully song:</p> + +<div class="block28"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2o">“I’m a pirate bold<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With a heart so cold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That it turns the biggest joys to solemn sorrow;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the hero-ine,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With her eyes so fine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am going to—marry—to-morrow.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">CHORUS</span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“He is go-ing to-marry—to-morrow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The maid with a heart full of sorrow;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For her we are sorry<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For she weds to-morry—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She is going to-marry—to-morrow.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“Gee!” added the Idiot, enthusiastically, “can’t you almost hear that +already?”</p> + +<p>“I am sorry to say,” said Mr. Brief, “that I can. You ought to call your +heroine Drivelina.”</p> + +<p>“Splendid!” cried the Idiot. “Drivelina goes. Well, then, on comes +Drivelina, and this beast of a pirate grabs her by the hand and makes +love to her as if he thought wooing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> was a game of snap-the-whip. She +sings a soprano solo of protest, and the pirate summons his hirelings to +cast Drivelina into a Donjuan cell, when boom! an American war-ship +appears on the horizon. The crew, under the leadership of a man with a +squeaky tenor voice, named Lieutenant Somebody or Other, comes ashore, +puts Drivelina under the protection of the American flag, while his crew +sing the following:</p> + +<div class="block30"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“We are jackies, jackies, jackies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And we smoke the best tobaccys<br /></span> +<span class="i2">You can find from Zanzibar to Honeyloo.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And we fight for Uncle Sammy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yes, indeed we do, for damme<br /></span> +<span class="i2">You can bet your life that that’s the thing to do,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Doodle-do!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">You can bet your life that that’s the thing to +doodle—doodle—doodle—doodle-do.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“Eh! What?” demanded the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“Well—what yourself?” asked the Lawyer. “This is your job. What next?”</p> + +<p>“Well—the pirate gets lively, tries to assassinate the lieutenant, who +kills half<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> the natives with his sword, and is about to slay the pirate +when he discovers that he is his long-lost father,” said the Idiot. “The +heroine then sings a pathetic love-song about her baboon baby, in a +green light to the accompaniment of a lot of pink satin monkeys banging +cocoanut-shells together. This drowsy lullaby puts the lieutenant and +his forces to sleep, and the curtain falls on their capture by the +pirate and his followers, with the chorus singing:</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Hooray for the pirate bold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With his pockets full of gold;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He’s going to marry to-morrow.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">To-morrow he’ll marry,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Yes, by the Lord Harry,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He’s go-ing—to-marry—to-mor-row!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And that’s a thing to doodle—doodle-doo.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“There,” said the Idiot, after a pause. “How is that for a first act?”</p> + +<p>“It’s about as lucid as most of them,” said the Poet, “but, after all, +you have got a story there, and you said you didn’t need one.”</p> + +<p>“I said you didn’t need one to start with,” corrected the Idiot. “And +I’ve proved it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> I didn’t have that story in mind when I started. That’s +where the easiness of the thing comes in. Why, I didn’t even have to +think of a name for the heroine. The inspiration for that popped right +out of Mr. Brief’s mouth as smoothly as though the name Drivelina had +been written on his heart for centuries. Then the title—‘The Isle of +Piccolo’—that’s a dandy, and I give you my word of honor, I’d never +even thought of a title for the opera until that revealed itself like a +flash from the blue; and as for the coon song, ‘My Baboon Baby,’ there’s +a chance there for a Zanzibar act that will simply make Richard Wagner +and Reginald de Koven writhe with jealousy. Can’t you imagine the lilt +of it:</p> + +<div class="block30"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2o">“My bab-boon—ba-habee,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My bab-boon—ba-habee—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I love you dee-her-lee<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yes dee-hee-hee-er-lee.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My baboon—ba-ha-bee,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My baboon—ba-ha-bee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My baboon—ba-hay-hay-hay-hay-hay-hay-bee-bee.”<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></div></div></div> + +<p>“And all those pink satin monkeys bumping their cocoanut-shells together +in the green moonlight—”</p> + +<p>“Well, after the first act, what?” asked the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“The usual intermission,” said the Idiot. “You don’t have to write that. +The audience generally knows what to do.”</p> + +<p>“But your second act?” asked the Poet.</p> + +<p>“Oh, come off,” said the Idiot, rising. “We were to do this thing in +collaboration. So far, I’ve done the whole blooming business. I’ll leave +the second act to you. When you collaborate, Mr. Poet, you’ve got to do +a little colabbing on your own account. What did you think you were to +do—collect the royalties?”</p> + +<p>“I’m told,” said the Lawyer, “that that is sometimes the hardest thing +to do in a comic opera.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I’ll be self-sacrificing,” said the Idiot, “and bear my full +share of it.”</p> + +<p>“It seems to me,” said the Bibliomaniac, “that that opera produced in +the right place might stand a chance of a run.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> +“Thank you,” said the Idiot. “After all, Mr. Bib, you are a man of some +penetration. How long a run?”</p> + +<p>“One consecutive night,” said the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Ah—and where?” demanded the Idiot, with a smile.</p> + +<p>“At Bloomingdale,” answered the Bibliomaniac, severely.</p> + +<p>“That’s a very good idea,” said the Idiot. “When you go back there, Mr. +Bib, I wish you’d suggest it to the superintendent.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> +<a name="vi" id="vi"></a>VI<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">HE DISCUSSES FAME</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">MR. POET,” said the Idiot, the other morning as his friend, the +Rhymster, took his place beside him at the breakfast-table, “tell me: +How long have you been writing poetry?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I don’t know,” said the Poet, modestly. “I don’t know that I’ve +ever written any. I’ve turned out a lot of rhymes in my day, and have +managed to make a fair living with them, but poetry is a different +thing. The divine afflatus doesn’t come to every one, you know; and I +doubt if anybody will be able to say whether my work has shown an +occasional touch of inspiration, or not until I have been dead fifty or +a hundred years.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> +“Tut!” exclaimed the Idiot. “That’s all nonsense. I am able to say now +whether or not your work shows the occasional touch of inspiration. It +does. In fact, it shows more than that. It shows a semi-occasional touch +of inspiration. How long have you been in the business?”</p> + +<p>“Eighteen years,” sighed the Poet. “I began when I was twelve with a +limerick. As I remember the thing, it went like this:</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“There was a young man of Cohasset<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Turned on the red-hot water-faucet.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When asked: ‘Is it hot?’<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He answered, ‘Well, thot<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is a pretty mild way for to class it.’”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“Good!” said the Idiot. “That wasn’t a bad beginning for a boy of +twelve.”</p> + +<p>“So my family thought,” said the Poet. “My mother sent it to the Under +the Evening Lamp Department of our town paper, and three weeks later I +was launched. I’ve had the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">cacœthes scribendi</i> ever since—but, +alas! I got more fame in that brief hour of success than I have ever +been able to win since. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> is a mighty hard job, Mr. Idiot, making a +name for yourself these days.”</p> + +<p>“That’s the point I was getting at,” said the Idiot, “and I wanted to +have a talk with you on the subject. I’ve read a lot of your stuff in +the past eight or ten years, and, in my humble judgment, it is better +than any of that rhymed nonsense of Henry Wintergreen Boggs, whose name +appears in the newspapers every day in the year; of Susan Aldershot +Spinks, whose portrait is almost as common an occurrence in the papers +as that of Lydia Squinkham; of Circumflex Jones, the eminent +sweet-singer of Arizona; or of Henderson Hartley MacFadd, the Canadian +Browning, of whom the world is constantly hearing so much. I have +wondered if you were going about it in the right way. What is your plan +for winning fame?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I keep plodding away, doing the best I can all the while,” said the +Poet. “If there’s any good in my stuff, or any stuff in my goods, I’ll +get my reward some day.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +“Fifty or a hundred years after you’re dead, eh?” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” smiled the Poet.</p> + +<p>“Well—your board-bills won’t be high then, anyhow,” said the Idiot. +“That’s one satisfaction, I presume. They tell me Homer hasn’t eaten a +thing for over twenty centuries. Seems to me, though, that if I were a +poet I’d go in for a little fame while I was alive. It’s all very nice +to work the skin off your knuckles, and to twist your gray matter inside +out until it crocks and fades, so that your great-grandchildren can +swell around the country sporting a name that has become a household +word, but I’m blessed if I care for that sort of thing. I don’t believe +in storing up caramels for some twenty-first-century baby that bears my +name to cut his teeth on, when I have a sweet tooth of my own that is +pining away for the lack of nourishment; and, if I were you, I’d go in +for the new method. What if Browning and Tennyson and Longfellow and Poe +did have to labor for years to win the laurel crown, that’s no reason +why you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> should do it. You might just as well reason that because your +forefathers went from one city to another in a stage-coach you should +eschew railways.”</p> + +<p>“I quite agree with you,” replied the Poet. “But in literature there is +no royal road to fame that I know of.”</p> + +<p>“What!” cried the Idiot. “No royal road to fame in letters! Why, where +have you been living all these years, Mr. Poet? This is the age of the +Get Fame-Quick Scheme. You can make a reputation in five minutes, if you +only know the ropes. I know of at least two department stores where you +can go and buy all you want of it, and in all its grades—from notoriety +down to the straight goods.”</p> + +<p>“Fame? At a department store!” put in Mr. Whitechoker, incredulously.</p> + +<p>“Certainly,” said the Idiot. “Ready-made laurels on demand. Why not? +It’s the easiest thing in the world. Fact is, between you and me, I am +considering a plan now for the promoting of a corporation to be called +the United States Fame Company,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> Limited, the main purpose of which +shall be to earn money for its stockholders by making its customers +famous at so much per head. It won’t make any difference whether the +customer wishes to be famous as an actor, a novelist, or a poet, or any +other old thing. We’ll turn the trick for him, and guarantee him more +than a taste of immortality.”</p> + +<p>“You may put me down for four dollars’ worth of notoriety,” said Mr. +Brief, with a laugh.</p> + +<p>“All right,” said the Idiot, dryly. “There’s a lot in your profession +who like the cheap sort. But I warn you in advance that if you go in for +cheap notoriety, you’ll find it a pretty hard job getting anybody to +sell you any eighteen-karat distinction later.”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said the Poet, “I don’t know that I can promise to be one of +your customers until I know something of the quality of the fame you +have to sell. Tell me of somebody you’ve made a name for, and I’ll take +the matter into consideration if I like the style of laurel you have +placed on his brow.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +“Lean over here and I’ll whisper,” said the Idiot. “I don’t mind telling +you, but I don’t believe in giving away the secrets of the trade to the +rest of these gentlemen.”</p> + +<p>The Poet did as he was bade, and the Idiot whispered a certain great +name in his ear.</p> + +<p>“No!” cried the Poet, incredulously.</p> + +<p>“Yes, sir. Fact!” said the Idiot. “He was made famous in a night. The +first thing we did was to get him to elongate his signature. He was +writing as—P. K. Dubbins we’ll call him, for the sake of the argument. +Now a name like that couldn’t be made great under any circumstances +whatsoever, so we made him write it out in full: Philander Kenilworth +Dubbins—regular broadside, you see. P. K. Dubbins was a pop-shot, but +Philander Kenilworth Dubbins spreads out like a dum-dum bullet or hits +you like a blast from a Gatling gun. Printed, it takes up a whole line +of a newspaper column; put at the top of an advertisement, it strikes +the eye with the convincing force of a circus-poster. You can’t help +seeing it, and it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> makes, when spoken, a mouthful that is nothing short +of impressive and sonorous.”</p> + +<p>“Still,” suggested Mr. Brief, with a wink at the Bibliomaniac, “you have +only multiplied your difficulties by three. If it was hard for your +friend Dubbins to make one name famous, I can’t see that he improves +matters by trying to make three names famous.”</p> + +<p>“On the modern business principle that to accomplish anything you must +work on a large scale,” said the Idiot. “Philander Kenilworth Dubbins +was a better proposition than P. K. Dubbins. The difference between them +in the mere matter of potentialities is the difference between a corner +grocery and a department store, or a kite with a tail and one without. +Well, having created the name, the next thing to do was to exploit it, +and we advertised Dubbins for all there was in him. We got Mr. William +Jones Brickbat, the eminent novelist, to say that he had read Dubbins’s +poems, and had not yet died; we got Edward Pinkham, the author of “The +Man with the Watering-pot,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> to send us a type-written letter, saying +that Dubbins was a coming man, and that his latest book, <i>Howls from +Helicon</i>, contained many inspired lines. But, best of all, we prevailed +upon the manufacturers of celluloid soap to print a testimonial from +Dubbins himself, saying that there was no other soap like it in the +market. That brought his name prominently before every magazine-reader +in the country, because the celluloid-soap people are among the biggest +advertisers of the day, and everywhere that soap ad went, why, Dubbins’s +testimonial went also, as faithfully as Mary’s Little Lamb. After that +we paid a shirt-making concern down-town to put out a new collar called +“The Helicon,” which they advertised widely with a picture of Dubbins’s +head sticking up out of the middle of it; and, finally, as a crowning +achievement, we leased Dubbins for a year to a five-cent cigar company, +who have placarded the fences, barns, and chicken-coops from Maine to +California with the name of Dubbins—‘Flora Dubbins: The Best Five-Cent +Smoke in the Market.’”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> +“And thus you made the name of Dubbins famous in letters!” sneered the +Doctor.</p> + +<p>“That was only the preliminary canter,” replied the Idiot. “So far, +Dubbins’s greatness was confined to fences, barns, chicken-coops, and +the advertising columns of the magazines. The next thing was to get him +written up in the newspapers. That sort of thing can’t be bought, but +you can acquire it by subtlety. Plan one was to make an after-dinner +speaker out of Dubbins. This was easy. There are a million public +dinners every year, but a limited supply of good speakers; so, with a +little effort, we got Dubbins on five toast-cards, hired a humorist out +in Wisconsin to write five breezy speeches for him, Dubbins committed +them to memory, and they went off like hot-cakes. Morning papers would +come out with Dubbins’s picture printed in between that of Bishop Potter +and a member of the cabinet, who also spoke. Copies of Dubbins’s +speeches were handed to the reporters before the dinner began, so that +it didn’t make any difference whether Dubbins spoke them or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> not—the +papers had ’em next morning just the same, and inside of six months you +couldn’t read an account of any public banquet without running up +against the name of Philander Kenilworth Dubbins.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I declare!” ejaculated Mr. Whitechoker. “What a strange affair!”</p> + +<p>“Then we got Dubbins’s publishers to take a hand,” said the Idiot. “They +issued a monthly budget of gossip concerning their authors, which +newspaper editors all over quoted in their interesting items of the day. +From these paragraphs the public learned that Dubbins wrote between +4 <small>A.M.</small> and breakfast-time; that Dubbins never penned a line +without having a tame rabbit, named Romola, sitting alongside of his +ink-pot; that Dubbins got his ideas for his wonderful poem, ‘The Mystery +of Life,’ from hearing a canary inadvertently whistle a bar of +‘Hiawatha;’ that Dubbins was the best-dressed author in the State of New +York, affecting green plaid waistcoats, pink shirts, and red neckties; +witty things that Dubbins’s boy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> had said about Dubbins’s work to +Dubbins himself were also spread all over the land, until finally +Philander Kenilworth Dubbins became a select series of household words +in every town, city, and hamlet in the United States. And there he is +to-day—a great man, bearing a great name, made for him by his friends. +<i>Howls from Helicon</i> is full of bad poems, but Dubbins is a son of +Parnassus just the same. Now we propose to do it for others. For five +dollars down, Mr. Poet, I’ll make you conspicuous; for ten, I’ll make +you notorious; for fifty, I’ll make you famous; for a hundred, I’ll give +you immortality.”</p> + +<p>“Good!” cried the Poet. “Immortality for a hundred dollars is cheap. +I’ll take that.”</p> + +<p>“You will?” said the Idiot, joyfully. “Put up your money.”</p> + +<p>“All right,” laughed the Poet. “I’ll pay—C. O. D.”</p> + +<p>“Another hundred gone!” moaned the Idiot, as the party broke up and its +members went +<a name="their" id="their"></a><ins title="Original has there">their</ins> several ways. “I think +<a name="its2" id="its2"></a><ins title="Original has its">it’s</ins> +abominable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> that this commercial spirit of the age should have affected +even you poets. You ought to have gone into business, old man, and left +the Muses alone. You’ve got too good a head for poetry.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +<a name="vii" id="vii"></a>VII<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">ON THE DECADENCE OF APRIL-FOOL’S-DAY</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">I AM sorry to observe,” said the Idiot, as he sat down at the +breakfast-table yesterday morning, “that the good old customs of my +youthful days are dying out by slow degrees, and the celebrations that +once filled my childish soul with glee are no longer a part of the +pleasures of the young. Actually, Mr. Whitechoker, I got through the +whole day yesterday without sitting on a single pin or smashing my toes +against a brickbat hid beneath a hat. What on earth can be coming over +the boys of the land that they no longer avail themselves of the +privileges of the fool-tide?”</p> + +<p>“Fool-tide’s good,” said Mr. Brief. “Where did you get that?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +“Oh, I pried it out of my gray-matter ’way back in the last century,” +said the Idiot. “It grew out of a simple little prank I played one April +1st upon an uncle of mine. I bored a hole in the middle of a pine log +and filled it with powder. We had it that night on the hearth, and a +moment later there wasn’t any hearth. In talking the matter over later +with my father and mother and the old gentleman, in order to turn the +discussion into more genial channels, I asked why, if the Yule-log was +appropriate for the Yule-tide, the Fool-log wasn’t appropriate for the +Fool-tide.”</p> + +<p>“I hope you got the answer you deserved,” said the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“I did,” sighed the Idiot. “I got all there was coming to me—slippers, +trunk-strap, hair-brush, and plain hand; but it was worth it. All the +glories of Vesuvius, Etna, Popocatepetl, and Pelée rolled into one could +never thereafter induce in me anything approaching that joyous sensation +that I derived from the spectacle of that fool-log and that happy hearth +soaring up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> through the chimney together, hand in hand, and taking with +them such portions of the flues, andirons, and other articles of +fireplace vertu as cared to join them in their upward flight.”</p> + +<p>“You must have been a holy terror as a boy,” said the Doctor. “I should +not have cared to live on your block.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I wasn’t so bad,” observed the Idiot. “I never was vicious or +malicious in what I did. If I poured vitriol into the coffee-pot at +breakfast my father and mother knew that I didn’t do it to give pain to +anybody. If I hid under my maiden aunt’s bed and barked like a bull-dog +after she had retired, dear old Tabitha knew that it was all done in a +spirit of pleasantry. When I glued my grandfather’s new teeth together +with stratina, that splendid old man was perfectly aware that I had no +grudge I was trying thus to repay; and certainly the French teacher at +school, when he sat down on an iron bear-trap I had set for him in his +chair, never entertained the notion that there was the slightest +animosity in my act.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +“By jingo!” cried the Bibliomaniac. “I’d have spanked you good and hard +if I’d been your mother.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t you fret—she did it; that is, she did up to the time I was ten +years old, and then she had such a shock she gave up corporeal +punishment altogether,” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“Had a shock, eh?” smiled the Lawyer. “Nearly killed you, I suppose, +giving you what you deserved?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said the Idiot. “Spanked me with a hair-brush without having +removed a couple of Excelsior torpedoes from my pistol-pocket. On the +second whack I appeared to explode. Poor woman! She didn’t know I was +loaded, and from that time on she was as afraid of me as most other +women are of a gun.”</p> + +<p>“I’d have turned you over to your father,” said the Bibliomaniac, +indignantly.</p> + +<p>“She did,” said the Idiot, sadly. “I never used explosives again. In +later years I took up the milder April-fool diversions, such as filling +the mucilage-pot with ink and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> the ink-pot with mucilage; mixing the +granulated sugar with white sand; putting powdered brick into the +red-pepper pot; inserting kerosene-oil into the sweet-oil bottle, and +little things like that. I squandered a whole dollar one +April-fool’s-day sending telegrams to my uncles and aunts, telling them +to come and dine with us that night; and they all came, too, although my +father and mother were dining out that evening, and—oh dear, +April-fool’s-day is not what it used to be. The boys and girls of the +present generation are little old men and women with no pranks left in +them. Why, I don’t believe that nine out of ten boys, who are about to +enter college this spring, could rig up a successful tick-tack on a +window to save their lives; and the joy of carrying a piece of twine +across the sidewalk from a front-door knob to a lamp-post, hat-high, and +then sitting back in the seclusion of a convenient area and watching the +plug-hats of the people go down before it—that is a joy that seems to +be wholly untasted of the present generation of infantile dignitaries +that we call the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> youth of the land. What is the matter with ’em, do you +suppose?”</p> + +<p>“I guess we’re getting civilized,” said Mr. Brief. “That seems to me to +be the most likely explanation of this deplorable situation, as you +appear to think it. For my part, I’m glad if what you say is true. Of +all rotten things in the world the practical jokes of April-fool’s-day +bear away the palm. There was a time, ten years ago, when I hardly dared +eat anything on the first of April. I was afraid to find my coffee made +of ink, my muffin stuffed with cotton, cod-liver oil in my +salad-dressing, and mayonnaise in my cream-puffs. Such tricks are the +tricks of barbarians, and I shall rejoice when April 1st as a day of +special privilege for idiots and savages has been removed from the +calendar.”</p> + +<p>“I am afraid,” said Mr. Whitechoker, “that I, too, must join the ranks +of those who rejoice if the old-time customs of the day are now honored +more in the breach than in the observance. Ever since that unhappy +Sunday morning some years ago<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> when somebody substituted a breakfast +bill-of-fare for the card containing the notes for my sermon, I have +mistrusted the humor of the April-fool joke. Instead of my text, as I +glanced at what I supposed was my note-card, my eyes fell upon the +statement that fruit taken from the table would be charged for; instead +of my firstly, secondly, thirdly, and fourthly, my eyes were confronted +by Fish, Eggs, Hot Bread, and To Order. And, finally, in place of the +key-line of my peroration, what should obtrude itself upon my vision but +that coarse and vulgar legend: Corkage, one dollar. I never found out +who did it, and, as a Christian man, I hope I never shall, for I should +much deprecate the spirit of animosity with which I should inevitably +regard the person who had so offended.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll bet you preached a bully good sermon, allee samee,” said the +Idiot.</p> + +<p>“Well,” smiled Mr. Whitechoker, “the congregation did seem to think that +it held more fire than usual; but I can assure you, my young friend, it +was more the fire of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> external wrath than of an inward spiritual grace.”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said the Bibliomaniac, “we ought to be thankful the old tricks +are going out. As Mr. Brief suggests, we are beginning to be +civilized—”</p> + +<p>“I don’t think it’s civilization,” said the Idiot. “I think the kids are +just discouraged, that’s all. They’re clever, these youngsters, but when +it comes to putting up games, they’re not in it with their far more foxy +fathers. What’s the use of playing April-fool jokes on your daddy, when +your daddy is playing April-fool jokes on the public all the year round? +That’s the way they reason. No son of George W. Midas, the financier, is +going to get any satisfaction out of handing his father a loaded cigar, +when he knows that the old man is handling that sort of thing every day +in his business as a promoter of the United States Hot Air Company. What +fun is there in giving your sister a caramel filled with tabasco-sauce +when you can watch your father selling eleven dollars’ worth of +Amalgamated Licorice stock to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> the dear public for forty-seven fifty? +The gum-drop filled with cotton loses its charm when you contrast it +with Consolidated Radium containing one part of radium and ninety-nine +parts of water. Who cares to hide a clay brick under a hat for somebody +to kick, when there are concerns in palatial offices all over town +selling gold bricks to a public that doesn’t seem to have any kick left +in it? I tell you it has discouraged the kid to see to what scientific +heights the April-fool industry has been developed, and as a result he +has abandoned the field. He knows he can’t compete.”</p> + +<p>“That’s all right as an explanation of the youngster whose parent is +engaged in that sort of business,” said the Doctor. “But there are +others.”</p> + +<p>“True,” said the Idiot. “The others stay out of it out of sheer pity. +When they are tempted to sew up the legs of their daddy’s trousers in +order to fitly celebrate the day, or to fill his collar-box with collars +five sizes too small for him, they say, ‘No. Let us refrain. The +governor has had trouble<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> enough with his International Yukon +Anticipated Brass shares this year. He’s had all the fooling he can +stand. We will give the old gentleman a rest!’ Fact is, come to look at +it, the decadence of April 1st as a day of foolery for the young is no +mystery, after all. The youngsters are not more civilized than we used +to be, but they have had the intelligence to perceive the exact truth of +the situation.”</p> + +<p>“Which is?” asked Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“That the ancient art of practical joking has become a business. +April-fool’s-day has been incorporated by the leading financiers of the +age, and is doing a profitable trade all over the world all the year +round. Private enterprise is simply unable to compete.”</p> + +<p>“I am rather surprised, nevertheless,” said Mr. Brief, “that you +yourself have abandoned the field. You are just the sort of person who +would keep on in that kind of thing, despite the discouragements.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I haven’t abandoned the field,” said the Idiot. “I did play an +April-fool joke last Friday.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> +“What was that?” asked Mr. Whitechoker, interested.</p> + +<p>“I told Mrs. Pedagog that I would pay my bill to-morrow,” replied the +Idiot, as he rose from the table and left the room.</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> +<a name="viii" id="viii"></a>VIII<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">SPRING AND ITS POETRY</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">WELL, Mr. Idiot,” said Mrs. Pedagog, genially, as the Idiot entered the +breakfast-room, “what can I do for you this fine spring morning? Will +you have tea or coffee?”</p> + +<p>“I think I’d like a cup of boiled iron, with two lumps of quinine and a +spoonful of condensed nerve-milk in it,” replied the Idiot, wearily. +“Somehow or other I have managed to mislay my spine this morning. +Ethereal mildness has taken the place of my backbone.”</p> + +<p>“Those tired feelings, eh?” said Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“Yeppy,” replied the Idiot. “Regular thing with me. Every year along +about the middle of April I have to fasten a poker on my back with +straps, in order to stand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> up straight; and as for my knees—well, I +never know where they are in the merry, merry spring-time. I’m quite +sure that if I didn’t wear brass caps on them my legs would bend +backward. I wonder if this neighborhood is malarious.”</p> + +<p>“Not in the slightest degree,” observed the Doctor. “This is the +healthiest neighborhood in town. The trouble with you is that you have a +swampy mind, and it is the miasmatic oozings of your intellect that +reduce you to the condition of physical flabbiness of which you +complain. You might swallow the United States Steel Trust, and it +wouldn’t help you a bit, and ten thousand bottles of nerve-milk, or any +other tonic known to science, would be powerless to reach the seat of +your disorder. What you need to stiffen you up is a pair of those +armored trousers the Crusaders used to wear in the days of chivalry, to +bolster up your legs, and a strait-jacket to keep your back up.”</p> + +<p>“Thank you, kindly,” said the Idiot. “If you’ll give me a prescription, +which I can have made up at your tailor’s, I’ll have it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> filled, unless +you’ll add to my ever-increasing obligation to you by lending me your +own strait-jacket. I promise to keep it straight and to return it the +moment you feel one of your fits coming on.”</p> + +<p>The Doctor’s response was merely a scornful gesture, and the Idiot went +on:</p> + +<p>“It’s always seemed a very queer thing to me that this season of the +year should be so popular with everybody,” he said. “To me it’s the +mushiest of times. Mushy bones; mushy poetry; mush for breakfast, fried, +stewed, and boiled. The roads are mushy; lovers thaw out and get mushier +than ever.</p> + +<div class="block42"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“In the spring the blasts of winter all are stilled in solemn hush.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the spring the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of mush.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the spring—”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“You ought to be ashamed of yourself to trifle with so beautiful a +poem,” interrupted the Bibliomaniac, indignantly.</p> + +<p>“Who’s trifling with a beautiful poem?” demanded the Idiot.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> +“You are—‘Locksley Hall’—and you know it,” retorted the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Locksley nothing,” said the Idiot. “What I was reciting is not from +‘Locksley Hall’ at all. It’s a little thing of my own that I wrote six +years ago called ‘Spring Unsprung.’ It may not contain much delicate +sentiment, but it’s got more solid information in it of a valuable kind +than you’ll find in ten ‘Locksley Halls’ or a dozen Etiquette Columns in +the <i>Lady’s Away From Home Magazine</i>. It has saved a lot of people from +pneumonia and other disorders of early spring, I am quite certain, and +the only person I ever heard criticise it unfavorably was a doctor I +know who said it spoiled his business.”</p> + +<p>“I should admire to hear it,” said the Poet. “Can’t you let us have it?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly,” replied the Idiot. “It goes on like this:</p> + +<div class="block42"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“In the spring I’ll take you driving, take you driving, Maudy dear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But I beg of you be careful at this season of the year.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is true the birds are singing, singing sweetly all their notes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But you’ll later find them wearing canton-flannel ’round their throats.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is true the lark doth warble, ‘Spring is here,’ with bird-like fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">‘All is warmth and all is genial,’ but I fear the lark’s a liar.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All is warmth for fifteen minutes, that is true; but wait awhile,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And you’ll find that April’s weather has not ever changed its style;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And beware of April’s weather, it is pleasant for a spell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, like little Johnny’s future, you can’t always sometimes tell.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Often modest little violets, peeping up from out their beds<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the balmy morn by night-time have bad colds within their heads;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the buttercup and daisy twinkling gayly on the lawn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sing by night a different story from their carollings at dawn;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the blossoms of the morning, hailing spring with joyous frenzy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the twilight falls upon them often droop with influenzy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">So, dear Maudy, when we’re driving, put your linen duster on,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And your lovely Easter bonnet, if you wish to, you may don;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But be careful to have with you sundry garments warm and thick:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Woollen gloves, a muff, and ear-tabs, from the ice-box get the pick;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There’s no telling what may happen ere we’ve driven twenty miles,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">April flirts with chill December, and is full of other wiles.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bring your parasol, O Maudy—it is good for <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-têtes</i>;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At the same time you would better also bring your hockey skates.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There’s no telling from the noon-tide, with the sun a-shining bright,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Just what kind of winter weather we’ll be up against by night.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“Referring to the advice,” said Mr. Brief, “that’s good. I don’t think +much of the poetry.”</p> + +<p>“There was a lot more of it,” said the Idiot, “but it escapes me at the +moment. Four lines I do remember, however:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p> + +<div class="block42"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Pin no faith to weather prophets—all their prophecies are fakes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Roulette-wheels are plain and simple to the notions April takes.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Keep your children in the nursery—never mind it if they pout—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, above all, do not let your furnace take an evening out.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“Well,” said the Poet, “if you’re going to the poets for advice, I +presume your rhymes are all right. But I don’t think it is the mission +of the poet to teach people common-sense.”</p> + +<p>“That’s the trouble with the whole tribe of poets,” said the Idiot. +“They think they are licensed to do and say all sorts of things that +other people can’t do and say. In a way I agree with you that a poem +shouldn’t necessarily be a treatise on etiquette or a sequence of health +hints, but it should avoid misleading its readers. Take that fellow who +wrote</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“‘Sweet primrose time! When thou art here<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I go by grassy ledges<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of long lane-side, and pasture mead,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And moss-entangled hedges.’<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></div></div></div> + +<p class="noi">That’s very lovely, and, as far as it goes, it is all right. +There’s no harm in doing what the poet so delicately suggests, but I +think there should have been other stanzas for the protection of the +reader like this:</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“But have a care, oh, readers fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To take your mackintoshes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on your feet be sure to wear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A pair of stanch galoshes.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Nor should you fail when seeking out<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The primrose, golden yeller,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To have at hand somewhere about<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A competent umbrella.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="noi">Thousands of people are inspired by lines like the original to +go gallivanting all over the country in primrose time, to return at dewy +eve with all the incipient symptoms of pneumonia. Then there’s the case +of Wordsworth. He was one of the loveliest of the Nature poets, but he’s +eternally advising people to go out in the early spring and lie on the +grass somewhere, listening to cuckoos doing their cooking, watching the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +daffodils at their daily dill, and hearing the crocus cuss; and some +sentimental reader out in New Jersey thinks that if Wordsworth could do +that sort of thing, and live to be eighty years old, there’s no reason +why he shouldn’t do the same thing. What’s the result? He lies on the +grass for two hours and suffers from rheumatism for the next ten years.”</p> + +<p>“Tut!” said the Poet. “I am surprised at you. You can’t blame Wordsworth +because some New Jerseyman makes a jackass of himself.”</p> + +<p>“In a way all writers should be responsible for the effect of what they +write on their readers,” said the Idiot. “When a poet of Wordsworth’s +eminence, directly or indirectly, advises people to go out and lie on +the grass in early spring, he owes it to his public to caution them that +in some localities it is not a good thing to do. A rhymed foot-note—</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“This habit, by-the-way, is good<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In climes south of the Mersey;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, I would have it understood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It’s risky in New Jersey—<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></div></div></div> + +<p class="noi">would fulfil all the requirements of the special individual to +whom I have referred, and would have shown that the poet himself was +ever mindful of the welfare of his readers.”</p> + +<p>The Poet was apparently unconvinced, so the Idiot continued:</p> + +<p>“Mind you, old man, I think all this poetry is beautiful,” he said; “but +you poets are too prone to confine your attention to the pleasant +aspects of the season. Here, for instance, is a poet who asks</p> + +<div class="block28"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘What are the dearest treasures of spring?’<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="noi">and then goes on to name the cheapest as an answer to his +question. The primrose, the daffodil, the rosy haze that veils the +forest bare, the sparkle of the myriad-dimpled sea, a kissing-match +between the sunbeams and the rain-drops, reluctant hopes, the twitter of +swallows on the wing, and all that sort of thing. You’d think spring was +an iridescent dream of ecstatic things; but of the tired feeling that +comes over you, the spine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> of jelly, the wabbling knee, the chills and +fever that come from sniffing ‘the scented breath of dewy April’s eve,’ +the doctor’s bills, and such like things are never mentioned. It isn’t +fair. It’s all right to tell about the other things, but don’t forget +the drawbacks. If I were writing that poem I’d have at least two stanzas +like this:</p> + +<div class="block34"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“And other dearest treasures of spring<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Are daily draughts of withering, blithering squills,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To cure my aching bones of darksome chills;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And at the door my loved physician’s ring;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“The tender sneezes of the early day;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The sudden drop of Mr. Mercury;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The veering winds from S. to N. by E.—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hunting flats to move to in the May.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="noi">You see, that makes not only a more comprehensive picture, but +does not mislead anybody into the belief the spring is all velvet, which +it isn’t by any means.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, bosh!” cried the Poet, very much nettled, as he rose from the +table. “I suppose if you had your way you’d have all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> poetry submitted +first to a censor, the way they do with plays in London.”</p> + +<p>“No, I wouldn’t have a censor; he’d only increase taxes unnecessarily,” +said the Idiot, folding up his napkin, and also rising to leave. “I’d +just let the Board of Health pass on them; it isn’t a question of morals +so much as of sanitation.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> +<a name="ix" id="ix"></a>IX<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">ON FLAT-HUNTING</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">AHA!” cried the Poet, briskly rubbing his hands together, and drawing a +deep breath of satisfaction, “these be great days for people who are +fond of the chase, who love the open, and who would commune with Nature +in her most lovely mood. Just look out of that window, Mr. Idiot, and +drink in the joyous sunshine. Egad! sir, even the asphalted pavement and +the brick-and-mortar façade of the houses opposite, bathed in that +golden light, seem glorified.”</p> + +<p>“Thanks,” said the Idiot, wearily, “but I guess I won’t. I’m afraid that +while I was drinking in those glorified flats opposite and digesting the +golden-mellow asphalt, you would fasten that poetic grip of yours upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> +my share of the blossoming buckwheats. Furthermore, I’ve been enjoying +the chase for two weeks now, and, to tell you the honest truth, I am +long on it. There is such a thing as chasing too much, so if you don’t +mind I’ll sublet my part of the contract for gazing out of the window at +gilt-edged Nature as she appears in the city to you. Mary, move Mr. +Poet’s chair over to the window so that he may drink in the sunshine +comfortably, and pass his share of the sausages to me.”</p> + +<p>“What have you been chasing, Mr. Idiot?” asked the Doctor. “Birds or the +fast-flitting dollar?”</p> + +<p>“Flats,” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“I didn’t know you Wall Street people needed to hunt flats,” said the +Bibliomaniac. “I thought they just walked into your offices and +presented themselves for skinning.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t mean the flats we live on,” explained the Idiot. “It’s the +flats we live in that I have been after.”</p> + +<p>The landlady looked up inquiringly. Mr. Idiot’s announcement sounded +ominous.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +“To my mind, flat-hunting,” the Idiot continued, “is one of the most +interesting branches of sport. It involves quite as much uncertainty as +the pursuit of the whirring partridge; your game is quite as difficult +to lure as the speckled trout darting hither and yon in the grassy pool; +it involves no shedding of innocent blood, as in the case of a ride +across-country with a pack in full pursuit of the fox; and strikes me as +possessing greater dignity than running forty miles through the +cabbage-patches of Long Island in search of a bag of +<a name="ainse" id="ainse"></a><ins title="Original has aniseseed">ainse seed</ins>. +When the sporting instinct arises in my soul and +reaches that full-tide where nothing short of action will hold it in +control, I never think of starting for Maine to shoot the festive moose, +nor do I squander my limited resources on a foggy hunt for the elusive +canvasback in the Maryland marshes. I just go to the nearest cab-stand, +strike a bargain with Mr. Jehu for an afternoon’s use of his hansom, and +go around the town hunting flats. It requires very little previous +preparation; it involves no prolonged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> absences from home; you do not +need rubber boots unless you propose to investigate the cellars or +intend to go far afield into the suburban boroughs of this great city; +and is in all ways pleasant, interesting, and, I may say, educational.”</p> + +<p>“Educational, eh?” laughed the Bibliomaniac. “Some people have queer +ideas of what is educational. I must say I fail to see anything +particularly instructive in flat-hunting.”</p> + +<p>“That’s because you never approached it in a proper spirit,” said the +Idiot. “Anybody who is at all interested in sociology, however, cannot +help but find instruction in a contemplation of how people are housed. +You can’t get any idea of how the other halves live by reading the +society news in the Sunday newspapers or peeping in at the second story +of the tenement-houses as you go down-town on the elevated railroads. +You’ve got to go out and investigate for yourself, and that’s where +flat-hunting comes in as an educational diversion. Of course, all men +are not interested in the same line<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> of investigation. You, as a +bibliomaniac, prefer to go hunting rare first editions; Dr. Pellet, +armed to the teeth with capsules, lies in wait for a pot-shot at some +new kind of human ailment, and rejoices as loudly over the discovery of +a new disease as you do over finding a copy of the rare first edition of +the <i>Telephone Book for 1899</i>; another man goes to Africa to investigate +the condition of our gorillan cousin of the jungle; Lieutenant Peary +goes and hides behind a snow-ball up North, so that his fellows of the +Arctic Exploration Society may have something to look for every other +summer; and I—I go hunting for flats. I don’t sneer at you and the +others for liking the things you do. You shouldn’t sneer at me for +liking the things I do. It is, after all, the diversity of our tastes +that makes our human race interesting.”</p> + +<p>“But the rest of us generally bag something,” said the Lawyer. “What the +dickens do you get beyond sheer physical weariness for your pains?”</p> + +<p>“The best of all the prizes of the hunt,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> said the Idiot; “the spirit +of content with my lot as a boarder. I’ve been through twenty-eight +flats in the last three weeks, and I know whereof I speak. I have seen +the gorgeous apartments of the Redmere, where you can get a Louis Quinze +drawing-room, a Renaissance library, a superb Grecian dining-room, and a +cold-storage box to keep your high-balls in for four thousand dollars +per annum.”</p> + +<p>“Weren’t there any bedrooms?” asked Mr. Whitechoker.</p> + +<p>“Oh yes,” said the Idiot. “Three, automatically ventilated from holes in +the ceiling leading to an air-shaft, size six by nine, and brilliantly +lighted by electricity. There was also a small pigeon-hole in a +corrugated iron shack on the roof for the cook; a laundry next to the +coal-bin in the cellar; and a kitchen about four feet square connecting +with the library.”</p> + +<p>“Mercy!” cried Mrs. Pedagog. “Do they expect children to live in such a +place as that?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said the Idiot. “You have to give<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> bonds as security against +children of any kind at the Redmere. If you happen to have any, you are +required by the terms of your lease to send them to boarding-school; and +if you haven’t any, the lease requires that you shall promise to have +none during your tenancy. The owners of such properties have a lot of +heart about them, and they take good care to protect the children +against the apartments they put up.”</p> + +<p>“And what kind of people, pray, live in such places as that?” demanded +the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Very nice people,” said the Idiot. “People, for the most part, who +spend their winters at Palm Beach, their springs in London, their +summers at Newport or on the Continent, and their autumns in the +Berkshires.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t see why they need a home at all if that’s the way they do,” +said Mrs. Pedagog.</p> + +<p>“It’s very simple,” said the Idiot. “You’ve got to have an address to +get your name in the <i>Social Register</i>.”</p> + +<p>“Four thousand dollars is pretty steep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> for an address,” commented the +Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“It would be for me,” said the Idiot. “But it is cheap for them. +Moreover, in the case of the Redmere it’s the swellest address in town. +Three of the most important divorces of the last social season took +place at the Redmere. Social position comes high, Mr. Bib, but there are +people who must have it. It is to them what baked beans are to the +Bostonian’s Sunday breakfast—a <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">sine qua non</i>.”</p> + +<p>“May I ask whatever induced you to look for a four-thousand-dollar +apartment?” asked Mr. Pedagog. “You have frequently stated that your +income barely equalled twenty-four hundred dollars a year.”</p> + +<p>“Why shouldn’t I?” asked the Idiot. “It doesn’t cost any more to look +for a four-thousand-dollar apartment than it does to go chasing after a +two-dollar-a-week hall-bedroom, and it impresses the cab-driver with a +sense of responsibility. But bagging these gorgeous apartments does not +constitute the real joy of flat-hunting. For solid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> satisfaction and +real sport the chase for a fifteen-hundred-dollar apartment in a decent +neighborhood bears away the palm. You can get plenty of roomy suites in +the neighborhood of a boiler-factory, or next door to a distillery, or +back of a fire-engine house, at reasonable rents, and along the elevated +railway lines much that is impressive is to be found by those who can +sleep with trains running alongside of their pillows all night; but when +you get away from these, the real thing at that figure is elusive. Over +by the Park you can get two pigeon-holes and a bath, with a southern +exposure, for nineteen hundred dollars a year; if you are willing to +dispense with the southern exposure you can get three Black Holes of +Calcutta and a butler’s pantry, in the same neighborhood, for sixteen +hundred dollars, but you have to provide your own air. Farther down-town +you will occasionally find the thing you want with a few extras in the +shape of cornet-players, pianola-bangers, and peroxide sopranos on +either side of you, and an osteopathic veterinary surgeon on the ground<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +floor thrown in. Then there are paper flats that can be had for twelve +hundred dollars, but you can’t have any pictures in them, because the +walls won’t stand the weight, and any nail of reasonable length would +stick through into the next apartment. A friend of mine lived in one of +these affairs once, and when he inadvertently leaned against the wall +one night he fell through into his neighbor’s bath-tub. Of course, that +sort of thing promotes sociability; but for a home most people want just +a little privacy. And so the list runs on. You would really be +astonished at the great variety of discomfortable dwelling-places that +people build. Such high-art decorations as you encounter—purple friezes +surmounting yellow dadoes; dragons peeping out of fruit-baskets; +idealized tomatoes in full bloom chasing one another all around the +bedroom walls. Then the architectural inconveniences they present with +their best bedrooms opening into the kitchen; their parlors with marble +wash-stands with running water in the corner; their libraries fitted up +with marvellous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> steam-radiators and china-closets, and their kitchens +so small that the fire in the range scorches the wall opposite, and over +which nothing but an asbestos cook, with a figure like a third rail, +could preside. And, best of all, there are the janitors! Why, Mr. Bib, +the study of the janitor and his habits alone is worthy of the life-long +attention of the best entomologist that ever lived—and yet you say +there is nothing educational in flat-hunting.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well,” said the Bibliomaniac, “I meant for me. There are a lot of +things that would be educational to you that I should regard as +symptomatic of profound ignorance. Everything is relative in this +world.”</p> + +<p>“That is true,” said the Idiot; “and that is why every April 1st I go +out and gloat over the miseries of the flat-dwellers. As long as I can +do that I am happy in my little cubby-hole under Mrs. Pedagog’s +hospitable roof.”</p> + +<p>“Ah! I am glad to hear you say that,” said Mrs. Pedagog. “I was a bit +fearful,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> Mr. Idiot, that you had it in mind to move away from us.”</p> + +<p>“No indeed, Mrs. Pedagog,” replied the Idiot, rising from the table. +“You need have no fear of that. You couldn’t get me out of here with a +crow-bar. If I did not have entire confidence in your lovely house and +yourself, you don’t suppose I would permit myself to get three months +behind in my board, do you?”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> +<a name="x" id="x"></a>X<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">THE HOUSEMAID’S UNION</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">POTATOES, sir?” said Mary, the waitress at Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog’s +High-Class Home for Single Gentlemen, stopping behind the Idiot’s chair +and addressing the back of his neck in the usual boarding-house fashion.</p> + +<p>“Yes, I want some potatoes, Mary; but before I take them,” the Idiot +replied, “I must first ascertain whether or not you wear the union +label, and what is the exact status also of the potatoes. My principles +are such that I cannot permit a non-union housemaid to help me to a scab +potato, whereas, if you belong to the sisterhood, and our stewed friend +Murphy here has been raised upon a union farm, then, indeed, do I wish +not only one potato but many.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> +Mary’s reply was a giggle.</p> + +<p>“Ah!” said the Idiot. “The merry ha-ha, eh? All right, Mary. That is for +the present sufficient evidence that your conscience is clear on this +very important matter. As for the potatoes, we will eat them not exactly +under protest, but with a distinctly announced proviso in advance that +we assume that they have qualified themselves for admission into a union +stomach. I hesitate to think of what will happen in my interior +department if Murphy is deceiving us.”</p> + +<p>Whereupon the Idiot came into possession of a goodly portion of the +stewed potatoes, and Mary fled to the kitchen, where she informed the +presiding genius of the range that the young gentleman was crazier than +ever.</p> + +<p>“He’s talkin’ about the unions, now, Bridget,” said she.</p> + +<p>“Is he agin ’em?” demanded Bridget, with a glitter in her eye.</p> + +<p>“No, he’s for ’em; he wouldn’t even drink milk from a non-union cow,” +said Mary.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> +“He’s a foine gintleman,” said Bridget. “Oi’ll make his waffles a soize +larger.”</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the Bibliomaniac had chosen to reflect seriously upon the +Idiot’s intelligence for his approval of unions.</p> + +<p>“They are responsible for pretty nearly all the trouble there is at the +present moment,” he snapped out, angrily.</p> + +<p>“Oh, go along with you,” retorted the Idiot. “The trouble we have these +days, like all the rest of the troubles of the past, go right back to +that old original non-union apple that Eve ate and Adam got the core of. +You know that as well as I do. Even Adam and Eve, untutored children of +nature though they were, saw it right off, and organized a union on the +spot, which has in the course of centuries proven the most beneficent +institution of the ages. With all due respect to the character of this +dwelling-place of ours—a home for single gentlemen—the union is the +thing. If you don’t belong to one you may be tremendously independent, +but you’re blooming lonesome.”</p> + +<p>“The matrimonial union,” smiled Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> Pedagog, “is indeed a blessed +institution, and, having been married twice, I can testify from +experience; but, truly, Mr. Idiot, I wish you wouldn’t put notions into +Mary’s head about the other kind. I should be sorry if she were to join +that housemaid’s union we hear so much about. I have trouble enough now +with my domestic help without having a walking delegate on my hands as +well.”</p> + +<p>“No doubt,” acquiesced the Idiot. “In their beginnings all great +movements have their inconveniences, but in the end, properly developed, +a housemaid’s union wouldn’t be a bad thing for employers, and I rather +think it might prove a good thing. Suppose one of your servants +misbehaves herself, for instance—I remember one occasion in this very +house when it required the united efforts of yourself, Mr. Pedagog, +three policemen, and your humble servant to effectively discharge a +three-hundred-pound queen of the kitchen, who had looked not wisely but +too often on the cooking sherry. Now suppose that highly cultivated +inebriate had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> belonged to a self-respecting union? You wouldn’t have +had to discharge her at all. A telephone message to the union +headquarters, despatched while the lady was indulging in one of her +tantrums, would have brought an inspector to the house, the queen would +have been caught with the goods on, and her card would have been taken +from her, so that by the mere automatic operation of the rules of her +own organization she could no longer work for you. Thus you would have +been spared some highly seasoned language which I have for years tried +to forget; Mr. Pedagog’s eye would not have been punched so that you +could not tell your blue-eyed boy from your black-eyed babe; I should +never have lost the only really satisfactory red necktie I ever owned; +and three sturdy policemen, one of whom had often previously acted as +the lady’s brother on her evenings at home, and the others, of whom we +had reason to believe were cousins not many times removed, would not +have been confronted by the ungrateful duty of clubbing one who had +frequently fed them generously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> upon your cold mutton and my beer.”</p> + +<p>“Is that one of the things the union would do?” queried Mrs. Pedagog, +brightening.</p> + +<p>“It is one of the things the union <em>should</em> do,” said the Idiot. +“Similarly with your up-stairs girl, if perchance you have one. Suppose +she got into the habit, which I understand is not all an uncommon case, +of sweeping the dust under the bureau of your bedroom or under the piano +in the drawing-room. Suppose she is really an adept in the art of dust +concealment, having a full comprehension of all sixty methods—hiding it +under tables, sofas, bookcases, and rugs, in order to save her back? You +wouldn’t have to bother with her at all under a properly equipped union. +Upon the discovery of her delinquencies you would merely have to send +for the union inspector, lift up the rug and show her the various +vintages of sweepings the maid has left there: November ashes; December +match-ends; threads, needles, and pins left over from the February +meeting of the Ibsen Sewing-Circle at your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> house; your missing +tortoise-shell hair-pin that you hadn’t laid eyes on since September; +the grocer’s bill for October that you told the grocer you never +received—all this in March. Do you suppose that that inspector, with +all this evidence before her eyes, could do otherwise than prefer +charges against the offender at the next meeting of the Committee on +Discipline? Not on your life, madam. And, what is more, have you the +slightest doubt that one word of reprimand from that same Committee on +Discipline would prove far more effective in reforming that particular +offender than anything you could say backed by the eloquence of Burke +and the thunderbolts of Jove?”</p> + +<p>“You paint a beautiful picture,” said the Doctor. “But suppose you +happened to draw a rotten cook in the domestic lottery—a good woman, +but a regular scorcher. Where does your inspector come in there? Going +to invite her to dine with you so as to demonstrate the girl’s +incompetence?”</p> + +<p>“Not at all,” said the Idiot. “That would make trouble right away. The +cook very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> properly would say that the inspector was influenced by the +social attention she was receiving from the head of the house, and the +woman’s effectiveness as a disciplinarian would be immediately +destroyed. I’d put half portions of the burned food in a sealed package +and send it to the Committee on Culinary Improvement for their +inspection. A better method which time would probably bring into +practice would be for the union itself to establish a system of +domiciliary visits, by which the cook’s work should be subjected to a +constant inspection by the union—the object being, of course, to +prevent trouble rather than to punish after the event. The inspector’s +position would be something like that of the bank examiner, who turns up +at our financial institutions at unexpected moments, and sees that +everything is going right.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, bosh!” said the Doctor. “You are talking of ideals.”</p> + +<p>“Certainly I am,” returned the Idiot. “Why shouldn’t I? What’s the use +of wasting one’s breath on anything else?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> +“Well, it’s all rot!” put in Mr. Brief. “There never was any such union +as that, and there never will be.”</p> + +<p>“You are the last person in the world to say a thing like that, Mr. +Brief,” said the Idiot—”you, who belong to the nearest approach to the +ideal union that the world has ever known!”</p> + +<p>“What! Me?” demanded the Lawyer. “Me? I belong to a union?”</p> + +<p>“Of course you do—or at least you told me you did,” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“Well, you are the worst!” retorted Mr. Brief, angrily. “When did I ever +tell you that I belonged to a union?”</p> + +<p>“Last Friday night at dinner, and in the presence of this goodly +company,” said the Idiot. “You were bragging about it, too—said that no +institution in existence had done more to uplift the moral tone of the +legal profession; that through its efforts the corrupt practitioner and +the shyster were gradually being driven to the wall—”</p> + +<p>“Well, this beats me,” said Mr. Brief. “I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> recall telling at dinner on +Friday night about the Bar Association—”</p> + +<p>“Precisely,” said the Idiot. “That’s what I referred to. If the Bar +Association isn’t a Lawyer’s Union Number Six of the highest type, I +don’t know what is. It is conducted by the most brilliant minds in the +profession; its honors are eagerly sought after by the brainiest +laborers in the field of Coke and Blackstone; its stern, relentless eye +is fixed upon the evil-doer, and it is an effective instrument for +reform not only in its own profession, but in the State as well. What I +would have the Housemaid’s Union do for domestic servants and for the +home, the Bar Association does for the legal profession and for the +State, and if the lawyers can do this thing there is no earthly reason +why the housemaids shouldn’t.”</p> + +<p>“Pah!” ejaculated Mr. Brief. “You place the bar and domestic service on +the same plane of importance, do you?”</p> + +<p>“No, I don’t,” said the Idiot. “Shouldn’t think of doing so. Twenty +people need housemaids, where one requires a lawyer;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> therefore the +domestic is the more important of the two.”</p> + +<p>“Humph!” said Mr. Brief, with an angry laugh. “Intellectual +qualifications, I suppose, go for nothing in the matter.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I don’t know about that,” said the Idiot. “I guess, however, that +there are more housemaids earning a living to-day than lawyers—and, +besides—oh, well, never mind—What’s the use? I don’t wish to quarrel +about it.”</p> + +<p>“Go on—don’t mind me—I’m really interested to know what further you +can say,” snapped Mr. Brief. “Besides—what?”</p> + +<p>“Only this, that when it comes to the intellectuals—Well, really, Mr. +Brief,” asked the Idiot, “really now, did you ever hear of anybody going +to an intelligence office for a lawyer?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Brief’s reply was not inaudible, for just at that moment he +swallowed his coffee the wrong way, and in the effort to bring him to, +the thread of the argument snapped, and up to the hour of going to press +had not been tied together again.</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> +<a name="xi" id="xi"></a>XI<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">THE GENTLE ART OF BOOSTING</span></h2> + + +<p class="cap">THE Idiot was very late at breakfast—so extremely late, in fact, that +some apprehension was expressed by his fellow-boarders as to the state +of his health.</p> + +<p>“I hope he isn’t ill,” said Mr. Whitechoker. “He is usually so prompt at +his meals that I fear something is the matter with him.”</p> + +<p>“He’s all right,” said the Doctor, whose room adjoins that of the Idiot +in Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog’s Select Home for Single Gentlemen. “He’ll be +down in a minute. He’s suffering from an overdose of vacation—rested +too hard.”</p> + +<p>Just then the subject of the conversation appeared in the doorway, pale +and haggard, but with an eye that boded ill for the larder.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> +“Quick!” he cried, as he entered. “Lead me to a square meal. Mary, +please give me four bowls of mush, ten medium soft-boiled eggs, a barrel +of saute potatoes, and eighteen dollars’ worth of corned-beef hash. I’ll +have two pots of coffee, Mrs. Pedagog, please, four pounds of sugar, and +a can of condensed milk. If there is any extra charge you may put it on +the bill, and some day, when the common stock of the Continental Hen +Trust goes up thirty or forty points, I’ll pay.”</p> + +<p>“What’s the matter with you, Mr. Idiot?” asked Mr. Brief. “Been fasting +for a week?”</p> + +<p>“No,” replied the Idiot. “I’ve just taken my first week’s vacation, and, +between you and me, I’ve come back to business so as to get rested for +the second.”</p> + +<p>“Doesn’t look as though vacation agreed with you,” said the +Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“It doesn’t,” said the Idiot. “Hereafter I am an advocate of the +rest-while-you-work system. Never take a day off if you can help it. +There’s nothing so restful as paying attention to business, and no +greater promoter of weariness of spirit and vexation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> of your digestion +than the modern style of vacating. No more for mine, if you please.”</p> + +<p>“Humph!” sneered the Bibliomaniac. “I suppose you went to Coney Island +to get rested up, bumping the bump and looping the loop, and doing a lot +of other crazy things.”</p> + +<p>“Not I,” quoth the Idiot. “I didn’t have sense enough to go to some +quiet place like Coney Island, where you can get seven square meals a +day, and then climb into a Ferris-wheel and be twirled around in the air +until they have been properly shaken down. I took one of the Four +Hundred vacations. Know what that is?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Mr. Brief. “I didn’t know there were four hundred vacations +with only three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. What do you +mean?”</p> + +<p>“I mean the kind of vacation the people in the Four Hundred take,” +explained the Idiot. “I’ve been to a house-party up in Newport with some +friends of mine who’re ’in the swim,’ and I tell you it’s hard swimming. +You’ll never hear me talking about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> a leisure class in this country +again. Those people don’t know what leisure is. I don’t wonder they’re +always such a tired-looking lot.”</p> + +<p>“I was not aware that you were in with the Smart Set,” said the +Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Oh yes,” said the Idiot. “I’m in with several of ’em—’way in; so far +in that I’m sometimes afraid I’ll never get out. We’re carrying a whole +lot of wild-cats on margin for Billie Van Gelder, the cotillon leader. +Tommy de Cahoots, the famous yachtsman, owes us about eight thousand +dollars more than he can spare from his living expenses on one of his +plunges into Copper, and altogether we are pretty long on swells in our +office.”</p> + +<p>“And do you mean to say those people invite you out?” asked the +Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“All the time,” said the Idiot. “Just as soon as one of our swell +customers finds he can’t pay his margins he comes down to the office and +gets very chummy with all of us. The deeper he is in it the more affable +he becomes. The result is there are house-parties<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> and yacht-cruises and +all that sort of thing galore on tap for us every summer.”</p> + +<p>“And you accept them, eh?” said the Bibliomaniac, scornfully.</p> + +<p>“As a matter of business, of course,” replied the Idiot. “We’ve got to +get something out of it. If one of our customers can’t pay cash, why, we +get what we can. In this particular case Mr. Reginald Squandercash had +me down at Newport for five full days, and I know now why he can’t pay +up his little shortage of eight hundred dollars. He’s got the money, but +he needs it for other things, and, now that I know it, I shall recommend +the firm to give him an extension of thirty days. By that time he will +have collected from the De Boodles, whom he is launching in society, C. +O. D., and will be able to square matters with us.”</p> + +<p>“Your conversation is Greek to me,” said the Bibliomaniac. “Who are the +De Boodles, and for what do they owe your friend Reginald Squandercash +money?”</p> + +<p>“The De Boodles,” explained the Idiot,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> “are what are known as climbers, +and Reginald Squandercash is a booster.”</p> + +<p>“A what?” cried the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“A booster,” said the Idiot. “There are several boosters in the Four +Hundred. For a consideration they will boost wealthy climbers into +society. The climbers are people like the De Boodles, who have suddenly +come into great wealth, and who wish to be in it with others of great +wealth who are also of high social position. They don’t know how to do +the trick, so they seek out some booster like Reggie, strike a bargain +with him, and he steers ’em up against the ‘Among-Those-Present’ game +until finally you find the De Boodles have a social cinch.”</p> + +<p>“Do you mean to say that society tolerates such a business as that?” +demanded the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Tolerates?” laughed the Idiot. “What a word to use! Tolerate? Why, +society encourages, because society shares the benefits. Take this +especial vacation of mine. Society had two five-o’clock teas, four of +the swellest dinners you ever sat down to, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> cotillon where the favors +were of solid silver and real ostrich feathers, a whole day’s clam-bake +on Reggie’s steam-yacht, with automobile-runs and coaching-trips galore. +Nobody ever declines one of Reggie’s invitations, because what he has +from a society point of view is the best the market affords. Why, the +floral decorations alone at the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fête champêtre</i> he gave in honor of the +De Boodles at his villa last Thursday night must have cost five thousand +dollars, and everything was on the same scale. I don’t believe a cent +less than seventy-five hundred dollars was burned up in the fire-works, +and every lady present received a souvenir of the occasion that cost at +least one hundred dollars.”</p> + +<p>“Your story doesn’t quite hold together,” said Mr. Brief. “If your +friend Reggie has a villa and a steam-yacht, and automobiles and +coaches, and gives <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fêtes champêtres</i> that cost fifteen or twenty +thousand dollars, I don’t see why he has to make himself a booster of +inferior people who want to get into society. What does he gain by it? +It surely isn’t sport to do a thing like that,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> and I should think he’d +find it a dreadful bore.”</p> + +<p>“The man must live,” said the Idiot. “He boosts for a living.”</p> + +<p>“When he has the wealth of Monte Cristo at his command?” demanded Mr. +Brief.</p> + +<p>“Reggie hasn’t a cent to his name,” said the Idiot. “I’ve already told +you he owes us eight hundred dollars he can’t pay.”</p> + +<p>“Then who in thunder pays for the villa and the lot and all those +hundred-dollar souvenirs?” asked the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“Why, this year, the De Boodles,” said the Idiot. “Last year it was +Colonel and Mrs. Moneybags, whose daughter, Miss Fayette Moneybags, is +now clinching the position Reggie sold her at Newport over in London, +whither Reggie has consigned her to his sister, an impecunious American +duchess—the Duchess of Nocash—who is also in the boosting business. +The chances are Miss Moneybags will land one of England’s most deeply +indebted peers, and, if she does, Reggie will receive a handsome check +for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> steering the family up against so attractive a proposition.”</p> + +<p>“And you mean to tell us that a plain man like old John De Boodle, of +Nevada, is putting out his hard-earned wealth in that way?” demanded Mr. +Brief.</p> + +<p>“I didn’t mean to mention any names,” said the Idiot. “But you’ve +spotted the victim. Old John De Boodle, who made his sixty million +dollars in six months, after having kept a saloon on the frontier for +forty years, is the man. His family wants to get in the swim, and Reggie +is turning the trick for them; and, after all, what better way is there +for De Boodle to get in? He might take sixty villas at Newport and not +get even a peep at the divorce colony there, much less a glimpse of the +monogamous set acting independently. Not a monkey in the Zoo would dine +with the De Boodles, and in his most eccentric moment I doubt if Tommy +Dare would take them up, unless there was somebody to stand sponsor for +them. A cool million might easily be expended without results by the De +Boodles themselves;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> but hand that money over to Reggie Squandercash, +whose blood is as blue as his creditors’ sometimes get, and you can look +for results. What the Frohman’s are to the stage, Reggie Squandercash is +to society. He’s right in it; popular as all spenders are; lavish as all +people spending other people’s money are apt to be. Old De Boodle, egged +on by Mrs. De Boodle and Miss Mary Ann De Boodle (now known as Miss +Marianne De Boodle), goes to Reggie and says: ‘The old lady and my girl +are nutty on society. Can you land ’em?’ ‘Certainly,’ says Reggie, ‘if +your pocket is long enough.’ ‘How long is that?’ asks De Boodle, wincing +a bit. ‘A hundred thousand a month, and no extras, until you’re in,’ +says Reggie. ‘No reduction for families?’ asks De Boodle, anxiously. +‘No,’ says Reggie. ‘Harder job.’ ‘All right,’ says De Boodle, ‘here’s my +check for the first month.’ That’s how Reggie gets his Newport villa, +his servants, his horses, yacht, automobiles, and coaches. Then he +invites the De Boodles up to visit him. They accept, and the fun +begins.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> First it’s a little dinner to meet my friends Mr. and Mrs. De +Boodle, of Nevada. Everybody there, hungry, dinner from Sherry’s, best +wines in the market. De Boodles covered with diamonds, a great success, +especially old John De Boodle, who tells racy stories over the +<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">demi-tasse</i> when the ladies have gone into the drawing-room. De Boodle +voted a character. Next thing, bridge-whist party. Everybody there. +Society a good winner. The De Boodles magnificent losers. Popularity +cinched. Next, yachting-party. Everybody on board. De Boodle on deck in +fine shape. Champagne flows like Niagara. Poker game in main cabin. Food +everywhere. De Boodles much easier. Stiffness wearing off, and so on and +so on, until finally Miss De Boodle’s portrait is printed in nineteen +Sunday newspapers all over the country. They’re launched, and Reggie +comes into his own with a profit for the season in a cash balance of +fifty thousand dollars. He’s had a bully time all summer, entertained +like a prince, and comes to the rainy season with a tidy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> little +umbrella to keep him out of the wet.”</p> + +<p>“And can he count on that as a permanent business?” asked Mr. +Whitechoker.</p> + +<p>“My dear sir, the rock of Gibraltar is no solider and no more +permanent,” said the Idiot. “For as long as there is a Four Hundred in +existence, human nature is such that there will also be a million who +will want to get into it.”</p> + +<p>“At such a cost?” demanded the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“At any cost,” replied the Idiot. “Even people who know they cannot swim +want to get in it.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> +<a name="xii" id="xii"></a>XII<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">HE MAKES A SUGGESTION TO THE POET</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">GOOD-MORNING, Homer, my boy,” said the Idiot, genially, as the Poet +entered the breakfast-room. “All hail to thee. Thou art the bright +particular bird of plumage I most hoped to see this rare and beauteous +summer morning. No sweet-singing robin-redbreast or soft-honking +canvasback for yours truly this <span class="smcap">A.M.</span>, when a living, breathing, +palpitating son of the Muses lurks near at hand. I fain would make thee +a proposition, Shakespeare dear!”</p> + +<p>“Back pedal there! Avaunt with your flowery speech, oh Idiot!” cried the +Doctor. “Else will I call an ambulance.”</p> + +<p>“No ambulance for mine,” chortled the Idiot.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> +“Nay, Sweet Gas-bags,” quoth the Doctor. “But for once I fear me we may +be scorched by this Pelée of words that thou spoutest forth.”</p> + +<p>“What’s the proposition, Mr. Idiot?” asked the Poet. “I’m always open to +anything of the kind, as the Subway said when an automobile fell into +it.’”</p> + +<p>“I thirst for laurels,” said the Idiot, “and I propose that you and I +collaborate on a book of poems for early publication. With your name on +the title-page and my poems in the book I think we can make a go of it.”</p> + +<p>“What’s the lay?” asked the Poet, amused, but wary. “Sonnets, or French +forms, or just plain snatches of song?”</p> + +<p>“Any old thing as long as it runs smoothly,” replied the Idiot. “Only +the poems must fit the title of the book, which is to be <em>Now</em>.”</p> + +<p>“<em>Now?</em>” said the Poet.</p> + +<p>“<em>Now!</em>” repeated the Idiot. “I find in reading over the verse of the +day that the ‘Now’ poem always finds a ready market. Therefore, there +must be money in it, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> where the money goes there the laurels are. +You know what Browning Robinson, the Laureate of Wall Street, wrote in +his ‘Message to Posterity’:</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“‘Oh, when you come to crown my brow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bring me no bay nor sorrel;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Give me no parsley wreath, but just<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The legal long green laurel.’”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“I never heard that poem before,” laughed the Poet, “though the +sentiment in these commercial days is not unfamiliar.”</p> + +<p>“True,” said the Idiot. “Alfred Austin Biggs, of Texas, voiced the same +idea when he said:</p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“‘Crown me not with spinach,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wreathe me not with hay;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Place no salad on my head<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When you bring the bay.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Give me not the water-cresses<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To adorn my flowing tresses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But at e’en<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crown my pockets good and strong<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the green—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The green that’s long.’”<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></div></div></div> + +<p>“Do you remember that?” asked the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“Only faintly,” said the Poet. “I think you read it to me once before, +just after you—er—ah—rather just after Alfred Austin Biggs, of +Texas—wrote it.”</p> + +<p>The Idiot laughed. “I see you’re on,” he said. “Anyhow, it’s good +sentiment, whether I wrote it or Biggs. Fact is, in my judgment, what +the poet of to-day ought to do is to collect the long green from the +present and the laurel from posterity. That’s a fair division. But what +do you say to my proposition?”</p> + +<p>“Well, it’s certainly—er—cheeky enough,” said the Poet. “Do I +understand it?—you want me to father your poems. To tell the truth, +until I hear some of them, I can’t promise to be more than an uncle to +them.”</p> + +<p>“That’s all right,” said the Idiot. “You ought to be cautious, as a +matter of protection to your own name. I’ve got some of the goods right +here. Here’s a little thing called ‘Summer-tide!’ It shows the whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +‘Now’ principle in a nutshell. Listen to this:</p> + +<div class="block34"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Now the festive frog is croaking in the mere,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the canvasback is honking in the bay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the summer-girl is smiling full of cheer<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On the willieboys that chance along her way.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Now the skeeter sings his carols to the dawn,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And bewails the early closing of the bar<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That prevents the little nips he seeks each morn<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On the sea-shore where the fatling boarders are.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Now the landlord of the pastoral hotel<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Spends his mornings, nights, and eke his afternoons,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Scheming plans to get more milk from out the well,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And a hundred novel ways of cooking prunes.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Now the pumpkin goes a pumpking through the fields,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the merry visaged cows are chewing cud;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the profits that the plumber’s business yields<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Come a-tumbling to the earth with deadly thud.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“And from all of this we learn the lesson sweet,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The soft message of Dame Nature, grand and clear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the winter-time is gone with storm and sleet,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the soft and jolly summer-tide is here.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="noi">How’s that? Pretty fair?”</p> + +<p>“Well, I might consent to be a cousin to a poem of that kind. I’ve read +worse and written some that are quite as bad. But you know, Mr. Idiot, +even so great a masterpiece as that won’t make a book,” said the Poet.</p> + +<p>“Of course it won’t,” retorted the Idiot. “That’s only for the summer. +Here’s another one on winter. Just listen:</p> + +<div class="block34"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Now the man who deals in mittens and in tabs<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is a-smiling broadly—aye, from ear to ear—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As he reaches out his hand and fondly grabs<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All the shining, golden shekels falling near.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Now the snow lies on the hill-side and the roof,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the birdling to the sunny southland flies;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the frowning summer landlord stands aloof,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And to solemncholy meditation hies.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Now the tinkling of the sleigh-bells tinge the air,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the coal-man is as happy as can be;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the hulking, sulking, grizzly seeks his lair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the ice-man’s soul is filled with misery.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Clad in frost are all the distant mountain-peaks,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the furnace is as hungry as a boy;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the plumber, as he gloats upon the leaks,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is the model that the painter takes for ‘Joy.’<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“And from all of this we learn the lesson sweet—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The glad message of Dame Nature, grand and clear:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the summer-time has gone with all its heat,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the crisp and frosty winter days are here.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="noi">You see, Mr. Poet, that out of that one idea alone—that +cataloguing of the things of the four seasons—you can get four poems +that are really worth reading,” said the Idiot. “We could call that +section ‘The Seasons,’ and make it the first part of the book. In the +second part we could do the same thing, only in greater detail, for each +one of the months. Just as a sample, take the month of February. We +could run something like this in on February:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Now o’er the pavement comes a hush<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As pattering feet wade deep in slush<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That every Feb.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Doth flow and ebb.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“I see,” said the Poet. “It wouldn’t take long to fill up a book with +stuff like that.”</p> + +<p>“To make the appeal stronger, let me take the month of July, which is +now on,” resumed the Idiot. “You may find it even more convincing:</p> + +<div class="block22"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“Now the fly—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The rhubarb-pie—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lightning in the sky—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thermometers so spry—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That leap up high—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The roads all dry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hoboes nigh,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The town a-fry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The mad ki-yi<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A-snarling by,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The crickets cry—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All tell us that it is July.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="noi">Eh?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t believe anybody would believe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> I wrote it, that’s all,” said +the Poet, shaking his head dubiously. “They’d find out, sooner or later, +that you did it, just as they discovered that Will Carleton wrote +‘Paradise Lost,’ and Dick Davis was the real author of Shakespeare. Why +don’t you publish the thing over your own name?”</p> + +<p>“Too modest,” said the Idiot. “What do you think of this:</p> + +<div class="block30"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2o">“Now the festive candidate<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Goes a-sporting through the State,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And he kisses babes from Quogue to Kalamazoo;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For he really wants to win<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Without spending any tin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And he thinks he has a chance to kiss it through.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“That’s fair, only I don’t think you’ll find many candidates doing that +sort of thing nowadays,” said the Poet. “Most public men I know of would +rather spend their money than kiss the babies. That style of campaigning +has gone out.”</p> + +<p>“It has in the cities,” said the Idiot. “But back in the country it is +still done, and the candidate who turns his back on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> infant might as +well give up the race. I know, because a cousin of mine ran for +supervisor once, and he was licked out of his boots because he tried to +do his kissing by proxy—said he’d give the kisses in a bunch to a +committee of young ladies, who could distribute them for him. Result was +everybody was down on him—even the young ladies.”</p> + +<p>“I guess he was a cousin of yours, all right,” laughed the Doctor; “that +scheme bears the Idiot brand.”</p> + +<p>“Here’s one on the opening of the opera season,” said the Idiot:</p> + +<div class="block30"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2o">“Now the fiddlers tune their fiddles<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the lovely taradiddles<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of old Wagner, Mozart, Bizet, and the rest.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now the trombone is a-tooting<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Out its scaley shute-the-chuteing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the oboe is hoboing with a zest.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2o">“Now the dressmakers are working—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Not a single minute shirking—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Making gowns with frills and fal-lals mighty queer,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span><br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the Autumn days are flying,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And there’s really no denying<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the season of the opera is near.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Mr. Brief took a hand in the discussion at this moment.</p> + +<p>“Then you can have a blanket verse,” he said, scribbling with his pencil +on a piece of paper in front of him. “Something like this:</p> + +<div class="block34"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2o">“And as Time goes on a-stalking,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the Idiot still is talking<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In his usual blatant manner, loud and free,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With his silly jokes and rhyme,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It is—well it’s any time<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From Creation to the jumping-off place that you’ll find at the far end of Eterni-tie.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“That settles it,” said the Idiot, rising. “I withdraw my proposition. +Let’s call it off, Mr. Poet.”</p> + +<p>“What’s the matter?” asked Mr. Brief. “Isn’t my verse good?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the Idiot. “Just as good as mine, and that being the case it +isn’t worth doing. When lawyers can write as good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> poetry as real poets, +it doesn’t pay to be a real poet. I’m going in for something else. I +guess I’ll apply for a job as a motorman, and make a name for myself +there.”</p> + +<p>“Can a motorman make a name for himself?” asked the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“Oh yes,” said the Idiot. “Easily. By being civil. A civil motorman +would be unique.”</p> + +<p>“But he wouldn’t make a fortune,” suggested the Poet.</p> + +<p>“Yes he would, too,” said the Idiot. “If he could prove he really was +civil, the vaudeville people would pay him a thousand dollars a week and +tour the country with him. He’d draw mobs.”</p> + +<p>With which the Idiot left the dining-room.</p> + +<p>“I think his poems would sell,” smiled Mrs. Pedagog.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Mr. Pedagog. “Chopped up fine and properly advertised, they +might make a very successful new kind of breakfast food—provided the +paper on which they were written was not too indigestible.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> +<a name="xiii" id="xiii"></a>XIII<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">HE DISCUSSES THE MUSIC CURE</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">GOOD-MORNING, Doctor,” said the Idiot, as Capsule, M.D., entered the +dining-room, “I am mighty glad you’ve come. I’ve wanted for a long time +to ask you about this music cure that everybody is talking about, and +get you, if possible, to write me out a list of musical nostrums for +every-day use. I noticed last night, before going to bed, that my +medicine-chest was about run out. There’s nothing but one quinine pill +and a soda-mint drop left in it, and if there’s anything in the music +cure, I don’t think I’ll have it filled again. I prefer Wagner to +squills, and, compared to the delights of Mozart, Hayden, and Offenbach, +those of paregoric are nit.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> +“Still rambling, eh?” vouchsafed the Doctor. “You ought to submit your +tongue to some scientific student of dynamics. I am inclined to think, +from my own observation of its ways, that it contains the germ of +perpetual motion.”</p> + +<p>“I will consider your suggestion,” replied the Idiot. “Meanwhile, let us +consult harmoniously together on the original point. Is there anything +in this music cure, and is it true that our medical schools are +hereafter to have conservatories attached to them, in which aspiring +young M.D.’s are to be taught the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">materia musica</i> in addition to the +<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">materia medica</i>?”</p> + +<p>“I had heard of no such idiotic proposition,” returned the Doctor. “And +as for the music cure, I don’t know anything about it; haven’t heard +everybody talking about it; and doubt the existence of any such thing +outside of that mysterious realm which is bounded by the four corners of +your own bright particular cerebellum. What do you mean by the music +cure?”</p> + +<p>“Why, the papers have been full of it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> lately,” explained the Idiot. +“The claim is made that in music lies the panacea for all human ills. It +may not be able to perform a surgical operation like that which is +required for the removal of a leg, and I don’t believe even Wagner ever +composed a measure that could be counted on successfully to eliminate +one’s vermiform appendix from its chief sphere of usefulness; but for +other things, like measles, mumps, the snuffles, or indigestion, it is +said to be wonderfully efficacious. What I wanted to find out from you +was just what composers were best for which specific troubles.”</p> + +<p>“You’ll have to go to somebody else for the information,” said the +Doctor. “I never heard of the theory, and, as I said before, I don’t +believe anybody else has, barring your own sweet self.”</p> + +<p>“I have seen a reference to it somewhere,” put in Mr. Whitechoker, +coming to the Idiot’s rescue. “As I recall the matter, some lady had +been cured of a nervous affection by a scientific application of some +musical poultice or other, and the general<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> expectation seems to be that +some day we shall find in music a cure for all our human ills, as the +Idiot suggests.”</p> + +<p>“Thank you, Mr. Whitechoker,” said the Idiot, +<a name="gratefully" id="gratefully"></a><ins title="Original has gratefuly">gratefully</ins> ratefuly. +“I saw that same item and several others besides, and I have only told +the truth when I say that a large number of people are considering the +possibilities of music as a substitute for drugs. I am surprised that +Dr. Capsule has neither heard nor thought about it, for I should think +it would prove to be a pleasant and profitable field for speculation. +Even I, who am only a dabbler in medicine and know no more about it than +the effects of certain remedies upon my own symptoms, have noticed that +music of a certain sort is a sure emollient for nervous conditions.”</p> + +<p>“For example?” said the Doctor. “Of course, we don’t doubt your word; +but when a man makes a statement based upon personal observation it is +profitable to ask him what his precise experience has been, merely for +the purpose of adding to our own knowledge.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> +“Well,” said the Idiot, “the first instance that I can recall is that of +a Wagner opera and its effects upon me. For a number of years I suffered +a great deal from insomnia. I could not get two hours of consecutive +sleep, and the effect of my sufferings was to make me nervous and +irritable. Suddenly somebody presented me with a couple of tickets for a +performance of ‘Parsifal,’ and I went. It began at five o’clock in the +afternoon. For twenty minutes all went serenely, and then the music +began to work. I fell into a deep and refreshing slumber. The +intermission came, and still I slept on. Everybody else went home, +dressed for the evening part of the performance, had their dinner, and +returned. Still I slept, and continued so to do until midnight, when one +of the gentlemanly ushers came and waked me up, and told me that the +performance was over. I rubbed my eyes, and looked about me. It was +true—the great auditorium was empty, and was gradually darkening. I put +on my hat and walked out refreshed, having slept from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> five-twenty until +twelve, or six hours and forty minutes straight. That was one instance. +Two weeks later I went again, this time to hear ‘Götterdämmerung.’ The +results were the same, only the effect was instantaneous. The curtain +had hardly risen before I retired to the little ante-room of the box our +party occupied and dozed off into a fathomless sleep. I didn’t wake up +this time until nine o’clock the next day, the rest of the party having +gone off without awakening me as a sort of joke. Clearly Wagner, +according to my way of thinking, then, deserves to rank among the most +effective narcotics known to modern science. I have tried all sorts of +other things—sulfonal, trionel, bromide powders, and all the rest, and +not one of them produced anything like the soporific results that two +doses of Wagner brought about in one instant. And, best of all, there +was no reaction: no splitting headache or shaky hand the next day, but +just the calm, quiet, contented feeling that goes with the sense of +having got completely rested up.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> +“You run a dreadful risk, however,” said the Doctor, with a sarcastic +smile. “The Wagner habit is a terrible thing to acquire, Mr. Idiot.”</p> + +<p>“That may be,” said the Idiot; “worse than the sulfonal habit by a great +deal, I am told; but I am in no danger of becoming a victim to it while +it costs from five to seven dollars a dose. In addition to this +experience, I have also the testimony of a friend of mine who was cured +of a frightful attack of the colic by Sullivan’s ‘Lost Chord,’ played on +a cornet. He had spent the day down at Asbury Park, and had eaten not +wisely but too copiously. Among other things that he turned loose in his +inner man were two plates of lobster salad, a glass of fresh cider, and +a saucerful of pistache ice-cream. He was a painter by profession, and +the color scheme he thus introduced into his digestive apparatus was too +much for his artistic soul. He was not fitted by temperament to +assimilate anything quite so strenuously chromatic as that, and, as a +consequence, shortly after he had retired to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> his studio for the night, +the conflicting tints began to get in their deadly work, and within two +hours he was completely doubled up. The pain he suffered was awful. +Agony was bliss alongside of the pangs that now afflicted him, and all +the palliatives and pain-killers known to man were tried without avail, +and then, just as he was about to give himself up for lost, an amateur +cornetist who occupied a studio on the floor above began to play the +‘Lost Chord.’ A counter-pain set in immediately. At the second bar of +the ‘Lost Chord’ the awful pain that was gradually gnawing away at his +vitals seemed to lose its poignancy in the face of the greater +suffering, and physical relief was instant. As the musician proceeded, +the internal disorder yielded gradually to the external and finally +passed away, entirely leaving him so far from prostrate that by +1 <small>A. M.</small> he was out of bed and actually girding himself with a +shot-gun and an Indian club to go up-stairs for a physical encounter +with the cornetist.”</p> + +<p>“And you reason from this that Sullivan’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> ‘Lost Chord’ is a cure for +cholera morbus, eh?” sneered the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“It would seem so,” said the Idiot. “While the music continued my friend +was a well man, ready to go out and fight like a warrior; but when the +cornetist stopped the colic returned, and he had to fight it out in the +old way. In these incidents in my own experience I find ample +justification for my belief, and that of others, that some day the music +cure for human ailments will be recognized and developed to the full. +Families going off to the country for the summer, instead of taking a +medicine-chest along with them, will be provided with a music-box with +cylinders for mumps, measles, summer complaint, whooping-cough, +chicken-pox, chills and fever, and all the other ills the flesh is heir +to. Scientific experiment will demonstrate before long just what +composition will cure specific ills. If a baby has whooping-cough, an +anxious mother, instead of ringing up the doctor, will go to the piano +and give the child a dose of ‘Hiawatha.’ If a small boy goes swimming +and catches a cold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> in his head and is down with a fever, his nurse, an +expert on the accordion, can bring him back to health again with three +bars of ‘Under the Bamboo Tree’ after each meal. Instead of dosing the +kids with cod-liver oil when they need a tonic, they will be set to work +at a mechanical piano and braced up on ‘Narcissus.’ ‘There’ll Be a Hot +Time in the Old Town To-night’ will become an effective remedy for a +sudden chill. People suffering from sleeplessness can dose themselves +back to normal conditions with Wagner the way I did. +<a name="Tchaikowsky" id="Tchaikowsky"></a><ins title="Original has Tchaikowski">Tchaikowsky</ins>, to be well shaken before taken, will be an +effective remedy for a torpid liver, and the man or woman who suffers +from lassitude will doubtless find in the lively airs of our two-step +composers an efficient tonic to bring their vitality up to a high +standard of activity. Nothing in it? Why, Doctor, there’s more in it +that’s in sight to-day that is promising and suggestive of great things +in the future than there was of the principle of gravitation in the rude +act of that historic pippin that left the parent tree<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> and swatted Sir +Isaac Newton on the nose.”</p> + +<p>“And the drug stores will be driven out of business, I presume,” said +the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“No,” said the Idiot. “They will substitute music for drugs, that is +all. Every man who can afford it will have his own medical phonograph, +or music-box, and the drug stores will sell cylinders and records for +them instead of quinine, carbonate of soda, squills, paregoric, and +other nasty-tasting things they have now. This alone will serve to +popularize sickness, and, instead of being driven out of business, their +trade will pick up.”</p> + +<p>“And the doctor, and the doctor’s gig, and all the appurtenances of his +profession—what becomes of them?” demanded the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“We’ll have to have the doctor just the same to prescribe for us, only +he will have to be a musician, but the gig—I’m afraid that will have to +go,” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“And why, pray?” asked the Doctor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> “Because there are no more drugs, +must the physician walk?”</p> + +<p>“Not at all,” said the Idiot. “But he’d be better equipped if he drove +about in a piano-organ or, if he preferred, an auto on a +steam-calliope.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> +<a name="xiv" id="xiv"></a>XIV<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">HE DEFENDS CAMPAIGN METHODS</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">GOOD-MORNING, gentlemen,” said the Idiot, cheerily, as he entered the +breakfast-room. “This is a fine Sunday morning in spite of the gloom +into which the approaching death of the campaign should plunge us all.”</p> + +<p>“You think that, do you?” observed the Bibliomaniac. “Well, I don’t +agree with you. I for one am sick and tired of politics, and it will be +a great relief to me when it is all over.”</p> + +<p>“Dear me, what a blasé old customer you are, Mr. Bib,” returned the +Idiot. “Do you mean to say that a Presidential campaign does not keep +your nerve-centres in a constant state of pleasurable titillation? Why,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> +to me it is what a bag full of nuts must be to a squirrel. I fairly +gloat over these quadrennial political campaigns of ours. They are to me +among the most exhilarating institutions of modern life. They satisfy +all one’s zest for warfare without the distressing shedding of blood +which attends real war, and regarded from the standpoint of humor, I +know of nothing that, to the eye of an ordinarily keen observer, is more +provocative of good, honest, wholesome mirth.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t see it,” said Mr. Bib. “To my mind, the average political +campaign is just a vulgar scrap in which men who ought to know better +descend to all sorts of despicable trickery merely to gain the +emoluments of office. This quest for the flesh-pots of politics, so far +from being diverting, is, to my notion, one of the most deplorable +exhibitions of human weakness that modern civilization, so called, has +produced. A couple of men are put up for the most dignified office known +to the world—both are gentlemen by birth and education, men of honor, +men who, you would think, would scorn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> baseness as they hate poison—and +then what happens? For three weary months the followers of each attack +the character and intelligence of the other until, if you really +believed what was said of either, neither in your estimation would have +a shred of reputation left. Is that either diverting or elevating or +educational or, indeed, anything but deplorable?”</p> + +<p>“It’s perfectly fine,” said the Idiot, “to think that we have men in the +country whose characters are such that they can stand four months of +such a test. That’s what I find elevating in it. When a man who is +nominated for the Presidency in June or July can emerge in November +unscathed in spite of the minute scrutiny to which himself and his +record and the record of his sisters and his cousins and his aunts have +been subjected, it’s time for the American rooster to get upon his hind +legs and give three cheers for himself and the people to whom he +belongs. Even old Diogenes, who spent his life looking for an honest +man, would have to admit every four years that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> he could spot him +instantly by merely coming to this country and taking his choice from +among the several candidates.”</p> + +<p>“You must admit, however,” said the Bibliomaniac, “that a man with an +honorable name must find it unpleasant to have such outrageous stories +told of him.”</p> + +<p>“Not a bit of it,” laughed the Idiot. “The more outrageous the better. +For instance, when <i>The Sunday Jigger</i> comes out with a four-page +revelation of your Republican candidate’s past, in which we learn how, +in 1873, he put out the eyes of a maiden aunt with a red-hot poker, and +stabbed a negro cook in the back with a skewer, because she would not +permit him to put rat-poison in his grandfather’s coffee, you know +perfectly well that that story has been put forth for the purpose of +turning the maiden aunt, negro, and grandfather votes against him. You +know well enough that he either never did what is charged against him, +or at least that the story is greatly exaggerated—he may have stuck a +pin into the cook, and played some boyish trick upon some of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> +relatives—but the story on the face of it is untrue and therefore +harmless. Similarly with the Democratic candidate. When the <i>Daily Flim +Flam</i> asserts that he believes that the working-man is entitled to four +cents a day for sixteen hours’ work, and has repeatedly avowed that +bread and water is the proper food for motormen, everybody with +common-sense realizes at once that even the <i>Flim Flam</i> doesn’t believe +the story. It hurts no one, therefore, and provokes a great deal of +innocent mirth. You don’t yourself believe that last yarn about the +Prohibition candidate, do you?”</p> + +<p>“I haven’t heard any yarn about him,” said the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“That he is the owner of a brewery up in Rochester, and backs fifteen +saloons and a pool-room in New York?” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“Of course I don’t,” said the Bibliomaniac. “Who does?”</p> + +<p>“Nobody,” said the Idiot; “and therefore the story doesn’t hurt the +man’s reputation a bit, or interfere with his chances of election in the +least. Take that other story<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> published in a New York newspaper that on +the 10th of last August Thompson Bondifeller’s yacht was seen anchored +for six hours off Tom Watson’s farm, two hundred miles from the sea, and +that the Populist candidate, disguised as a bank president, went off +with the trust magnate on a cruise from Atlanta, Georgia, to +Oklahoma—you don’t believe that, do you?”</p> + +<p>“It’s preposterous on the face of it,” said Mr. Bib.</p> + +<p>“Well, that’s the way the thing works,” said the Idiot. “And that’s why +I think there’s a lot of bully good fun to be had out of a political +campaign. I love anything that arouses the imagination of a people too +much given over to the pursuit of the cold, hard dollar. If it wasn’t +for these quadrennial political campaigns to spur the fancy on to +glorious flights we should become a dull, hard, prosaic, unimaginative +people, and that would be death to progress. No people can progress that +lacks imagination. Politics is an emery-wheel that keeps our wits +polished.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> +“Well, granting all that you say is true,” said the Bibliomaniac, “the +intrusion upon a man’s private life that politics makes possible—surely +you cannot condone that.”</p> + +<p>The Idiot laughed.</p> + +<p>“That’s the strangest argument of all,” he said. “The very idea of a man +who deliberately chooses public life as the sphere of his activities +seeking to hide behind his private life is preposterous. The fellow who +does that, Mr. Bib, wants to lead a double life, and that is +reprehensible. The man who offers himself to the people hasn’t any +business to tie a string to any part of him. If Jim Jones wants to be +President of the United States the people who are asked to put him there +have a right to know what kind of a person Jim Jones is in his +dressing-gown and slippers. If he beats his mother-in-law, and eats +asparagus with the sugar-tongs, and doesn’t pay his grocer, the public +have a right to know it. If he has children, the voters are perfectly +justified in asking what kind of children they are, since the voters own +the White House furniture,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> and if the Jim Jones children wipe their +feet on plush chairs, and shoot holes in the paintings with their +bean-snappers and putty-blowers, Uncle Sam, as a landlord and owner of +the premises, ought to be warned beforehand. You wouldn’t yourself rent +a furnished residence to a man whose children were known to have built +bonfires in the parlor of their last known home, would you?”</p> + +<p>“I think not,” smiled the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Then you cannot complain if Uncle Sam is equally solicitous about the +personal paraphernalia of the man who asks to occupy his little cottage +on the Potomac,” said the Idiot. “So it happens that when a man runs for +the Presidency the persons who intrude upon his private life, as you put +it, are conferring a real service upon their fellow-citizens. When I +hear from an authentic source that Mr. So-and-So, the candidate of the +Thisorthatic party for the Presidency, is married to an estimable lady +who refers to all Frenchmen as parricides, because she believes they +have come from Paris, I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> a right to consider whether or not I wish +to vote to place such a lady at the head of my official table at White +House banquets, where she is likely, sooner or later, to encounter the +French ambassador, and the man who gives me the necessary information is +doing me a service. You may say that the lady is not running for a +public office, and that, therefore, she should be protected from public +scrutiny, but that is a fallacy. A man’s wife is his better half and his +children are a good part of the remainder, and what they do or don’t do +becomes a matter of legitimate public concern. As a matter of fact, a +public man <em>can</em> have no private life.”</p> + +<p>“Then you approve of these stories of candidates’ cousins, the prattling +anecdotes of their grandchildren, these paragraphs narrating the doings +of their uncles-in-law, and all that?” sneered the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Certainly, I do,” said the Idiot. “When I hear that Judge Torkin’s +grandson, aged four, has come out for his grandfather’s opponent I am +delighted, and give the judge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> credit for the independent spirit which +heredity accounts for; when it is told to me that Tom Watson’s uncle is +going to vote for Tom because he knows Tom doesn’t believe what he says, +I am almost inclined to vote for him as the uncle of his country; when I +hear that Debs’s son, aged three, has punched his daddy in the eye, on +general principles I feel that there’s a baby I want in the White House; +and when it is told to me that the Prohibition candidate’s third cousin +has just been cured of delirium tremens, I feel that possibly there is a +family average there that may be struck to the advantage of the +country.”</p> + +<p>“Say, Mr. Idiot,” put in the Poet, at this point, “who are you going to +vote for, anyhow?”</p> + +<p>“Don’t ask me,” laughed the Idiot. “I don’t know yet. I admire all the +candidates personally very much.”</p> + +<p>“But what are your politics—Republican or Democratic?” asked the +Lawyer.</p> + +<p>“Oh, that’s different,” said the Idiot. “I’m a Sammycrat.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> +“A what?” cried the Idiot’s fellow-boarders in unison.</p> + +<p>“A Sammycrat,” said the Idiot. “I’m for Uncle Sam every time. He’s the +best ever.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> +<a name="xv" id="xv"></a>XV<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">ON SHORT COURSES AT COLLEGE</span></h2> + + +<p class="cap">MR. PEDAGOG threw down the morning paper with an ejaculation of +impatience.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know what on earth we are coming to!” he said, stirring his +coffee vigorously. “These new-fangled notions of our college presidents +seem to me to be destructive in their tendency.”</p> + +<p>“What’s up now? Somebody flunked a football team?” asked the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“No, I quite approve of that,” said Mr. Pedagog; “but this matter of +reducing the college course from four to two years is so radical a +suggestion that I tremble for the future of education.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I wouldn’t if I were you, Mr. Pedagog,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> said the Idiot. “Your +trembling won’t help matters any, and, after all, when men like +President Eliot of Harvard and Dr. Butler of Columbia recommend the +short course the idea must have some virtue.”</p> + +<p>“Well, if it stops where they do I don’t suppose any great harm will be +done,” said Mr. Pedagog. “But what guarantee have we that fifty years +from now some successor to these gentlemen won’t propose a one-year +course?”</p> + +<p>“None,” said the Idiot. “Fact is, we don’t want any guarantee—or at +least I don’t. They can turn colleges into bicycle academies fifty years +from now for all I care. I expect to be doing time in some other sphere +fifty years from now, so why should I vex my soul about it?”</p> + +<p>“That’s rather a selfish view, isn’t it, Mr. Idiot?” asked Mr. +Whitechoker. “Don’t you wish to see the world getting better and better +every day?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said the Idiot. “It’s so mighty good as it is, this bully old +globe, that I hate to see people monkeying with it all the time.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> Of +course, I wasn’t around it in the old days, but I don’t believe the +world’s any better off now than it was in the days of Adam.”</p> + +<p>“Great Heavens! What a thing to say!” cried the Poet.</p> + +<p>“Well, I’ve said it,” rejoined the Idiot. “What has it all come to, +anyhow—all this business of man’s trying to better the world? It’s just +added to his expenses, that’s all. And what does he get out of it that +Adam didn’t get? Money? Adam didn’t need money. He had his garden truck, +his tailor, his fuel supply, his amusements—all the things we have to +pay cash for—right in his backyard. All he had to do was to reach out +and take what we fellows nowadays have to toil eight or ten hours a day +to earn. Literature? His position was positively enviable as far as +literature is concerned. He had the situation in his own hands. He +wasn’t prevented from writing ‘Hamlet,’ as I am, because somebody else +had already done it. He didn’t have to sit up till midnight seven nights +a week to keep up with the historical novels of the day. Art? There were +pictures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> on every side of him, splendid in color, instinct of life, +perfect in their technique, and all from the hand of that first of Old +Masters, Nature herself. He hadn’t any Rosa Bonheurs or Landseers on his +farm, but he could get all the cow pictures he wanted from the back +window of his bungalow without their costing him a cent. Drama? Life was +a succession of rising curtains to Adam, and while, of course, he had +the errant Eve to deal with, the garden was free from Notorious Mrs. +Ebbsmiths, there wasn’t a Magda from one end of the apple-orchard to the +other, and not a First, Second, or Third Mrs. Tanqueray in sight. Music? +The woods were full of it—the orioles singing their cantatas, the +nightingales warbling their concertos, the eagles screeching out their +Wagnerian measures, the bluejays piping their intermezzos, and no +Italian organ-grinders doing De Koven under his window from one year’s +end to the other. Gorry! I wish sometimes Adam had known a good thing +when he had it and hadn’t broken the monologue.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> +“The what?” demanded Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“The monologue,” repeated the Idiot. “The one commandment. If ten +commandments make a decalogue, one commandment makes a monologue, +doesn’t it?”</p> + +<p>“You’re a philologist and a half,” said the Bibliomaniac, with a laugh.</p> + +<p>“No credit to me,” returned the Idiot. “A ten years’ residence in this +boarding-house has resulted practically in my having enjoyed a diet of +words. I have literally eaten syllables—”</p> + +<p>“I hope you haven’t eaten any of your own,” said the Bibliomaniac. “That +would ruin the digestion of an ostrich.”</p> + +<p>“That’s true enough,” said the Idiot. “Rich foods will overthrow any +kind of a digestion in the long run. But to come back to the college +tendencies, Mr. Pedagog, it is my belief that in this short-course +business we haven’t more than started. It’s my firm conviction that some +day we shall find universities conferring degrees ‘while you wait,’ as +it were. A man, for instance, visiting Boston for a week will some day +be able to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> run out to Harvard, pay a small fee, pass an examination, +and get a bachelor’s degree, as a sort of souvenir of his visit; another +chap, coming to New York for a brief holiday, instead of stealing a +spoon from the Waldorf for his collection of souvenirs, can ring up +Columbia College, tell ’em all he knows over the wire, and get a +sheepskin by return mail; while at New Haven you’ll be able to stop off +at the railway station and buy your B. A. at the lunch-counter—they may +even go so far as to let the newsboys on the train confer them without +making the applicant get off at all. Then the golden age of education +will begin. There’ll be more college graduates to the square inch than +you can now find in any ten square miles in Massachusetts, and our +professional men, instead of beginning the long wait at thirty, will be +in full practice at twenty-one.”</p> + +<p>“That is the limit!” ejaculated Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“Oh, no indeed,” said the Idiot. “There’s another step. That’s the +gramophone course, in which a man won’t have to leave home at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> all to +secure a degree from any college he chooses. By tabulating his knowledge +and dictating it into a gramophone he can send the cylinder to the +university authorities, have it carefully examined, and receive his +degree on a postal-card within forty-eight hours. That strikes me as +being the limit, unless some of the ten-cent magazines offer an LL. D. +degree with a set of Kipling and a punching-bag as a premium for a one +year’s subscription.”</p> + +<p>“And you think that will be a good thing?” demanded the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“No, I didn’t say so,” said the Idiot. “In one respect I think it would +be a very bad thing. Such a method would involve the utter destruction +of the football and rowing seasons, unless the universities took some +decided measures looking toward the preservation of these branches of +undergraduate endeavor. It is coming to be recognized as a fact that a +man can be branded with the mark of intellectual distinction in +absentia, as the Aryan tribes used to put it, but a man can’t win +athletic prowess without<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> giving the matter attention in propria +persona, to adopt the phraseology of the days of Uncle Remus. You can’t +stroke a crew by mail any more than you can stroke a cat by freight, and +it doesn’t make any difference how wonderful he may be physically, a +Yale man selling dry-goods out in Nebraska can’t play football with a +Harvard student employed in a grocery store at New Orleans by telephone. +You can do it with chess, but not with basket ball. There are some +things in university life that require the individual attention of the +student. Unless something is done by our colleges, then, to care for +this very important branch of their service to growing youth, the new +scheme will meet with much opposition from the public.”</p> + +<p>“What would you, in your infinite wisdom, suggest?” asked the Doctor. +“The wise man, when he points out an objection to another’s plans, +suggests a remedy.”</p> + +<p>“That’s easy,” said the Idiot. “I should have what I should call +residential terms for those who wished to avail themselves of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> athletic +training under academic auspices. The leading colleges could announce +that they were open for business from October 1st to December 1st for +the study of the Theory and Practice of Gridirony—”</p> + +<p>“Excuse me,” said Mr. Pedagog. “But what was that word?”</p> + +<p>“Gridirony,” observed the Idiot. “That would be my idea of the proper +academic designation of a course in football, a game which is played on +the gridiron. It is more euphonious than goalology or leather spheroids, +which have suggested themselves to me.”</p> + +<p>“Go on!” sighed the Doctor. “As a word-mint you are unrivalled.”</p> + +<p>“There could be a term in baseballistics; another in lacrossetics; a +fourth in aquatics, and so on all through the list of intercollegiate +sports, each in the season best suited to its completest development.”</p> + +<p>“It’s not a bad idea, that,” said Mr. Pedagog. “A parent sending his boy +to college under such conditions would have a fairly good idea of what +the lad was doing. As<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> matters are now, it’s a question whether the +undergraduate acquires as much of Euripides as he does of Travis, and as +far as I can find out there are more Yale men around who know all about +Bob Cook and Hinkey than there are who are versed in Chaucer, Milton, +and Shakespeare.”</p> + +<p>“But what have these things to do with the arts?” asked Mr. Whitechoker. +“A man may know all about golf, base and foot ball and rowing, and yet +be far removed from the true ideals of culture. You couldn’t give a man +a B. A. degree because he was a perfect quarter rush, or whatever else +it is they call him.”</p> + +<p>“That’s a good criticism,” observed the Idiot, “and there isn’t a doubt +in my mind that the various faculties of our various colleges will meet +it by the establishment of a new degree which shall cover the case.”</p> + +<p>“Again I would suggest that it is up to you to cover that point,” said +Mr. Brief. “You have outlined a pretty specific scheme. The notion that +you haven’t brains enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> to invent a particular degree is to my mind +preposterous.”</p> + +<p>“Right,” said the Idiot. “And I think I have it. When I was in college +they used to confer a degree upon chaps who didn’t quite succeed in +passing their finals which was known as A. B. Sp. Gr.—they were mostly +fellows who had played more football than Herodotus who got them. The +Sp. Gr. meant ‘by special favor of the Faculty.’ I think I should +advocate that, only changing its meaning to ‘Great Sport.’”</p> + +<p>Mr. Pedagog laughed heartily. “You are a great Idiot,” he said. “I +wonder they don’t call you to a full professorship of idiocy somewhere.”</p> + +<p>“I guess it’s because they know I wouldn’t go,” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“Did you say you were in college ever?” sneered the Bibliomaniac, rising +from the table.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the Idiot. “I went to Columbia for two weeks in the early +nineties. I got a special A. B. at the beginning of the third week for +my proficiency in sciolism<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> and horseplay. I used a pony in an +examination and stuck too closely to the text.”</p> + +<p>“You talk like it,” snapped the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“Thank you,” returned the Idiot, suavely. “I ought to. I was one of the +few men in my class who really earned his degree by persistent effort.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> +<a name="xvi" id="xvi"></a>XVI<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">THE HORSE SHOW</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">I SUPPOSE, Mr. Idiot,” observed Mr. Brief, as the Idiot took his +accustomed place at the breakfast-table, “that you have been putting in +a good deal of your time this week at the Horse Show?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the Idiot, “I was there every night it was open. I go to all +the shows—Horse, Dog, Baby, Flower, Electrical—it doesn’t matter what. +It’s first-rate fun.”</p> + +<p>“Pretty fine lot of horses, this year?” asked the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“Don’t know,” said the Idiot. “I heard there were some there, but I +didn’t see ’em.”</p> + +<p>“What?” cried the Doctor. “Went to the Horse Show and didn’t see the +horses?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said the Idiot. “Why should I?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> I don’t know a cob from a lazy +back. Of course I know that the four-legged beast that goes when you say +get ap is a horse, but beyond that my equine education has been +neglected. I can see all the horses I want to look at on the street, +anyhow.”</p> + +<p>“Then what in thunder do you go to the Horse Show for?” demanded the +Bibliomaniac. “To sleep?”</p> + +<p>“No,” rejoined the Idiot. “It’s too noisy for that. I go to see the +people. People are far more interesting to me than horses, and I get +more solid fun out of seeing the nabobs go through their paces than +could be got out of a million nags of high degree kicking up their heels +in the ring. If they’d make the horses do all sorts of stunts, it might +be different, but they don’t. They show you the same old stuff year in +and year out, and things that you can see almost any fine day in the +Park during the season. You and I know that a four-horse team can pull a +tally-ho coach around without breaking its collective neck. We know that +two horses harnessed together fore and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> aft instead of abreast are +called a tandem, and can drag a cart on two wheels and about a mile high +a reasonable distance without falling dead. There isn’t anything new or +startling in their performance, and why anybody should pay to see them +doing the commonplace, every-day act I don’t know. It isn’t as if they +had a lot of thoroughbreds on exhibition who could sit down at a table +and play a round of bridge whist or poker. That would be worth seeing. +So would a horse that could play ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’ on the piano, +but when it comes to dragging a hansom-cab or a grocery-wagon around the +tanbark, why, it seems to me to lack novelty.”</p> + +<p>“The idea of a horse playing bridge whist!” jeered the Bibliomaniac. +“What a preposterous proposition!”</p> + +<p>“Well, I’ve seen fellows with less sense than the average horse make a +pretty good stab at it at the club,” said the Idiot. “Perhaps my +suggestion is extreme, but I put it that way merely to emphasize my +point. I’ve seen an educated pig play cards, though,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> and I don’t see +why they can’t put the horse through very much the same course of +treatment and teach him to do something that would make him more of an +object of interest when he has his week of glory. I don’t care what it +is as long as it is out of the ordinary.”</p> + +<p>“There is nothing in the world that is more impressive than a fine horse +in action,” said the Doctor. “What you suggest would take away from his +dignity and make him a freak.”</p> + +<p>“I didn’t say it wouldn’t,” rejoined the Idiot. “In fact, my remarks +implied that it would. You don’t quite understand my meaning. If I owned +a stable I’d much rather my horses didn’t play bridge whist, because, in +all probability, they’d be sending into the house at all hours of the +night asking me to come over to the barn and make a fourth hand. It’s +bad enough having your neighbors doing that sort of thing without +encouraging your horse to go into the business. Nor would it please me +as a lover of horseback-riding to have a mount that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> could play grand +opera on the piano. The chances are it would spoil three good +things—the horse, the piano, and the opera—but if I were getting up a +show and asking people from all over the country to pay good money to +get into it, then I should want just such things. In the ordinary daily +pursuits of equine life the horse suits me just as he is, but for the +extraordinary requirements of an exhibition he lacks diverting +qualities. He’s more solemn than a play by Sudermann or Blanketty +Bjornsen; he is as lacking in originality as a comic-opera score by Sir +Reginald de Bergerac, and his drawing powers, outside of cab-work, as +far as I am concerned, are absolutely nil. A horse that can draw a +picture I’d travel miles to see. A horse that can’t draw anything but a +T-cart or an ice-wagon hasn’t two cents’ worth of interest in my eyes.”</p> + +<p>“But can’t you see the beauty in the action of a horse?” demanded the +Doctor.</p> + +<p>“It all depends on his actions,” said the Idiot. “I’ve seen horses whose +actions were highly uncivilized.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> +“I mean his form—not his behavior,” said the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“Well, I’ve never understood enough about horses to speak intelligently +on that point,” observed the Idiot. “It’s incomprehensible to me how +your so-called judges reason. If a horse trots along hiking his +fore-legs ’way up in the air as if he were grinding an invisible +hand-organ with both feet, people rave over his high-stepping and call +him all sorts of fine names. But if he does the same thing with his +hind-legs they call it springhalt or stringhalt, or something of that +kind, and set him down as a beastly old plug. The scheme seems to me to +be inconsistent, and if I were a horse I’m blessed if I think I’d know +what to do. How a thing can be an accomplishment in front and a blemish +behind is beyond me, but there is the fact. They give a blue ribbon to +the front-hiker and kick the hind-hiker out of the show altogether—they +wouldn’t even pin a Bryan button on his breast.”</p> + +<p>“I fancy a baby show is about your size,” said the Doctor.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> +“Well—yes,” said the Idiot, “I guess perhaps you are right, as far as +the exhibit is concerned. There’s something almost human about a baby, +and it’s the human element always that takes hold of me. It’s the human +element in the Horse Show that takes me and most other people as well. +Fact is, so many go to see the people and so few to see the horses that +I have an idea that some day they’ll have it with only one horse—just +enough of a nag to enable them to call it a Horse Show—and pay proper +attention to the real things that make it a success even now.”</p> + +<p>The Doctor sniffed contemptuously. “What factors in your judgment +contribute most to the success of the Horse Show?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“Duds chiefly,” said the Idiot, “and the people who are inside of them. +If there were a law passed requiring every woman who goes to the Horse +Show to wear a simple gown in order not to scare the horses, ninety per +cent. of ’em would stay at home, and all the blue-ribbon steeds in +creation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> couldn’t drag them to the Garden—and nobody’d blame them for +it, either. Similarly with the men. You don’t suppose for an instant, do +you, that young Hawkins Van Bluevane would give seven cents for the +Horse Show if it didn’t give him a chance to appear every afternoon in +his Carnegie plaid waistcoat?”</p> + +<p>“That’s a new one on me,” said Mr. Brief. “Is there such a thing as a +Carnegie plaid?”</p> + +<p>“It’s the most popular that ever came out of Scotland,” said the Idiot. +“It’s called the Carnegie because of the size of the checks. Then +there’s poor old Jimmie Varickstreet—the last remnant of a first +family—hasn’t enough money to keep a goat-wagon, and couldn’t tell you +the difference between a saw-horse and a crupper. He gives up his hall +bedroom Horse-Show week and lives in the place day and night, covering +up the delinquencies of his afternoon and evening clothes with a long +yellow ulster with buttons like butter-saucers distributed all over his +person—”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> +“Where did he get it, if he’s so beastly poor?” demanded the Lawyer.</p> + +<p>“He’s gone without food and drink and clothes that don’t show. He has +scrimped and saved, and denied himself for a year to get up a gaudy +shell in which for six glorious days to shine resplendent,” said the +Idiot. “Jimmie lives for those six days, and as you see him flitting +from box to box and realize that he is an opulent swell for six days of +every year, and a poor, down-trodden exile for the rest of the time, you +don’t grudge him his little diversion and almost wish you had sufficient +will power to deny yourself the luxuries and some of the necessities of +life as well to get a coat like that. If I had my way they’d award +Jimmie Varickstreet at least an honorable mention as one of the most +interesting exhibits in the whole show.</p> + +<p>“And there are plenty of others. There’s raw material enough in that +Horse Show to make it a permanent exhibition if the managers would only +get together and lick it into shape. As a sort of social zoo it is +unsurpassed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> and why they don’t classify the various sections of it I +can’t see. In the first place, imagine a dozen boxes filled with members +of the Four Hundred, men and women whose names have become household +words, and wearing on their backs garments made by the deft fingers of +the greatest sartorial artists of the ages. You and I walk in and are +permitted to gaze upon this glorious assemblage—the American +nobility—in its gayest environment. Wouldn’t it interest you to know +that that very beautiful woman in the lavender creation, wrapped up in a +billion-dollar pearl necklace, is the famous Mrs. Bollington-Jones, who +holds the divorce championship of South Dakota, and that those two chaps +who are talking to her so vivaciously are two of her ex-husbands, Van +Bibber Beaconhill and ‘Tommy’ Fitz Greenwich? Wouldn’t it interest you +more than any horse in the ring to know that her gown was turned out at +Mrs. Robert Bluefern’s Dud Studio at a cost of nine thousand seven +hundred and fifty dollars, hat included? Yet the programme says<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> never a +word about these people. Every horse that trots in has a number so that +you can tell who and what and why he is, but there are no placards on +Mrs. Bollington-Jones by which she may be identified.</p> + +<p>“Then on the promenade, there is Hooker Van Winkle. He’s out on bail for +killing a farmer with his automobile up in Connecticut somewhere. There +is young Walston Addlepate, whose father pays him a salary of +twenty-five thousand dollars a year for keeping out of business. There’s +Jimson Gooseberry, the cotillon leader, whose name is on every lip +during the season. Approaching you, dressed in gorgeous furs, is Mrs. +Dinningforth Winter, who declined to meet Prince Henry when he was here, +because of a previous engagement to dine with Tolby Robinson’s pet +monkey just in from a cruise in the Indies. And so it goes. The place +fairly shrieks with celebrities whose names appear in the <i>Social +Register</i>, and whose photographs in pink and green are the stock in +trade of the Sunday newspapers of saffron tendencies everywhere—but +what is done<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> about it? Nothing at all. They come and go, conspicuous +but unidentified, and wasting their notoriety on the desert air. It is a +magnificent opportunity wasted, and, unless you happen to know these +people by sight, you miss a thousand and one little points which are the +<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">sine qua non</i> of the show.”</p> + +<p>“I wonder you don’t write another Baedeker,” said the +Bibliomaniac—”<i>The Idiot’s Hand-book to the Horse Show, or Who’s Who +at the Garden.</i>”</p> + +<p>“It would be a good idea,” said the Idiot. “But the show people must +take the initiative. The whole thing needs a live manager.”</p> + +<p>“A sort of Ward MacAllister again?” asked Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“No, not exactly,” said the Idiot. “Society has plenty of successors to +Ward MacAllister. What they seem to me to need most is a P. T. Barnum. A +man like that could make society a veritable Klondike, and with the +Horse Show as a nucleus he wouldn’t have much trouble getting the thing +started along.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> +<a name="xvii" id="xvii"></a>XVII<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">SUGGESTION TO CHRISTMAS SHOPPERS</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">BY Jingo!” said the Idiot, as he wearily took his place at the +breakfast-table the other morning, “but I’m just regularly tuckered +out.”</p> + +<p>“Late hours again?” asked the Lawyer.</p> + +<p>“Not a late hour,” returned the Idiot. “Matter of fact, I went to bed +last night at half-after seven and never waked until nine this morning. +In spite of all that sleep and rest I feel now as if I’d been put +through a threshing-machine. Every bone in my body from the funny to the +medulla aches like all possessed, and my joints creak like a new pair of +shoes on a school-boy in church, they are so stiff.”</p> + +<p>“Oh well,” said the Doctor, “what of it?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> The pace that kills is bound +to have some symptoms preliminary to dissolution. If you, like other +young men of the age, burn the candle at both ends and in the middle, +what can you expect? You push nature into a corner and then growl like +all possessed because she rebels.”</p> + +<p>“Not I,” retorted the Idiot. “Mr. Pedagog and the Poet and Mr. Bib may +lead the strenuous life, but as for mine the simple life is the thing. +I’m not striving after the unattainable. I’m not wasting my physical +substance in riotous living. The cold and clammy touch of dissipation is +not writing letters of burning condemnation proceedings on my brow. +Excesses in any form are utterly unknown to me, and from one end of the +Subway to the other you won’t find another man of my age who in general +takes better care of himself. I am as watchful of my own needs as though +I were a baby and my own nurse at one and the same time. No mother could +watch over her offspring more tenderly than I watch over me, and—”</p> + +<p>“Well, then, what in thunder is the matter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> with you?” cried the Lawyer, +irritated. “If this is all true, why on earth are you proclaiming +yourself as a physical wreck? There must be some cause for your +condition.”</p> + +<p>“There is,” said the Idiot, meekly. “I went Christmas shopping yesterday +without having previously trained for it, and this is the result. I +sometimes wonder, Doctor, that you gentlemen, who have the public health +more or less in your hands, don’t take the initiative and stave off +nervous prostration and other ills attendant upon a run-down physical +condition instead of waiting for a fully developed case and trying to +cure it after the fact. The ounce-of-prevention idea ought to be +incorporated, it seems to me, into the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">materia medica</i>.”</p> + +<p>“What would you have us do, move mountains?” demanded the Doctor. “I’m +not afraid to tackle almost any kind of fever known to medical science, +but the shopping-fever—well, it is incurable. Once it gets hold of a +man or a woman, and more especially a woman, there isn’t anything that +I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> know of can get it out of the system. I grant you that it is as much +of a disease as scarlet, typhoid, or any other, but the mind has not yet +been discovered that can find a remedy for it short of abject poverty, +and even that has been known to fail.”</p> + +<p>“That’s true enough,” said the Idiot, “but what you can do is to make it +harmless. There are lots of diseases that our forefathers used to regard +as necessarily fatal that nowadays we look upon as mere trifles, because +people can be put physically into such a condition that they are +practically immune to their ravages.”</p> + +<p>“Maybe so—but if people will shop they are going to be knocked out by +it. I don’t see that we doctors can do anything to mitigate the evil +effects of the consequences <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ab initio</i>. After the event we can pump you +full of quinine and cod-liver oil and build you up again, but the ounce +of prevention for shopping troubles is as easily attainable as a ton of +radium to a man with eight cents and a cancelled postage-stamp in his +pocket,” said the Doctor.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> +“Nonsense, Doctor. You’re only fooling,” said the Idiot. “A college +president might as well say that boys will play football, and that +there’s nothing they can do to stave off the inevitable consequences of +playing the game to one who isn’t prepared for it. You know as well as +anybody else that from November 15th to December 24th every year an +epidemic of shopping is going to break out in our midst. You know that +it will rage violently in the last stage beginning December 15th, thanks +to our habit of leaving everything to the last minute. You know that the +men and women in your care, unless they have properly trained for the +exigencies of the epidemic period, will be prostrated physically and +nervously, racked in bone and body, aching from tip to toe, their energy +exhausted and their spines as limp as a rag, and yet you claim you can +do nothing. What would we think of a football trainer who would try thus +to account for the condition of his eleven at the end of a season? We’d +bounce him, that’s what.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> +“Perhaps that gigantic intellect of yours has something to suggest,” +sneered the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“Certainly,” quoth the Idiot. “I dreamed it all out in my sleep last +night. I dreamed that you and I together had started a series of +establishments all over the country—”</p> + +<p>“To eradicate the shopping evil?” laughed the Doctor. “A sort of Keeley +Cure for shopping inebriates?”</p> + +<p>“Nay, nay,” retorted the Idiot. “The shopping inebriate is too much of a +factor in our commercial prosperity to make such a thing as that +popular. My scheme was a sort of shopnasium.”</p> + +<p>“A what?” roared the Doctor.</p> + +<p>“A shopnasium,” explained the Idiot. “We have gymnasiums in which we +teach gymnastics. Why not have a shopnasium in which to teach what we +might call shopnastics? Just think of what a boon it would be for a lot +of delicate women, for instance, who know that along about +Christmas-time they must hie them forth to the department stores, there +to be crushed and mauled and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> pulled and hauled until there is scarcely +anything left to them, to feel that they could come to our shopnasium +and there be trained for the ordeal which they cannot escape.”</p> + +<p>“Very nice,” said the Doctor. “But how on earth can you train them? +That’s what I’d like to know.”</p> + +<p>“How? Why, how on earth do you train a football team except by +practice?” demanded the Idiot. “It wouldn’t take a very ingenious mind +to figure out a game called shopping that would be governed by rules +similar to those of football. Take a couple of bargain-counters for the +goals. Place one at one end of the shopnasium and one at the other. Then +let sixty women start from number one and try to get to number two +across the field through another body of sixty women bent on getting to +the other one, and <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">vice versa</i>. You could teach ’em all the arts of the +rush-line, defence, running around the ends, breaking through the +middle, and all that. At first the scrimmage would be pretty hard on the +beginners, but with a month’s practice they’d get hardened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> to it, and +by Christmas-time there isn’t a bargain-counter in the country they +couldn’t reach without more than ordinary fatigue. An interesting +feature of the game would be to have automatic cars and automobiles and +cabs running to and fro across the field all the time so that they would +become absolute masters of the art of dodging similar vehicles when they +encounter them in real life, as they surely must when the holiday season +is in full blast and they are compelled by the demands of the hour to go +out into the world.”</p> + +<p>“The women couldn’t stand it,” said the Doctor. “They might as well be +knocked out at the real thing as in the imitation.”</p> + +<p>“Not at all,” said the Idiot. “They wouldn’t be knocked out if you gave +them preliminary individual exercise with punching-bags, dummies for +tackle practice, and other things the football player uses to make +himself tough and irresistible.”</p> + +<p>“But you can’t reason with shopping as you do with football,” suggested +the Lawyer.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> “Think of the glory of winning a goal which sustains the +football player through the toughest of fights. The knowledge that the +nation will ring with its plaudits of his gallant achievement is half +the backing of your quarter-back.”</p> + +<p>“That’s all right,” said the Idiot, “but the make-up of the average +woman is such that what pursuit of fame does for the gladiator, the +chase after a bargain does for a woman. I have known women so worn and +weary that they couldn’t get up for breakfast who had a lion’s strength +an hour later at a Monday marked-down sale of laundry soap and Yeats’s +poems. What the goal is to the man the bargain is to the woman, so on +the question of incentive to action, Mr. Brief, the sexes are about +even. I really think, Doctor, there’s a chance here for you and me to +make a fortune. Dr. Capsule’s Shopnasium, opened every September for the +training and development of expert shoppers in all branches of +shopnastics, under the medical direction of yourself and my business +management would be a winner.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> Moreover, it would furnish a business +opening for all those football players our colleges are turning out, +for, as our institution grew and we established branches of it all over +the country, we should, of course, have to have managers in every city, +and who better to teach all these things than the expert footballist of +the hour?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well,” said the Doctor, “perhaps it isn’t such a bad thing, after +all; but I don’t think I care to go into it. I don’t want to be rich.”</p> + +<p>“Very well,” said the Idiot. “That being the case, I will modify my +suggestion somewhat and send the idea to President Taylor of Vassar and +other heads of women’s colleges. As things are now they all ought to +have a course of shopping for the benefit of the young women who will +soon graduate into the larger institution of matrimony. That is the only +way I can see for us to build up a woman of the future who will be able +to cope with the strenuous life that is involved to-day in the purchase +of a cake of soap to send to one’s grandmother at Christmas.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> I know, +for I have been through it; and rather than do it again I would let the +All-American eleven for 1908 land on me after a running broad jump of +sixteen feet in length and four in the air.”</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> +<a name="xviii" id="xviii"></a>XVIII<br /> +<br /> +<span class="sub">FOR A HAPPY CHRISTMAS</span></h2> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="open quote" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="cap2">I HAVE a request to make of you gentlemen,” observed the Idiot, as the +last buckwheat-cake of his daily allotment disappeared within. “And I +sincerely hope you will all grant it. It won’t cost you anything, and +will save you a lot of trouble.”</p> + +<p>“I promise beforehand under such conditions,” said the Doctor. “The +promise that doesn’t cost anything and saves a lot of trouble is the +kind I like to make.”</p> + +<p>“Same here,” said Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“None for me,” said the Bibliomaniac. “My confidence in the Idiot’s +prophecies is about as great as a defeated statesman’s popular +plurality. My experience with him teaches me that when he signals no +trouble<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> ahead then is the time to look out for squalls. Therefore, you +can count me out on this promise he wants us to make.”</p> + +<p>“All right,” said the Idiot. “To tell the truth, I didn’t think you’d +come in because I didn’t believe you could qualify. You see, the promise +I was going to ask you to make presupposes a certain condition which you +don’t fulfil. I was going to ask you, gentlemen, when Christmas comes to +give me not the rich and beautiful gifts you contemplate putting into my +stocking, but their equivalent in cash. Now you, Mr. Bib, never gave me +anything at Christmas but advice, and your advice has no cash equivalent +that I could ever find out, and even if it had I’m long on it now. That +piece of advice you gave me last March about getting my head shaved so +as to give my brain a little air I’ve never been able to use, and your +kind suggestion of last August, that I ought to have my head cut off as +a sure cure of chronic appendicitis, which you were certain I had, +doctors tell me would be conducive to heart failure, which is far more +fatal than the original<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> disease. The only use to which I can put it, on +my word of honor, is to give it back to you this Christmas with my best +wishes.”</p> + +<p>“Bosh!” sneered the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“It was, indeed,” said the Idiot. “And there isn’t any market for it. +But the rest of you gentlemen will really delight my soul if you will do +as I ask. You, Mr. Brief—what is the use of your paying out large sums +of money, devoting hour after hour of your time, and practically risking +your neck in choosing it, for a motor-car for me, when, as a matter of +fact, I’d rather have the money? What’s the use of giving thirty-six +hundred dollars for an automobile to put in my stocking when I’d be +happier if you’d give me a certified check for twenty-five hundred +dollars? You couldn’t get any such discount from the manufacturers, and +I’d be more greatly pleased into the bargain. And you, Doctor—generous +heart, that you are—why in thunder should you wear yourself out between +now and Christmas-day looking for an eighteen-hundred-dollar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> fur-lined +overcoat for me, when, as a matter of actual truth, I’d prefer a +twenty-two-dollar ulster with ten crisp one-hundred-dollar bills in the +change-pocket?”</p> + +<p>“I’m sure I don’t see why I should,” said the Doctor. “And I promise you +I won’t. What’s more, I’ll give you the ulster and the ten crisp one +hundred dollars without fail if you’ll cash my check for eighteen +hundred dollars and give me the change.”</p> + +<p>“Certainly,” said the Idiot. “How will you have it, in dimes or +nickels?”</p> + +<p>“Any way you please,” said the Doctor, with a wink at Mr. Brief.</p> + +<p>“All right,” returned the Idiot. “Send up the ulster and the ten crisps +and I’ll give you my check for the balance. Then I’ll do the same by +you, Mr. Poet. My policy involves a square deal for everybody whatever +his previous condition of servitude. Last year, you may remember, you +sent me a cigar and a lovely little poem of your own composition:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p> + +<div class="block24"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="io">“When I am blue as indigo, you wrote,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And cold as is the Arctic snow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Give me no megrims rotting.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I choose the friend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Heavens send<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who takes me Idiyachting.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p class="noi">Remember that? Well, it was a mighty nice present, and I +wouldn’t sell it for a million abandoned farms up in New Hampshire, but +this year I’d rather have the money—say one thousand dollars and five +cents—a thousand dollars instead of the poem and five cents in place of +the cigar.”</p> + +<p>“I am afraid you value my verse too high,” smiled the Poet.</p> + +<p>“Not that one,” said the Idiot. “The mere words don’t amount to much. I +could probably buy twice as many just as good for four dollars, but the +way in which you arranged them, and the sentiment they conveyed, made +them practically priceless to me. I set their value at a thousand +dollars because that is the minimum sum at which I can be tempted to +part with things that on principle I should always like to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> keep—like +my word of honor, my conscience, my political views, and other things a +fellow shouldn’t let go of for minor considerations. The value of the +cigar I may have placed too high, but the poem—never.”</p> + +<p>“And yet you don’t want another?” asked the Poet, reproachfully.</p> + +<p>“Indeed I do,” returned the Idiot, “but I can’t afford to own so much +literary property any more than I can afford to possess Mr. Brief’s +automobile—and this is precisely what I am driving at. So many people +nowadays present us at Christmas with objects we can’t afford to own, +that we cannot possibly repay, and overwhelm us with luxuries when we +are starving for our necessities, so that Christmas, instead of bringing +happiness with it, brings trial and tribulation. I know of a case last +year where a very generous-hearted individual sent a set of Ruskin, +superbly bound in full calf that would have set the Bibliomaniac here +crazy with joy, to a widow who had just pawned her wedding-ring to buy a +Christmas turkey for her children. A bundle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> of kindling-wood would have +been far more welcome than a Carnegie library at that moment, and yet +here was a generous soul who was ready to spend a good hundred dollars +to make the recipient happy. Do you suppose the lady looked upon that +sumptuous Ruskin with anything but misery in her heart?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well, she could have pawned that instead of her wedding-ring,” +sniffed the Bibliomaniac.</p> + +<p>“She couldn’t for two reasons,” said the Idiot. “In the first place, her +sensibilities were such that she could not have pawned a present just +received, and, in the second place, she lived in the town of Hohokus on +the Nepperhan, and there isn’t a pawnshop within a radius of fifty miles +of her home. Besides, it’s easier to sneak into a pawnshop with a +wedding-ring for your collateral than to drive up with a van big enough +to hold a complete set of Ruskin bound in full calf. It takes nerve and +experience to do that with a cool and careless <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mien</i>, and, whatever you +may have in that respect, Mr. Bib, there are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> few refined widows in +reduced circumstances who are similarly gifted. Then take the case of my +friend Billups—some sharp of a tailor got out a judgment against +Billups for ninety-eight dollars for a bill he couldn’t pay on the +fifteenth of December. Billups got his name in the papers, and received +enough notoriety to fill him with ambition to go on the stage, and it +nearly killed him, and what do you suppose his friends did when +Christmas came around? Did they pay off that judgment and relieve him of +the odium of having his name chalked up on the public slate? Not they. +They sent him forty dollars’ worth of golf-clubs, sixteen dollars’ worth +of cuff-buttons, eight ten-dollar umbrellas, a half-dozen silver +match-boxes, a cigar-cutter, and about two hundred dollars’ worth of +other trash that he’s got to pay storage-room for. And on top of that, +in order to keep up his end, Billups has had to hang up a lot of +tradesmen for the match-cases and cigar-cutters and umbrellas and trash +he’s sent to his generous friends in return for their generosity.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> +“Oh, rot,” interrupted the Bibliomaniac. “What an idiot your friend +Billups must be. Why didn’t he send the presents he received to others, +and so saved his money to pay his debts with?”</p> + +<p>“Well, I guess he didn’t think of that,” said the Idiot. “We haven’t all +got the science of Christmas-giving down as fine as you have, Mr. Bib. +But that is a valuable suggestion of yours and I’ll put it down among +the things that can be done in the plan I am formulating for the +painless Christmas.”</p> + +<p>“We can’t relieve one another’s necessities unless we know what they +are, can we?” asked Mr. Whitechoker.</p> + +<p>“We can if we adopt my cash system,” said the Idiot. “For instance, I +know that I need a dozen pairs of new socks. Modesty would prevent my +announcing this fact to the world, and as long as I wear shoes you’d +never find it out, but if, when Christmas came, you gave me twenty-five +dollars instead of Foxe’s <i>Book of Martyrs</i> in words of one syllable, +you would relieve my necessities<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> and so earn my everlasting gratitude. +Dr. Capsule here wouldn’t acknowledge to you or to me that his +suspenders are held together in three places with safety-pins, and will +so continue to be until these prosperous times moderate; but if we were +to present him with nine dollars and sixty-eight cents on Christmas +morning, we should discern a look of gratitude in his eye on that +suspender account that would be missing if we were to hand him out a +seven-dollar gold-mounted shaving-mug instead. We should have shown our +generous spirit on his behalf, which is all a Christmas present ever +does, whether it is a diamond tiara or a chain of sausages, and at the +same time have relieved his anxieties about his braces. His gratitude +would be double-barrelled, and his happiness a surer shot. Give us the +money, say I, and let us relieve our necessities first, and then if +there is anything left over we can buy some memorial of the day with the +balance.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I think it’s a pretty good plan,” said Mrs. Pedagog. “It would +save a lot of waste, anyhow. But it isn’t possible for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> all of us to do +it, Mr. Idiot. I, for instance, haven’t any money to give you.”</p> + +<p>“You could give me something better,” said the Idiot. “I wouldn’t accept +any money from you for a Christmas present.”</p> + +<p>“Then what shall it be?” asked the Landlady.</p> + +<p>“Well—a receipt in full for my bill to date,” said the Idiot.</p> + +<p>“Mercy!” cried the Landlady. “I couldn’t afford that—”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes you could,” said the Idiot. “Because for your Christmas I’d +give you a check in full for the amount.”</p> + +<p>“Oh—I see,” smiled the Landlady. “Then what do we get for our +Christmas? Strikes me it’s about as broad as it is long.”</p> + +<p>“Precisely,” said the Idiot. “We get even—and that’s about as conducive +to a happy Christmas, to Peace on Earth and Good-will to men, as any +condition I know of. If I can get square for Christmas I don’t want +anything else.”</p> + +<hr class="white" /> + +<h3>THE END</h3> + +<hr class="white" /> + + + +<div class="box"> +<p class="center">Transcriber’s Note:</p> + +<p class="noi">Punctuation has been standardised. Spelling has been retained +as in the original publication except as follows:</p> + +<p class="noi">Page 29<br /> +do you think or that <i>changed to</i><br /> +do you think <a href="#of">of</a> that</p> + +<p class="noi">Page 52<br /> +its as easy as rolling <i>changed to</i><br /> +<a href="#its1">its</a> as easy as rolling</p> + +<p class="noi">Page 75<br /> +went their several ways <i>changed to</i><br /> +went <a href="#their">their</a> several ways<br /> +<br /> +I think its abominable <i>changed to</i><br /> +I think <a href="#its2">it’s</a> abominable</p> + +<p class="noi">Page 102<br /> +a bag of aniseseed <i>changed to</i><br /> +a bag of <a href="#ainse">ainse seed</a></p> + +<p class="noi">Page 150<br /> +said the Idiot, gratefuly <i>changed to</i><br /> +said the Idiot, <a href="#gratefully">gratefully</a></p> + +<p class="noi">Page 156<br /> +Tchaikowski, to be well <i>changed to</i><br /> +<a href="#Tchaikowsky">Tchaikowsky</a>, to be well</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Genial Idiot, by John Kendrick Bangs + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENIAL IDIOT *** + +***** This file should be named 35302-h.htm or 35302-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/0/35302/ + +Produced by Beginners Projects and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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