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diff --git a/39682-8.txt b/39682-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fa9e02a --- /dev/null +++ b/39682-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5152 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Idiot at Home, 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/license + + +Title: The Idiot at Home + +Author: John Kendrick Bangs + +Illustrator: F. T. Richards + +Release Date: May 12, 2012 [EBook #39682] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDIOT AT HOME *** + + + + +Produced by Annie McGuire. This book was produced from +scanned images of public domain material from the Internet +Archive. + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Book Cover] + + + + +[Illustration: JOHN KENDRICK BANGS] + + + + +The Idiot at Home + + +By +John Kendrick Bangs + + +Illustrated by +F. T. Richards + + +[Illustration] + + +NEW YORK AND LONDON +HARPER & BROTHERS _Publishers_ +1900 + + + + +BY THE SAME AUTHOR. + + * * * * * + +THE BOOMING OF ACRE HILL. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25. + +THE ENCHANTED TYPEWRITER. Illustrated by PETER NEWELL. 16mo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1.25. + +COFFEE AND REPARTEE and THE IDIOT. 1 vol. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1.25. + +THE DREAMERS: A CLUB. Illustrated by EDWARD PENFIELD. 16mo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1.25. + +A REBELLIOUS HEROINE, A Story. Illustrated by W. T. SMEDLEY. 16mo, +Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges, $1.25. + +A HOUSE-BOAT ON THE STYX. Illustrated by PETER NEWELL. 16mo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1.25. + +THE PURSUIT OF THE HOUSE-BOAT. Illustrated by PETER NEWELL. 16mo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1.25. + +PASTE JEWELS. Being Seven Tales of Domestic Woe. 16mo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1.00. + +GHOSTS I HAVE MET, AND SOME OTHERS. With Illustrations by NEWELL, FROST, +and RICHARDS. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.25. + +THE BICYCLERS, AND THREE OTHER FARCES. Illustrated, 16mo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1.25. + +PEEPS AT PEOPLE. Illustrated by EDWARD PENFIELD. 16mo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1.25. + +MR. BONAPARTE OF CORSICA. Illustrated by H. W. MCVICKAR. 16mo, Cloth, +Ornamental, $1.25. + +THE WATER GHOST, AND OTHERS. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental $1.25. + +THREE WEEKS IN POLITICS. Illustrated. 32mo, Cloth, Ornamental, 50 cents. + + * * * * * + +NEW YORK AND LONDON: +HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. + + * * * * * + +Copyright, 1900, by JOHN KENDRICK BANGS. + + + + +TO +"MISS BANGS OF LONDON" + +FROM +"MR. BARNES OF NEW YORK" + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + I. BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 1 + II. A LITTLE DINNER TO SOME OLD FRIENDS 21 + III. IN THE LIBRARY 43 + IV. AS TO A SMALL DINNER 63 + V. ON THE MAINTENANCE OF AN ATTIC 84 + VI. THE IDIOT'S GARDEN 105 + VII. HOUSEHOLD POETRY 125 + VIII. SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE HIRED MAN 145 + IX. ON SOCIAL ACCOUNTS 165 + X. AS TO SANTA CLAUS 185 + XI. AS TO NEW-YEAR'S DAY 205 + XII. SOME DOMESTIC INTENTIONS 228 + XIII. A SUBURBAN COMPLICATION 249 + XIV. SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE MOTH 269 + XV. SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE BURGLAR 288 + XVI. CONCLUSION 301 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + + PAGE + JOHN KENDRICK BANGS _Frontispiece_ + "POSSESSED A LIBRARY OF FIRST EDITIONS" 5 + "'THEY NEVER HAD THE FUN OF BUYING THEM'" 9 + "'GUARANTEED TO HANG ONTO A GARMENT IN A GALE'" 13 + "'AND SOME PEOPLE SAY WAGNER IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT'" 17 + "TOMMY AND MOLLIE GAVE THE COOK A GREAT DEAL OF TROUBLE" 23 + "'LET THE FATHERS LOOK AFTER THE CHILDREN AT NIGHT'" 29 + "A LITTLE FIGURE CLAD IN WHITE" 35 + "'I'D RATHER BE SPANKED THAN NOT NOTICED AT ALL'" 39 + "'I DID NOT SMOKE UNTIL I WAS FIFTY'" 45 + "'SMOKING KEEPS INSECTS FROM THE PLANTS'" 49 + "THE BIBLIOMANIAC WAS INVESTIGATING THE CONTENTS OF THE LOWER + SHELVES" 53 + "'I PREFERRED TO PAY THE $49.50'" 57 + "THE COOK HAD TAKEN WINGS ONTO HERSELF" 65 + "'TWO BIG BOXES OF POTATOES, A CAN OF FRENCH PEASE, AND A BOTTLE + OF SARSAPARILLA'" 69 + "'THE PEOPLE DOWN-STAIRS BORROWED OUR DINING-ROOM CHAIRS'" 75 + "'WHO WAS IT?' ASKED MRS. IDIOT" 79 + "'I SET OFF A GIANT CRACKER UNDER HIS CHAIR'" 87 + "'WOULD HANG THAT PORTRAIT UPON THE WALL OF MY BEDROOM'" 91 + "'STARTED TO PREACH WITH THE RECIPE FOR A WASHINGTON PIE'" 95 + "'A LITTLE BUNDLE OF MY OWN LETTERS'" 101 + "'WE SPRINKLED IT IN PERSON'" 107 + "'HE DISCOVERED THE ONE PERFECT STALK'" 111 + "'IT WOULD DE DEUCEDLY AWKWARD ... IF THEY WOULD EXPLODE IN THE + MOUTH OF THE PERSON WHO WAS EATING THEM'" 115 + "SHE COULD SLAM THEM DOWN ON THE HEARTH-STONES LIKE TORPEDOES'" 119 + "'THE JOYS AND WOES OF THE TOILERS WHO MINED IT'" 127 + "'FOR THOUGH I'M BUT A CARPET-TACK,'" ETC. 131 + "'I SHOULD HESITATE TO TRY TO DRIVE A CANAL-BOAT'" 137 + "'I HAVEN'T EVER HAD A HOME; I'VE ALWAYS BOARDED'" 141 + "'I FEEL THAT I COULD GO OUT AND MOW THREE ACRES OF GRASS'" 147 + "'HE WOULD GO OUT DAY AFTER DAY AND SIT DOWN BESIDE IT'" 151 + "'HE SHOVELS OFF A FOOT-PATH'" 155 + "'SPEND A WHOLE DAY ON ONE WINDOW'" 161 + "'WELL, I'M FOND OF GOLF'" 167 + "'AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL TEA'" 171 + "'THE BABY IS ROCKED TO SLEEP EVERY NIGHT'" 175 + "'POOR DICK DAWKINS ISN'T TAKEN CARE OF AT ALL'" 179 + "'DR. PREACHLY ONLY GOT EIGHT PAIRS LAST XMAS'" 189 + "'A CHINA DOLL TO THE DAUGHTER OF A CARPENTER'" 193 + "'HULLO, SONNY! HAD A GOOD TIME?'" 197 + "'I GAVE MY DOLLY AWAY TO-DAY'" 201 + "'I DON'T QUITE CATCH YOUR DRIFT'" 207 + "'I FELT AS IF I HAD SWALLOWED AN OVERSHOE'" 213 + "'I FOUND EIGHT SANDWICHES AND A PINT OF SALTED ALMONDS'" 219 + "'THEY WERE FOUND SOME DAYS LATER WHEN THE ROOM WAS PUT IN + ORDER'" 223 + "'THERE'S NOT MUCH MONEY IN STOCKS'" 231 + "'A NICE LITTLE BASKET-HAT ON HER HEAD TO HOLD THE PINS IN'" 235 + "'AN ELECTRIC NOTICE TO QUIT'" 239 + FINDING OUT WHAT IS BEING COOKED FOR DINNER 245 + "'COURTING HIS BEST GIRL ON SOME OTHER FELLOW'S STONE WALL'" 251 + "'HOLDING UP A GREAT OSAGE ORANGE'" 255 + "'THE PICTURE OF A HEART WITH AN ARROW DRAWN THROUGH IT'" 259 + "'IT TOOK MY HIRED MAN TWO WEEKS TO SCRUB IT OUT'" 265 + "'AN UNPAID GROCER'S BILL BECOMES AN ABSOLUTE PLEASURE'" 271 + "'THE LION, THE ELEPHANT, THE TIGER, ALL HAVE THEIR WORK TO DO'" 275 + "'THEY EAT UP MY NEW CLOTHES'" 279 + "'WASTED MY ENERGY UPON THE UNRESPONSIVE AIR'" 283 + + + + +I + +BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION + + +"My dear," said the Idiot one morning, as he and his good wife and the +two little ones, Mollie and Tommy, sat down at the breakfast-table, "now +that we are finally settled in our new house I move we celebrate. Let's +give a dinner to my old friends of Mrs. Smithers's; they were nice old +people, and I should like to get them together again. I saw Dr. Pedagog +in the city yesterday, and he inquired most affectionately, not to say +anxiously, about the children." + +"Why should he be anxious about the children?" asked Mrs. Idiot, +placidly, as she sweetened her husband's coffee. "Does he suspect them +of lacking completeness or variety?" + +The Idiot tapped his forehead significantly. + +"He didn't know whether they take after you or after me, but I relieved +his mind on that score," he said. "I told him that they didn't take +after anybody that either of us ever knew. They have started in on a +line of Idiocy that is entirely their own. He seemed very much pleased +when I said that, and observed that he was glad to hear it." + +Mrs. Idiot laughed. + +"It was very nice of the Doctor to ask about them, but I am a little +afraid he wants to take a hand in their bringing up," she said. + +"No doubt of it," said the Idiot. "Pedagog always was anxious to +experiment. Many a time I have suspected him of having designs even on +me." + +"Mrs. Pedagog told me last year that he had devised an entirely new +system of home training," observed Mrs. Idiot, "and they both regretted +that they had no children of their own to try it on." + +"And of course you offered to lend Tommy to them?" said the Idiot, with +a sly glance at his son, who was stowing away his oatmeal at a rate that +bade fair to create a famine. + +"Of course," said Mrs. Idiot. "He's got to get raw material somewhere, +and I thought Tommy would be just the thing." + +"Well, I ain't a-goin'," said Tommy, helping himself liberally and for +the third time to the oatmeal. + +"My son," said the Idiot, with a mock show of sternness, "if your mother +chooses to lend you to any one it is not for you to say that you 'ain't +a-goin'. It may be that I shall interfere to the extent of demanding to +know what security for your safe return is offered, but otherwise +neither you nor I shall intervene. What your mother says is law for you +as well as for me. Please understand that, Thomas." + +"All right, pa," said Tommy; and then he added in an undertone, +presumably to the butter, "But I ain't a-goin', just the same." + +"I'll go," said Mollie, who rather liked the idea of being lent to +somebody, since it involved a visit to some strange and therefore +fascinating spot away from home. "Lend me to somebody, will you, mamma?" + +"Yes, ma, lend Mollie to 'em," said Tommy, with, a certain dry +enthusiasm, "and then maybe you can borrow a boy from somebody else for +me to play with. I don't see why you don't swap her off for a boy, +anyhow. I like her well enough, but what you ever wanted to buy her for +in the beginning I don't know. Girls isn't any good." + +"Thomas," said the Idiot, "you talk too much, and, what is more, you say +vain things which some day you will regret. When you get older you will +recall this dictum of yours, that 'girls isn't any good,' with a blush +of shame, and remember that your mother was once a girl." + +"Well, she's outgrown it," said Tommy; and then reverting to his +father's choice of words, he added, "What is dictums, anyhow?" + +"Pooh!" cried the little girl. "Smarty don't know what dictums is!" + +"Suppose you two young persons subside for a few minutes!" interrupted +the Idiot. "I wish to talk to your mother, and I haven't got all day. +You'll be wanting some bread and butter to-morrow, and I must go to town +and earn it." + +"All right, pa," said Tommy. "I ain't got anything to say that I can't +say to myself. I'd rather talk to myself, anyhow. You can be as sassy--" + +"Thomas!" said the Idiot, severely. + +"All right, pa," said Tommy; and with a side remark to the cream-jug, +that he still thought Mollie ought to be swapped off for something, it +didn't matter what as long as it wasn't another girl, the boy lapsed +into a deep though merely temporary silence. + +"You said you'd like to give a dinner to Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog and the +others," said Mrs. Idiot. "I quite approve." + +"I think it would be nice," returned the Idiot. "It has been more than +six years since we were all together." + +"You wouldn't prefer having them at breakfast, would you?" asked Mrs. +Idiot, with a smile. "I remember hearing you say once that breakfast was +your best time." + +"How long is six years, pa?" asked Tommy. + +"Really, Thomas," replied the Idiot, severely, "you are the most absurd +creature. How long is six years!" + +"I meant in inches," said Tommy, unabashed. "You always told me to ask +you when I wanted to know things. Of course, if you don't know--" + +"It's more'n a mile, I guess," observed Mollie, with some superiority of +manner. "Ain't it, pa?" + +The Idiot glanced at his wife in despair. + +"I don't think, my dear, that I am as strong at breakfast as I used to +be," said he. "There was a time when I could hold my own, but things +seem to have changed. Make it dinner; and, Tommy, when you have deep +problems to solve, like how long is six years in inches, try to work +them out for yourself. It will fix the results more firmly in your +mind." + +"All right, pa," replied Tommy; "I thought maybe you knew. I thought you +said you knew everything." + +[Illustration: "POSSESSED A LIBRARY OF FIRST EDITIONS"] + +In accordance with the Idiot's suggestion the invitations were sent out. +It was a most agreeable proposition as far as his wife was concerned, +for the Idiot's old associates, his fellow-boarders at Mrs. +Smithers-Pedagog's "High-Class Home for Single Gentlemen," had proved +to be the stanchest of his friends. They had, as time passed on, gone +their several ways. The Poet had made himself so famous that even his +bad things got into print; the Bibliomaniac, by an unexpected stroke of +fortune, had come into possession of his own again, and now possessed a +library of first editions that auctioneers looked upon with envious +eyes, and which aroused the hatred of many another collector. The Doctor +had prospered equally, and was now one of the most successful operators +for appendicitis; in fact, could now afford to refuse all other practice +than that involved in that delicate and popular line of work. The genial +gentleman who occasionally imbibed had not wholly reformed, but, as the +Idiot put it, had developed into one who occasionally did _not_ imbibe. +Mr. Brief had become an assistant district attorney, and was prominently +mentioned for a judgeship, and Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog lived placidly along +together, never for an instant regretting the inspiration which led them +to economize by making two into one. In short, time and fortune had +dealt kindly with all, even with Mary, the housemaid, who was now +general manager of the nursery in the Idiot's household. + +The home life of "Mr. and Mrs. Idiot" had been all that either of the +young people could have wished for, and prosperity had waited upon them +in all things. The Idiot had become a partner in the business of his +father-in-law, and even in bad times had managed to save something, +until now, with two children, aged five and six, he found himself the +possessor of his own home in a suburban city. It had been finished only +a month when the proposed dinner was first mentioned, and the natural +pride of its master and mistress was delightful to look upon. + +"Why, do you know, my dear," said the Idiot one evening, on his return +from town, "they are talking of asking me to resign from the club +because they say I am offensive about this place, and Watson says my +conversation has become a bore to everybody because the burden of my +song yesterday was pots and pans and kettles and things like that?" + +"I suppose clubmen are not interested in pots and pans and kettles and +things," Mrs. Idiot observed. "Some people aren't, you know." + +"Not interested?" echoed the Idiot. "What kind of people can they be not +to be interested in pots and pans and kettles and things? I guess it's +because of their dense ignorance." + +[Illustration: "'THEY NEVER HAD THE FUN OF BUYING THEM'"] + +"They never had the fun of buying them, perhaps," suggested Mrs. Idiot. + +[Illustration: "'GUARANTEED TO HANG ONTO A GARMENT IN A GALE'"] + +"Possibly," assented the Idiot. "And I'll tell you one thing, Pollie, +dear," he added, "if they had had that fun just once, instead of +squandering their savings on clothes and the theatre, and on horses, +you'd find every blessed one of those chaps thronging the hardware shops +all day and spending their money there. Why, do you know I even enjoyed +getting the clothes-pins, and what is more, it was instructive. I never +knew before what countless varieties of clothes-pins there were. There's +the plain kind of commerce that look like a pair of legs with a polo-cap +on. I was brought up on those, and I used to steal them when I was a +small boy, to act as understudies for Noah and Shem and Ham and Japheth +in my Noah's ark. Then there's the patent kind with a spring to it that +is guaranteed to hang onto a garment in a gale if it has to let go of +the rope. Very few people realize the infinite variety of the +clothes-pin, and when I try to tell these chaps at the club about it +they yawn and try to change the subject to things like German opera and +impressionism and international complications." + +"How foolish of them!" laughed Mrs. Idiot. "The idea of preferring to +talk of Wagner when one can discourse upon clothes-pins!" + +"I am afraid you are sarcastic," rejoined the Idiot. "But you needn't +be; if you'd only reason it out you'd see at once that my view is +correct. Anybody can talk about Wagner. Any person who knows a picture +from a cable-car can talk with seeming intelligence on art, and even a +member of Congress can talk about international complications off-hand +for hours; but how many of these people know about clothes-pins?" + +"Very few," said Mrs. Idiot, meekly. + +"Very few, indeed," observed the Idiot. "And the same way with +egg-beaters. I'll bet you a laundry-stove that if I should write to the +_Recorder_ to-morrow morning, and ask a question about Wagner, the +musical editor would give me an answer within twenty-four hours; but +with reference to egg-beaters it would take 'em a week to find out. And +that's just the trouble. The newspapers are filled up with stuff that +everybody knows about, but they don't know a thing about other things on +the subject of which the public is ignorant." + +"I think," said Mrs. Idiot, reflectively, "that that is probably due to +the fact that they consider Wagner more important than an egg-beater." + +[Illustration: "'AND SOME PEOPLE SAY WAGNER IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN +THAT'"] + +"Well, then, they don't know, that's all," rejoined the Idiot, rising +and walking out into the kitchen and taking the fascinating object over +which he was waxing so enthusiastic from the dresser drawer. "Just look +at that!" he cried, turning the cog-wheel which set the three +intersecting metal loops whizzing like a squirrel in its wheel-cage. +"Just look at that! It's beautiful, and some people say Wagner is more +important than that." + +"Well, I must say, my dear," said Mrs. Idiot, "that I have a leaning +that way myself. Of course, I admit the charm of the egg-beater, but--" + +"Tell me one thing," demanded the Idiot. "Can you get along without +Wagner?" + +"Why, yes," Mrs. Idiot replied, "if I have to." + +"And can you get along without an egg-beater?" he cried, triumphantly. + +The evidence was overwhelming, and Mrs. Idiot, with an appreciative +ebullition of mirth, acknowledged herself defeated, and so charmingly +withal, that the next day when her husband returned home he brought her +two tickets for the opera of Siegfried as a reward for her graceful +submission. + +"I could have bought ten dozen muffin-rings for the same money," said +he, as he gave them to her, "but people who know when to give in, and do +give in as amiably as you do, my dear, deserve to be rewarded; and, on +the whole, when you use these tickets, if you'll ask me, I think I'll +escort you to Siegfried myself." + + + + +II + +A LITTLE DINNER TO SOME OLD FRIENDS + + +[Illustration: "TOMMY AND MOLLIE GAVE THE COOK A GREAT DEAL OF TROUBLE"] + +Ten days later all was excitement at the Idiot's new home. Tommy and +Mollie were in a state bordering upon frenzy, and gave the cook a great +deal of trouble, requesting a taste of this, that, and the other thing, +which she was preparing for the dinner to Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog, the +Bibliomaniac, and the others. Inwardly, too, they were somewhat +wrathful, for they could not understand why they were not permitted to +dine with their parents as usual. + +"I guess maybe it's your manners that keeps you away, Tommy," said +Mollie. + +"Hoh!" said Tommy. "It can't be that, because pa says I ain't got any. +It's because you're too young to be introdoosed into society, and I've +got to stay up-stairs and look after you. If you weren't a girl!" + +Here Tommy clenched his fists and looked unutterable things. Mollie +shuddered and was glad she was a girl as she imagined the awful things +Tommy would do to her had she been a boy. + +"Neither of 'em's it, Tommy," she said, in a conciliatory manner. "It's +because they ain't got enough dining-room chairs, that's why. I know, +because I counted 'em, and there's only eight, and there's nine people +comin'." + +"I guess maybe that's it," said Tommy, pacified somewhat. "And anyhow, I +don't care. I saw that piece of paper ma gave Jennie, and she wrote down +all the things they're goin' to have, and it's goin' to be two hours +between the soup and the ice-cream. I couldn't ever wait that long for +the ice-cream. I don't see why they don't begin with ice-cream." + +"I guess maybe we're better off as it is," said Mollie. "Popper and +mommer ain't likely to forget us, and, besides, we can talk." + +And with this comforting reflection the little ones retired to their +nursery contented in mind and spirit--and they didn't suffer a bit. +Their "popper and mommer" didn't forget them. The ice-cream was +excellent, and they had their share of it almost before the guests began +with their oysters. + +At seven o'clock Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog had arrived, and at seven-ten all +the invited guests were present. + +"If it hadn't been for my wife," Mr. Pedagog whispered in his host's +ear, "I should have been late, too." + +"Don't apologize, old man," replied the Idiot, gripping the +Schoolmaster's hand warmly. "I sometimes go to dinners on time myself." + +In a few moments dinner was announced, and shortly after all were +seated, and in memory of old times the guests naturally waited for the +Idiot to begin. + +"Do you know," he said, as he squeezed the juice from a luscious lemon +over an unprotesting oyster, at the same time glancing affectionately +over the company, "I haven't felt so much at home for years as I do +now." + +"Not very complimentary to your wife," said Mr. Brief. + +"Oh, I know what he means," observed Mrs. Idiot. + +"And I have so many other opportunities to compliment her," said the +Idiot. + +"But really, Mrs. Pedagog," he added, addressing the good lady who sat +at his right, "I feel absolutely contented to-night. All the good things +of the past and of the present seem to be concentrated about this +board--except the three up-stairs, who can't very well be here." + +"Three?" asked Mr. Pedagog. "I thought there were only two--" + +"Certainly," said the Idiot. "Tommy and Mollie, but there is Mary, your +old housemaid. We can't very well ask them to dine with us, you know." + +"I don't see why Tommy and Mollie can't be invited," said Mr. Pedagog, +much to the Idiot's surprise, it seemed so like a violation of his +system, as it might be presumed to be. + +"You believe in having children at table, then, Mr. Pedagog?" asked Mrs. +Idiot. + +"Most certainly," said the Schoolmaster. Mrs. Pedagog glanced smilingly +at Mrs. Idiot, as much as to say, "Oh, these men!" + +"I certainly do approve of having children at table on all occasions," +he continued. "How else are they to learn how to conduct themselves? The +discipline of the nursery is apt to be lax, and it is my belief that +many of the bad table manners of the present-day child are due to the +sense of freedom which eating dinner in the nursery naturally +inculcates." + +"There is something in what you say," said the Idiot. "Tommy, for +instance, never learned to throw a French pancake across the table at +his sister by watching his mother and myself here in the dining-room, +yet in the freedom of the nursery I have known it done." + +"Precisely," said Mr. Pedagog. "That very little incident illustrates my +point exactly. And I have no doubt that in the nursery the offence +seemed less heinous than it would had it occurred in the dining-room, +and hence did not meet with the full measure of punishment that it +deserved." + +"I have forgotten exactly what was done on that occasion," said the +Idiot, calmly. "It is my impression that I compelled Thomas to eat the +pancake." + +"I am sure I never heard of the incident before," said Mrs. Idiot, her +cheeks growing very red. "He didn't really, did he, dear?" + +"By jove!" cried the Idiot, snapping his forefinger against his thumb, +"what a traitor I am, to be sure. I promised Thomas never to tell, and +here I've given the poor little chap away; but the boy was excusable, I +assure you all--that is, he was excusable in a sense. Mollie had +previously hit him in the eye with a salted almond, and--" + +"It is quite evident," put in Mrs. Pedagog, her womanly sympathy leading +her to rush to the aid of Mrs. Idiot, who seemed somewhat mortified over +the Idiot's confidences, "that you were not at home, my dear. I have +myself observed that extraordinary episodes of this nature generally +happen when it is the father who is left in charge of the children." + +"Quite right, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Doctor, nodding his head gravely. +"I have noticed the same thing in my professional practice. As long as +the mother is about discipline is maintained, but once leave the father +in charge and riot is the order of the day." + +"That's exactly what I was going to say," said the Idiot. "Many a time +when Mrs. Idiot has gone out shopping, as she did on the day in +question, and I have remained at home for a rest, I have wished +before evening came that I had gone shopping and let my wife have the +rest. As a matter of fact, the bringing up of children should be left to +the mother--" + +"Oh, but the father should have something to do with it," interrupted +Mrs. Idiot. "It is too great a responsibility to place on a woman's +shoulders." + +"You didn't let me finish, my dear," said the Idiot, amiably. "I was +going to say that the mother should bring the children up, and the +father should take 'em down when they get up too high." + +"My views to a dot," said Mr. Pedagog, with more enthusiasm than he had +ever yet shown over the Idiot's dicta. "Just as in ordinary colonial +government, the home authorities should govern, and when necessary a +stronger power should intervene." + +"Ideal--is it not?" laughed Mrs. Idiot, addressing Mrs. Pedagog. "The +mother, Spain. The children, Cuba. Papa, the great and glorious United +States!" + +"Ahem! Well," said Mr. Pedagog, "I didn't mean that exactly, you know--" + +"But it's what you said, John," said Mrs. Pedagog, somewhat severely. + +[Illustration: "'LET THE FATHERS LOOK AFTER THE CHILDREN AT NIGHT'"] + +"Well, I don't see why there can't be a division of responsibility," +said the Poet, who had never married, and who knew children only as a +theory. "Let the mothers look after them in the daytime, and the fathers +at night." + +This sally was greeted with an outburst of applause, it was so +practical. + +"Excuse me!" said the Idiot. "I'm not selfish, but I don't want to have +charge of the children at night. Why, when Tommy was cutting his teeth I +suffered agonies when night came on. I was down-town all day, and so +wasn't very much bothered then, but at night it was something awful. Not +only Tommy's tooth, but the fear that his mother would tread on a tack." + +"That was unselfish," said Mr. Pedagog, dryly. "You weren't afraid of +treading on one yourself." + +"How could I?" said the Idiot. "I had all I could do trying to keep my +wife from knowing that I was disturbed. It is bad enough to be worried +over a crying babe, without being bothered by an irritated husband, so I +simply lay there pretending to be asleep and snoring away for dear +life." + +"You are the most considerate man I ever heard of," said Mrs. Pedagog, +smiling broadly. + +"You don't mean to say," said the Poet, with a frown, "that you made +your wife get up and take all the trouble and bother--" + +"I'd only have been in the way," said the Idiot, meekly. + +"So he kept quiet and pretended to snore like the good old Idiot that he +is," put in the Doctor. "And he did the right thing, too," he added. "If +all fathers would obliterate themselves on occasions of that sort, and +let the mothers rule, the Tommys and Dickies and Harrys would go to +sleep a great deal more quickly." + +"We are rambling," said Mr. Pedagog. "The question of a father's duty +towards a teething son has nothing to do with the question of a child's +right to dine with his parents." + +"Oh, I don't know," said the Idiot. "If we are to consider this matter +scientifically we must start right. Teething is a natural first step, +for if a child hath no teeth, wherewithal shall he eat dinners with his +parents or without them?" + +"That is all very well," retorted Mr. Pedagog, "but to discuss +fire-engines intelligently it is not necessary to go back to the times +of Elisha to begin it." + +Mr. Whitechoker--now the Rev. Theophilus Whitechoker, D.D., for he, too, +had prospered--smiled deprecatingly. There is no man in the world who +more thoroughly appreciates a biblical joke than the prosperous +clergyman. + +"Well," said the Idiot, reflectively, "I quite agree with your +proposition that children should dine in the dining-room with their +parents and not up-stairs in the nursery, with a lot of tin soldiers and +golliwogs. The manners of parents are no better than those of tin +soldiers and golliwogs, but their conversation is apt to prove more +instructive; and as for the stern father who says his children must dine +in the kitchen until they learn better manners, I never had much +confidence in him or in his manners, either." + +"I don't see," said the genial old gentleman who occasionally imbibed, +"how you can discipline children in the nursery. If they misbehave in +the dining-room you can send them up-stairs to the nursery, but if they +misbehave in the nursery, where the deuce can you send them?" + +"To bed," said Mr. Brief. + +"Never!" cried the Idiot. "Children, Mr. Brief, as I understand +them--and I have known three very well; myself as a boy, and Tommy and +Mollie--children, as I understand them, are never naughty for the mere +fun of being so. Their wickedness grows out of their wonderful stores of +unexpended and unexpendable energy. Take my son Thomas on last Saturday +afternoon, for instance. It was a rainy Saturday, and Tommy, instead of +being out-of-doors all morning and afternoon getting rid of his +superfluous vitality, had been cooped up in the house all day doing +nothing. Shortly before dinner we had a difference of opinion which +lasted for more time than I like to think about. I was tired and +irritable. Tommy wasn't tired, but he _was_ irritable, and, from his +point of view, was as right as I was. He had the best of me to the +extent that I was tired and he wasn't. I had the best of him to the +extent that I had authority and he hadn't--" + +"And who came out ahead?" asked Mr. Pedagog. + +"I did," said the Idiot, "because I was bigger than he was; but what I +was going to say was this: Mr. Brief would have sent him to bed, +thereby adding to the boy's stock of energy, already too great for his +little mind to control." + +"And what did you do?" asked Mr. Brief. + +"Nothin'," said a small but unmistakably masculine voice from behind the +portieres. + +"Thomas!" said the Idiot, severely, as all turned to see who had spoken. + +[Illustration: "A LITTLE FIGURE CLAD IN WHITE"] + +A little figure clad in white, ably supported by a still smaller figure, +also clad in white, but with an additional ruffle about the neck, both +of them barefooted, appeared in the doorway. + +"Why, Mollie!" said Mrs. Idiot. + +"We comed down to thee how you wath gettin' along," said the little +girl. + +"Yes, we did," said the boy. "But he didn't do a thing to me that day," +he added, climbing on his father's knee and snuggling down against his +vest-pocket with a sweet little sigh of satisfaction. "Did you, pa?" + +"Yes, Thomas," said the Idiot. "Don't you remember that I ignored you +utterly?" + +[Illustration: "'I'D RATHER BE SPANKED THAN NOT NOTICED AT ALL'"] + +"Yes, I do," said Tommy. "But I'd rather be spanked than not noticed at +all." + +"I am afraid," said Mr. Pedagog a few hours later, as he and Mrs. +Pedagog were returning home, "I am very much afraid that the Idiot's +children are being spoiled." + +"I hope they are!" returned the good lady, "for really, John, I never +knew a boy or a girl to grow into man or womanhood and amount to +anything who hadn't been spoiled in childhood. Spoiling is another name +for the attitude of parents who make comrades of their children and who +do not set themselves up as tyrants--" + +"But the veneration of a child for his father and mother--" Mr. Pedagog +began. + +"Should not degenerate into the awe which one feels for an unrelenting +despot!" interrupted Mrs. Pedagog. + +The old gentleman discreetly retired from the field. + +As for Mrs. and Mr. Idiot, they retired that night satisfied with the +evening's diversion, and just before he turned out the light the Idiot +walked into the nursery to say good-night to the children. + +"You're a good old pop!" said Tommy, with an affectionate hug. "_The +best I ever had!_" + +As for Mollie, she was sleeping soundly, with a smile on her placid +little face which showed that, "spoiled" as she was, she was happy; and +what should the Idiot or any one else seek to bring into a child's life +but happiness? + + + + +III + +IN THE LIBRARY + + +The Bibliomaniac had come off into the country to spend Sunday with the +Idiot, and, as fortune would have it, Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog also appeared +on the scene. After the mid-day dinner the little party withdrew to the +library, where the Bibliomaniac began to discourse somewhat learnedly +upon his hobby. + +"I am glad to see, my dear Idiot," he observed, as he glanced about the +room at the well-filled shelves, "that as you grow older you are +cultivating a love of good literature." + +"I heartily echo the sentiment," said Mr. Pedagog, as he noted the +titles of some of the volumes. "I may add that I am pleasurably +surprised at some of your selections. I never knew, for instance, that +you cared for Dryden, and yet I see here on the top shelf a voluminous +edition of that poet." + +"Yes," said the Idiot. "I have found Dryden very useful indeed. +Particularly in that binding and in so many volumes. The color goes very +well with the hangings, and the space the books occupy, eked out by a +dozen others of the same color, gives to that top shelf all the esthetic +effect of an attractive and tasteful frieze. Then, too, it is always +well," he added, with a sly wink at Mrs. Idiot, "to have a lot of books +for a top shelf that is difficult to reach that nothing under the canopy +could induce you to read. It is not healthful to be stretching upward, +and with Dryden upon the top shelf my wife and I are never tempted to +undermine our constitutions by taking him down." + +The Bibliomaniac laughed. + +"Your view is at least characteristic," said he, "and to tell you the +absolute truth, I do not know that your judgment of the literary value +of Dryden is at variance with my own. Somebody called him the Greatest +Poet of a Little Age. Perhaps if the age had been bigger he'd not have +shone so brilliantly." + +"Lowell," observed Mr. Pedagog, "was responsible for that remark, if I +remember rightly, and I have no doubt it is a just one, and yet I do not +hold it up against Dryden. Man does not make the age. The age makes the +man. Had there been any inspiring influences at work to give him a +motive, an incentive, Dryden might have been a greater poet. To excel +his fellows was all that could rightly be expected of him, and that he +did." + +"Assuredly," said the Idiot. "That has always been my view, and to-day +we benefit by it. If he had gone directly to oblivion, Mrs. Idiot and I +should have been utterly at a loss to know what to put on that top +shelf." + +The Idiot offered his visitors a cigar. + +"Thank you," said the Bibliomaniac, taking his and sniffing at it with +all the airs and graces of a connoisseur. + +[Illustration: "'I DID NOT SMOKE UNTIL I WAS FIFTY'"] + +"I don't know but that I will join you," said Mr. Pedagog. "I did not +smoke until I was fifty, and I suppose I ought not to have taken it up +then, but I did, and I have taken a great deal of comfort out of it. My +allowance is fifty-two cigars a year, one for each Sunday afternoon," he +added, with a kindly smile. + +"Well, you want to look out you don't get smoker's heart," said the +Idiot. "When a man plunges into a bad habit as rashly as that, he wants +to pull up before it is too late." + +"I have felt no ill effects since the first one," rejoined Mr. Pedagog. +"But you, my dear Idiot, how about your allowance? Is it still as great +as ever? As I remember you in the old days you were something of a +cigarette fiend." + +[Illustration: "'SMOKING KEEPS INSECTS FROM THE PLANTS'"] + +"I smoke just as much, but with this difference: I do not smoke for +pleasure any more, Mr. Pedagog," the Idiot replied. "As a householder I +smoke from a sense of duty. It keeps moths out of the house, and insects +from the plants." + +[Illustration: "THE BIBLIOMANIAC WAS INVESTIGATING THE CONTENTS OF THE +LOWER SHELVES"] + +The Bibliomaniac meanwhile had been investigating the contents of the +lower shelves. + +"You've got a few rare things here, I see," he observed, taking up a +volume of short sketches illustrated by Leech, in color. "This small +tome is worth its weight in gold. Where did you pick it up?" + +"Auction," said the Idiot. "I didn't buy it by weight, either. I bought +it by mistake. The colored pictures fascinated me, and when it was +put up I bawled out 'fifteen.' Another fellow said 'sixteen.' I wasn't +going to split nickels so I bid 'twenty.' So we kept at it until it was +run up to 'thirty-six.' Then I thought I'd break the other fellow's +heart by bidding fifty, and it was knocked down to me." + +"That's a stiff price, but on the whole it's worth it," said the +Bibliomaniac, stroking the back of the book caressingly. + +"But," said Mr. Pedagog, "if you bid on it consciously where did the +mistake come in?" + +The Idiot sighed. "I meant cents," he said, "but the other chap and the +auctioneer meant dollars. I went up and planked down a half-dollar and +was immediately made aware of my error." + +"But you could have explained," said Mr. Pedagog. + +[Illustration: "'I PREFERRED TO PAY THE $49.50'"] + +"Oh, yes," said the Idiot, "I _could_, but after all I preferred to pay +the extra $49.50 rather than make a public confession of such infernal +innocence before some sixty or seventy _habitues_ of a book-auction +room." + +"And you were perfectly right!" said the Bibliomaniac. "You never would +have dared set your foot in that place again if you had explained. They +would have made life a burden to you. Furthermore, you have not paid too +dearly for the experience. The book is worth forty dollars; and to learn +better than to despise the man who makes his bid cautiously, and who +advances by small bids rather than by antelopian jumps, is worth many +times ten dollars to the man who collects rare books seriously. In the +early days I scorned to break a five-dollar bill when I was bidding, +just as you refused, as you put it, to split nickels, and many a time I +have paid as high as twenty-five dollars for books that could have been +had for twenty-one, because of that foolish sentiment." + +"I have often wondered," Mr. Pedagog put in at this point, holding his +cigar in a gingerly and awed fashion, taking a puff at it between words, +by which symptoms the man who seldom smokes may always be identified, "I +have often wondered what was the mission of a private library, anyhow. +And now that I find you two gentlemen interested in a phase of +book-collecting with which I have had little sympathy myself, possibly I +may, without being offensive, ask a question. Do you, for instance, +Mr. Idiot, collect books because you wish to have something nobody else +has got, or do you buy your books to read?" + +"That is a deep question," said the Idiot, "and I do not know that I can +answer it off-hand. I have already confessed that I bought Dryden for +his decorative quality. I purchased my Thackeray to read. I bought my +Pepys Diary because I find it better reading than a Sunday newspaper, +quite as gossipy, and with weather reports that are fully as reliable. +But that particular Leech I bought because of my youthful love for +colored pictures." + +"But you admit that it is valuable because of its rarity, and that +compared to fifty dollars' worth of books that are not rare it is not to +be compared with them from a literary point of view?" said Mr. Pedagog. + +"I presume," said the Idiot, "that the fifty dollars I expended on that +book would have provided me with a complete Shakespeare in one volume; +all of Byron in green cloth and gold top; all of Dickens, Thackeray, +Bulwer, and Austen in six volumes, with a margin of forty-five dollars +left with which for nine years I could have paid for a subscription to +the Mercantile Library, containing all the good reading of the present +day and all the standard works of the past. But I rather like to have +the books, and to feel that they are my own, even if it is only for the +pleasure of lending them." + +"Still, if a man collects books merely for their contents--" persisted +Mr. Pedagog. + +"He is a wild, extravagant person," said the Idiot. "He might save +himself hundreds of dollars, not to say thousands. The library on that +plan need not occupy an honored place among the rooms of the house. A +mere pigeon-hole with a subscriber's card to a circulating library filed +away in it will do as well, or if the city or town in which he lives +maintains a public library he may spare himself even that expense." + +"Good for you!" exclaimed the Bibliomaniac. "That's the best answer to +the critics of book-collectors I have heard yet." + +"I agree with you," said Mr. Pedagog. "It is a very comprehensive reply. +As for you, my dear Bibliomaniac, why do you collect books?" + +"Because I love 'em as books," replied the Bibliomaniac. "Because of +their associations, and because when I get a treasure I have the bliss +of knowing I have something that others haven't." + +"Then it is selfishness?" asked Mr. Pedagog. + +"Just as everything else is," returned the Bibliomaniac. "You, sir, if I +may be personal without wishing to be offensive, are wedded to Mrs. +Pedagog. You take pleasure in knowing that she belongs to you and not to +any one else. The Idiot here is proud of his children, and is glad they +are his children and nobody else's. _I_ am wedded to my rare books, and +it rejoices my soul to pick up a volume that is unique, and to know that +it belongs to me and to no one else. If that is selfishness, then all +possession is selfish." + +"That's about it," said the Idiot. "You collect books just as Mormons +and Solomon used to collect wives. You are called a Bibliomaniac. I +suppose Brigham Young and Solomon would have been known as +Gamyomaniacs--though I don't suppose that age in women as in books is a +requisite of value to marrying men--and they are both of them supposed +to be rather canny persons." + +Mr. Pedagog puffed away in silence. It was evident that the _argumentum +ad hominem_ did not please him. + +"Well," he said, after awhile, "possibly you are right. If a man wants a +library to be a small British Museum--" + +"He will take better care of his rarities than the Idiot does," said the +Bibliomaniac, putting the rare Leech back into its place. "If that were +mine I'd put it out of the reach of my children." + +"I didn't know you had any," said the Idiot, eagerly. + +"Oh, you know what I mean," retorted the Bibliomaniac. "You place Dryden +on the top shelf where Tommy and Mollie cannot get at him. But this +book, which is worth ten larger paper editions of Dryden, you keep +below, where the children can easily reach it. It's a wonder to me +you've been able to keep it in its present superb condition." + +"The mind of a child," said Mr. Pedagog, sententiously, "is above +values, above all conceits. It is the mind of sincerity, and a rare book +has no greater attraction to the boy or girl than one not so favored." + +"That is not my reason," said the Idiot. "I know children pretty well, +and I have observed that they are ambitious, and in a sense rebellious. +They want to do what they cannot do. That is why, when mothers place jam +on the top shelf of the pantry, the children always climb up to get it. +If they would leave it on the dining-room table, within easy reach, the +children would soon cease to regard it as a thing to be sought for. Make +jam a required article of diet and the little ones will soon cease to +want it. So with that book. If I should put that out of Tommy's reach, +Tommy would lie awake nights to plan his campaign to get it. Leaving it +where it is he doesn't think about it, doesn't want it, is not forbidden +to have it, and so it escapes his notice." + +"You have the right idea, the human idea," said Mr. Pedagog, and even +the Bibliomaniac was inclined to agree. But just then Tommy happened in, +with Mollie close after. The boy walked straight to the bookcase, and +Mollie gathered up the large shears from the Idiot's table, and together +they approached their father. + +"Pa," said Mollie, holding up the scissors, "can I borrow these?" + +"What for?" asked the Idiot. + +"We want to cut the pictures out o' this," said Tommy, holding up the +fifty-dollar Leech. + +After all, it is difficult to lay down a cast-iron rule as to how a +private library should be constructed or arranged, particularly when +one's loyalty is divided between one's children and one's merely bookish +treasures. + + + + +IV + +AS TO A SMALL DINNER + + +[Illustration: "THE COOK HAD TAKEN WINGS UNTO HERSELF"] + +It was sad but true. Mr. and Mrs. Idiot had invited Mr. Whitechoker and +Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog and the Poet to dinner, and for some reason or +another the cook had taken wings unto herself and flown, and the guests +were expected within two hours. + +"I see now," said the Idiot, "why they call it taking French leave. +Nobody who doesn't understand French understands it. If it wasn't +French, or if somebody would translate it for us, we might be able to +comprehend it; as it is, it is one of the mysteries, and, as usual, we +must make the best of it. Life, after all, my dear, consists largely of +making the best of things." + +"Well, I'm sure I don't know what to do," said Mrs. Idiot, despairfully, +"unless you telegraph them all not to come, and tell them why." + +"It is too late to do that," said the Idiot, looking at his watch. +"They've probably all left home by this time. Poets and clergymen and +old people like Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog always do start an hour too early, +for fear of missing their train." + +"I wouldn't care so much about the Poet," said Mrs. Idiot; "he doesn't +know enough about housekeeping, anyhow, to make it matter. But Mr. +Whitechoker and Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog--I simply can't ask them to camp +out, as it were. The very fact that Mrs. Pedagog would become +sympathetic immediately she learned what had happened would in itself be +unbearable." + +"I thought women liked sympathy?" said the Idiot, with a proper +manifestation of surprise. + +"So they do; but you might just as well talk about claret as meaning one +thing as of sympathy being all of the same brand," Mrs. Idiot answered. +"Certain kinds of claret are insufferable--sour and heady. I suppose +there are sixty different kinds." + +"Sixty-two," said the Idiot, blandly. "The sixty you mean and two more +whose names I have forgotten." + +"I wish you would be serious for a moment," Mrs. Idiot retorted, with as +near an approach to irritation as was possible to one of her amiable +disposition. "And it's just the same way with sympathy," she continued; +"Mrs. Pedagog will lay this whole trouble to my inexperience. Probably +she never had a servant take French leave in her life on the eve of a +dinner-party." + +"I'll bet she didn't," said the Idiot. "And for why? Because she never +gave a dinner-party in all her life. The habits of early life cling unto +old age, and even as in her early days as a boarding-house keeper she +never gave anything, so now she doubtless considers giving a dinner as a +reckless waste of opportunity. And she is quite right. Does a lawyer +invite his friends to join him in an opinion? Never. Does Mr. Tiffany +request Mr. and Mrs. Idiot to accept a diamond tiara given in their +honor? Not. Does a true poet, with three names on his autograph, give a +poem to anybody when he can sell it? Not if he knows it. Why, then, +expect a landlady, by birth and previous training, to _give_ a dinner?" + +"I notice," said Mrs. Idiot, severely, "that you are always willing to +give your views!" + +[Illustration: "'TWO BIG BOXES OF POTATOES, A CAN OF FRENCH PEASE, AND A +BOTTLE OF SARSAPARILLA'"] + +"Precisely, my dear, and that proves my point," replied the Idiot, +amiably. "I am not a professional viewer, and I am not a photographer by +trade. Therefore, why should I not _give_ my views? But really," he +added, "I wouldn't bother; it'll all come out right. I don't know just +how, but I am confident we shall have the most glorious dinner of our +lives. When I was down cellar this morning looking at the gas-meter I +saw two big boxes full of potatoes, a can of French pease, and a bottle +of sarsaparilla, and if they don't like what they get it will be because +they are exacting. And I'll wager you from what I know of their manners +that if you gave them dried apples, cold tongue, and milk they'd say it +was the most delightful repast they ever sat down to." + +"But _I'd_ know they didn't mean it," said Mrs. Idiot, smiling in spite +of her woe. + +"And that brings up the question, why should your conscience be +troubled by the insincerity of others?" said he. "Now, I'll tell you +what we'll do. You fry the potatoes and I'll boil the can of pease; I +think four minutes will boil them hard, like an egg, and together we'll +put the sarsaparilla on ice, and bluff the whole thing through. Bluffing +was always my strong point, and I have noticed, my dear, that in +whatever I have tried to do since we were married you have contributed +at least ninety per cent. to success. My bluff plus your efforts to make +the thing a go will send our dinner to a premium." + +Mrs. Idiot remained properly silent. As a matter of fact, she was not +even listening. She was considering. What on earth to do was the +question in her mind, and it so entirely absorbed it that she +fortunately had little left for the rather easy views of the Idiot +himself. + +"What is a dinner, anyhow?" the Idiot added, after the silence had to +his mind become oppressive. "Is it a mere meal? Do the Poet and Mr. and +Mrs. Pedagog and Mr. Whitechoker come here merely to get something to +eat? Or do they come for the pleasure of our society, or for the +pleasure of leaving home, or what? As I understand it, people go out to +dine not because they have not a sufficiency of food at home, but +because they wish to meet other people. That's what I do. I can always +have something better to eat at home than I can get at somebody else's +house; and furthermore, it is a more natural meal. Dinners generally are +made up of pretty little things that nobody likes, and have no +sustenance in them. A successful dinner lies not in successful cooking, +but in pleasing conversation. Wherefore, it is not the cook, but the +host and hostess who make a failure or a success of a dinner." + +"Then I presume if we simply spread the table and let you talk our +guests will be satisfied?" said Mrs. Idiot, blandly. + +"Precisely," the Idiot replied. "It will be delightful. Just think of +the menu! Instead of oysters I will indulge in a few opinions as to the +intellectual qualities of bivalves generally, finishing up with a +glowing tribute to the man who is content to be a clam and not talk too +much. In the place of _purée_ we will tackle some such subject as the +future of Spain. I think I could ladle out a few sound ideas on that +subject that would be as clear as the purest _consommé_. Then for fish, +that would be easy. A good trout story, with imagination sauce, would do +very well. For the _entrée_ I will give you one of my most recent poems, +and the roast will be--" + +"And the rest of us are to sit and twiddle our thumbs while you +soliloquize?" demanded Mrs. Idiot. "I rather think not. I will provide +the roast, my dear John, and it will consist largely of remarks upon the +ways of cooks." + +"A very proper subject for a roast," observed the Idiot, complacently, +"and in your present frame of mind I think it will be not only well +done, but rare as well, with plenty of crisp. And so we can simply talk +this dinner through. It will be novel, certainly, and if you provide +plenty of bread and butter no one need go away hungry." + +"Very true," Mrs. Idiot answered. "And now that you have had your fun, +suppose we put our minds on the serious aspect of the case. Two hours +from now four people are coming here hungry--" + +"I have it!" cried the Idiot, delightedly. "Let's _borrow_ a cook! I +don't believe it's ever been done before. It would be splendid, not +only in getting us out of our troubles, but in establishing an entirely +new principle in domestic science. What is the use of neighbors who will +not be neighborly and lend you their most cherished possession?" + +"None at all," sighed Mrs. Idiot, despairingly. + +[Illustration: "'THE PEOPLE DOWN-STAIRS BORROWED OUR DINING-ROOM +CHAIRS'"] + +"Now, when we lived in our flat in New York the people up-stairs +borrowed our ice," said the Idiot; "the people down-stairs borrowed our +dining-room chairs; the people across the hall borrowed butter and milk +and eggs, and I think we once borrowed a lemon from the people on the +top floor." + +"Never!" cried Mrs. Idiot. + +"Yes, we did, my dear," insisted the Idiot. "At least I did. You and the +children were off in the country, and one hot summer's night, two years +ago, I was consumed with a desire for a glass of lemonade, and as there +were no lemons in the house, or the flat, I sent out to borrow. I began +at the basement and worked up towards the roof, and ultimately got what +I wanted, although, as I have said, it was the top-flat people I got it +from." + +"And did you ever return it?" demanded Mrs. Idiot. + +"I regret to say that I didn't," said the Idiot. "But I will, and with +interest. I wonder what two years' interest on a lemon is!" he added. "I +suppose that a borrowed lemon compounded at the rate of six per cent. +could be paid off by a lemon and one small Bermuda potato. I will send +my check for both to those people to-morrow. What was their name?" + +"I never knew," said Mrs. Idiot. "I never liked them, and I never +called. I am sorry you are under obligations to them." + +"Only for a lemon, though, dear," said the Idiot, "at six per cent." + +"But what does all this prove?" demanded the poor little housekeeper. + +"That the principle of lending is recognized among neighbors," the Idiot +explained. "If a neighbor will lend a lemon, surely a neighbor will lend +a cook. The principle involved is the same in both cases. Particularly +so in this case, for my experience with cooks has been that they are, +after all, for the most part nothing but human lemons. If the departed +Bridget had been anything but full of sourness she would not have left +us so unexpectedly." + +"You don't really think for a moment, do you, that the Jimpsonberrys +would lend us their cook, or that she would come, or that I would ask +them?" said Mrs. Idiot. + +"Well, I suppose not," said the Idiot. "I suppose not. _But I don't see +why!_ First, the Jimpsonberrys, as our neighbors, ought to be willing to +get us out of our trouble. Second, we don't ask their cook to come for +nothing. By coming she will receive an addition to her wages which will +help her to endow a policeman with a moderate fortune some day when she +marries him. As for your asking Mrs. Jimpsonberry to lend us her cook +for a few hours, that is the main objection. When one borrows one must +give collateral, and it may be that it would embarrass you to offer Mike +as security for the safe return of the Jimpsonberrys' cook. Anyhow, I +see weak points in my plan, and we'd better abandon it. If the +Jimpsonberrys' cook is the only available incendiary in the +neighborhood, we'd better stop where we are. When we dined at +Jimpsonberrys' last week I went away feeling that Jimpsonberry ought to +collect fire insurance on that dinner. It wasn't cooked; it was a plain +case of arson." + +It was at this precise moment, when poor Mrs. Idiot was beginning to +despair of getting any advice of value from her husband, that the +telephone-bell rang, and the Idiot rose up to answer the call. + +"Hello!" he said. + +"Oh! Hello, old man!" he added. "That you? Glad to see you." + +"Yes," he continued, after a pause. "Of course we expect you." + +"Seven o'clock sharp," he remarked, a moment later. "You'll surely be +here?" Then after a second pause, he added: + +"Good! You can stay all night if you wish; we've plenty of room. +Good-bye." + +[Illustration: "'WHO WAS IT?' ASKED MRS. IDIOT"] + +"Who was it?" asked Mrs. Idiot, as the Idiot hung up the receiver of the +telephone. + +"The Poet," replied the Idiot. "He wanted to know at what hour dinner +was." + +"Oh, dear!" cried Mrs. Idiot. "Why didn't you tell him the dinner isn't +for to-night, but to-morrow night?" + +"Didn't need to, my dear," said the Idiot, lighting a cigarette. "We've +made a slight mistake. You invited these people, it now appears, for the +twenty-ninth." + +"Certainly," said Mrs. Idiot. + +"Well, my love," said the Idiot, with an affectionate glance, "to-day is +the--ah--the twenty-eighth." + +Mrs. Idiot drew a sigh of relief. + +"My!" she cried, "what a blessing! I wonder how I got so mixed!" + +"It's economy, perhaps," suggested the Idiot. "If you will insist on +buying out-of-date diaries and last year's calendars at bargain-counters +because they are cheap, I don't really see how you can expect to keep up +with the times." + +Mrs. Idiot laughed heartily. Her relief of mind was unmistakable. + +"What would you have done, John, if this had really been the night?" she +asked later. + +"Oh, I don't know," said the Idiot. "I think I should have taken you to +New York to dinner, and bluffed our guests into believing they had come +up on the wrong night. It is very easy for a host to put his guests in +the wrong if he wants to. I don't, but if I must, I must." + +As it was, the family dinner that night was a great success in spite of +the absence of the cook, because Mrs. Idiot, who is an expert with the +chafing-dish, found several odds and ends in the late cook's domains, +which, under her expert manipulation, became dishes which the Idiot said +afterwards "remained long in the memory without proving too permanent a +tax upon the digestion." + + + + +V + +ON THE MAINTENANCE OF AN ATTIC + + +The Idiot had been laid up for a week. That is to say, he was too +indisposed to attend to business at his office, and the family physician +thought it would be a good idea if his patient would be content to +remain quietly indoors for a little while. To this the Idiot cheerfully +consented. + +"If there is one thing that I can do to perfection," he said, "it is +resting. Some men are born leisurely, some achieve leisure, and some are +discharged by their employers. I belong to the first two classes. I can +never become one of the third class, because, being my own employer, I +am naturally pleased with myself, and am not likely to dispense with my +own services." + +And so he stayed at home, and for a week pottered about the house, as he +put it, and he had a glorious time. + +"What are you going to do with yourself this morning, dear?" asked Mrs. +Idiot on the morning of the first day. "I've got to go to market, and +there are one or two other little things to be attended to which will +keep me out for some hours. Do you think you can amuse yourself while I +am out?" + +"Well, I don't know," said the Idiot. "I can try. Of course, you know, +my dear, that I am a good deal of a baby yet. However, if you can trust +me to stay all by my lonesome for two or three hours I'll try to behave. +I promise not to take the piano apart, and I vow I won't steal any jam, +and I sha'n't float hair-brushes in the bath-tub pretending that they +are armored cruisers looking for Spaniards, and I'll try to be good, but +I can't make any promises." + +Mrs. Idiot smiled, as an indulgent guardian should, and went forth. The +Idiot stayed at home and enjoyed himself. What he did is perhaps best +indicated by his remarks some time later at a Sunday-night tea at which +Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog, and Mr. Brief, the lawyer, were present. + +"Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "did you ever have an attic?" + +"A what?" demanded the Schoolmaster, naturally somewhat nonplussed. + +"An attic," said the Idiot. "A favored spot wherein to potter, to root, +to rummage." + +"Why, yes," said Mrs. Pedagog, after a moment of deliberation. "I have +had an attic, but it never seemed to me to be a particularly interesting +spot. I've used it as a sort of store-room for things I didn't know what +to do with." + +"Useless things," suggested Mr. Pedagog. + +"Entirely so," acquiesced the good lady. + +"Then if they are useless, why keep them?" queried the Idiot. "Useless +things might better be thrown away than stored away even in an attic." + +"Oh, as for that," rejoined Mrs. Pedagog, "they were useless in the +sense that there was nothing I could do with them, and yet there was +generally some quality of association or something about them that so +appealed to me that I couldn't quite throw them away, or even bring +myself to give them away." + +"That is the idea," said the Idiot. "One's cherished possessions are +often stored away up-stairs and forgotten, and then sometimes years +after you'll go rummaging about the house for lack of some other +employment; an old trunk, a wooden box, will be unearthed in the attic, +and then what a flood of memories will come rushing back over you as the +long-forgotten objects come to light, one by one." + +"I have had much the same experience," said Mr. Brief, "in what I might +term my professional attic. We keep a room for the storage of old +papers, and strange exhibits in litigation turn up there frequently that +bring back old-time lawsuits in a most interesting fashion." + +"I suppose, then," observed Mr. Pedagog, with a shrug of tolerant +contempt, "that the attic is, in your estimation, a sort of repository +for family archives." + +[Illustration: "'I SET OFF A GIANT CRACKER UNDER HIS CHAIR'"] + +"That's about it," said the Idiot. "You ought to see mine. There are +archives from the Ark in mine. I've got all the portraits of my +unpopular relatives up there, and such a gallery of smug-looking +individuals you never saw. There's Uncle Jedediah, who hated me because +I set off a giant cracker under his chair one Fourth of July, and who +from that day vowed I was born to be hanged; and who sent me a crayon +portrait of himself the following Christmas--" + +"That seems to me to show a kindly feeling, not one of hatred, towards +you," suggested Mrs. Pedagog. + +[Illustration: "'WOULD HANG THAT PORTRAIT UPON THE WALL OF MY BEDROOM'"] + +"Oh no," said the Idiot, with a laugh. "You never knew my dear old Uncle +Jed. He sent it in a pure spirit of revenge. He had to send something, +and he picked out the one thing he had reason to know I didn't want; and +he was likewise aware that my mother had a sense of the proprieties and +would hang that portrait upon the wall of my bedroom, whence it could +stare at me, disapprovingly, forevermore. Still, when I became the head +of my own house, I did not take a mean-spirited revenge on Uncle +Jedediah's portrait by selling it to one of the comic papers with a joke +under it; I gave it the nicest, warmest, most comfortable spot I could +find for it under a pile of old magazines in the attic, and the other +day when it came to light again I greeted it with an affectionate smile; +and the picture of the old gentleman rising hurriedly from over the +giant cracker on that long-forgotten Fourth, brought vividly to mind by +the portrait, brought tears to my eyes, I laughed so heartily. It +really was very affecting." + +Mr. Pedagog gazed at the Idiot fondly. + +"You are a great boy," he said. "You'd never suspect it, but I had a +similar case of Uncle Jed, but the years I have lived since have +softened my feelings so that I remember my old relative with a certain +degree of affection." + +"I shall never believe, my dear John," said Mrs. Pedagog, "that in your +day boys ever placed giant crackers under their uncles' chairs." + +"We never did, my love," Mr. Pedagog responded, quickly. + +"Why, of course not," laughed the Idiot. "They couldn't, you know. They +hadn't been invented. What was your trouble with Uncle Jed, Mr. +Pedagog?" + +"Oh, our difference of opinion was rather of an ethical import," replied +Mr. Pedagog, genially. "My Uncle Jed was a preacher, and he used to +speak entirely from notes which he would make out the night before and +place in the pocket of his black coat. All I did was to take the notes +of his next day's sermon out of his pocket one Saturday evening, and put +in their stead a--ah--a recipe for what we called Washington pie--and a +very good pie it was." + +"John!" ejaculated Mrs. Pedagog. + +[Illustration: "'STARTED TO PREACH WITH THE RECIPE FOR A WASHINGTON +PIE'"] + +"I _did_, my dear," confessed the Schoolmaster, "and really I have never +regretted it, although my particular uncle gave me a distressingly acrid +and dreary lecture on my certain future when he found out what had +happened. Yet what did happen, though mischievously intended, resulted +in great good, for when the dear old gentleman stood up in the pulpit +and started to preach the next morning, with the recipe for a Washington +pie as the only available note at hand, he pulled himself together and +preached off-hand the finest sermon of his life, and he discovered then +the secret of his after-success. He became known ultimately as one of +the most brilliant preachers of his time, and from that moment never +went into the pulpit with any factitious aids to his memory." + +"You mean cribs, don't you?" asked the Idiot. + +"That is what college-boys call them, I believe," said Mr. Pedagog. "I +will say further that a year before he died _my_ Uncle Jed told me that +it was my mischievous act that had given him the hint which became +the keynote of his eloquence," he added, complacently. "I shall always +remember him affectionately." + +"Of course," said the Idiot. "No doubt we all remember our Uncle Jeds +affectionately. I certainly do. He was my mother's brother, and he meant +well. I never really blamed him for not knowing how to sympathize with a +boyish prank, because there has never been a school of instructions for +uncles. Unclehood is about the hardest hood man has to wear, and as I +have observed uncles and their habits, they either spoil or repel the +small chaps and chappesses who happen to be made their nephews and +nieces by an accident of birth. Uncles are either intensely genial or +intensely irritable, and as far as I am concerned it is my belief that +our colleges should include in their curriculum a chair of 'Uncleism.' +Unclehood is a relationship that man has to accept. It is thrust upon +him. He can't help himself. To be a father or a mother is a matter of +volition. But even in a free country like our own, if a man has a +brother or a sister he is liable to find himself an uncle at any time +whether he wishes to be one or not. Then when it happens he's got to +reason out a course of procedure without any basis in previous +experience." + +"Why don't you write a book on 'Hints to Uncles,' or 'The Complete +Aunt,'" suggested Mr. Brief. "I have no doubt it would make good +reading." + +"Thanks for the idea," said the Idiot. "I think I'll do it. Not in the +hope of profit, but for the benefit of the race." + +"What has all this to do with attics?" asked Mrs. Idiot. + +"The natural resting-place of the bad uncle," explained the Idiot. +"Still, I maintain that it is every man's duty to keep an attic for the +useless things, as Mrs. Pedagog calls them, which some day, when he +least expects it, will carry his mind back to other days. The word +itself, attic, carries the mind back to the splendors of Athens and +other things that are out of date. When I was ill I found sincerest +pleasure in rummaging. You can't rummage in a library if your library is +properly looked after. You can't rummage in a bedroom in a well-kept +house. You all know what parlors are--designed largely for the +reception of people who come out to call upon you in their best Sunday +clothes, and who would never think of calling upon you intimately, as a +friend might, in his knickerbockers. You can't rummage there. The only +place where one may rummage with any degree of success is in the attic, +and my experience has been such that I believe my recent illness has +contributed to my health. My mind has been carried back to conditions +that used to be. Conditions which existed then and which were inferior +to conditions which now prevail make me satisfied with the present. +Where old-time conditions were better than the existing one I have +naturally discovered how to improve. Rummaging, therefore, is improving +to the mind and contributes to one's contentment." + +[Illustration: "'A LITTLE BUNDLE OF MY OWN LETTERS'"] + +"Then there are good economical reasons for the maintenance of an +attic," the Idiot continued. "I found enough old boyhood collections of +various things there to keep Tommy and Mollie happy for years without my +having to pay out a penny for birthday presents--old stamps, old coins, +old picture papers, and, I assure you, a lot of old newspapers, too, +with better and more readable news in them than is now to be found in +any of our modern bilious journals. Then the bundles of letters that +came out of that place--my mother's letters to me, written while I was +away at school; my father's letters in the old days at your house, Mrs. +Pedagog, which did much to keep me straight then and re-reading of which +doesn't hurt now; and, best of all," he added, with an affectionate +glance at Mrs. Idiot, "a little bundle of my own letters to a certain +person tied up with a blue ribbon, and full of pressed roses and autumn +leaves and promises--" + +"In the attic?" asked Mr. Brief, with a dry smile. "Is that where Mrs. +Idiot keeps your promises?" + +Mrs. Idiot blushed. "I have a cedar chest full of treasures up there," +she said. "I thought it was locked." + +"Well, anyhow, I found them," said the Idiot, cheerfully; "and while +they were not especially good reading, they were good reminders of other +days. It wouldn't be a bad idea if every married man were to read over +the letters of his days of courtship once a year. I think it would bring +back more forcibly than anything else the conditions of the contract +which he was inviting the young partner of his joys to sign. If an attic +never held anything but bundles of one's old love-letters it would +demonstrate its right to become an institution." + +"Very true," said the lawyer; "but," he added, prompted by that cautious +spirit which goes always with the professional giver of advice, "suppose +that side by side with that little bundle of pressed flowers and autumn +leaves and promises one should chance to find another little bundle of +pressed flowers and autumn leaves and promises--the promises written by +some other hand than the hand that is rummaging in the cedar chest? What +then? Would that prove a pleasing find?" + +"Oh, as for that," the Idiot remarked, "when I advocate the maintenance +of an attic as one of the first duties of mankind, I mean its +intelligent maintenance. The thing which makes of the British Museum, +the National Attic of Great Britain, a positive educational force is its +intelligent direction. It is the storehouse of the useless possessions +of the British Empire which have an inspiring quality. There is nothing +in it which makes a Briton think less of himself or which in any way +unpleasantly disturbs his equanimity. So with the attic of the humble +citizen. It must be intelligently directed if it is to become an +institution, and should not be made the repository of useless things +which ought to be destroyed, among which I class that other possible +bundle to which you refer." + +And inasmuch as the whole party agreed to the validity of this +proposition, the subject was dropped, and the Idiot and his guests +wandered on to other things. + + + + +VI + +THE IDIOT'S GARDEN + + +"I should think, my dear Idiot," Mr. Pedagog observed one summer +evening, as his host stood upon the back piazza of "Castle Idiot," as +they had come to call the dwelling-place of their friend, "that with all +this space you have about you, you would devote some of it to a garden." + +"Why, I do," said the Idiot. "I've got a small patch down there behind +the tennis-court, fifty by one hundred feet, under cultivation. The +stuff we get is almost as good as the average canned goods, too. We had +a stalk of asparagus the other night that was magnificent as far as it +went. It was edible for quite a sixteenth of an inch, or at least I was +told so. That portion of it had already been nibbled off by my son +Thomas while it was resting in the pantry waiting to be served. +However, the inedible end which arrived was quite sturdy, and might have +stood between my family and starvation if the necessity had arisen." + +"One stalk of asparagus is a pretty poor crop, I should say," observed +the lawyer, with a laugh. + +"You might think so," said the Idiot. "But everything in the world is +comparative, after all. Ants build ant-hills which are several feet +lower than the Alps, and yet they are monumental, considering that they +were made by ants. All things considered, Mrs. Idiot and I were proud of +our asparagus crop, and distinctly regretted that it did not survive to +be served in proper state at dinner. If I remember rightly, Thomas was +severely reprimanded for his privateering act in biting off the green +end of it before I had a chance to see it." + +"'Twasn't specially good," said Tommy, loftily. + +"I am very glad it was not, my son," said the Idiot. "I should be very +sorry to hear that you had derived the slightest sensation of pleasure +from your piratical and utterly inexcusable act." + +"Do you usually serve so small a portion of the product of your +garden?" asked Mr. Brief. + +[Illustration: "'WE SPRINKLED IT IN PERSON'"] + +[Illustration: "'HE DISCOVERED THE ONE PERFECT STALK'"] + +"Sometimes we don't serve anything at all from it," said the Idiot, +"which you will observe is smaller yet. In this instance Mrs. Idiot +intended a little surprise for me. We had struggled with that +asparagus-bed for some time. The madame had studied up asparagus in her +botany. I had looked it up in the cyclopedia and the Century dictionary. +We had ordered it in various styles when we dined out at the New York +hotels, and we had frequently bought cans of it in order to familiarize +ourselves more intimately with its general personal appearance. Then we +consulted people we thought would be likely to know how to obtain the +best results, and what they told us to do we did, but somehow it didn't +work. Our asparagus crop languished. We sprinkled it in person. We put +all sorts of garden cosmetics on it to improve its complexion, but it +seemed hopeless, and finally when I footed up the asparagus item in my +account-book, and discovered that we had paid out enough money without +results of a satisfactory nature to have kept us in canned asparagus for +four years, we got discouraged, and resolved to give it up. It was +while Michael, our gardener, was removing the evidences of our failure +that he discovered the one perfect stalk, and like the honest old +gardener that he is, he immediately brought it into the house and +presented it to my wife. She naturally rejoiced that our efforts had not +been entirely vain, and in her usual spirit of self-sacrifice had the +stalk cooked as a surprise for me. As I have told you, that small +circumstance Thomas, over which we seem to have no control, got ahead of +us--" + +"You was surprised, wasn't you, pa?" demanded the boy. + +"Somewhat, my son," said the Idiot, "but not in the way your mother had +designed, exactly." + +"Is asparagus the extent of your gardening?" queried Mrs. Pedagog. + +"Oh no, indeed!" replied Mrs. Idiot. "We've had peas and beets and beans +and egg-plant and corn--almost everything, in fact, including potatoes." + +"Yes, ma'am," said the Idiot, "almost everything, including potatoes. +Our pea crop was lovely. We had five podfuls for dinner on the Fourth of +July, and the children celebrated the day by podding them for the +cook. They popped open almost as noisily as a torpedo. It was really +very enjoyable. Indeed, one of the results of that pea crop has been to +give me an idea by which I may some day redeem my losses on the +asparagus-bed. An explosive pea which should be edible, and yet would +pop open with the noise of a small fire-cracker, would be a delight to +the children and serviceable for the table. I don't exactly know how to +bring about the desired results, but it seems to me if I were to mix a +little saltpetre in the water with which we irrigate our pea-trees the +required snap would be obtained. Then on the Fourth of July the +children, instead of burning their fingers and filling their parents +with nervous dread setting off fire-crackers, could sit out on the back +piazza and shell the peas for the cook--" + +"I'd rather shell Spangyards," said Mollie. + +"I am surprised at you, my child," said the Idiot. "A little girl like +you should be an advocate of peace, not of war." + +"You can't eat Spaniards, either, can you, pa?" said Tommy, who, while +he shared Mollie's views as to the comparative value for shelling +purposes of peas and Spaniards, was nevertheless quite interested in the +development of a pea-pod that would open with a bang. + +"No, Tommy," said the Idiot, "you can't eat Spaniards, and they'd be +sure to disagree with you if you could." + +"That is a very interesting proposition of yours," said Mr. Brief, "but +it has its dangers. A dynamite pea would prove very attractive so long +as its explosive qualities were confined to the pod and its opening. But +how are you going to keep the saltpetre out of the peas themselves?" + +"That is where the difficulty comes in," said the Idiot. "I frankly +don't know how we could insulate the peas from the effects of the +saltpetre." + +[Illustration: "'IT WOULD BE DEUCEDLY AWKWARD ... IF THEY WOULD EXPLODE +IN THE MOUTH OF THE PERSON WHO WAS EATING THEM'"] + +"It would be deucedly awkward," observed the Bibliomaniac, "if, as might +very well happen, one or two of the peas should become so thoroughly +impregnated with the stuff that they would explode in the mouth of the +person who was eating them, like bombs in miniature." + +[Illustration: "'SHE COULD SLAM THEM DOWN ON THE HEARTH-STONES LIKE +TORPEDOES'"] + +"True," said the Idiot. "The only safeguard against that would be to +compel the cook to test every pea before she cooked it. She could +slam them down on the hearth-stone like torpedoes, and every one that +didn't go off could be cooked and served with safety. Still, there would +be danger even then. A careless cook might forever ruin the tooth of a +favored guest. I guess I'd better give up the idea." + +"Oh, don't, pa!" cried Tommy, his interest in explosive vegetables +worked up to a high pitch. "I'll test 'em all for you, and if they work +I don't see why you couldn't raise dynamite punkins!" + +"It would be a strong temptation, my son," said the Idiot, "which is all +the more reason why I should abandon the plan. A dynamite punkin, as you +call it, would wreck the whole neighborhood if one should set it off +properly. No, we will, after all, confine our attention to vegetables of +a more pacific nature. The others might prove more profitable at first, +but when the novelty of them wore off, and one realized only their +danger, a great deal of the pleasure one derives from eating fresh +vegetables would be utterly destroyed." + +Tommy looked out over the railing of the piazza, deep regret and +disappointment depicted in his brown little face; but if the glitter of +his eyes meant anything it meant that the idea of putting vegetables on +a war footing was not going to be allowed to drop into oblivion; and if +the small youth progresses in inventive genius in a fair ratio to his +past achievements in that line, I have no doubt that if a Vesuvian +pumpkin _can_ be produced at all, the day will dawn when Thomas is +hailed as its inventor. + +"Is it true," asked Mr. Brief, "that home-raised peas are sweeter than +any other?" + +"We think so," said Mrs. Idiot. + +"We know so," amended the Idiot. "That Fourth-of-July night when we ate +those five podfuls we discovered that fact. Five podfuls of peas are not +enough to feed a family of four on, so we mixed them in with a few more +that we bought at the grocer's, and we could tell ours from the others +every time, they were so much sweeter." + +The Bibliomaniac laughed scornfully. + +"Pooh!" said he. "How did you know that they were yours that were sweet, +and not the grocery-bought peas?" + +"How does a father know his own children?" said the Idiot. "If you'd +labored over those five pods as hard and assiduously as we did, nursing +them through their infant troubles, guarding them against locusts and +potato-bugs, carefully watching their development from infancy into the +full vigor of a mature peahood, I guess you'd know your own from those +of others. It's instinct, my dear Bibliomaniac." + +"Tell about the strawberry, pa," said Tommy, who liked to hear his +father talk, in which respect I fear he takes strongly after his parent. + +"Well," said the Idiot, "it's not much of a story. There was one. We had +a strawberry patch twenty feet by ten. We had plenty of straw and plenty +of patch, but the berries were timid about appearing. The results were +similar to those in our asparagus venture. One berry was discovered +trying to hide itself under half a bale of straw one morning, and while +I was looking for Mrs. Idiot, to ask her to come down to the garden and +see it grow, a miserable robin came along and bit its whole interior +out. I hope the bird enjoyed it, because on a bed-rock estimate that +berry cost twenty dollars. That is one of the things about gardening +that make me especially weary. One doesn't mind spending forty-four +dollars on a stalk of asparagus that is eaten, even surreptitiously, by +a member of one's own family; but to pay twenty dollars for a strawberry +to be wasted on a fifteen-cent robin is, to say the least, irritating." + +"You forget, John," said Mrs. Idiot, with a somewhat mirthful look in +her eyes, "that we got fifteen boxes out of the strawberry-patch later." + +"No, I don't," said the Idiot. "I was coming to that, and it involves a +confession. You were so blue about the loss of our one beautiful berry +that I entered into a conspiracy with Michael to make that patch yield. +The fifteen boxes of berries that we took out subsequently were bought +at a New York fruit-store and judiciously scattered about the patch +where you would find them. I had hoped you would never find it out, but +when you spoke the other day of expending thirty-eight dollars on that +strawberry-patch next year, I resolved then to undeceive you. This is +the first favorable opportunity I have had." + +Mrs. Idiot laughed heartily. "I knew it all along," she said. "Michael +came to me with them and asked for instructions as to where to put them. +Really, I--ah--I arranged them under the straw myself." + +"What an ass a hired man can be!" ejaculated the Idiot. "I shall +discharge Michael to-morrow." + +"I wish you would," said Mrs. Idiot. "Ever since the conspiracy he has +been entirely too independent." + +"Don't discharge Michael, papa," said Mollie. "He's awful nice. He's +always willin' to stop anything he's doing to play with Tommy and me." + +"You bet he is!" cried Tommy. "He's a dandy, Mike is. He never says a +word when I sit under the sprinkler, and he told me the other day that +his grandfather would have been king of Ireland if Queen Victoria hadn't +come in. He said the Queen was a lady, and his grandfather gave up his +seat to her because he was a gentleman and couldn't do anything else." + +"Very well," said the Idiot, suavely. "Then I won't discharge Michael. +One feels a better American, a better Republican, if he has a royal +personage in his employ. I always wondered where Michael got his +imperious manner; now I know. As a descendant of a long line of kings it +could not be otherwise. I will give him another chance. But let me give +you all fair warning. If next summer Michael does not succeed in +producing from my garden four beets, ten pods of peas, three +string-beans, and less than ten thousand onions, he goes. I shall not +pay a gardener forty dollars a month unless he can raise three dollars' +worth of vegetables a year." + +"But really," said Mr. Pedagog, "haven't you raised anything in your +garden?" + +"Oh yes," said the Idiot. "I've raised my water bill in the garden. I +used to pay twelve dollars a quarter for water, but now the bills come +to at least twenty-five dollars. Truly, a garden is not without profit +to some one." + + + + +VII + +HOUSEHOLD POETRY + + +"Yes," said the Idiot, in response to an inquiry from the Poet, who was +passing a Sunday with him at Castle Idiot, "I have found that there is a +great deal of poetry in the apparently uninspiring little things of a +household. There is to me as much poetry in a poker as there is in a +snow-clad Alp, if you only have an eye to find it; and I am sure that to +thousands of housewives the whole land over a sonnet to a clothes-pin, +written by one who knows the clothes-pin's nature intimately, would be +far more appealing than a similar number of lines trying to prove that +we are all miserable phantoms flitting across a morass of woe." + +The Poet pulled away thoughtfully at his pipe. He was a broad-minded +poet, and while he had never owned a poker of his own, he was ready to +admit its possibilities; but he could not follow his friend closely +enough to admit that it contained as much that was inspiring as did Mont +Blanc, for instance, a bright particular Alp of which he was very fond. + +The Idiot continued: + +[Illustration: "'THE JOYS AND WOES OF THE TOILERS WHO MINED IT'"] + +"A ton of coal contains far more warmth than a woman's eyebrow; sends +the mind of a thoughtful person chasing backward to the time when it lay +snugly hid in the fair breast of nature; to the joys and woes of the +toilers who mined it; through a variety of complexities of life, every +one of them fraught with noble thoughts. Yet who ever wrote dainty +verses to a ton of coal, and who hasn't at one time or another in his +life written about the eyebrows of some woman?" + +The Poet laughed this time. "A triolet to a ton of coal would be a +glorious thing now, wouldn't it?" he observed. + +"No," said the Idiot. "A triolet could never be a glorious thing under +any circumstances; but to the extent that a ton of coal contains a +certain amount of grandeur in the service it renders to mankind, I think +the form would be ennobled somewhat by the substance. Let's try it and +see." + +"You do it," said the Poet; "I really don't think I could do the +subject justice." + +The Idiot got out a pencil and a pad of paper and began. + +"I don't think I'll make it a triolet," he said, after biting the end of +his pencil for a few moments. "A whole ton is a good deal to cram into a +triolet. I'll just make it a plain poem of the go-as-you-please variety +instead, eh?" + +"In the manner of Whitman, perhaps?" suggested the Poet, dryly. + +"Just so," said the Idiot. "In the manner of Whitman; in fact, I think +the manner of Whitman is the only manner for the poetic description of a +ton of coal." + +He began to scribble on the pad. + +"I'm going to call this 'Content,'" he said in a few moments. +"Contentment strikes me as the main lesson a ton of coal teaches." + +He scribbled on, and in four or five minutes he put down his pencil and +read the following lines: + + "I'm glad I'm not as men are-- + Always worrying about something, and often about nothing; + About what was and what wasn't; + Fretting about what may be and what might have been; + Wondering whether when they are called upon to do their duty + They'll be able to do it, + And generally deciding they won't, + To their own discomfort. + And if so be they're women, + Cogitating from morn till night, + From night till morn, + Wherewithal shall they be clothed, + And if their hats are on straight! + Yea! + I am glad I am not like one of these, + But am myself-- + A ton of coal--jetty in my blackness and luminous in my bituminosity. + Lying here in the cellar content and not bothering a bit. + Not needing income or clothes, and wearing no hat, and with no + complexion to bother about. + Happy and serene about my duty, + Certain that I shall succeed when the time for action comes; + Knowing that I shall burn, + And in the burning glow like the polar star. + Cackling and crackling, + Hissing and smoking, + Full of heat, + A satisfaction to mankind, + And never worth less than $5.65, delivered! + Ah, me! What bliss to be a ton of coal! + I am content." + +The Poet nodded his pleasure at the effort. "It is charmingly put," he +said. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that the idea of contentment is +the last one that I should ever have extracted from contemplation of +a binful of anthracite, and yet when I consider how you put it I wonder +it has not occurred to every one. You have the manner of the Whitman +parodist down fine, too." + +"Thank you," said the Idiot. "It is entirely natural to me. I think, +too, that using the Whitman lack of form carries with it the notion of +the coal sliding down the chute, don't you? Coal runs into the cellar in +such an irresponsible, formless way, eh?" + +"Precisely," smiled the Poet. "You have the right notion about that. The +form of a poem should really be adapted to the substance. It should be +descriptive, always. Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade' has in its +rhythm nothing more or less than the clatter of the horses' hoofs as +they and their riders dashed through the valley of death at Balaklava. +And how vividly Southey's brook comes before the mind in its mad rush +downward as one reads that wonderfully lyrical poem. Why don't you write +a book of household poetry? You seem to me to be eminently well +qualified to undertake it." + +"I intend to," said the Idiot. "In fact, I've begun it already. Written +five or six. Like to see 'em?" + +"Indeed I should," said the Poet. "Anything you do interests me." + +The Idiot went to his desk and took from it a few pages of manuscript. + +"Here is a thing on pokers I did the other night. I called it 'The Song +of the Poker Bold.'" And then he read these lines: + + "Warder of the grate am I, + Ever standing near; + Poking, poking all day long, + Knowing naught of fear. + + "Keeping coals up to their work, + Setting them aglow, + Minding not the scorching heat, + Rather like it so. + + "Knocking ashes right and left, + Flirting with the tiles; + Bossing tongs and seeing that + The brazen kettle biles. + + "And the little girls and boys + As they watch me pause, + Wishing that I'd talk and tell + 'Bout old Santa Claus! + + "Cracking jokes with crickets on + The merry hearth, elate; + Happy lot indeed is mine-- + Warder of the grate!" + +"Splendid!" cried the Poet, clapping his hands with enthusiasm. +"Splendid! A good stiff pokeresque lyric, and your characterization of +the poker as the 'Warder of the Grate' gives it a flavor of romance. You +could almost imagine the implement going out into a mediæval world in +search of knightly adventure--a sort of hearth-stone Quixote. Have you +tackled the clothes-pin yet?" + +"Yes," replied the Idiot. "Indeed, my first effort was a lyric on the +clothes-pin. I started one night to do the contents of the +kitchen-dresser drawer in French forms, but the first thing I took out +was an egg-beater, and it wouldn't go, so I did the clothes-pin lyric. I +call it + +"FIDELITY + + "Blow, ye winds, + I fear ye not; + Blast, ye simoon, + Sere and hot! + + "Hurricane, + And cyclone, too, + Blow, I have no + Fear of you. + + "Lacking beauty, + Lacking grace, + Lacking handsome + Form and face; + + "Lacking soul + And intellect, + Still I stand up, + Proud, erect. + + "For the Fates + Have given me + Wondrous great + Tenacity. + + "And success, + Both fair and fine, + Comes to him + Who holds his line. + + "Burrs can stick + And so can glue-- + Mucilage, + Stratena, too; + + "But there's nothing + Holds so fast + As the clothes-pin + To the last." + +"And you gave up the egg-beater altogether?" asked the Poet, restraining +a natural inclination to find flaws in the construction of the +clothes-pin poem. + +"Oh no," said the Idiot, "I knocked off a little quatrain on that. I +called it 'The Speedy Egg-Beater,' and it goes like this: + + "Great Maude S. can beat all steeds, + However speedy be their legs; + But I distance her with ease + When it comes to beating eggs." + +"I really think that you would have done better to give up the +egg-beater," said the Poet, grown critical. "I've no patience with +one-rhymed quatrains. Now if you had written: + + "Great Maude S. can beat all steeds, + However speedy be their legs; + But despite her doughty deeds; + I can beat her beating eggs, + +"I should not have objected." + +"I accept the amendment," replied the Idiot, meekly. "I realized the +weakness of the thing myself, and thought of changing it into a couplet, +where you only need one rhyme. How's this on a 'Carpet-Tack'?" + +[Illustration: "'FOR THOUGH I'M BUT A CARPET-TACK + +AFAR FROM MOIL AND STRIFE, + +NO ONE CAN EVER TRULY SAY + +THAT MINE'S A POINTLESS LIFE'"] + + "However dull the day, + However dull the skies, + However dark the night may be, + My spirits ever rise. + + "For though I'm but a carpet-tack, + Afar from moil and strife, + No one can ever truly say + That mine's a pointless life." + +"That is very good," said the Poet. "I think almost any editor of any +comic paper would be willing to pay you three dollars for that. It is as +good as your poem on a ton of coal--simple in its expression and sweet +in sentiment." + +"I thought you'd think so," said the Idiot. "It struck me so. I've got +one on a screw-driver, too, that is very much of the same order, and +conveys a moral lesson to the reader who is always reaching out after +the unattainable. It reads as follows: + + "I cannot tool a tally-ho, + I cannot drive a nag; + I dare not hold the ribbons + On a hack or rumbling drag. + + "I could not guide the reins upon + A simple billy-goat, + And I should hesitate to try + To drive a can-al boat. + + "But I don't mind these things at all, + For I can drive a screw, + And I am happy, for that's just + What I was meant to do." + +[Illustration: "'I SHOULD HESITATE TO TRY TO WRITE A CAN-AL BOAT'"] + +"The fourth line of the second verse is weak, but otherwise it's good," +commented the Poet. "It's not a _can_-al boat; it's a can-_al_ boat, and +all the poetic license in the world wouldn't excuse your taking such +a liberty with language." + +"I appreciate that," said the Idiot. "But I don't see how I could get +around it." + +"There's only one way," said the Poet. "I think if you omitted that +verse altogether you'd improve the poem." + +"Then I should have to eliminate the billy-goat," said the Idiot. "That +takes a great deal of humor out of it. I always laugh when I encounter a +beast like that in poetry; he seems so helpless when incarcerated in a +poem." + +"That may be," observed the Poet. "But it is my belief that the goat, of +all animals in the kingdom, was the last one designed to be used in +poetry, anyhow. He is bad enough in prose, and in this case will butt +your poem to oblivion if you insist on keeping him in it. Any more?" + +"No," said the Idiot; "that's the last." + +"Well, you've got a good start," said the Poet, rising to light his +pipe, which had gone out. "And if I were you I'd go on and finish the +book. 'The Idiot's Book of Household Poetry' would have a great sale. +It has but one drawback that I can see. You harp on one string too much. +Every one of your poems preaches contentment, satisfaction--nothing +else." + +"That," said the Idiot, "is not an objection, but a virtue; for what +other lesson," he added, with a glance of pride at his surroundings, +"what other lesson, my dear Poet, should a home try to teach, and what +other sentiment can mean so much to mankind?" + +[Illustration: "'I HAVEN'T EVER HAD A HOME; I'VE ALWAYS BOARDED'"] + +"I don't know," said the Poet, with a little sigh. "I haven't ever had a +home; I've always boarded." + +Whereupon the Idiot rose up from his chair, and putting his arm about +his friend's shoulder, said: + +"How you do talk! Never had a home? Why, my dear fellow, what's this? +It's yours as long as it's mine!" + + + + +VIII + +SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE HIRED MAN + + +"Who is that sitting down on your tennis-court, Mr. Idiot?" asked Mr. +Brief, the lawyer. "Or is it anybody? I've been trying for the last +half-hour to make out whether it's a man or one of those iron figures +with which some people decorate their lawns." + +"That," replied the Idiot, calmly, "is my hired man. I pay him forty +dollars a month to sit down there and let the grass grow under his feet. +I heard you and Mr. Pedagog discussing the wonderful grassiness of my +lawn after dinner last night, and I meant to have told you then that the +credit thereof belongs entirely to the restful nature of that man's +soul. He will stand for hours rooted to one spot and looking with +apparent aimlessness out over the river. To most people this would seem +to be prompted by a sheer indisposition to work, but this would do him a +rank injustice, for his immovability is due entirely to his system. He +is letting the grass grow beneath him, and the fact that our grass is so +nourishing everywhere is due to his having stood for hours at various +times over every square inch of territory to which I hold the +title-deeds." + +The Idiot gazed out of the window at his retainer with affectionate +admiration. + +"He certainly clings closely to his system," said the lawyer. + +[Illustration: "'I FEEL THAT I COULD GO OUT AND MOW THREE ACRES OF +GRASS'"] + +"He is a model," said the Idiot. "He has done more to make my life here +easy than any one in my service. For instance, you know the hurly-burly +of existence in town. I go to my office in the morning, and whether I +have much work or little to do, I come home in the afternoon absolutely +worn out. The constant hustling and bustling of others in the city wears +upon my mind, and consequently upon my body. The rush and roar of cables +and electric-cars; the activity of messengers running to and fro in the +streets; the weary horses dragging great lumbering wagons up and down +the crowded thoroughfares, all affect my nature and impair my energy; +and then, the day's work done, I return here, where all is quiet and +still, and the very contrast between that man, standing silently on his +appointed spot, or leaning against the house, or lying off in sheer +content under some tree, and the mad scramble for lucre in the city, +invigorates my tired body until I feel that I could go out and mow three +acres of grass before dinner; in fact, I generally do." + +"I did not know that a restful nature was a requisite of a successful +career as a hired man," said Mr. Pedagog. + +"It is evident, then, that you have never had a hired man," rejoined the +Idiot. "Nor can you ever have studied the species at close range. +Ceaseless activity would be his ruin. If he did to-day all there is to +do, he would be out of employment to-morrow, consequently he never does +to-day's work to-day, and cultivates that leisurely attitude towards +life upon which you have commented. Do you see that small beech-tree +over there?" he added, pointing to a scrawny little sapling whose sole +virtue appeared to be its rigid uprightness. + +"Is that a beech-tree?" asked Mr. Brief. "I thought it was a garden +stake." + +[Illustration: "'He WOULD GO OUT DAY AFTER DAY AND SIT DOWN BESIDE IT'"] + +"It is a beech-tree," said the Idiot. "I planted it myself last autumn, +and while it has as yet borne no beeches, I think if we give it time, +and it withstands the rigors of the climate, it will produce its fruit. +But it was not of its possibilities as a beech-bearing tree that I +intended to speak. I wanted to indicate to you by a material object the +value of having a hired man who likes to lean against things. At the +close of this last winter that tree, instead of being as erect as a +grenadier, as it now is, was all askew. The strong westerly winds which +are constantly blowing across that open stretch bent the thing until it +seemed that the tree was bound to be deformed; but Mike overcame the +difficulty. He would go out day after day and sit down beside it and +lean against it for two and three hours at a time, with the result that +the tendency to curve was overcome, and a tree that I feared was doomed +to fail now bids fair to resemble a successful telegraph-pole in its +uprightness. And, of course, the added warmth of his body pressing down +upon the earth which covers its roots gave it an added impulse to +grow." + +"It is a wonderful system," smiled Mr. Brief. "I wonder it is not +adopted everywhere." + +"It is, pretty much," said the Idiot. "Most hired men do the same thing. +I don't think Mike differs radically from others of his kind. Of course, +there are exceptions. My neighbor Jimpsonberry, for instance, has a man +who is so infernally unrestful that he makes everybody tired. He is up +every morning mowing Jimpsonberry's lawn at five o'clock, waking up +every sleepy soul within ear-shot with the incessant and disturbing +clicking of his machine. Mike would never think of making such a +nuisance of himself. Furthermore, Jimpsonberry's lawn is kept so +close-cropped that the grass doesn't get any chance, and in the heat of +midsummer turns to a dull brick-red." + +After a pause, during which the company seemed to be deeply cogitating +the philosophical bearing of the subject under discussion, the Idiot +resumed: + +"There is another aspect of this matter," he said, "which Jimpsonberry's +man brings to my mind. You know as well as I do that heat is +contagious. If you feel as cool as a cucumber, and then all of a sudden +see somebody who is dripping with perspiration and looking for all the +world like a human kettle simmering on a kitchen-range, you begin to +simmer yourself. It is mere sympathy, of course, but you simmer just the +same, get uncomfortable and hot in the collar, and are shortly as badly +off as the other fellow. So it is with Jimpsonberry's man. Time and time +again he has spoiled all my pleasure by making me realize by a glance at +his red face and sweating arms how beastly hot it is, when before I had +seen him I felt tolerably comfortable. Mike, on the other hand, is not +so inconsiderate, and I am confident would let the grass grow a mile +high before he would consent to interfere with my temperature by pushing +the mower up and down the lawn on a humid day." + +"Do you keep this interesting specimen of still life all through the +year?" asked Mr. Brief, "or do you give him a much-needed vacation in +winter? I should think he would be worn out with all this standing +around, for nothing that I know of is more tiresome than doing +nothing." + +"No," said the Idiot. "Mike never seems to need a vacation. Sitting down +and leaning against things and standing around don't seem to tire him in +the least. It might tire you or me, but you see he's used to it. The +only effect it has on him, as I view the matter, is that it wears out +his clothes. It doesn't impair his lack of vigor at all. So by the +simple act of occasionally renewing his wardrobe, which I do every time +I discard a suit of my own, I revive his wasted vitality, and he does +not require to be sent to Europe, or to take an extended tour in the +White Mountains to recuperate. I keep him all through the winter, and +his system is quite the same then as in summer, except that he does his +sitting around and leaning indoors instead of in the open." + +"I suppose he looks after the furnace and keeps the walks clear of snow +in winter time?" suggested Mr. Pedagog, who was beginning to take an +interest in this marvellously restful personage. + +[Illustration: "'HE SHOVELS OFF A FOOT-PATH'"] + +"Yes," said the Idiot; "and he attends to the windows as well. As a +minder of the furnace he is invaluable. My house is as cool as a +roof-garden all through the winter, and thanks to his unwillingness to +over-exert himself shovelling coal into the furnace, I burn only about +half as much as my neighbors, and my house is never overheated. This in +itself is an indication of the virtue of Mike's method. One-half of the +colds contracted by children nowadays are the result of overheated +houses. Mike's method gives me a cool house at very moderate expense, +owing to the great saving of coal, the children do not get colds because +of overheating, and the expense of having a doctor every other day is +averted. Then his snow-shovelling scheme goes back to the first +principles of nature. Mike is not overawed by convention, and instead of +following the steps of other men who shovel the snow entirely off, he +shovels off a footpath to enable me to go to business, and then sits +down and oversees the sun while it melts the balance. Sometimes, if the +sun does not do the work promptly enough to suit him, he gets up little +contests for the children. He divides up certain portions of the walk +into equal parts, and starts the small boys on a race to see which one +will get the portion assigned to him cleaned off first, the prize being +something in the nature of an apple, which the cook orders from the +market. I believe my son Thomas won ten apples last winter, although I +am told that the Jimpsonberry boy, whose father's man is cross, and +insists on doing all the work himself, is the champion snow-shoveller of +the street." + +"Yes, he is, pa," put in Tommy. "Mike owes him 'leven apples. I only won +eight." + +"Well, that is a very good record, Thomas," said the Idiot, "and I will +see to it that next winter you have a brand-new snow-shovel with which +to enter the contest." + +"Mike lets us chop the kindling-wood, too," said Tommy, suddenly +perceiving a chance to put in a good word for the genial Mike. "I think +he's the nicest hired man as ever was." + +"He'll stop anything he's doing to talk to me," ventured Mollie, not +wishing to be backward in laying wreaths upon the brow of their friend. + +"Yes, I have noticed that," said the Idiot. "Indeed, next to his extreme +restfulness there is no quality that I know of in Mike that shines out +so conspicuously as his intense love for children. He will neglect his +own interests, as Mollie has suggested, to talk to the little ones, and +I rather like him for it. No boy dares go near the Jimpsonberry man, who +has exerted himself into a perpetual state of nervous exhaustion." + +"Well, if he cleans your windows, that is something," observed Mrs. +Pedagog, whose experience in keeping a boarding-house years before +entitled her to speak as one having authority. + +"Unless his system is the same in that work as in the other branches +committed to his care," said Mr. Brief. + +[Illustration: "'SPEND A WHOLE DAY ON ONE WINDOW'"] + +"It isn't quite," said the Idiot. "He really does exert himself in +window-cleaning. I have frequently seen him spend a whole day on one +window. His window-washing system is a very ingenious one, +nevertheless." + +"It is, indeed," said Mrs. Idiot, with a show of feeling. + +"A new window-washing system?" grinned Mr. Pedagog. + +"Yes," said the Idiot. "It is his own invention. He washes them on the +outside in summer and on the inside in winter. The result is this +opalescent glass which you see. You would hardly guess that these +windows are of French plate. Still, we don't mind so much. I couldn't +ask him to wash them on the outside in winter, it is so dreadfully cold, +and in the summer, of course, they are always open, and no one, unless +he were disagreeable enough to go snooping about after unpleasant +details, would notice that they are not immaculate." + +"And you pay this man forty dollars for this?" demanded Mr. Brief. + +"Oh, for this and other things. I pay him two dollars a month for the +work he does. I pay him ten dollars a month because he's good to the +children. I pay him ten dollars more for his civility, which is +unvarying--he always puts his hat on when he comes into the house, +having noticed, perhaps, that only those who are my social equals are +entitled to appear bareheaded in my presence." + +"And the other eighteen?" persisted the lawyer, by nature a +cross-examiner. + +"Well, I don't grudge him that because--" a sort of a fond light lit up +the Idiot's eyes as he gazed down upon Mike, still sitting on the +tennis-court--"I don't grudge him that other eighteen dollars because it +costs Mike twenty dollars a month to live; and he uses the rest of it to +put his boy through college, so that when he grows up to be a man he +will be something more than a hired man." + +"Ah!" said Mr. Brief. + +"Yes," said the Idiot; "I found that out from a third party some time +ago, and I thought after all I'd keep him, for I know nobody else would +have him, and then what would become of the boy in college?" + + + + +IX + +ON SOCIAL ACCOUNTS + + +"It's rather strange, I think," observed Mrs. Idiot one evening, as she +and the Idiot sat down to dine, "that the Dawkinses haven't been here +for three or four months." + +"I've noticed it myself," said the Idiot. "We used to see 'em every day +about. What's up? You and Polly Dawkins had a fight?" + +"Not that I know of," said Mrs. Idiot. "The last time we met she was +very cordial, and asked most affectionately after you and the children. +I presumed that possibly you and Dick had had some kind of a falling +out." + +"Not a bit of it. Dick and I couldn't quarrel any more than you and +Polly could. Perhaps as we grow older our ideals differ. Polly's rather +anthropological in her talks, isn't she?" + +"A trifle," said Mrs. Idiot. "And musical and literary and scientific." + +"While you?" queried the Idiot. + +[Illustration: "'WELL, I'M FOND OF GOLF'"] + +"Well, I'm fond of golf and--ah--well--" + +"Golf again," laughed the Idiot. "I guess that's it, Bess. When a woman +wants to talk about the origin of the species and has to hear about a +splendid putt, and her observations upon the sonata are invariably +interrupted by animadversions upon the morals of caddies, and her +criticisms of Browning end in a discussion of the St. Andrew's Rules, +she's apt to shy off into a more congenial atmosphere, don't you think?" + +"I am sure," retorted Mrs. Idiot, "that while I admit I am more +interested in golf than in anything else outside of you and the +children, I can and do talk sometimes of other things than caddies, and +beautiful drives, and stymies. You are very much mistaken if you think +otherwise." + +"That is very true, my dear," said the Idiot. "And nobody knows it +better than I do. I've heard you talk charmingly about lots of things +besides stymies, and foozles, and putts, and drives, but you don't know +anything about the men of the Stone Age, and you couldn't tell the +difference between a sonata and a fugue any more than I. Furthermore, +you have no patience with Browning, so that when Polly Dawkins asks if +you like _Sordello_, you are more likely than not to say that you never +ate any, but on the whole for small fish prefer whitebait." + +Mrs. Idiot laughed. + +"No, indeed," she replied. "I'd fall back on golf if Polly mentioned +_Sordello_ to me. You may remember that you sent it to me when we were +engaged, and I loved you so much--then--that I read it. If I hadn't +loved you I couldn't have done it." + +"Well," smiled the Idiot, "what did you think of it?" + +"I think Browning had a good lie, but he foozled," said Mrs. Idiot, with +her eyes atwinkle, and the Idiot subsided for at least ten seconds. + +"I wish you'd say that to Polly some time," he observed. "It's so very +true, and put with an originality which cannot but appeal to the most +hardened of literary women." + +"I will if I ever get the chance," said Mrs. Idiot. + +"Suppose we make the chance?" suggested the Idiot. "Let's go down there +and call to-night. I'll work the conversation up so that you can get +that off as an impromptu." + +[Illustration: "AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL TEA"] + +"No," said Mrs. Idiot. "I don't think we'd better. In the first place, +Mrs. Whalker told me yesterday that Polly is to read a paper on Balzac +before the S. F. M. E. to-morrow evening, and on Friday morning she is +to discuss the 'Influence of Mozart on De Koven' before the Musical +Mothers' Meeting, and on Saturday afternoon she is going to have an +anthropological tea at her house, which she is to open with some +speculations as to whether in the Glacial Period dudes were addicted to +the use of cigarettes." + +"Great Scott!" said the Idiot. "This is her busy week." + +"Tolerably so," said Mrs. Idiot. "She has probably reserved this evening +to read up on Balzac for to-morrow's essay, so I think, my dear, we'd +better not go." + +"Right as usual," said the Idiot. And then he added, "Poor Dawkins, who +is taking care of him now?" + +"I think," said Mrs. Idiot, "that possibly Mrs. Dawkins has sublet the +contract for looking after her husband and children to the United +States Housekeeping Company Limited." + +The Idiot gazed blankly at his wife, and awaited an explanation. + +[Illustration: "'THE BABY IS ROCKED TO SLEEP EVERY NIGHT'"] + +"An organization, my dear," she continued, "formed by a number of +well-meaning and remorseful widows who, having lost their husbands, +begin to appreciate their virtues, and who, finding themselves +sympathetic when it is too late, are devoting themselves to the husbands +of others who are neglected. A subscription of five hundred dollars will +secure the supervision of all the domestic arrangements of a +home--marketing, engagement and discharge of domestics, house-cleaning, +buttons sewed on, darning done, care of flowers, wifely duties +generally; for one thousand dollars they will bring up the children, and +see that the baby is rocked to sleep every night, and suitably +interested in elevating narratives and poems like Joseph's coat of many +colors, and Tom, Tom the Piper's Son. This enables an advanced woman +like Mrs. Dawkins to devote her mornings to the encyclopedias, her +afternoons to the public libraries, and her evenings to the functions +whereat she may read the papers which her devotion to the encyclopedias +and the libraries has brought forth." + +"Excuse me, my dear Bess," said the Idiot, rising. "I wish to telephone +Dr. Simmons." + +"For what--for whom?" demanded the lady. + +"You, of course," returned the Idiot. "You are developing alarming +symptoms. You give every indication of a bad attack of professional +humor. Your 'International Widows Company for the Protection and +Amelioration of Neglected Husbandry' proves that!" + +Mrs. Idiot laughed again. + +[Illustration: "POOR DICK DAWKINS ISN'T TAKEN CARE OF AT ALL'"] + +"Oh, I didn't say that there really is such an institution!" she cried. +"I said that I supposed there was, for if there isn't, poor Dick Dawkins +isn't taken care of at all." + +"Well, I'm sorry for it all, anyhow," said the Idiot, seriously. +"They're both of 'em good friends of ours, and I hate to see two +families that have been so close drawing apart." + +Just then Mollie and Tommy came in. + +"Mamma, Willie Dawkins says he can't come to our party because his ma +won't let him," said Mollie. "She says we don't never go down there." + +"That's it," said the Idiot. "Mrs. Dawkins has got so many irons in the +fire she's begun to keep social books. I'll bet you she's got a ledger +and a full set of double-entry account-books charging up calls payable +and calls receivable." + +"I don't see how she can get along unless she has," replied Mrs. Idiot. +"With all her clubs and church societies and varied social obligations +she needs an expert accountant to keep track of them all." + +"I suppose a promise to read a paper on Balzac," put in the Idiot, "is +something like a three-months' note. It's easy to promise to pay, with +three months in which to prepare, but you've got to keep track of the +date and meet the obligation when it falls due. As for me, I'd rather +meet the note." + +"That is about it," said Mrs. Idiot. "If a woman goes into society +properly she's got to make a business of it. For instance, there are +about ten dances given at the club here every year. Polly is patroness +for every one of 'em. There are twenty-five teas during the spring and +summer months. Polly assists at half of them, and gives a fifth of +them. She's president of the King's Daughters, corresponding secretary +of the Dorcas, treasurer of the Red Cross Society, and goodness knows +what all!" + +"I can quite understand why she needs to keep accounts--social +accounts," said the Idiot. "But it's rather queer, don't you think, that +she has the children on her books? The idea of saying that Jimmie and +Gladys can't come to Mollie's party because Mollie hasn't been down +there--why, it's nonsense!" + +"No," said Mrs. Idiot, "it is merely logical. Whatever Polly Dawkins +does she tries to do thoroughly. I've no doubt she'll do Balzac up +completely. If she keeps social books showing call balances in her favor +or against herself she might as well go the whole thing and write the +children in--only she's made a mistake, as far as we are concerned, +unless she means to write us off without squaring up." + +"You talk like a financier," said the Idiot, admiringly. "What do you +know about writing off?" + +"I used to help my father with his accounts, occasionally," said Mrs. +Idiot. "Polly Dawkins's books ought to show a balance of one call in +our favor. That's really the reason I'm not willing to call there +to-night. She's so queer about it all, and, as a matter of fact, she +owes me a call. I'm not going to overwhelm her with an added +obligation." + +"Ho!" smiled the Idiot. "You keep books yourself, eh?" + +"I keep score," said Mrs. Idiot. "I learned that playing golf." + +"It's a bad thing to keep score in golf," said the Idiot. + +"So they say, but I find it amusing," she replied. + +"And how many calls does Mrs. Wilkins owe you?" demanded the Idiot. + +"I don't know," returned the wife. "And I don't care. When I want to see +Mrs. Wilkins I call on her whether she owes me a call or not, but with +Polly Dawkins it's different. She began the book-keeping, and as long as +she likes it I must try to live up to her ideas. If social intercourse +develops into a business, business requirements must be observed." + +"It's a good idea in a way," said the Idiot, reflectively. "But if you +make a business of society, why don't you carry it to a logical +conclusion? Balance your books, if you mean business, every month, and +send your debtors a statement of their account." + +"Well, I will if you wish me to," said Mrs. Idiot. "Suppose they don't +pay?" + +"Dun 'em," said the Idiot. And then the matter dropped. + +On the fifth of the following month Mr. and Mrs. Idiot were seated +comfortably in their library. The children had gone to bed, and they +were enjoying the bliss of a quiet evening at home, when the door-bell +rang, and in a moment or two the maid ushered in Mr. and Mrs. Richard +Dawkins, preceded, of course, by their cards. The young householders +were delighted, and Polly Dawkins was never more charming. She looked +well, and she talked well, and there was not a symptom of any diminution +of the old-time friendship perceptible--only she did appear to be tired +and care-worn. + +The evening wore away pleasantly. The chat reverted to old times, and by +degrees Mrs. Dawkins seemed to grow less tired. + +About ten o'clock the Idiot invited his neighbor to adjourn to the +smoking-room, where they each lit a cigar and indulged in a +companionable glass. + +"Idiot," said Dawkins, when his wife called out to him that it was time +to go home, "your wife is a wonder. I've been trying for three months to +make Polly come up here and she wouldn't. Keeps books, you know--now. +Has to--so much to do. Thought you owed us a call, but received your +bill Wednesday--looked it up--questioned servants--found you were +right." + +"Bill," cried the Idiot. "What bill?" + +"Why, the one Mrs. Idiot sent--this," said Dawkins, taking a piece of +paper out of his pocket. "Confoundedly good joke." + +The Idiot took up the piece of paper. It was type-written--on Tommy's +machine--and read as follows: + + November 1 1898 + MR. AND MRS. RICHARD DAWKINS + _To Mr. and Mrs. Idiot Dr._ + + September 20 Evening call 1 + Account overdue. + Please remit. + +"Great Scott!" laughed the Idiot. + +"My dear," said the Idiot after the Dawkinses had gone, "that bill of +yours was a great idea." + +"It wasn't my idea at all--it was yours," said Mrs. Idiot, laughing. +"You said we ought to be business-like to the last and send out a +statement on the first of the month. I sent it. And they paid up." + +"Richard," said Mrs. Dawkins, as they drove home, "did you get a +receipt?" + + + + +X + +AS TO SANTA CLAUS + + +"I am very glad I didn't take Tommy and Mollie to church with me this +morning," said Mrs. Idiot, on her return from service. "It would have +broken their hearts to have heard the sermon. I don't know what gets +into Dr. Preachly sometimes. He gave us a blast about Santa Claus." + +"A blast about Santa Claus, eh!" said the Idiot. "And how did he blast +the good old saint?" + +"He said he was a lie," rejoined Mrs. Idiot, indignantly, "and that it +was the duty of every Christian in the land to see that the lie was +exposed." + +"Great heavens!" cried the Idiot, in astonishment. "Doesn't Dr. Preachly +believe in Santa Claus? Poor old Preachly! How much he has lost! Did he +say anything about Hop o' My Thumb and Cinderella?" + +"No, of course not. Why should he?" returned Mrs. Idiot. + +"Oh, because; I suppose that a man who doesn't believe in Santa Claus is +a skeptic on the subject of Hop o' My Thumb, and Rumpelstiltzken, and +Cinderella, and Jack the Giant-Killer, and all the rest of that noble +army of childhood friends," explained the Idiot. + +"He didn't mention them," said Mrs. Idiot. "He--" + +"He's going to preach a series of sermons on lies, I presume," said the +Idiot. "He's tackled Santa Claus first, as being the most seasonable of +the lot, eh? Jack the Giant-Killer ought to be a good subject for a +ministerial attack." + +"Well, he pulled poor old Santa Claus to pieces," said Mrs. Idiot, with +a sigh. + +"Why didn't you bring me a piece of him as a souvenir?" demanded the +Idiot. "Just a lock of his hair for my collection of curios? What was +done with the remains?" + +Mrs. Idiot laughed as she pulled over her gloves and smoothed them upon +her lap. + +"There weren't any remains," she answered. "When Dr. Preachly got +through with him there wasn't a vestige of the old chap left. To begin +with, he was a lie, the doctor said. Then he went on and showed that he +was a wickedly partial old fellow--a very snob, he called him--because +he gives fine things to the children of the rich and little or nothing +to the children of the poor. He filled the little folk with hope and +brought them disappointment, and so on. It was a powerful sermon, +although I wanted to weep over it." + +"Go ahead and weep," said the Idiot; "it's the appropriate thing to do. +I don't wonder you wanted to cry; you've always liked Dr. Preachly." + +"Of course," said Mrs. Idiot. + +"And you hate to see him make a--ah--a--well, you know--of himself in +the pulpit; and I quite agree with you. I rather like Preachly myself. +It is too bad to see a well-meaning man like that batting his brains out +against the rock of Gibraltar, whether suicide is sin or not. What has +put him in this despondent mood? Do you suppose he has heard?" + +"Heard what?" demanded Mrs. Idiot. + +"About the slippers," said the Idiot. + +"What slippers?" asked his wife. + +"Oh, the same old slippers," said the Idiot. "You know the ones I +mean--the ones he's going to get from Santa Claus. Really, I'm not +surprised, after all. If I were a minister, and realized that truckloads +of embroidered slippers of every size and color, covered with stags of +red worsted jumping over rivulets of yellow floss, with split agates for +eyes set in over the toe, were to be dumped in my front yard every +Christmas Eve by that old reprobate, Santa Claus, I think I, too, would +set him down as a fraud, or an overworked cobbler, anyhow." + +[Illustration: "'DR. PREACHLY ONLY GOT EIGHT PAIRS LAST XMAS'"] + +"That's exaggerated--a comic-paper idea," said Mrs. Idiot. "I don't +believe the average clergyman gets so many slippers. Dr. Preachly only +got eight pairs last Christmas." + +"Is that all?" cried the Idiot. "Mercy, what a small income of slippers! +Dear me! how can he live with only eight pairs of slippers? But, after +all, slippers are an appropriate gift for a clergyman," he added, "and +Santa Claus should be credited with that fact. Slippers have soles, and +the more slippers he gets the easier it is to save their soles, and +therefore--" + +"Really, my dear, you are flippant," said Mrs. Idiot. + +"Not at all," rejoined the Idiot. "I am merely trying to sit on two +stools at once--to retain my respect for Dr. Preachly without giving up +my everlasting regard for Santa Claus. If I can't do both I am very much +afraid it will be Dr. Preachly, and not Santa Claus, who will go to the +wall in this establishment, and that would be sad. I can't say I think +much of the doctor's logic. Do you?" + +"I didn't notice his logic," Mrs. Idiot replied. + +"Very likely," said the Idiot; "from what you tell me of his discourse I +imagine he must have left it at home, which is a bad thing to do in an +argument. To begin, he called Santa a lie, did he?" + +"Yes; said he didn't exist at all." + +"Good! Then how could he have been a snob?" + +"Why, while of course I have no sympathy with his conclusions, Dr. +Preachly handled that point pretty well. It certainly is true that in +the homes of the rich there is a lavishness of gifts that you don't +find in the homes of the poor, and therefore Santa Claus treats the rich +better than he does the poor. We all know that." + +"Hum!" said the Idiot. "And so it is Santa Claus who is the snob, eh, +and not Fortune?" + +"Well, Dr. Preachly did not touch upon that. All he said was that Santa +Claus was a snob for favoring 'high society' and in many cases +absolutely ignoring the submerged." + +"But I don't see how," said the Idiot. + +"Suppose he brings a diamond necklace to the daughter of a Croesus?" + +"Precisely," said the Idiot. + +[Illustration: "'A CHINA DOLL TO THE DAUGHTER OF A CARPENTER'"] + +"And a china doll to the daughter of a carpenter?" said Mrs. Idiot. + +"That's tact, not snobbishness," said the Idiot. "What would the +daughter of a carpenter do with a diamond necklace? The china doll is +not only more appropriate, but a better plaything." + +"Well, anyhow, he gives richly to those that have, and sparsely, if at +all, to those that haven't, Dr. Preachly said," said Mrs. Idiot. + +"There is scriptural authority for that," observed the Idiot. "I wonder +if Dr. Preachly reads his Bible! Perhaps I'd better send him one for +Christmas instead of a pair of galoshes. He'll find in the Bible that +'to him that hath shall be given,' and so forth. But to return to the +logic--" + +"I told you I didn't notice it," said Mrs. Idiot. + +"Nor did Dr. Preachly, my dear; passed it by as if it were a poor +relation, apparently. But this is true, a lie is an untruth. Truth alone +lives, therefore an untruth does not live. Santa Claus is a lie and does +not live, and is a snob, according to our reverend logician. Now, how +can one who does not live be a snob or anything else? Truly, I wish Dr. +Preachly would be more careful in his statements. As a pew-holder in his +church I do not like to hear him denounce something that does not exist +as having unworthy qualities. It's like shaking a sword at nothing and +patting yourself on the back afterwards for your courage; still more in +this instance is it like batting your poor mortal head against the hard +surface of an everlasting rock, and our clergy should be in better +business. + +"Let 'em fight the harmful lies--the lies of false social ideas as +propagated by distinctions of pew-holding, for instance. The man who +sits in the front of the church is no better than the man who sits at +the back, and is frequently his inferior; but has he more or has he less +influence? The man who hands in his check for ten thousand dollars, +having that and more to spare, is not more the friend of religion and +Christianity than the poor beggar who stumbles in and puts his penny in +the plate, thus diminishing by one-fifth his capital. Suppose Santa +Claus is in a material sense a fancy or a lie; Heaven help Dr. Preachly +if he can't see the beauty and the ethical value of the deception. Is he +not the embodiment of the golden rule, and is he not, after all--God +bless him and them!--something beautiful in the eyes of the children?" + +"I'm flippant, and I know it, but there are some things I cling to," he +added, after a pause. "Santa Claus is one of them, and Dr. Preachly can +preach through all eternity, and, with all due respect to him, he can't +remove from my mind the beauty of an idea that was planted there by two +people who were practical enough, my father and my mother. I've +inherited Santa Claus, and I'm not going to give him up, and no +preacher in our church or in the church of others can take him away from +me by one sermon, or by an infinite number of sermons, however sincere +they may be. Is dinner ready?" + +Dinner was ready. It was eaten reflectively, and after it the children +went to Sunday-school. From this Tommy returned with a swollen eye, +which later became dark. + +"Hullo, pop!" he said, addressing the Idiot as he entered the house. + +[Illustration: "'HULLO, SONNY! HAD A GOOD TIME?'"] + +"Hullo, sonny!" replied the Idiot, observing the swollen eye. "Had a +good time?" + +"Yep," said the boy; "pretty good." + +"Been fighting?" suggested the Idiot. + +"Not so very much," said the boy; "only a little." And he began to sing +a popular air, as if he didn't care much about life in general, and +didn't mind an aching eye, which was rapidly, by its inflammation, +giving away the fact that he had met with trouble. + +"What did you learn at Sunday-school?" asked the Idiot. + +"More blessed to give than to receive," said Tommy. + +"Good!" said the Idiot. "I hope you will remember that, sonny. There is +no satisfaction in all the world like that of giving if you can afford +it." + +[Illustration: "'I GAVE MY DOLLY AWAY TO-DAY'"] + +"I think tho, too," said Mollie, sitting down on her father's lap with +the contented sigh of a little girl who has discovered that life is not +all an illusion. "I gave my dollie away to-day, papa," she added. "She +wath only thawdust, and Pollie Harrington hath her now. She was a +drefful care, and I'm glad to be ridden of her." + +But the Idiot's mind was not on dolls, and he showed it. His boy's eye +proved a greater care. + +"Come here, my boy," he said. + +The boy approached inquiringly. + +"How did this happen?" the Idiot asked. "Your eye is swollen." + +"Oh, I don't know," cried Tommy, exultantly. "Jimmie Roberts said there +wasn't no Santy Claus." + +"Well?" + +"I said there was, an' then I gave him one on the end of his nose." + +Here the boy struggled away from his father, as if he had done something +he was willing to stand by. + +"Let me understand this," said the Idiot. "Jimmie said--" + +"There wasn't any Santy Claus," interrupted Tommy. + +"Then what did you say?" asked the Idiot. + +"I told him he didn't know what he was talking about," said Tommy. + +"Why did you say that?" + +"Because he was wrong, papa," said Tommy. "I've seen Santy Claus; I saw +him last year." + +"Ah! You did, eh? I was not aware of that fact." + +Tommy began to laugh. + +"You can't fool me, daddy," he said, climbing onto his father's knee. +"Of course I've seen him, and he's the bulliest feller in all the world. +_You're him!_" + +And a hug followed. + +Later on Mrs. Idiot and the Idiot sat together. The latter was deep in +thought. + +"Children have queer notions," said he, after a while. + +"They are generally pretty right, though," observed Mrs. Idiot. "You are +a pretty good Santa Claus, after all," she added. + +"Pollie," said the Idiot, rising, "I believe in Santa Claus because he +represents the spirit of the hour, and whoever tries to turn him down +tries to turn down that spirit--the most blessed thing we have. Let's +keep the children believing in Santa Claus, eh?" + +"I agree," said Mrs. Idiot. "For the secret is out. You are Santa Claus +to them." + +"Heaven grant I may always be as much," said the Idiot. "For if a father +is Santa Claus, and a boy or a girl believes in Santa Claus as a friend, +as a companion, as something that brings them only sincerity and love +and sympathy, then may we feel that Tiny Tim's prayer has been answered, +and that God has blessed us all." + + + + +XI + +AS TO NEW-YEAR'S DAY + + +It was New-Year's eve, and Mr. and Mrs. Idiot with their old friends +were watching the old year die. The old year had been a fairly +successful one for them all, and they were properly mournful over its +prospective demise, but the promise of the new was sufficiently bright +to mitigate their sorrow. + +"What a sandwich life is, after all!" ejaculated the Idiot. + +Mr. Pedagog started nervously. The remark was so idiotic that even its +source seemed to make it inexcusable. + +[Illustration: "'I DON'T QUITE CATCH YOUR DRIFT'"] + +"I don't quite catch your drift," said he. + +"As the man said when an avalanche of snow fell off his neighbor's roof +and missed him by an inch," said the Idiot. "Why, just think a moment, +Doctor, and my drift will overwhelm you. Look about you and consider +what we have ourselves demonstrated to-night. If that does not prove +life a series of emotional sandwiches, then I don't know what a sandwich +is. Twenty minutes ago we were all gladness over the prosperity of the +year gone by. Five minutes ago we were all on the verge of tears because +the good old year is going the way of all years. An hour from now we +will be joyously acclaiming the new. Two thick slices of joy with a thin +slice of grief between." + +"Ah!" said Mr. Pedagog. "I see. There is something in the analogy, after +all. The bread of joy and the ham of sorrow, as you might put it; do +make up the sum of human existence; but in some cases, my lad, I am +afraid you will find there is only one slice of bread to two of ham." + +"No doubt," replied the Idiot, "but that does not affect my proposition +that life is a sandwich. If one slice of ham between two slices of bread +is a ham sandwich, why is not one slice of bread between two slices of +ham a bread sandwich? What is a sandwich, anyhow? The dictionary says +that a sandwich is something placed between two other things; hence, +all things are sandwiches, because there is nothing in the world, the +world being round, that is not between two other things. Therefore, all +things being sandwiches, life is a sandwich, Q. E. D." + +"Is life a thing?" demanded Mr. Pedagog. + +"Certainly," said the Idiot. "And a mighty good thing, too. If you don't +believe it look the word thing up in the dictionary. All things are +things." + +"But," continued the Schoolmaster, his old spirit of antagonism rising +up in his breast, "granted that life is a thing, what is it between so +that it becomes a sandwich?" + +"The past and the future," said the Idiot. "It is a slice of the +immediate between a slice of past and one of future." + +Mr. Pedagog laughed. + +"You are still the same old Idiot," he said. + +"Yes," said the Idiot. "Gibraltar and I and Truth are the three +unchangeable things in this life, and that's why I am so happy. I'm in +such good company. Gibraltar and Truth are good enough companions for +anybody." + +Meanwhile Mollie and Tommy, who had been allowed to sit up upon this +rare occasion, stirred uneasily. + +"Ith I a thandwich, popper?" said the little girl, sleepily, raising her +head from her father's shoulder and gazing into his eyes. + +"Yes, indeed, you are," said her father, giving her an affectionate +squeeze. "A sugar sandwich, Mollie. You're really good enough to eat." + +"Well, I'd rather be a pie," put in Tommy; "an apple pie." + +"Very well, my son," returned the Idiot. "Have your own way. Henceforth +be a pie if you prefer--an apple pie. But may I ask why you express this +preference?" + +"Oh, because," said Tommy, "if I'm to be an apple pie somebody's got to +fill me chock-full of apple sauce." + +"The son of his father," observed Mr. Whitechoker. + +"I think it is a pity," Mrs. Pedagog put in at this point, "that some of +the good old customs of the New Year have gone out." + +"As to which, Mrs. Pedagog?" asked the Idiot. + +"Well, New-Year's calling particularly," explained the lady. "It is no +longer the thing for people to make New-Year's calls, and I must confess +I regret it. It used to be a great pleasure to me in the old days to +receive the gentlemen--my old friends, and relatives, and boarders." + +"Why distinguish between your old friends and your boarders, Mrs. +Pedagog?" interrupted the Idiot. "They are synonymous terms." + +"They are now," said the good lady, "but--ah--they weren't always. I +used sometimes to think you, for instance, didn't like me as much as you +might." + +"I didn't dare," explained the Idiot. "If I'd liked you as much as I +might I'd have told you so, and then Mr. Pedagog would have got jealous +and there'd have been a horrid affair." + +The lady smiled graciously, and Mr. Pedagog threw a small paper pellet +at the Idiot. + +"I'm much obliged to you for holding off, Idiot," he said. "I don't know +where I'd have been to-day if you'd got in ahead of me. Mrs. Pedagog has +always had a soft spot in her heart for you." + +"I've got the other spot," said the Idiot, "and a pair of aces are hard +to beat in pairs; but I think I voice Mrs. Pedagog's sentiments in the +matter, Mr. Pedagog, when I say that she and I would always have been +glad to see you every other New-Year's day if I had been the fortunate +winner of her hand." + +"And Mr. Pedagog and I would have been glad to see you and Mrs. Pedagog +in the sandwich years," said Mrs. Idiot to her husband; and then, +turning to the Schoolmaster, added, "Wouldn't we, Mr. Pedagog?" + +"No, madame," returned Mr. Pedagog, courteously. "You might have been, +but I would not. If I had married you I could never have seen any one +else with pleasure. I should have kept my eyes solely for you." + +"John!" cried Mrs. Pedagog, arching her eyebrows. + +"Pleasantry, my dear--mere pleasantry," returned the Schoolmaster, +tapping his fingers together and smiling sweetly upon Mrs. Idiot. + +"You didn't finish, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "You were telling us +how you used to enjoy New-Year's calling before it went out." + +"Yes," replied Mrs. Pedagog. "It was charming. I used positively to +look forward to its coming with delight. We women, Mr. Idiot, found the +old custom very delightful." + +"But the men, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "did you ever think of +them?" + +"What else did we think of? What else is there for a woman to think +about?" replied Mrs. Pedagog. + +"Jane!" cried Mr. Pedagog. + +"_Pleasantry, my dear--mere pleasantry_," returned Mrs. Pedagog, +frigidly. And Mr. Pedagog lit a cigar. It is not always pleasant to be +quoted. + +"Still," said the Idiot, "you thought of men only as creatures of the +moment--" + +"Entirely," said Mrs. Pedagog. + +"And not as creatures of the week following," said the Idiot. + +"What has that to do with it?" asked Mrs. Pedagog. + +"Much--from the man's stand-point," returned the Idiot. "His digestion +was butchered to make a woman's holiday. Take myself as an example. I +used to make New-Year's calls; and to get through with my list by +midnight, I had to start in at nine o'clock in the morning." + +"Nine o'clock is not so early," said Mr. Whitechoker. + +"It's early for cake and pickled oysters," said the Idiot. "And for +chicken salad and wedding-cake, and for lemonade and punch, and for +lobster and egg-nog, and for ice-cream and _pâté-de-foie-gras_." + +"H'm!" said Mr. Pedagog, reflectively. "That's true." + +"Quite so," observed Mr. Whitechoker, brushing off his vest, upon which +the ashes of his cigar had rested. "Especially for the punch." + +"There was no punch in my house," said Mrs. Pedagog. "Indeed, I always +served a very simple luncheon. We did have chicken salad, of course, but +the chicken was good and the salad was crisp--" + +"I'd swear to it," said the Idiot. + +"And we had egg-nog, but there was more egg than nog in it--" + +"Again I'd swear to it," said the Idiot, smacking his lips. + +"And as for the lobsters, nobody ever complained--" + +"He'd have been a lobster himself who would," said the Idiot. "But that +does not prove that no one ever suffered." + +"And as for the pickled oysters, no one ever suffered from them that I +knew of," continued the good lady. "They are harmless eaten in +moderation." + +[Illustration: "'I FELT AS IF I HAD SWALLOWED AS OVERSHOE'"] + +"Exactly right," cried the Idiot. "No gentleman would ever complain of +pickled oysters, even if they were made of inferior rubber, eaten in +moderation. Yet I recall in my own experience a pickled oyster of most +impressive quality. He was not a pickled oyster of the moment. He was +the Admiral Dewey of pickled oysters. In appearance he resembled every +other pickled oyster I ever met, but--well, he kept me in a state of +worry for a month. Just eating him alone was eating pickled oysters in +immoderation. I felt as if I had swallowed an overshoe. He was a +charming pickled oyster, Mrs. Pedagog, and he was devoted to me, but he +involved me in complications alongside of which the Philippine question +is child's play. If a New-Year's caller could have confined his +attentions to the ladies he met no harm would have come to him, but he +couldn't, you know. The day was one continuous round of effort and +indigestibles. What a man got at your house and had to eat merely to +show his appreciation of your hospitality was all right and wholesome. +Your lobster and egg-nog could do him no harm, but he couldn't stop with +yours; he had to continue, and consume lobsters and egg-nog everywhere +else and all day long. The day resolved itself into a magnificent gorge +alongside of which that of Niagara seems like a wagon-rut. It finally +came down to the point where either man or the custom had to die, and +man being selfish, the custom went. Did you ever consider exactly how +much indigestible food an amiable, well-meaning person had to consume in +a round of, say, three dozen calls, Mrs. Pedagog?" + +Mr. Brief nodded his approval. "Now you've struck it," he said. "I've +been there, Idiot." + +"I must confess," said Mrs. Pedagog, "that I never looked into that +question." + +"Well, I'll tell you," the Idiot resumed. "The last time I made +New-Year's calls I figured it out for the doctor the next morning, and +as I recall the statistics, in the course of that day I ate one hundred +and twenty-nine pickled oysters, thirteen plates of chicken salad, seven +plates of lobster salad, five plates of mulled sardines, twenty-three +plates of ice-cream, four hundred and sixty-three macaroons, +eighty-seven sandwiches ranging from lettuce and ham to chicken and +potted goose-liver, enough angel-cake to feed all the angels there are +and two more, sixteen Welsh rarebits that were being made just as I +happened in, and crystallized ginger and salted almonds and marrons to +the extent of about eighteen pounds." + +"Mercy!" cried Mrs. Pedagog. + +"Say, pa, where was I then?" asked Tommy, his eyes glittering with +delight. + +"You were eating green cheese on the moon, Tommy," said the Idiot. + +"Wisht I'd been with you," said Tommy. "Must o' been better than bein' a +pie." + +"And all of these things," continued the Idiot, with a wink at his son, +"I washed down with six gallons of lemonade, nineteen cups of coffee, +eighteen cups of tea, and a taste of claret punch." + +"And how about the egg-nog?" asked the Bibliomaniac, slyly. + +"I judge there were about six crates of eggs in it," said the Idiot. "I +never had the nerve to estimate the nog-end of it." + +"What did the doctor say when you told him all that?" asked Mrs. +Pedagog. + +The Idiot chuckled. "What did he say?" he cried. "Why, I should think +you could guess. He blamed it all on the Welsh rarebits, but he thought +he could get me into shape again in time for the next New Year. I've +never been the same man since." + +"Well, the way I look at it," said Mrs. Pedagog, "is that it is a great +pity that women must be deprived of a function that gives them pleasure +because the men make pigs of themselves." + +"But you don't understand, Mrs. Pedagog," the Idiot persisted. "I grant +you that the man who eats all that makes a pig of himself, but he has no +choice. He can't help himself. When a charming hostess insists, he'd be +a greater pig if he refused to partake of her hospitality. The custom +involved an inevitable sacrifice of man's digestion upon the altar of +woman. That's all there was about it. If it could have been arranged so +that a man could take a hamper about with him and stow all the cakes and +salads and other good things away in that, and eat them later as he +happened to need or want them, instead of in his own inner self, the +good old custom might have been preserved, but that is impossible in +these conventional days." + +"You needn't have eaten it all," put in Mrs. Idiot. "You could have +pretended to eat it and put it down somewhere." + +[Illustration: "'I FOUND EIGHT SANDWICHES AND A PINT OF SALTED +ALMONDS'"] + +[Illustration: "'THEY WERE FOUND SOME DAYS LATER WHEN THE ROOM WAS PUT +IN ORDER'"] + +"I know that, my dear. I didn't even on that occasion eat it all--I only +ate what I told you. I found eight sandwiches and a pint of salted +almonds in my coat-tail pocket the next morning, which I managed +surreptitiously to hide away while my hostesses were getting me +something else, and in one place, while nobody was watching me, I hid a +half-dozen pickled oysters under a sofa, where I suppose they were found +some days later when the room was put in order." + +As the Idiot spoke the clock struck twelve, and the guests all rose up. + +"Here's to the New Year!" said Mr. Pedagog. + +"Not yet," interposed the Idiot. "That's only a signal for the Welsh +rarebits to be brought in. I've sworn them off for the New Year, but I +haven't for the old. The clock is a half-hour fast." + +"No, my dear," said Mrs. Idiot. "It was, but I put it back. It's exactly +right now." + +"Then," said the Idiot, "I join you in the toast, Mr. Pedagog. Here's to +the New Year: may it bring joy to everybody. Meanwhile may it bring also +the Welsh rarebits." + +"I thought you'd sworn off," suggested Mr. Pedagog. + +"So I had," replied the Idiot, "but circumstances over which I have no +control force me to postpone my reformation for another twelve months. +If they had been served at half-past eleven I should have stuck to my +resolve; as they have been delayed until twelve-one I cannot do less +than eat them. I do not believe in wilful waste; and besides, it is +quite as much the duty of the host to consume the good things he places +before his guests as it is for the guests to partake. I can wait a year, +I think, without wholly ruining what little digestion my former devotion +to New-Year's calling has left me. Gentlemen, I propose the ladies: May +their future be as golden as this rarebit; and for the men, may they +always be worthy to be the toast upon which that golden future may rest +with the certainty born of confidence." + +And the guests fell to and ate each a golden buck to the New Year--all +save Mollie and Tommy. These two important members of the household went +up to their little beds, but just before going to sleep Tommy called +through the door to his little sister: + +"Mollie!" + +"Yeth!" + +"Want to play a game with me to-morrow?" + +"Yeth!" + +"Well, you get a cake and a pie and some gingersnaps and a lot of apples +and some candy and we'll play New-Year's calls." + +"Splendid!" lisped Mollie. "You'll call on me?" + +"Yes," said Tommy; "and all you'll have to do will be to force food on +me." + +And they soon passed into the land of dreams. + + + + +XII + +SOME DOMESTIC INVENTIONS + + +[Illustration: "'THERE'S NOT MUCH MONEY IN STOCKS'"] + +"I think I'll give up the business of broking and go into inventing," +said the Idiot one Sunday morning, as he and Mrs. Idiot and their +friends sat down at breakfast. "There's not much money in stocks, but +the successful inventor of a patent clothes-pin makes a fortune." + +"I'd think twice about that before acting," observed Mr. Brief. "There +may not be much money in stocks, but you can work eight hours a day, and +get good pay in a broker's office, while the inventor has to wait upon +inspiration." + +"True enough," said the Idiot; "but waiting on inspiration isn't a bad +business in itself. You can play golf or read a rattling good novel, or +go to a yacht-race while you wait." + +"But where does the money come in?" asked Mr. Pedagog, his usual +caution coming to the fore. + +"Inspiration brings it with her," said the Idiot, "and by the barrel, +too. What's the use of toiling eight hours a day for fifty weeks in a +year for three thousand dollars when by waiting on inspiration in a +pleasant way you make a million all of a sudden?" + +"Well," said Mr. Pedagog, indulgently, "if you have the inspiration +lassoed, as you might say, your argument is all right; but if you are +merely going to sit down and wait for it to ring you up on the +telephone, and ask you when and where you wish your barrels of gold +delivered, I think it will be your creditors, and not fortune, who will +be found knocking at your door. How are you going about this business, +provided you do retire from Wall Street?" + +"Choose my field and work it," replied the Idiot. "For the present I +should choose the home. That is the field I am most interested in just +now. I should study its necessities, and endeavor to meet whatever these +might demand with an adequate supply. Any man who stays around home all +day will find lots of room for the employment of his talents along +inventive lines." + +"You've tried it, have you?" asked Mr. Brief. + +"Certainly I have," said the Idiot, "though I haven't invented anything +yet. Why, only last week I stayed home on Monday--wash-day--and a +thousand things that might be invented suggested themselves to me." + +"As, for instance?" asked Mrs. Idiot, who was anxious to know of any +possible thing that could mitigate the horrors of wash-day. + +[Illustration: "'A NICE LITTLE BASKET-HAT ON HER HEAD TO HOLD THE PINS +IN'"] + +"Well, it wouldn't help _you_ much, my dear," said the Idiot, "but the +wash-lady would hail with unmixed delight a substitute for her mouth to +hold clothes-pins in while she is hanging out the clothes. I watched +Ellen in the yard for ten minutes that day, and it was pathetic. There +she was, standing on her tiptoes, hanging innumerable garments on the +line, her mouth full of clothes-pins, and Jimpsonberry's hired man +leaning over the fence trying to shout sweet nothings in her ear. If she +had had a nice little basket-hat on her head to hold the pins in she +could have answered back without stopping her work every other minute +to take them out of her mouth in order to retort to his honeyed +sentiments." + +Mrs. Idiot laughed. "Ellen finds time enough to talk and do the washing, +too," she said. "I sometimes think she does more talking than washing." + +"No doubt of it; she's only human, like the rest of us," said the Idiot. +"But she might save time to do something else for us if she could do the +washing and the talking at the same time. She may give up the washing, +but she'll never give up the talking. Therefore, why not make the +talking easier?" + +"What you need most, I think," put in Mr. Brief, "is an instrument to +keep hired men from leaning over the fence and distracting the attention +of the laundress from her work. That would be a great boon." + +"Not unless idleness is a great boon," retorted the Idiot. "Half the +hired men I know would be utterly out of employment if they couldn't +lean over a fence and talk to somebody. Leaning over a fence and talking +to somebody forms seventy-five per cent. of the hired man's daily labor. +He seems to think that is what he is paid for. Still, any one who +objects could very easily remedy the conversational detail in so far as +it goes on over the fence." + +"By the use of barbed wire, I presume," suggested Mr. Pedagog. + +"By something far more subtle and delicately suggestive," rejoined the +Idiot. "Hired men do not mind barbed-wire fences. They rather like them +when they annoy other people. When they annoy themselves they know how +to treat them. My own man Mike, for instance, minds them not at all. +Indeed, he has taken my pruning-shears and clipped all the barbs off the +small stretch of it we had at the rear end of our lot to keep him from +climbing over for a short cut home." + +"With what result?" asked Mr. Brief. + +[Illustration: "'AN ELECTRIC NOTICE TO QUIT'"] + +"With the result that I had to buy a new pair of pruning-shears," said +the Idiot. "My Anti-Over-the-Fence-Gabber," he continued, "would involve +certain complex details, but it would work. I should have an electric +battery connected with the upper cable of the fence, and an operator +stationed inside of the house, close to a key which would send some +six hundred or seven hundred volts through the cable whenever needed. +Then if I felt that Jimpsonberry's man was interfering with my +laundress, as soon as he leaned over the fence I'd have the operator +send him an electric notice to quit." + +"A message?" said Mr. Pedagog. + +"No, a plain shock. Two hundred volts as a starter, three hundred as a +reminder, and the full seven hundred if necessary to make the hint +plainer." + +"That would be cruel," observed Mrs. Pedagog. + +"Not wholly," said the Idiot. "It would be an advantage to the man +himself in one way. Hired men have too little electricity in their +systems, Mrs. Pedagog. If Jimpsonberry's man, for instance, would take +all the electricity I'd give him and apply it to his work, +Jimpsonberry's unpulled dandelions would not be such a constant menace +to my lawn. I compel Mike to weed out my lawn every spring and autumn, +but Jimpsonberry doesn't attend to his at all. He doesn't sleep on it, +and so doesn't bother about it. Consequently, when his dandelions go to +seed the seed is blown over into my grass, and every year I get an +uninvited crop, which at a dollar a thousand would make me a +millionaire." + +"Why don't you apply your inventive genius to the discovery of a +seedless dandelion?" asked the Lawyer. "It seems to me that would be the +best solution of the dandelion problem." + +"Because Jimpsonberry wouldn't have 'em if I discovered 'em," said the +Idiot. "I judge from the millions he raises every year that he is +satisfied with dandelions as they are. He's got enough for himself, and +never makes any charge for those he gives to his neighbors." + +"I think a furnace-feeder would be a good thing, too," the Idiot +continued, in a moment. "My furnace is a chronic sufferer from +indigestion because on some days it is gorged with coal and on others +with ashes. Seems to me if I could get a month's time in which to +concentrate my attention upon a furnace-feeder, I could devise some kind +of a contraption that would invoke the enthusiastic love of the suburban +resident in Arctic latitudes the world over." + +"I have often thought of that possibility myself," observed Mr. Pedagog, +his eyes fondly resting upon a steaming plate of griddle-cakes that +had just been brought in. "But coal is a rebellious quantity. A +furnace-feeder would need to be delicately adjusted, and coal cannot be +handled with delicacy. It requires a chute rather than a tube. It must +be manipulated with the shovel, not the sugar-tongs." + +"Correct," said the Idiot. "Therefore, _you_ would experiment on a chute +or a shovel, abandoning all idea of refining the coal. I, on the other +hand, would experiment with the coal itself, Mr. Pedagog. Why not +liquefy it, and let it drop automatically into the furnace through a +self-acting spigot?" + +"Liquefy coal?" asked Mr. Pedagog. + +"Certainly," replied the Idiot. "We liquefy pretty nearly everything +else. If liquid air, why not liquid coal? Everything we have in nature +in these days apparently can be liquefied, and while I am not familiar +with the process, I see no reason why a ton of coal should not be +reduced to such a shape that it can be bottled. Once bottled and +provided with an automatic dropper, it could easily be adjusted so as to +flow in proper quantities into the furnace at proper intervals." + +"It would be very expensive. Do you know what a pint of liquid air +costs?" demanded the Doctor. + +"No," said the Idiot. "I neither breathe nor drink it. The plain old +stuff is good enough for me, and cheap if you don't have to go to the +mountains or the sea-shore to get your supply." + +"Granting coal could be liquefied," the Doctor assented, "I venture to +say that a ton of it would cost as much as five hundred dollars." + +"I've no doubt it would," said the Idiot; "but I could afford a ton of +coal at five hundred dollars if my scheme worked. A successful invention +would make bread seem cheap at ten dollars a loaf. There's another thing +I should put my mind on, and that is a method of cooking a cauliflower +so that everybody in the house, as well as the neighbors, should not +know that you are doing so," he continued. "I am particularly fond of +cauliflower, but it is undeniable that in the process of cooking it +becomes obtrusive, almost to the point of ostentation. I've spoken about +it many times. Mike, the gardener, to whom I've spoken on the subject, +thinks the cauliflower itself, if sprinkled with _eau de Cologne_ while +growing, would cease to be obnoxious in the cooking; but that is too +expensive a process. It would take a dozen cases of _eau de Cologne_ to +bring a single cauliflower to maturity. My son, Tommy, has stated that +he thinks it might be boiled in Florida-water instead of in the simple +variety that comes from the pipes. A good suggestion for a small boy, +but also expensive. Hired men and small boys do not think of the +exchequer of the principal in their plans. They don't have to. Their +allowance and wages are usually all velvet--an elegant vulgarism for +surplus--and for my own part I have constantly to veto their little +schemes for the betterment of my condition in order to have any +condition at all left. But as far as the arrangement of an odorless +cauliflower-cooker is concerned, it is as simple as A B C, barring one +or two complications." + +"I wish you'd hurry up and invent it," cried Mrs. Idiot, with +enthusiasm. "What are the main features of this simple contrivance?" + +"I'd have a boiler, in the first place, in which to boil the animal," +said the Idiot. "When the water was ready I'd clap the creature into it, +and before it had time to remonstrate I'd fasten a hermetically sealed +cover over the top." + +"But when you took it off the results would still be overpowering," said +Mr. Pedagog. + +[Illustration: "'FINDING OUT WHAT IS BEING COOKED FOR DINNER'"] + +"No, my dear sir," said the Idiot, "for the simple reason that I should +affix a cold-air box and a flue to the hermetically sealed boiler. +Through the cold-air box fresh air would constantly flow into the +boiler. Through the flue all the aromatic drawbacks of the cauliflower +would be carried off through the chimney into the upper air. Anybody who +wished to know whether we were going to have cauliflower for dinner or +not would have to climb up to the roof and sniff at the chimney-top to +find out." + +"It _is_ simple, isn't it, Mrs. Idiot?" Mrs. Pedagog said. + +"Very," replied Mrs. Idiot. "Indeed, it seems so extremely simple that I +should like to know where the complications lie." + +"Where all the complications in cooking lie, my dear," said the +Idiot, "in the cook. The chief complication would lie in getting a cook +who could, or if she could, would, use the thing intelligently." + +"I don't see," said Mr. Brief, dryly--"I don't see but that what you +ought to devote your time to, my dear Idiot, is the invention of an +intelligent cook." + +"Humph!" laughed the Idiot. "I may be an idiot, Mr. Brief, but I'm not +an ass. There are some things that man may reasonably hope to +accomplish--such as setting fire to the Hudson River, or growing +butternuts on the summit of Mont Blanc--but as for trying to invent an +intelligent cook who would stay in the country for more than two weeks +for less than ten thousand dollars a year, that, sir, is beyond all the +conceptions of the human mind." + +"Ain't Bridget intelligent, pa?" asked Tommy. + +Here was a complication, for Tommy liked to retail to Bridget the gossip +of the day, and especially what "pa said." + +"H'm--ah--oh yes, indeed, she is, Tommy," the Idiot replied, with some +embarrassment. "Very; she's been with us three months." + +"How much do you pay her, pa?" asked the boy. + +"Well," said the Idiot, "not more than fifteen hundred dollars a month. +Just take another griddle-cake, my son, and remember that there are some +things little boys should not talk about." + +"Like tumpany's bald heads?" lisped Mollie, complacently, her eye fixed +upon Mr. Pedagog's shining dome. + +"Precisely," observed Mr. Pedagog, appreciating the situation. + +And while everybody else laughed the Idiot looked upon his children with +a sternly affectionate face. + +"My dear," said he to Mrs. Idiot, "I think it is time the babies got +ready for Sunday-school." + + + + +XIII + +A SUBURBAN COMPLICATION + + +"Well, old chap," said the Poet some weeks later, when he happened to be +spending the night off in the suburbs with his old friend, "how goes the +noble art of inventing? Has your horseless cauliflower bloomed as yet?" + +"Horseless cauliflower is good, but tautological," said the Idiot. "The +cauliflower is an automobile in itself, without the intervention of man. +Who told you I was inventing instead of broking these days?" + +"Mr. Pedagog said something about it the last time I met him," said the +Poet. "He's a mighty good friend of yours. He says you are the most +perfect Idiot he ever met." + +"He's a bully good fellow," said the Idiot, affectionately. "You know I +used to think Pedagog wasn't of any earthly use except to teach people +things, but as I look back upon my experience with him he has never +taught me anything that was worth forgetting. So he told you I was going +into invention, did he?" + +"Yes; and he said he thought you were going about it in the right way," +rejoined the Poet. "You weren't spending ten thousand dollars to get a +four-dollar invention on the market, he said, but were inventing things +that you knew at the outset weren't worth risking your money on." + +The Idiot smiled broadly. + +"He said that, did he? Well, he doesn't know what he is talking about," +he retorted. "I am spending money on my inventions. I have already +invested fifty cents in my patent Clothes-Pin-Holding Laundry-Bonnet, +and I have strung the wires along my fence to be used in my electric +Hired-Man-Discourager; and when I have managed to save up a few dollars +more I'm going to get a battery to attach to it, when woe betide that +man of Jimpsonberry's if he tries to talk to Maria while she is at work! +Furthermore, I have extended the operations of that same useful +invention so that it will meet a long-felt want in all suburban +communities as a discourager of promiscuous wooing. You never lived +in the country, did you?" + +"Not permanently," said the Poet. + +[Illustration: "'COURTING HIS BEST GIRL ON SOME OTHER FELLOW'S STONE +WALL'"] + +"Then you are not aware of a singular habit the young country swain has +of courting his best girl on some other fellow's stone wall after the +sun goes down," said the Idiot. "Some balmy evening next spring, if +you'll come up here I'll show you one of the features of suburban life +that will give you an idea for a poem. That stone wall that runs along +the front of my place has been the scene of more engagements than I can +tell you of. Many a time when I have come home late at night I have +counted as many as ten couples sitting on the cold coping of that wall +telling each other how beautiful the world is, and holding each other on +with loving arms." + +"Rather an affecting scene, that," said the Poet. + +"It was at first," rejoined the Idiot, "and I rather liked to see it. +Indeed, I once suggested to Mrs. Idiot that we should have the coping +upholstered, so that they might sit more comfortably. I even wanted to +put a back along the inner side of it for them to lean against, but +after a while it palled. We couldn't sit out on our own front porch on +a summer evening and talk without sentimental interruptions that were +demoralizing to a sustained conversation. We'd try to talk, for +instance, about Browning, or Tennyson, or Le Gallienne, or some other +poet of their class, when we'd be interrupted by such sentiments as, +'Ess I is,' and 'I's oo ducky,' and 'Ain't de moon boofer?' Then when we +had guests we never dared to take them out-of-doors, but remained cooped +up inside the house, because Mrs. Idiot feared to intrude upon the +sacred right of those ten couples to do their courting comparatively +unobserved." + +"It must have been a nuisance," said the Poet. + +"It grew to be so; but I hadn't the heart to stop it, even if I could +have done so, so I put up a hedge to hide them from view and soften the +sound of their voices; but it didn't work very long. They didn't seem to +appreciate my motive, and it so happened that the hedge which I put up +with the most innocent of intentions was a Japanese quince that blossoms +out in thorns half an inch long, to an extent which suggests the fretful +porcupine. These, for some reason or other, excited the animosity of +my twenty young friends on the wall, and at the end of the season there +were not two consecutive feet of the hedge that had not been hacked and +cut to pieces by my indignant but uninvited guests." + +"What impudence!" cried the Poet. + +"Only the ardor of youth," observed the Idiot, calmly. "Put yourself in +the same place. Suppose that you, just as you were about to declare your +undying love for the girl of your choice, and while gently stealing your +arm about her waist, were to have the back of your hand ripped off by a +brutal hedge?" + +"I see," laughed the Poet. "I dare say I should be indignant." + +"They were properly so," said the Idiot, "properly so; and neither Mrs. +Idiot nor I really blamed them." + +[Illustration: "'HOLDING UP A GREAT OSAGE ORANGE'"] + +"We let the matter rest, and made no complaint," he continued. "Time +went on, and the courters became a trifle more assertive. One of them +came into the house one evening and demanded to know what I meant by +assaulting him and his lady friend, holding up a great Osage orange +which he alleged to have been the murderous weapon I had used; and I +really had to apologize, for I was guilty. It happened that while +walking about my small preserves I had picked up this orange, which had +fallen onto my lawn from a tree on Jimpsonberry's place, and had +unthinkingly tried to see how far I could throw it. It went just over +the hedge, and had unceremoniously knocked Strephon's hat into the +middle of next week and frightened Phyllis into hysterics. I was placed +on the defensive, but for the life of me I couldn't help laughing, with +the result that Strephon stalked angrily away, alleging that I should +hear from him further in the matter." + +"And did you?" asked the Poet. + +"No," said the Idiot, "I never did; but the incident rather soured me +towards the people who seemed to regard my stone wall as their property. +I even came to feel like purchasing a gatling-gun and loading it with +Osage oranges for the purpose of repelling them, but even under this +provocation I still continued to ignore the matter." + +"You are too easy-going," suggested the Poet. + +"I was," said the Idiot, "until they began to use the sidewalk that runs +parallel with the wall as a tablet upon which to inscribe in letters +of flame their undying affection. One Sunday morning, as Mrs. Idiot and +I started for church, we were horrified to find our flagstones scribbled +all over with poetry, done in chalk, after the order of + + "Roses is pink, and violets is blue, + Sugar is sweet, and so be you. + +[Illustration: "'THE PICTURE OF A HEART WITH AN ARROW DRAWN THROUGH +IT'"] + +"Further along was the picture of a heart with an arrow drawn through +it, and the two names 'Larry' and 'Mame' written on either side. And one +unusually affectionate youth had actually cut the initials of his young +lady and himself in the top of the coping, with a cold-chisel, I +suspect. It's there yet. It was then my spirit rose up into fierce +denunciation. That night, when the clans had gathered and were going +through the initial stages I marched out in front of them, cleared my +throat ostentatiously, and made a speech. It was the most nervous speech +I ever made; worse than after-dinner speaking by a good deal. I called +their attention to how I had suffered: referred pathetically to the +destruction of the hedge; inveighed sarcastically against the +Osage-orange man; told them in highly original fashion that worms, if +taken at the ebb that leads on to fortune, would surely turn and rend +their persecutors, and that I'd had enough. I forgave them the hedge; I +forgave them the annoyance they had cost me, but I asserted that I'd see +them all condemned to eternal celibacy before I would permit my sidewalk +to be turned into an anthology of love, and my coping into an intaglio +of eternal blessedness. I requested them if they wished to write poetry +to write it upon their own hearths, and if they had any inscriptions to +cut to chip in and buy an obelisk of their own and hieroglyph to their +hearts' content. I even offered to buy them each a slate and pencil, +which they might bring with them when they came, upon which to send +their sentiments down to posterity, and I finished with what I consider +to be a pleasing perversion of Longfellow's poem on the Woodman, with a +few lines beginning: + + "Scribbler, spare that sidewalk. + +"Then I departed, threatening to have them all arrested." + +"Good!" said the Poet. "I didn't think you'd ever do it. You have nerve +enough, but you are too good-natured." + +"I wasn't good-natured then," said the Idiot, regretfully; "and when I +got through I stalked back into the house, scolded Mollie, sent Tommy to +bed, and behaved like a bear for the rest of the evening." + +"And the people on the wall? They slunk away in despair, I suppose," +said the Poet. + +[Illustration: "'IT TOOK MY HIRED MAN TWO WEEKS TO SCRUB IT OUT'"] + +"Not they," said the Idiot; "not by a long shot. They combined against +me, and next morning when I started for town I found my sidewalk in +worse shape than ever. One flag had written upon it the pleasing mandate +'Go drown yourself.' Another bore the mystic word 'Chump' in great +capital letters, and at the end of my walk was a pastel portrait of +myself, of rough and awkward composition, labelled with my name in full. +It took my hired man two weeks to scrub it out. And on the following +Hallowe'en they strung a huge banner on my telephone wires, inscribed +'The Idiot Asylum,' and every blessed gate I have to my name had been +removed from the premises." + +"What an outrage!" cried the Poet. + +"Not a bit of it. Merely a suburban ebullition," said the Idiot. "They +don't mean anything by it. They are mere children, after all, and from +their point of view I have interfered with their rights." + +"And you propose to stand all this?" asked the Poet. "If I were you I'd +get a pile of broken bottles, as they do in England, and place them +along the top of that wall so that they couldn't possibly use it." + +"Brutal custom, that," said the Idiot. "May do for Englishmen; won't do +here at all. In the first place, it spoils the appearance of the wall; +in the second place, it is not efficacious; in the third place, it would +place me in a false position. Everybody'd soon be asking where I got all +those bottles. An Englishman drinks enough beer in the course of a week +to keep his walls covered with broken bottles for a century. I don't, +and I'm not going to buy bottles. I've got a better scheme." + +"Ah!" cried the Poet. "Now we are coming to the invention." + +"Merely an extension of my 'Hired-Man-Discourager,'" said the Idiot. +"Simple, and I trust efficacious. I am going to put a live wire along +the coping of my wall. Broken bottles are cheap, my dear Poet, but +they don't work. If I put broken bottles on my wall the Amalgamated +Brotherhood of Wooers would meet on my lawn and pass resolutions against +me, and ultimately they would demand the use of my parlor, unless I +misunderstand their nature. + +"The lovers' rights must be respected always, and I'm truly thankful +that they have stopped short at my frontage. When they operate along my +frontier-line they are harmless, interesting, even amusing. If they +carry their principles through and penetrate beyond the edge, why, then +Mrs. Idiot and I will have to give it up. + +"My scheme is to make them feel that they are welcome to the wall, but +to make the wall--well, to give an element of surprise to the wall. Just +as Jimpsonberry's man is soon to be surprised electrically, which is +legitimately, so do I propose to surprise these inconsiderate persons +who cut down my hedges, who scribble up my sidewalk with their poems, +and who hang Hallowe'en banners on my telephone wires. I wish them all +well, but next spring when they attempt to revive the customs of the +past they will find that even I am resentful." + +"But how?" + +"I shall have a wire running along the coping, as I have already said, +that between the hours of eight and twelve p.m. will be so full of +shocking things that my uninvited guests will cease to bother me. Can +you imagine the effect of a live wire upon ten loving couples engaged in +looking at the moon while sitting on it?" + +"Yet you claim to insist upon their rights as lovers," said the Poet, +deprecatingly. + +"Certainly I do," said the Idiot. "Man has a right to make love wherever +he can. If he can't make love on my wall, let him make love somewhere +else." + +"But where?" cried the Poet. "Your swains up here have no home, +apparently." + +"Or Jimpsonberry's wall," said the Idiot. "By the way, do you know +anything about moths?" + + + + +XIV + +SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE MOTH + + +"Do you know anything about the habits of moths?" repeated the Idiot. + +"Moths?" echoed the Poet, eying the Idiot closely, the transition from +live wires to moths proving rather too sudden for his comprehension. +"No, I don't know anything about moths except that I have heard that +they are an unmitigated nuisance." + +"They are worse than a nuisance," said the Idiot. "They are a devouring +element, and they are worse than fire. If your house catches fire you +can summon an engine and have it put out, and what damage it does you +can collect for if you are careful enough to keep your possessions +insured; but with the moth it is different. There isn't any moth +department in town that you can ring up, nor is there a +moth-extinguisher that you can keep close at hand to fight them with. +Furthermore, there is no moth-insurance company here or elsewhere to +protect the man who suffers damage at their teeth, that I know of. + +"He is a mean, sneaking, underhanded element, the moth is. Fire has a +decent sense of the proprieties. Moths have none at all. When fire +attacks you it smokes, and crackles, and hisses, and roars, and lets you +know in clarion tones that it has come. The moth steals upon you in the +dead of night, and chews up your best trousers, gorges himself upon your +wife's furs, tickles his palate with your swellest flannel golf-shirt, +munches away upon your handsomest rug, punches holes in your best +sofa-cushions with his tusks, and then silently folds his tent and +steals away without so much as a thank-you for his meal. For unmitigated +meanness commend me to the moth!" + +"You seem to speak with feeling," said the Poet, with a smile. "Have you +suffered?" + +[Illustration: "'AN UNPAID GROCER'S BILL BECOMES AN ABSOLUTE PLEASURE'"] + +"Suffered?" cried the Idiot. "Suffered is not the word. They have +tortured me. Alongside of the moth and his nefarious work even a +book-agent pales into insignificance, and an unpaid grocer's bill +becomes an absolute pleasure. You can meet a book-agent on his own +ground, for you know his limitations. I have done so myself. Only +yesterday one of them called upon me to sell me a Cyclopedia of Cookery, +and before he got away I had actually sold him a copy of your poems." + +"Ah," said the Poet, shaking his head. "You sold my gift, did you?" + +"Not a bit of it," laughed the Idiot. "When your book came out I bought +a copy, and two days later you sent me another with an inscription, +which I treasure affectionately. I sold him the one I bought." + +"You are a beautiful Idiot," said the Poet, slapping his knee +enthusiastically. + +"I don't lay claim so much to beauty as to sublimity," said the Idiot, +lighting a cigar. "And even that is not to my credit. Beauty and +sublimity are gifts. No amount of cultivation can produce genius when it +does not exist. When I see a beautiful woman it is not she that I +admire. I admire the gracious Hand that made her." + +"Give me that idea, old man!" cried the Poet. + +"It is yours from this on," said the Idiot, with a sigh. "I am not equal +to it. I may be able to think thoughts, but thoughts are of no more use +to me than a piano is to a man who can't read music. But we are becoming +discursive. We were talking about moths, not thoughts. You said that I +must have suffered, and I said that I had been tortured, and I have. My +evening clothes have been ruined by them; my best shirts have been eaten +by them; my silk hat, in which I have taken much pride, has four bald +spots on its side because of their insatiable appetite, and as far as I +can find out, I have no redress. You can't sue a moth for damages, you +know, with any degree of satisfaction." + +"Why should you expect to sue a moth for damages any more than to have a +mosquito indicted for assault?" suggested the Poet. + +"Oh, as for that," said the Idiot, "you can treat the mosquito without +much difficulty. He merits capital punishment, and if you are yourself +alert you can squash him at the moment of his crime. But the moth is +different. You are absolutely helpless in the face of him. He works +in secret." + +"I am told that there are such things as camphor-balls," observed the +Poet. + +"There are," said the Idiot. "And I truly think the moth enjoys them as +much as a young girl enjoys a military ball. Whenever we give a +camphor-ball the moths attend, and as far as I can find out dance all +through it. They seem to enjoy functions of that nature. Furthermore, I +have yet to meet the man who likes to go about in a suit of clothes that +smells like a drug-store. I don't. I hate the odor of camphor, and if I +have my choice of going to a dinner in a perforated dress-suit or in one +that is redolent of the camphor-ball, I prefer the one with holes in it. +What I can't understand is why a race as proud as the one to which you +and I belong should have to knuckle under to an inferior lot of insects +such as the moth represents." + +[Illustration: "'THE LION, THE ELEPHANT, THE TIGER, ALL HAVE THEIR WORK +TO DO'"] + +"I suppose there is something about it that we cannot understand," said +the Poet, dreamily. "All created things have their uses. The lion, the +elephant, the tiger, the boa-constrictor, all have their work to do in +life. Even the mosquito has his mission, whatever it may be. You must +admit this. Why not, therefore, admit that the moth serves a purpose in +the great scheme of life?" + +"My dear Poet," said the Idiot, "far be it from me to deny the truth of +what you say. There is hardly a living creature that I have ever +encountered in all my life that has not had some truly utilitarian +quality in its make-up. The lion is a splendid creature, and with the +bear and the fox and the rhinoceros and the tapir he serves a purpose. +They at least teach boys geography, and teach it interestingly. The boy +who knows where the tapir hath its lair knows more geography than I do. +My son Tommy has learned more of geography from a visit to the circus +where those animals are shown than he ever learned from books. I can +quite see likewise the utilitarian value of the mosquito. He keeps the +sea-shore from being overcrowded, and he prevents some people from +sleeping too much. He is an accomplished vocalist, and from my own point +of view is superior to a Wagner opera, since Wagner opera puts me to +sleep, while the magnificent discords of the mosquito keep me awake. But +the moth is beyond me. What his contribution to the public welfare +may be I cannot reason out, although I have tried." + +"And you find nothing in his favor?" asked the Poet. + +"Much," replied the Idiot, "but he has no system. His mission is to eat +old clothes, but he is such a very disgusting glutton that he does not +discriminate between old and new, and I have no use for him. If in his +search for a meal he would choose the garments of three years ago, which +I ought not to wear because they are so old-fashioned as to make me +conspicuous when I do wear them, it would be all right. But the moth is +no such discriminating person. He is not a lover of old vintages. When +he calls in a number of his brother moths to dine at his expense he does +not treat them to an overcoat of '89, or to a dress-suit of '93, or to a +silk hat laid down in '95. He wants the latest thing, and as far as I +can find out he gets it. I have just been compelled to lay in a new +stock of under and over clothes because the ones I had have been served +upon his table." + +"The moth must live," observed the Poet. + +[Illustration: "'THEY EAT UP MY NEW CLOTHES'"] + +[Illustration: "'WASTED MY ENERGY UPON THE UNRESPONSIVE AIR'"] + +"I'm perfectly willing he should if he'll only discriminate," retorted +the Idiot. "We have enough old clothes in this house, my dear Poet, to +give a banquet of seventeen courses to six hundred moths every night for +the next six months. If they would content themselves with that I should +be satisfied. But they won't. They eat up my new clothes; they destroy +my new hats; they munch away upon my most treasured golf-vests. That is +why I asked you if you knew anything about moths. I am anxious to reform +them. As you have said, I have gone into inventing, and my inventions +are wholly designed to meet long-felt wants in all households. The man +who invents a scheme to circumvent or properly to satisfy the appetite +of the moth will find his name indissolubly linked with fame. I have +thought, and thought, and thought about it. The moth must either be +domesticated or extinguished. I have tried to extinguish him, but +without avail. When he has flown forth I have endeavored to punch him in +the head, and I have wasted my energy upon the unresponsive air. Did you +ever undertake to punch a moth in the head?" + +"Never," said the Poet. "I am not a fighter." + +"My dear boy," rejoined the Idiot, "I don't know a hero in real life or +in fiction who could meet a moth on his own ground. I read about Mr. +Willie B. Travers, of New York, who can drive four horses about the +arena at the horse show without turning a hair. I read about Emerson +McJones, of Boston, putting up his face against the administration on a +question of national import. I have read of the prowess of Alexander, of +Cæsar, of D'Artagnan, of Bonaparte, and of Teddy Roosevelt, but there +isn't a man among 'em who can fight the moth. You can bombard him with a +gatling-gun loaded to the muzzle with camphor-balls, and he still waves +his banner defiantly in your face. You may lunge at him with a rapier, +and he jumps lightly aside, and to express his contempt bites a hole in +your parlor hangings. You can turn the hose on him, and he soars +buoyantly away out of reach. You can't kill him, because you can't catch +him. You can't drive him away, and until we go back to the dress of the +knights of old and wear nickel-plated steel clothing, and live in rooms +of solid masonry, we can't starve him out. There is, therefore, only one +thing to do, and that is to domesticate him. If you in the course of +your investigations into nature have ever discovered any trait in the +moth that science can lay hold upon, something through which we can +appeal to his better nature, if he has such a thing, you will be +conferring a great boon upon the whole domestic world. What I want to +find out is if he possesses some particularly well-defined taste; if +there is any one kind of texture or fabric that he likes better than +another. If there is such a thing I'll have a brand-new suit made of +that same material especially for him, furnish a nice comfortable, warm +spot in the attic as a dining-room, and let him feed there forevermore, +when and how he pleases. The manners and customs of moths are an open +book to most of us. His tastes are as mysterious as the ocean's depths." + +The Poet shook his head dubiously. "I am afraid, my dear Idiot, that you +have at last tackled a problem that will prove too much for you. How to +get at the point you desire is, I fear, impossible of discovery," he +said. + +"It would seem so," replied the Idiot. "But I shall not despair. If the +ordinary cook of commerce can be made humanly intelligent I do not see +any reason why we should abandon so comparatively simple a proposition +as the domesticization of the moth." + +Tommy and Mollie had been listening with great interest, and as the +Idiot finished Mollie observed that she thought the best way to do was +to ask the moth what he liked most, but Tommy had a less conciliatory +plan. + +"Best thing's to get rid of 'em altogether, pa," he said. "Mollie and +I'll squash 'em for you for fi' cents apiece." + +Which struck the Poet as the most practical idea that had been advanced +during the discussion. + + + + +XV + +SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE BURGLAR + + +"Are you ever bothered much by burglars off here in the country?" asked +Mr. Pedagog one spring afternoon, as he and the Idiot and the youngsters +strolled about the Idiot's small farm. + +"No," said the Idiot. "They've only visited me twice." + +"Only twice, eh?" observed the Schoolmaster. "Well, I should think that +was often enough, considering that you haven't lived here more than a +year and a half." + +"It was," said the Idiot. "I didn't say I wanted them to come again, did +I?" + +"Of course not," returned Mr. Pedagog. "But you said 'only twice,' as if +two visits of that nature were less than might have been expected." + +"Well, aren't they?" asked the Idiot. "Just make a little calculation. +I've lived on this place precisely five hundred and ninety-four days, +and, of course, an equal number of nights. It seems to me that in +breaking into my house only twice when they might have come every night +shows a degree of restraint upon our Suburban Burglary Company that is +worthy of the highest commendation. You, of course, refer to +professional burglars, don't you?" + +Mr. Pedagog laughed. "Are there any amateur burglars?" + +"Are there!" ejaculated the Idiot. "Well, rather. There is the Gasman, +and man who inspects the water-meter, and the Iceman, and the Plumber. +If you refer to that class, why, I have them with me always." + +"Which of the two classes do you prefer?" asked Mr. Pedagog, with a +chuckle. + +"Well, I'm not quite sure as to that," returned the Idiot. "I've often +wondered myself whether I preferred the straight-out honest pirate, who +does his work surreptitiously by night, and who doesn't pretend to be +anything but a pirate, or the sleek, insinuating chap, who comes into +our house by day, and runs up a bill against you which in his heart of +hearts he knows is not a proper one. There are burglars and burglars in +this world, Mr. Pedagog, and the one who lands in the penitentiary is +not always a bigger rascal than the fellow who holds the respect of the +community and sets himself up as a prominent citizen. Highwaymen may be +divided into classes, some of them respectable, others not. There was +Dick Turpin, who ran honest risks to obtain a living; there are men in +Wall Street who work greater ruin, and are held in higher esteem. There +is the footpad who takes your watch, and pawns it to buy bread for his +starving family, and there is the very charming young person who sits +behind a table at a church fair, and charges you seven dollars for a +fifty-cent sofa-cushion. So it goes. Socially I prefer the esteemed +citizen who makes me pay twenty-eight dollars for ten dollars' worth of +gas; but when it comes down to a strict business basis I must say I have +lost less money through the operations of the professional thief than +through those of the amateur highwayman. Take a recent case in my own +experience, for instance. Only last week I sent anonymously a small +clock which cost me twenty dollars to a guild fair here in town, and +Mrs. Idiot bought it for a birthday present for me for forty dollars. In +other words, I have a twenty-dollar clock on my hands that has cost me +sixty dollars." + +"But you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have contributed to +the good work of the guild," suggested Mr. Pedagog. + +"That is true enough," said the Idiot; "but the guild is only forty +dollars to the good. They'd have been better off if I had given them +fifty dollars in cash, and I'd have saved ten." + +"But you have the clock," insisted Mr. Pedagog. + +"I certainly have," replied the Idiot; "and if time is money I shall +soon be rich, for that clock makes time to beat the band. If it keeps on +as it has started and we stand by it, we shall soon be about a month +ahead of the sun. It gains a week every forty-eight hours. If that clock +were truthful, I should be a centenarian at forty." + +"But you're not sorry you gave it?" said Mr. Pedagog, deprecatingly. + +"Not at all," said the Idiot. "My only regret is that Mrs. I. bought it. +But," he added, hastily, "she needn't know that." + +"I won't say a word," said Mr. Pedagog. + +"I won't, neither, pa," said Tommy, with a degree of complacency which +showed that the temptation to tell was great. + +"Well, I won't say mor'n two or three words about it, anyhow," put in +Mollie, not anxious to commit herself to perpetual silence on the +subject. + +"It is the most beautiful clock I ever saw," said the Idiot, quickly, +realizing the possibilities of Mollie's two or three words. + +"That's what I fink," said Mollie, "and I'm goin' to tell mamma that you +said so." + +"All right," said the Idiot. "Suppose you and Tommy run right up and +tell her now." + +"I'd rather hear you talk, pa," said Tommy. + +"He does take after you, doesn't he?" said Mr. Pedagog. + +"Yes," said the Idiot, "he does. He likes to hear me talk as much as I +do, bless him!" + +"It is a commendable sign in a son," observed Mr. Pedagog. "But tell +about the two professionals. Did they get anything?" + +"They did," said the Idiot. "And at the same time I lost nothing. The +first chap came on the scene, along about two o'clock in the morning. He +was a very industrious mechanic, and I regret to say he was not +adequately paid for his services. He tackled the safe." At this point +the Idiot threw back his head and laughed heartily. + +"I have seen the safe," said Mr. Pedagog, "and to tell you the truth, my +dear Idiot, I have wondered at your choosing so obvious a receptacle for +your valuables. It does not, to my mind, deny itself as a safe should. +It advertises the fact that your silver, your wife's jewels perhaps, are +within. I have spoken once or twice to our friend Mr. Brief about it." + +"No doubt," replied the Idiot. "However, I can't see why a safe has any +disadvantages." + +"It lies in this," said Mr. Pedagog, impressively. "You confess at once +to the burglar the exact location of the things he's after. Without a +safe your silver, or Mrs. Idiot's jewels, such as they are, might be +found anywhere in the house. But when you take the trouble to buy a +safe, any burglar in creation who has ordinary common-sense must know +that your valuables are concentrated in that one spot." + +"That, I rejoice to say," said the Idiot, "is the burglar's view." + +"You should not rejoice," said Mr. Pedagog, with some of his old-time +severity. "You make his work so comparatively easy that he is content to +follow a base profession, as you have termed it. Truly, I wonder at you. +You place on your first floor a bald safe--" + +"I haven't seen any advertised as having a full head of hair," observed +the Idiot, complacently. + +"You misunderstand me," said Mr. Pedagog. "When I say bald I mean +evident, plain, obvious. You practically say: Here are the things which +I value. What is to be found within this safe, Mr. Burglar, _are the +very things you are after_. Therefore, say you to the burglar: Attack +this safe. Break it open, rifle it of its contents; in other words, here +is the swag, as I believe it is called." + +"You are wholly right," said the Idiot. "I bought that safe for that +precise reason, and I bought a big one and a strong one. But you don't +know the story of that safe, do you, Mr. Pedagog?" + +"I do not," said the Schoolmaster. + +"Then let me tell you," said the Idiot. "That safe has been broken open, +and by a professional burglar. The burglar had his tools, and he had +his expert knowledge of their use. He arrived at my house, as I recall +the situation, somewhere about--ah--two o'clock at night. He bored at +the lock until three. He fooled about the combination. He did everything +that a respectable burglar might be expected to do, and--" + +"He failed, of course, since you say you have lost nothing," said Mr. +Pedagog. + +"Not at all," said the Idiot. "After two hours and fifty-five minutes' +work on that safe he got it open. And--" + +"And?" queried Mr. Pedagog. + +"He found it empty," said the Idiot; "absolutely empty. There was not a +spoon, a fork, a tea-pot, or a diamond necklace, or even a scrap of +paper in it." + +"Then why do you have it," said Mr. Pedagog. + +"Merely to keep the burglar busy while he is in my house, and to make +him expert in honest work. An ordinary mechanic, intelligent enough to +get that safe open by night or by day, would be entitled to at least two +dollars for his services. The individual involved got it open; and when +he opened it--" + +"Found nothing!" cried Mr. Pedagog. + +"Exactly," said the Idiot, pulling away on his cigar. "I suppose I +should have left a check inside payable to bearer for a dollar and a +half to compensate him for his trouble, but I am so neglectful that I +really didn't." + +"And you bought a safe--" + +"Merely to provide employment for the unemployed burglar," said the +Idiot. "That is all a safe is good for, Mr. Pedagog. Experience has +shown that the house-safe isn't worth the paint it is covered with in +the matter of protection. But as a decoy it works to a charm. A safe, in +other words, is a splendid thing to keep things out of, as well as to +keep the burglar busy while he is your guest. If our particular visitor +had not spent all his time breaking the safe open he might have been +able to locate our spoons." + +"It is a pity," said Mr. Pedagog, dryly, "that you did not add to the +impression the futility of his work made upon his mind a short note of +admonition indicating to him that he might be in better business." + +"My dear Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "that would have been rude. +Invited or otherwise, the man was a guest in my house, and a note of +that kind would have savored of sarcasm, or, if not, would have placed +me in the position of having taken advantage of my guest's weakness to +be facetious at his expense." + +"You take an original view of it," said Mr. Pedagog. + +"Not a bit of it," returned the Idiot. "I got the idea from a Boston +girl. Once when she and her sister-in-law found themselves alone at +night in a huge country-house they were suddenly overcome with fear of +burglars, and rather than run any personal risk from the midnight +marauder they left a big card on top of the safe inscribed with these +words: 'Dear Sir,--The combination of this safe is 11-16-91. There is +nothing in it. If you must have our silver, call at the Shawmut Safe +Deposit Company, where it is now stored.' The two girls were cousins of +mine." + +The Schoolmaster smiled again. "There must be a streak of your +particular kind of genius running all through your family," said he. + +"True--there is," said the Idiot. "I'm not the only Idiot in my tribe." + +"And the second burglar. How about him?" asked Mr. Pedagog. + +"Oh, he was easy," said the Idiot. "I compromised with him. You see, I +met him on his way out. I was coming home late, and just as I arrived he +was leaving. I invited him back, lit the gas in the dining-room, and +asked him to join me in a bit of cold tongue and a bottle of beer. He +tried to shuffle out of it, but when I said I preferred to reason with +him rather than have him arrested he sat down, and we talked the +situation over. I discovered that for about three hundred dollars' worth +of my stuff that he had in a bag slung over his shoulder he might get as +much as fifty dollars, and at great risk. I showed him how foolish that +was, and offered to give him forty dollars if he'd leave the stuff, so +saving me two hundred and sixty dollars, and avoiding all trouble for +himself. He didn't like it at first, but under the genial influence of +the beer and the cold tongue and my conversation he finally yielded, and +walked out of my house with a check drawn to bearer for forty dollars in +his pocket." + +"I am astonished at you!" cried Mr. Pedagog. "You compounded a felony." + +"Not exactly," said the Idiot. "I should have done so if I hadn't +stopped payment on the check the next day." + +"Oh," said Mr. Pedagog, "I see!" + +"All I lost was the revenue-stamp on the check," said the Idiot. + +"And did you ever hear from the man again?" + +"Yes," observed the Idiot. "I met him on the train a day or two +later--sat next to him in the smoking-car, in fact." + +"And did he know you?" + +"Yes. We had a very pleasant chat going to town. He said he was moving +away from here. He couldn't stand it, he said. He was going to work in +some new field where a man could get living pay for his work. Said he'd +been robbed by some of our best people; what's the use of working for +nothing? he asked. The poor man was kept down, and all that sort of +talk." + +"And you parted friends?" + +"Yes," said the Idiot. "I felt rather sorry for him, and when he said +good-bye I gave him a cigar and a five-dollar bill, and that was the end +of him. I have since received a letter from him in which he said that my +kindness was appreciated, and that I could leave my valuables out on the +lawn all night hereafter with perfect impunity. 'There isn't a thief in +our whole suburban gang would be mean enough to touch it after your +kindness to me,' he wrote." + +"Extraordinary!" said Mr. Pedagog. + +"Very," said the Idiot. "Nevertheless, I have not taken his hint about +leaving my silver out-of-doors, and have worked as hard as ever on my +patent burglar-alarm." + +"Oh, indeed! Have you a new idea in that line?" asked the Schoolmaster. + +"Yes," said the Idiot. "It is wholly novel. It is designed to alarm the +burglar, and not scare the people in the house. Did you ever hear of +anything like that before?" + +"Never!" ejaculated Mr. Pedagog, with enthusiasm. "How is it to work?" + +"That," said the Idiot, "is what I am trying to find out. When I do I'll +let you know, Doctor." + + + + +XVI + +CONCLUSION + + + MR. AND MRS. IDIOT + REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY + AT DINNER + ON THURSDAY EVENING, May 31, 1900 + AT HALF-AFTER SEVEN O'CLOCK + R.S.V.P. LAST CALL + +Handsomely engraved, a card bearing the above inscription was sent about +the middle of May to all the Idiot's old friends of Mrs. +Smithers-Pedagog's select home for gentlemen, and it is needless to say +that they all accepted. + +"I wonder what the dickens he means by 'Last Call,'" said Mr. Brief to +the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally imbibed. "Sounds like the +warning of the dining-car porter on a Pullman train." + +"I'm sure I can't imagine," said the other; "and what's more, I'm +content to wait and find out. Of course you are going?" + +"I am, indeed," said Mr. Brief. "I'd travel farther than that for the +pleasure of an hour with the dear old boy, and particularly now that he +has so good a cook. Dined there lately?" + +"Yes," said the Genial Old Gentleman. + +"Had any of those mulled sardines he gives you Sunday nights?" + +"More than was good for me. Ain't they fine?" said the Genial Old +Gentleman, smacking his lips ecstatically. + +"Immense!" said Mr. Brief. "A cook that can mull sardines like that is +worth her weight in gold. Where do you suppose he got her?" + +"Why, he married her!" cried the Genial Old Gentleman, promptly. "Mrs. +Idiot cooks those herself, on the chafing-dish. Didn't you know that?" + +"No," said Mr. Brief. "I happened in late Sunday night, and we had 'em. +They were so awfully good I didn't do a thing but eat, and forgot to +ask who cooked 'em." + +"It's the way of the world," sighed the Genial Old Gentleman. "We old +bachelors have to get along on what comes to us, but the energetic chap +who goes out into the world and marries the right sort of a woman--Jove, +what a lucky chap he is!" + +"There's some truth in that," agreed Mr. Brief; "but, on the whole, just +think what a terrible thing it would be to marry a bad cook, and to have +to eat everything she prepared with an outward show of delight just to +keep peace in the family." + +"That's your cautious lawyer's view of it," said the Genial Old +Gentleman. + +"Why the deuce don't you get married yourself, then," said Mr. Brief. +"If you feel that way--" + +"I don't want to," said the Genial Old Gentleman. "Fact is, Brief, old +man, all I should ever marry for would be the comfort of a home, and I +can always get that by going up to the Idiot's." + +The other invited guests were no less perplexed by the final words of +the Idiot's invitation, and with the pleasure of accepting was mingled +an agreeable curiosity to know what was meant by "Last Call." The +evening came, and all were present. It was a goodly company, and by +special favor the children were allowed to sit up and partake; and, what +was more, Mary, the housemaid of the old days, assisted in the serving +of the dinner. + +"Seems like old times," said Mr. Whitechoker, beaming at Mrs. Pedagog +and smiling pleasantly at Mary. "I shall almost expect our host to be +sarcastic." + +"Sarcasm, Mr. Whitechoker," said the Idiot, unfolding his napkin, "is +all right in its place, but as I have grown older I haven't found that +having given rein to it I was happier afterwards. Sometimes, no doubt, +Mrs. Pedagog has thought me rude--" + +"Never!" said the ancient landlady. + +"Well, there's something worse than having others think you rude," said +the Idiot. "That's realizing yourself that you have been so, and I hope +Mrs. Pedagog will accept here and now an apology--a blanket +apology--which shall cover a multitude of past sins." + +"My dear Idiot," said Mrs. Pedagog, "do you know how I have always +thought of you?" + +"As a son," said Mr. Pedagog. "And I have felt towards you as a father." + +"I wonder you didn't give me a thrashing once in a while, then," said +the Idiot. + +"We have often wished to," observed Mr. Pedagog. + +"John!" cried Mrs. Pedagog. + +"Well, _I_ have," said Mr. Pedagog. "Mrs. Pedagog has all the amiable +weakness of a woman towards her naughty boy. Spank him next time, not +this." + +Everybody laughed, and the Idiot rose from his place and walked to Mrs. +Pedagog's side and kissed her. + +"You're a nice old mommie," he said, "and the naughty boy loves you. +He'll be hanged if he'll kiss his daddy, though!" he added, with a +glance at Mr. Pedagog. + +"I will," said Mollie; and she did so. + +The old Schoolmaster returned the little girl's salute with emphasis. + +"Bless you, little one!" he said, huskily. "I love you even as I loved +your papa." + +"I'm a-goin' to kiss everybody," said Tommy; and he started in with Mary +and put his little scheme through to the bitter end. "What are we going +to have for dessert?" he added, complacently, as he resumed his seat. + +"Idiot," said Mr. Brief, when the third course had been served, "what do +you mean by 'Last Call?'" + +"We are going to give up housekeeping," said the Idiot. + +"No trouble, I hope," said Mr. Whitechoker. + +"Lots!" ejaculated the Idiot. "But not very troublesome troubles. The +fact is we intend to travel." + +"To travel, eh?" said the Genial Old Gentleman. "Where?" + +"Abroad," replied the Idiot. "We have never been abroad, you know. I've +been abroad, and Mrs. Idiot has been abroad, but _we_ have never been +abroad. We are going together this time, and we are going to take the +children, and for a year we propose to see Europe under the most +favorable conditions. I think that abroad will seem a little different +if we go together." + +"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But London is a cold, godless +place." + +"It is if you go alone," said the Idiot. + +"And Paris is vile," suggested Mr. Brief. + +"To the man who has only himself to think of," said the Idiot. + +"And Italy is dirty," said the Bibliomaniac. + +"There's water in Venice," observed the Idiot. "Not very clean water, to +be sure, but wet enough to wash the edges of the sidewalks." + +"And travel is uncomfortable," observed the Poet. + +"Admitted," said the Idiot. "Travel is about the hardest work and the +worst-paid work I know of, but we cannot help ourselves. Now that we are +rich we must accept the penalties imposed by modern society upon the +wealthy. You never knew a rich man to lead a comfortable life, did you, +Mr. Pedagog?" + +"There are few of them who seem to know how," admitted the Schoolmaster. +"But--you do." + +"No doubt," said the Idiot. "But you see I do not wish to be +ostentatiously different from my kind, so having made a fortune I am +going to live as people of fortune do and be as uncomfortable as I know +how." + +"I don't understand about this fortune," said Mr. Brief. "Have you run +up against a rich uncle somewhere, or is this sudden wealth the result +of your inventions, concerning which we have heard so much lately?" + +"Neither," replied the Idiot. "The fact is, I made an investment some +years ago in a certain stock, for which I paid twenty-three. I sold it +three weeks ago for one hundred and sixty-three, clearing one hundred +and forty dollars each on a thousand shares." + +The Poet gasped. + +"One hundred and forty thousand dollars profit!" cried Mr. Whitechoker. + +"Yes," said the Idiot, calmly, "that's about the size of it. Terrible, +isn't it? Here I was a happy man; content to stay at home and toil eight +hours a day for a small stipend; living in tolerable comfort, and +nothing to worry over. All of a sudden this thing happens, and like all +other men of wealth I must become a wanderer. I shudder to think of what +might have happened if I'd made a million; I shouldn't have had a home +at all then." + +The guests looked at their host with amazement. To most of them he had +reached the supreme moment of his idiocy. + +"Ahem!" said the Poet. "I fail to see why." + +"Look at the ways of the millionaire and you'll see," observed the +Idiot, suavely. "Given his million he gives up his house and builds +himself a small, first-class hotel in some big city, which for the +greater part of the year is occupied by servants. He next erects a +country palace at Lenox or at Newport. This he calls a cottage, though +it usually looks more like a public library or a hospital or a +club-house. Then he builds himself a camp, with stained-glass windows, +in the Adirondacks, and has to float a small railroad in order to get +himself and his wife's trunks into camp. Shortly after these follows a +bungalow modelled after a French château, somewhere in the South, and +then a yacht warranted to cross the ocean in ten days, and to produce +sea-sickness twelve hours sooner than the regular ocean-steamer, becomes +one of the necessities of life. Result, he never lives anywhere. To +occupy all his residences, camps, and bungalows he has to keep eternally +on the move, and when he thinks he needs a trip to Europe he has his +yacht got ready and sends it over, going himself on a fast steamer. He +meets his yacht at Southampton, and orders the captain to proceed +directly to some Mediterranean port, going himself, meanwhile, to +London. After a month of London he goes to Paris, and thence to the +Mediterranean port, where, after steaming aboard of the yacht for three +or four days, he sends the boat back to New York and returns himself by +the regular liner. Oh, it's a terrible thing to be a millionaire and +have nowhere to lay one's head, with every poorer man envying you, many +hating you, and hands raised against you everywhere." + +There was a pause, and the assembled company properly expressed their +appreciation of the millionaire's hard lot by silence. + +"The scheme has its advantages," observed Mrs. Idiot. + +"Some," said the Idiot. "But think, my dear, of the town house with +thirty-nine servants; the Newport house with thirty-four; the camp with +sixty, including gamekeepers and guides; the bungalow with thirty more, +and the yacht with a captain, a crew, stewards, stewardesses, and a cook +you can't get away from without jumping overboard. Just think how that +would multiply your troubles. You would come to me from time to time and +ask me how I could expect you to discharge seven butlers and four cooks +in one morning, and no doubt you'd request me sometimes to stop in at +the intelligence office on my way home and employ a dozen housemaids for +you." + +"But you would have a manager for all this," suggested Mrs. Pedagog. + +"That's the point," observed the Idiot. "We'd have to have a manager, +and for my part I shouldn't relish being managed. What chance would Mrs. +Idiot have against a manager ahead of an army of servants of such +magnitude? We have more than we can keep in subjection as we stand now, +with this one small house. If it wasn't for Mary, who keeps an eye on +things, I don't know what we should do." + +"Well, I am glad you're rich, pa," said Tommy; "you can increase my +allowance." + +"And I can have a pony," lisped Mollie. + +"Alas! Poor children!" cried the Idiot. "That is the saddest part of +wealth. Instead of bringing the little ones up ourselves, to be wholly +fashionable it will be necessary to sublet the contract to a committee +of tutors and governesses. The obligations of social life hereafter will +require that we meet our children by appointment only, and that when +they dine they shall eat in solitary grandeur until they become so +polished in manners that their parents may once more formally welcome +them at table. All the good old democratic ways of the domestic republic +are now to be set aside. Tommy, instead of yelling for a buckwheat-cake +at the top of his lungs, upon our return will request a butler in +choicest French to hand him a _pâté de foie gras_; and dear little +Mollie will have to give up attracting the waitress' attention by shying +an olive-pit at her and imperiously summon her by means of an electric +buzzer set to buzzing with her toe." + +"Mercy! What a picture of woe!" cried Mr. Pedagog. + +"Not altogether true, is it?" suggested the Doctor. + +"Have you ever visited Newport?" asked the Idiot. + +"No," said the Doctor, "never." + +"Well, don't," said the Idiot, "unless you wish to look upon that +picture--a picture of life whence childhood is abolished; where _blasé_ +little swells take the place of lively small boys, and diminutive grand +duchesses, clad in regal garb, have supplanted the little daughters who +bring smiles and sunshine into the life of the common people. Ah, my +friends," the Idiot continued, with a shake of his head, "there are sad +sights to be seen in this world, but I know of none sadder than those +rich little scions of the American aristocracy in whose veins the good +red blood of a not very remote ancestry has turned blue through too much +high living and too little real living." + +"I should think you'd take that hundred and forty thousand dollars and +throw it into the sea," said Mr. Brief. + +"That would be wicked waste," observed the Idiot. "I propose to use it +to win back the good old home-life, and the best way to perpetuate that +is to leave it for a time and travel. When you have travelled and seen +how uncomfortable others are, and discovered how uncomfortable you are +while travelling, nothing can exceed the bliss of getting back to the +first simple principles of the real home." + +"As a sensible man, why don't you stay here, then?" queried the Poet. + +"Because," said the Idiot, "if I stayed here with that hundred and forty +thousand dollars on my mind I should nurse it, and in a short while I'd +become a millionaire, and such a misfortune as that I shall never +invite. We shall go abroad and spend--" + +"Not all of it, I hope?" said Mr. Whitechoker. + +"No," replied the Idiot. "But enough of it to mitigate the horrors of +our condition while absent." + +And so it was that Castle Idiot was closed, and that for a time at least +"The Idiot at Home" became a thing of the past. Wherever he and his +small family may be, may I not bespeak for him the kindly, even +affectionate, esteem of those who have followed him with me through +these pages? He has his faults; they are many and manifest, for he has +never shown the slightest disposition to conceal them, but, as Mrs. +Pedagog remarked to me the other night, "He has a large heart, and it is +in the right place. If he only wouldn't talk so much!" + + +THE END + + + + +By MARK TWAIN + + * * * * * + +THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG, AND OTHER STORIES AND ESSAYS. +Illustrated by LUCIUS HITCHCOCK and Others. + +THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT, AND OTHER STORIES AND SKETCHES. + +THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. With Photogravure Portrait of the +Author. + +A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT. + +THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER. + +LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. + +TOM SAWYER ABROAD; TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE; AND OTHER STORIES, ETC., ETC. + + _New Library Edition from New Electrotype Plates. Illustrated. + Crown 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.75 each._ + +PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC. By the Sieur LOUIS DE CONTE (her +page and secretary). Illustrated from Original Drawings by F. V. DU +MOND, and from Reproductions of Old Paintings and Statues. Crown 8vo, +Cloth, Ornamental, $2.50. + +HOW TO TELL A STORY, AND OTHER ESSAYS. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, +$1.50. + + * * * * * + +By ROBERT W. CHAMBERS + + * * * * * + +THE CONSPIRATORS. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1.50. + + There is an unmistakable brilliancy about "The Conspirators"; the + rollicking spirits of the hero, the man who tells the story, are + infectious, and his ardor in love is delightfully + romantic.--_Chicago Tribune._ + +LORRAINE. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.25. + + Of this novel _The Interior_ says: "A more absorbing story could + scarcely be imagined; there is no better tale among recent + publications than 'Lorraine.'" + + * * * * * + +HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS + +NEW YORK AND LONDON + +_Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any +part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price._ + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Idiot at Home, by John Kendrick Bangs + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDIOT AT HOME *** + +***** This file should be named 39682-8.txt or 39682-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/6/8/39682/ + +Produced by Annie McGuire. 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