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+Project Gutenberg's The Inventions of the Idiot, by John Kendrick Bangs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Inventions of the Idiot
+
+Author: John Kendrick Bangs
+
+Release Date: September 3, 2010 [EBook #33623]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVENTIONS OF THE IDIOT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Clarity, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
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+    TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Apart from a few punctuation corrections, no
+    other changes have been made in the text.
+
+
+
+
+                      THE INVENTIONS OF THE IDIOT
+
+                                   by
+
+                          JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
+
+                  Author of "A House-Boat on the Styx"
+                    "The Pursuit of the House-Boat"
+                      "Olympian Nights" Etc. Etc.
+
+
+                          New York and London
+                      Harper & Brothers Publishers
+                                  1904
+
+
+
+                 Copyright, 1903, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+
+                         _All rights reserved._
+
+                         Published April, 1904
+
+
+
+                                   TO
+
+                                   YOU
+
+
+
+                                Contents
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                     PAGE
+     I. THE CULINARY GUILD                       1
+    II. A SUGGESTION FOR THE CABLE-CARS         16
+   III. THE TRANSATLANTIC TROLLEY COMPANY       31
+    IV. THE INCORPORATION OF THE IDIOT          47
+     V. UNIVERSITY EXTENSION                    64
+    VI. SOCIAL EXPANSION                        79
+   VII. A BEGGAR'S HAND-BOOK                    96
+  VIII. PROGRESSIVE WAFFLES                    112
+    IX. A CLEARING-HOUSE FOR POETS             127
+     X. SOME ELECTRICAL SUGGESTIONS            142
+    XI. CONCERNING CHILDREN                    158
+   XII. DREAMALINE                             172
+
+
+
+
+THE INVENTIONS OF THE IDIOT
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+The Culinary Guild
+
+
+It was before the Idiot's marriage, and in the days when he was nothing
+more than a plain boarder in Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog's High-class Home for
+Single Gentlemen, that he put what the School-master termed his "alleged
+mind" on plans for the amelioration of the condition of the civilized.
+
+"The trials of the barbarian are really nothing as compared with the
+tribulations of civilized man," he said, as the waitress passed him a
+piece of steak that had been burned to a crisp. "In the Cannibal Islands
+a cook who would send a piece of broiled missionary to her employer's
+table in this condition would herself be roasted before another day had
+dawned. We, however, must grin and bear it, because our esteemed
+landlady cannot find anywhere in this town a woman better suited for the
+labors of the kitchen than the blank she has had the misfortune to draw
+in the culinary lottery, familiarly known to us, her victims, as
+Bridget."
+
+"This is an exceptional case," said Mr. Pedagog. "We haven't had a steak
+like this before in several weeks."
+
+"True," returned the Idiot. "This is a sirloin, I believe. The last
+steak we had was a rump steak, and it was not burned to a crisp, I
+admit. It was only boiled, if I remember rightly, by mistake; Bridget
+having lost her fifth consecutive cousin in ten days the night before,
+and being in consequence so prostrated that she could not tell a
+gridiron from a lawn-mower."
+
+"Well, you know the popular superstition, Mr. Idiot," said the Poet.
+"The devil sends the cooks."
+
+"I don't believe it," retorted the Idiot. "That's one of those proverbs
+that haven't a particle of truth in 'em--nor a foundation in reason
+either, like 'Never look a gift horse in the mouth.' Of all absurd
+advice ever given to man by a thoughtless thinker, that, I think, bears
+the palm. I know a man who didn't look a gift horse in the mouth, and
+the consequence was that he accepted a horse that was twenty-eight years
+old. The beast died in his stables three days later, and the beneficiary
+had to pay five dollars to have him carted away. As for the devil
+sending the cooks, I haven't any faith in the theory. Any person who had
+come from the devil would know how to manage a fire better than
+ninety-nine per cent. of the cooks ever born. It would be a good thing
+if every one of 'em were forced to serve an apprenticeship with the
+Prince of Darkness. However, steak like this serves a good purpose. It
+serves to bind our little circle more firmly together. There's nothing
+like mutual suffering to increase the sympathy that should exist between
+men situated as we are; and as for Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog, I wish her to
+understand distinctly that I am criticising the cook and not herself. If
+this particular dainty had been prepared by her own fair hand, I doubt
+not I should want more of it."
+
+"I thank you," returned the landlady, somewhat mollified by this remark.
+"If I had more time I should occasionally do the cooking myself, but,
+as it is, I am overwhelmed with work."
+
+"I can bear witness to that," observed Mr. Whitechoker. "Mrs.
+Smithers-Pedagog is one of the most useful ladies in my congregation. If
+it were not for her, many a heathen would be going without garments
+to-day."
+
+"Well, I don't like to criticise," said the Idiot, "but I think the
+heathen at home should be considered before the heathen abroad. If your
+congregation would have a guild to look after such heathen as the Poet
+and the Doctor and myself, I am convinced it would be more appreciated
+by those who benefited by its labors than it is at present by the
+barbarians who try to wear the misfits it sends out. A Christian whose
+plain but honest breakfast is well cooked is apt to be far more grateful
+than a barbarian who is wearing a pair of trousers made of calico and a
+coat three sizes too small in the body and nine sizes too large in the
+arms. I will go further. I believe that if the domestic heathen were
+cared for they would do much better work, would earn better pay, and
+would, out of mere gratitude, set apart a sufficiently large portion of
+their increased earnings to be devoted to the purchase of tailor-made
+costumes, which would please the cannibals better, far better, than the
+amateur creations they now get. I know I'd contribute some of my
+surplus."
+
+"What would you have such a guild do?" queried Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"Do? There'd be so much for it to do that the members could hardly find
+time to rest," returned the Idiot. "Do? Why, my dear sir, take this
+house, for instance, and see what it could do here. What a boon it would
+be for me if some kind-hearted person would come here once a week and
+sew buttons on my clothes, darn my socks--in short, keep me mended. What
+better work for one who desires to make the world brighter, happier, and
+less sinful!"
+
+"I fail to see how the world would be brighter, happier, or less sinful
+if your suspender-buttons were kept firm, and your stockings darned, and
+your wardrobe generally mended," said Mr. Pedagog. "I grant that such a
+guild would be doing a noble work if it would take you in hand and
+correct many of your impressions, revise your well-known facts so as to
+bring them more in accord with indubitable truths, and impart to your
+customs some of that polish which you so earnestly strive for in your
+dress."
+
+"Thank you," said the Idiot, suavely. "But I don't wish to overburden
+the kind ladies to whom I refer. If my costumes could be looked after I
+might find time to look after my customs, and, I assure you, Mr.
+Pedagog, if at any time you will undertake to deliver a course of
+lectures on Etiquette, I will gladly subscribe for two orchestra-chairs
+and endeavor to occupy both of them. At any rate, to return to the main
+point, I claim that the world would be happier and brighter and less
+sinful if the domestic heathen were kept mended by such a guild, and I
+challenge any one here to deny, even on so slight a basis as the loose
+suspender-button, the truth of what I say. When I arise in the morning
+and find a button gone, do I make genial remarks about the joys of life?
+I do not. I use words. Sometimes one word, which need not be repeated
+here. I am unhappy, and, being unhappy, the world seems dark and dreary,
+and in speaking impatiently, though very much to the point, as I do, I
+am guilty of an offence that is sinful. With such a start in the
+morning, I come here to the table. Mr. Pedagog sees that I am not quite
+myself. He asks me if I am not feeling well, an irritating question at
+any time, but particularly so to a man with a suspender-button gone. I
+retort. He re-retorts, until our converse is warmer than the coffee, and
+our relations colder than the waffles. Finally I leave the house,
+slamming the door behind me, structurally weakening the house, and go to
+business, where I wreak my vengeance upon the second clerk, who takes it
+out of the office-boy, who goes home and vents his wrath on his little
+sister, who, goaded into recklessness, teases the baby until he yells
+and gets spanked by his mother for being noisy. Now, why should a loose
+suspender-button be allowed to subject that baby to such humiliation,
+and who can deny that, if it had been properly sewed on by a guild, such
+as I have mentioned, the baby never would have been spanked for the
+causes mentioned? What is _your_ answer, Mr. Whitechoker?"
+
+"Truly, I am so breathless at your logic that I cannot reason," said the
+Minister. "But haven't we digressed a little? We were speaking of cooks,
+and we conclude with a pathetic little allegory about a suspender-button
+and a baby that is not only teased but spanked."
+
+"The baby could get the same spanking for reasons based on the
+shortcomings of the cooks," said the Idiot. "I am irritated when I am
+served with green pease hard enough to batter down Gibraltar if properly
+aimed; when my coffee is a warmed-over reminiscence of last night's
+demi-tasse, I leave the house in a frame of mind that bodes ill for the
+junior clerk, and the effect on the baby is ultimately the same."
+
+"And--er--you'd have the ladies whose energies are now devoted towards
+the clothing of the heathen come here and do the cooking?" queried the
+School-master.
+
+"I leave if they do," said the Doctor. "I have seen too much of the
+effects of amateur cookery in my profession to want any of it. They are
+good cooks in theory, but not in practice."
+
+"There you have it!" said the Idiot, triumphantly. "Right in a nutshell.
+That's where the cooks are always weak. They have none of the theory and
+all of the practice. If they based practice on theory, they'd cook
+better. Wherefore let your theoretical cooks seek out the practical and
+instruct them in the principles of the culinary art. Think of what
+twelve ladies could do; twelve ladies trained in the sewing-circle to
+talk rapidly, working five hours a day apiece, could devote an hour a
+week to three hundred and sixty cooks, and tell them practically all
+they themselves know in that time; and if, in addition to this, twelve
+other ladies, forming an auxiliary guild, would make dresses and bonnets
+and things for the same cooks, instead of for the cannibals, it would
+keep them good-natured."
+
+"Splendid scheme!" said the Doctor. "So practical. Your brain must weigh
+half an ounce."
+
+"I've never had it weighed," said the Idiot, "but, I fancy, it's a good
+one. It's the only one I have, anyhow, and it's done me good service,
+and shows no signs of softening. But, returning to the cooks,
+good-nature is as essential to the making of a good cook as are apples
+to the making of a dumpling. You can't associate the word dumpling with
+ill-nature, and just as the poet throws himself into his work, and as
+he is of a cheerful or a mournful disposition, so does his work appear
+cheerful or mournful, so do the productions of a cook take on the
+attributes of their maker. A dyspeptic cook will prepare food in a
+manner so indigestible that it were ruin to partake of it. A
+light-hearted cook will make light bread; a pessimistic cook will serve
+flour bricks in lieu thereof."
+
+"I think possibly you are right when you say that," said the Doctor. "I
+have myself observed that the people who sing at their work do the best
+work."
+
+"But the worst singing," growled the School-master.
+
+"That may be true," put in the Idiot; "but you cannot expect a cook on
+sixteen dollars a month to be a prima-donna. Now, if Mr. Whitechoker
+will undertake to start a sewing-circle in his church for people who
+don't care to wear clothing, but to sow the seeds of concord and good
+cookery throughout the kitchens of this land, I am prepared to prophesy
+that at the end of the year there will be more happiness and less
+depression in this part of the world; and once eliminate dyspepsia from
+our midst, and get civilization and happiness controvertible terms, then
+you will find your foreign missionary funds waxing so fat that instead
+of the amateur garments for the heathen you now send them, you will be
+able to open an account at Worth's and Poole's for every barbarian in
+creation. The scheme for the sewing on of suspender-buttons and the
+miscellaneous mending that needs to be done for lone-lorn savages like
+myself might be left in abeyance until the culinary scheme has been
+established. Bachelors constitute a class, a small class only, of
+humanity, but the regeneration of cooks is a universal need."
+
+"I think your scheme is certainly a picturesque one and novel," said Mr.
+Whitechoker. "There seems to be a good deal in it. Don't you think so,
+Mr. Pedagog?"
+
+"Yes--I do," said Mr. Pedagog, wearily. "A great deal--of language."
+
+And amid the laugh at his expense which followed, the Idiot, joining in,
+departed.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A Suggestion for the Cable-cars
+
+
+"Heigh-ho!" sighed the Idiot, rubbing his eyes sleepily. "This is a
+weary world."
+
+"What? This from you?" smiled the Poet. "I never expected to hear that
+plaint from a man of your cheerful disposition."
+
+"Humph!" said the Idiot, with difficulty repressing a yawn. "Humph! and
+I may add, likewise, tut! What do you take me for--an insulated
+sun-beam? I can't help it if shadows camp across my horizon
+occasionally. I wouldn't give a cent for the man who never had his
+moments of misery. It takes night to enable us to appreciate daytime.
+Misery is a foil necessary to the full appreciation of joy. I'm glad I
+am sort of down in the mouth to-day. I'll be all right to-morrow, and
+I'll enjoy to-morrow all the more for to-day's megrim. But for the
+present, I repeat, this is a weary world."
+
+"Oh, I don't think so," observed the School-master. "The world doesn't
+seem to me to betray any signs of weariness. It got to work at the usual
+hour this morning, and, as far as I can judge, has been revolving at the
+usual rate of speed ever since."
+
+"The Idiot's mistake is a common one," put in the Doctor. "I find it
+frequently in my practice."
+
+"That's a confession," retorted the Idiot. "Do you find out these
+mistakes in your practice before or after the death of the patient?"
+
+"That mistake," continued the Doctor, paying apparently little heed to
+the Idiot's remark--"that mistake lies in the Idiot's assumption that
+he is himself the world. He regards himself as the earth, as all of
+life, and, because he happens to be weary, the world is a weary one."
+
+"It isn't a fatal disease, is it?" queried the Idiot, anxiously. "I am
+not likely to become so impressed with that idea, for instance, that I
+shall have to be put in a padded cell and manacled so that I may not
+turn perpetual handsprings under the hallucination that, being the
+world, it is my duty to revolve?"
+
+"No," replied the Doctor, with a laugh. "No, indeed. That is not at all
+likely to happen, but I think it would be a good idea if you were to
+carry the hallucination out far enough to put a cake of ice on your
+head, assuming that to be the north pole, and cool off that brain of
+yours."
+
+"That is a good idea," returned the Idiot; "and if Mary will bring me
+the ice that was used to cool the coffee this morning, I shall be
+pleased to try the experiment. Meanwhile, this is a weary world."
+
+"Then why under the canopy don't you leave it and go to some other
+world?" snapped Mr. Pedagog. "You are under no obligation to remain
+here. With a river on either side of the city, and a New York Juggernaut
+Company, Unlimited, running trolley-cars up and down two of our more
+prominent highways, suicide is within the reach of all. Of course, we
+should be sorry to lose you, in a way, but I have known men to recover
+from even greater afflictions than that."
+
+"Thank you for the suggestion," replied the Idiot, transferring four
+large, porous buckwheat-cakes to his plate. "Thank you very much, but I
+have a pleasanter and more lingering method of suicide right here. Death
+by buckwheat-cakes is like being pierced by a Toledo blade. You do not
+realize the terrors of your situation until you cease to be susceptible
+to them. Furthermore, I do not believe in suicide. It is, in my
+judgment, the worst crime a man can commit, and I cannot but admire the
+remarkable discernment evinced by the Fates in making of it its own
+inevitable capital punishment. A man may commit murder and escape death,
+but in the commission of suicide he is sure of execution. Just as Virtue
+is its own reward, so is Suicide its own amercement."
+
+"Been reading the dictionary again?" asked the Poet.
+
+"No, not exactly," said the Idiot, with a smile, "but--it's a kind of
+joke on me, I suppose--I have just been stuck, to use a polite term, on
+a book called Roget's _Thesaurus_, and, if I want to get hold of a new
+word that will increase my seeming importance to the community, I turn
+to it. That's where I got 'amercement.' I don't hold that its use in
+this especial case is beyond cavil--that's another Thesaurian term--but
+I don't suppose any one here would notice that fact. It goes here, and I
+shall not use it elsewhere."
+
+"I am interested to know how _you_ ever came to be the owner of a
+_Thesaurus_," said the School-master, with a grim smile at the idea of
+the Idiot having such a book in his possession. "Except on the score of
+affinities. You are both very wordy."
+
+"Meaning pleonastic, I presume," retorted the Idiot.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said the School-master.
+
+"Never mind," said the Idiot. "I won't press the analogy, but I will say
+that those who are themselves periphrastic should avoid criticising
+others for being ambaginous."
+
+"I think you mean ambiguous," said the School-master, elevating his
+eyebrows in triumph.
+
+"I thought you'd think that," retorted the Idiot. "That's why I used the
+word 'ambaginous.' I'll lend you my dictionary to freshen up your
+phraseology. Meanwhile, I'll tell you how I happened to get a
+_Thesaurus_. I thought it was an animal, and when I saw that a New York
+bookseller had a lot of them marked down from two dollars to one, I sent
+and got one. I thought it was strange for a bookseller to be selling
+rare animals, but that was his business, not mine; and as I was anxious
+to see what kind of a creature a _Thesaurus_ was, I invested. When I
+found out it was a book and not a tame relic of the antediluvian animal
+kingdom, I thought I wouldn't say anything about it, but you people here
+are so inquisitive you've learned my secret."
+
+"And wasn't it an animal?" asked Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog.
+
+"My dear--my _dear_!" ejaculated Mr. Pedagog. "Pray--ah--I beg of you,
+do not enter into this discussion."
+
+"No, Mrs. Pedagog," observed the Idiot, "it was not. It was nothing more
+than a book, which, when once you have read it, you would not be
+without, since it gives your vocabulary a twist which makes you proof
+against ninety-nine out of every one hundred conversationalists in the
+world, no matter how weak your cause."
+
+"I am beginning to understand the causes of your weariness," observed
+Mr. Pedagog, acridly. "You have been memorizing syllables. Really, I
+should think you were in danger of phonetic prostration."
+
+"Not a bit of it," said the Idiot. "Those words are stimulating, not
+depressing. I begin to feel better already, now that I have spoken them.
+I am not half so weary as I was, but for my weariness I had good cause.
+I suffered all night from a most frightful nightmare. It utterly
+destroyed my rest."
+
+"Welsh-rarebit?" queried the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally
+imbibed, with a tone of reproach. "If so, why was I not with you?"
+
+"That question should be its own answer," replied the Idiot. "A man who
+will eat a Welsh-rarebit alone is not only a person of a sullen
+disposition, but of reckless mould as well. I would no sooner think of
+braving a Welsh-rarebit unaccompanied than I would think of trying to
+swim across the British Channel without a lifesaving boat following in
+my wake."
+
+"I question if so light a body as you could have a wake!" said Mr.
+Pedagog, coldly.
+
+"I am sorry, but I can't agree with you, Mr. Pedagog," said the
+Bibliomaniac. "A tugboat, most insignificant of crafts, roils up the
+surface of the sea more than an ocean steamer does. Fuss goes with
+feathers more than with large bodies."
+
+"Well, they're neither of 'em in it with a cake of soap for real,
+bona-fide suds," said the Idiot, complacently, as he helped himself to
+his thirteenth buckwheat-cake. "However, wakes have nothing to do with
+the case. I had a most frightful dream, and it was not due to
+Welsh-rarebits, but to my fatal weakness, which, not having my
+_Thesaurus_ at hand, I must identify by the commonplace term of
+courtesy. You may not have noticed it, but courtesy is my strong point."
+
+"We haven't observed the fact," said Mr. Pedagog; "but what of it? Have
+you been courteous to any one?"
+
+"I have," replied the Idiot, "and a nightmare is what it brought me. I
+rode up-town on a trolley-car last night, and I gave up my seat to
+sixteen ladies, two of whom, by-the-way, thanked me."
+
+"I don't see why more than one of them should thank you," sniffed the
+landlady. "If a man gives up a trolley-car seat to sixteen ladies, only
+one of them can occupy it."
+
+"I stand corrected," said the Idiot. "I gave up a seat to ladies sixteen
+times between City Hall and Twenty-third Street. I can't bring myself to
+sit down while a woman stands, and every time I'd get a seat some woman
+would get on the car. Hence it was that I gave up my seat to sixteen
+ladies. Why two of them should thank me, considering the rules, I do not
+know. It certainly is not the custom. At any rate, if I had walked
+up-town, I should not have had more exercise than I got on that car,
+bobbing up and down so many times, and lurching here and lurching there
+every time the car stopped, started, or turned a corner. Whether it was
+the thanks or the lurching I got, I don't know, but the incidents of
+the ride were so strongly impressed upon me that I dreamed all night,
+only in my dreams I was not giving up car seats. The first seat I gave
+up to a woman in the dream was an eighty-thousand-dollar seat in the
+Stock Exchange. It was expensive courtesy, but I did it, and mourned so
+over the result that I waked up and discovered that it was but a dream.
+Then I went to sleep again. This time I was at the opera. I had the best
+seat in the house, when in came a woman who hadn't a chair. Same result.
+I got up. She sat down, and I had to stand behind a pillar where I could
+neither see nor hear. More grief; waked up again, more tired than when I
+went to bed. In ten minutes I dozed off. Found myself an ambitious
+statesman running for the Presidency. Was elected and inaugurated. Up
+comes a Woman's Rights candidate. More courtesy. Gave up the
+Presidential chair to her and went home to obscurity, when again I
+awoke tireder than ever. Clock struck four. Fell asleep again. This time
+I was prepared for anything that might happen. I found myself in a
+trolley-car, but with me I had a perforated chair-bottom, such as the
+street peddlers sell. Lady got aboard. I put the perforated chair-bottom
+on my lap and invited her to sit down. She thanked me and did so. Then
+another lady got on. The lady on my lap moved up and made room for the
+second lady. She sat down. Between them they must have weighed three
+hundred pounds. I could have stood that, but as time went on more ladies
+got aboard, and every time that happened these first-comers would move
+up and make room for them. How they did it I can't say, any more than I
+can say how in real life three women can find room in a car-seat vacated
+by a little child. They did the former just as they do the latter,
+until finally I found myself flattened into the original bench like the
+pattern figure of a carpet. I felt like an entaglio; thirty women by
+actual count were pressing me to remain, as it were, but the worst of it
+all was they none of them seemed to live anywhere. We rode on and on and
+on, but nobody got off. I tried to move--and couldn't. We passed my
+corner, but there I was fixed. I couldn't breathe, and so couldn't call
+out, and I verily believe that if I hadn't finally waked up I should by
+this time have reached Hong-Kong, for I have a distinct recollection of
+passing through Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, and Honolulu. Finally, I
+did wake, however, simply worn out with my night's rest, which,
+gentlemen, is why I say, as I have already said, this is a weary world."
+
+"Well, I don't blame you," said Mr. Whitechoker, kindly. "That was a
+most remarkable dream."
+
+"Yes," assented Mr. Pedagog. "But quite in line with his waking
+thoughts."
+
+"Very likely," said the Idiot, rising and preparing to depart. "It was
+absurd in most of its features, but in one of them it was excellent. I
+am going to see the president of the Electric Juggernaut Company, as you
+call it, in regard to it to-day. I think there is money in that idea of
+having an extra chair-seat for every passenger to hold in his lap. In
+that way twice as many seated passengers can be accommodated, and
+countless people with tender feet will be spared the pain of having
+other wayfarers standing upon them."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The Transatlantic Trolley Company
+
+
+"If I were a millionaire," began the Idiot one Sunday morning, as he and
+his friends took their accustomed seats at the breakfast-table, "I would
+devote a tenth of my income to the poor, a tenth to children's fresh-air
+funds, and the balance to the education through travel of a dear and
+intimate friend of mine."
+
+"That would be a generous distribution of your wealth," said Mr.
+Whitechoker, graciously. "But upon what would you live yourself?"
+
+"I should stipulate in the bargain with my dear and intimate friend
+that we should be inseparable; that wherever he should go I should go,
+and that, of the funds devoted to his education through travel, one-half
+should be paid to me as my commission for letting him into a good
+thing."
+
+"You certainly have good business sense," put in the Bibliomaniac. "I
+wish I had had when I was collecting rare editions."
+
+"Collecting rare books and a good business sense seldom go together, I
+fancy," said the Idiot. "I began collecting books once, but I gave it up
+and took to collecting coins. I chose my coin and devoted my time to
+getting in that variety alone, and it has paid me."
+
+"I don't exactly gather your meaning," said Mr. Whitechoker. "You chose
+your coin?"
+
+"Precisely. I said, 'Here! Most coin collectors spend their time looking
+for one or two rare coins, for which, when they are found, they pay
+fabulous prices. The result is oftentimes penury. I, on the other hand,
+will look for coins of a common sort which do not command fabulous
+prices.' So I chose United States five-dollar gold pieces, irrespective
+of dates, for my collection, and the result is moderate affluence. I
+have between sixty and a hundred of them at my savings-bank, and when I
+have found it necessary to realize on them I have not experienced the
+slightest difficulty in forcing them back into circulation at cost."
+
+"You are a wise Idiot," said the Bibliomaniac, settling back in his
+chair in a disgusted, tired sort of way. He had expected some sympathy
+from the Idiot as a fellow-collector, even though their aims were
+different. It is always difficult for a man whose ten-thousand-dollar
+library has brought six hundred dollars in the auction-room to find,
+even in the ranks of collectors, one who understands his woes and helps
+him bear the burden thereof by expressions of confidence in his sanity.
+
+"Then you believe in travel, do you?" asked the Doctor.
+
+"I believe there is nothing broadens the mind so much," returned the
+Idiot.
+
+"But do you believe it will develop a mind where there isn't one?" asked
+the School-master, unpleasantly. "Or, to put it more favorably, don't
+you think there would be danger in taking the germ of a mind in a small
+head and broadening it until it runs the risk of finding itself confined
+to cramped quarters?"
+
+"That is a question for a physician to answer," said the Idiot. "But, if
+I were you, I wouldn't travel if I thought there was any such danger."
+
+"_Tu quoque_," retorted the School-master, "is _not_ true repartee."
+
+"I shall have to take your word for that," returned the Idiot, "since I
+have not a Latin dictionary with me, and all the Latin I know is to be
+found in the quotations in the back of my dictionary, like '_Status quo
+ante_,' '_In vino veritas_,' and '_Et tu, Brute_.' However, as I said
+before, I'd like to travel, and I would if it were not that the sea and
+I are not on very good terms with each other. It makes me ill to cross
+the East River on the bridge, I'm so susceptible to sea-sickness."
+
+"You'd get over that in a very few days," said the Genial Old Gentleman
+who occasionally imbibed. "I have crossed the ocean a dozen times, and
+I'm never sea-sick after the third day out."
+
+"Ah, but those three days!" said the Idiot. "They must resemble the
+three days of grace on a note that you know you couldn't pay if you had
+three years of grace. I couldn't stand them, I am afraid. Why, only
+last summer I took a drive off in the country, and the motion of the
+wagon going over the thank-ye-marms in the road made me so sea-sick
+before I'd gone a mile that I wanted to lie down and die. I think I
+should have done so if the horse hadn't run away and forced me to ride
+back home whether I wanted to or not."
+
+"You ought to fight that," said the Doctor. "By-and-by, if you give way
+to a weakness of that sort, the creases in your morning newspaper will
+affect you similarly as you read it. If you ever have a birthday, let us
+know, and we'll help you to overcome the tendency by buying you a
+baby-jumper for you to swing around in every morning until you get used
+to the motion."
+
+"It would be more to the purpose," replied the Idiot, "if you as a
+physician would invent a preventive of sea-sickness. I'd buy a bottle
+and go abroad at once on my coin collection if you would guarantee it
+to kill or to cure instantaneously."
+
+"There is such a nostrum," said the Doctor.
+
+"There is, indeed," put in the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally
+imbibes. "I've tried it."
+
+"And were you sea-sick?" asked the Doctor.
+
+"I never knew," replied the Genial Old Gentleman. "It made me so ill
+that I never thought to inquire what was the matter with me. But one
+thing is certain, I'll take my sea-voyages straight after this."
+
+"I'd like to go by rail," said the Idiot, after a moment's thought.
+
+"That is a desire quite characteristic of you," said the School-master.
+"It is so probable that you could. Why not say that you'd like to cross
+the Atlantic on a tight-rope?"
+
+"Because I have no such ambition," replied the Idiot. "Though it might
+be fun if the tight-rope were a trolley-wire, and one could sit
+comfortably in a spacious cab while speeding over the water. I should
+think that would be exhilarating enough. Just imagine how fine it would
+be on a stormy day to sit looking out of your cab-window far above the
+surface of the raging and impotent sea, skipping along at electric
+speed, and daring the waves to do their worst--that would be bliss."
+
+"And so practical," growled the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Bliss rarely is practical," said the Idiot. "Bliss is a sort of mugwump
+blessing--too full of the ideal and too barren in practicability."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I don't know why we should say that
+trolley-cars between New York and London never can be. If we had told
+our grandfathers a hundred years ago that a cable for the transmission
+of news could be laid under the sea, they would have laughed us to
+scorn."
+
+"That's true," said the School-master. "But we know more than our
+grandfathers did."
+
+"Well, rather," interrupted the Idiot. "My great-grandfather, who died
+in 1799, had never even heard of Andrew Jackson, and if you had asked
+him what he thought of Darwin, he'd have thought you were guying him."
+
+"Respect for age, sir," retorted Mr. Pedagog, "restrains me from
+characterizing your great-grandfather, if, as you intimate, he knew less
+than you do. However, apart from the comparative lack of knowledge in
+the Idiot's family, Mr. Whitechoker, you must remember that with the
+advance of the centuries we have ourselves developed a certain amount of
+brains--enough, at least, to understand that there is a limit even to
+the possibilities of electricity. Now, when you say that just because
+an Atlantic cable would have been regarded as an object of derision in
+the eighteenth century, we should not deride one who suggests the
+possibility of a marine trolley-road between London and New York in the
+twentieth century, it appears to me that you are talking--er--talking--I
+don't like to say nonsense to one of your cloth, but--"
+
+"Through his hat is the idiom you are trying to recall, I think, Mr.
+Pedagog," said the Idiot. "Mr. Whitechoker is talking through his hat is
+what you mean to say?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Idiot," said the School-master; "but when I find
+that I need your assistance in framing my conversation, I shall--er--I
+shall give up talking. I mean to say that I do not think Mr. Whitechoker
+can justify his conclusions, and talks without having given the subject
+concerning which he has spoken due reflection. The cable runs along the
+solid foundation of the bed of the sea. It is a simple matter,
+comparatively, but a trolley-wire stretched across the ocean by the
+simplest rules of gravitation could not be made to stay up."
+
+"No doubt you are correct," said Mr. Whitechoker, meekly. "I did not
+mean that I expected ever to see a trolley-road across the sea, but I
+did mean to say that man has made such wonderful advances in the past
+hundred years that we cannot really state the limit of his
+possibilities. It is manifest that no one to-day can devise a plan by
+means of which such a wire could be carried, but--"
+
+"I fear you gentlemen would starve as inventors," said the Idiot.
+"What's the matter with balloons?"
+
+"Balloons for what?" retorted Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"For holding up the trolley-wires," replied the Idiot. "It is perfectly
+feasible. Fasten the ends of your wire in London and New York, and from
+coast to coast station two lines of sufficient strength to keep the wire
+raised as far above the level of the sea as you require. That's simple
+enough."
+
+"And what, pray, in this frenzy of the elements, this raging storm of
+which you have spoken," said Mr. Pedagog, impatiently--"what would then
+keep your balloons from blowing away?"
+
+"The trolley-wire, of course," said the Idiot. Mr. Pedagog lapsed into a
+hopelessly wrathful silence for a moment, and then he said:
+
+"Well, I sincerely hope your plan is adopted, and that the promoters
+will make you superintendent, with an office in the mid-ocean balloon."
+
+"Thanks for your good wishes, Mr. Pedagog," the Idiot answered. "If they
+are realized I shall remember them, and show my gratitude to you by
+using my influence to have you put in charge of the gas service.
+Meantime, however, it seems to me that our ocean steamships could be
+developed along logical lines so that the trip from New York to
+Liverpool could be made in a very much shorter period of time than is
+now required."
+
+"We are getting back to the common-sense again," said the Bibliomaniac.
+"That is a proposition to which I agree. Ten years ago eight days was
+considered a good trip. With the development of the twin-screw steamer
+the time has been reduced to approximately six days."
+
+"Or a saving, really, of two days because of the extra screw," said the
+Idiot.
+
+"Precisely," observed the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"So that, provided there are extra screws enough, there isn't any reason
+why the trip should not be made in two or three hours."
+
+"Ah--what was that?" said the Bibliomaniac. "I don't exactly follow
+you."
+
+"One extra screw, you say, has saved two days?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then two extra screws would save four days, three would save six days,
+and five extra screws would send the boat over in approximately no
+time," said the Idiot. "So, if it takes a man two hours to succumb to
+sea-sickness, a boat going over in less than that time would eliminate
+sea-sickness; more people would go; boats could run every hour, and Mr.
+Whitechoker could have a European trip every week without deserting his
+congregation."
+
+"Inestimable boon!" cried Mr. Whitechoker, with a laugh.
+
+"Wouldn't it be!" said the Idiot. "Unless I change my mind, I think I
+shall stay in this country until this style of greyhound is perfected.
+Then, gentlemen, I shall tear myself away from you, and seek knowledge
+in foreign pastures."
+
+"Well, I am sure," said Mr. Pedagog--"I am sure that we all hope you
+will change your mind."
+
+"Then you want me to go abroad?" said the Idiot.
+
+"No," said Mr. Pedagog. "No--not so much that as that we feel if you
+were to change your mind the change could not fail to be for the better.
+A mind like yours ought to be changed."
+
+"Well, I don't know," said the Idiot. "I suppose it would be a good
+thing if I broke it up into smaller denominations, but I've had it so
+long that I have become attached to it; but there is one thing about it,
+there is plenty of it, so that in case any of you gentlemen find your
+own insufficient I shall be only too happy to give you a piece of it
+without charge. Meanwhile, if Mrs. Pedagog will kindly let me have my
+bill for last week, I'll be obliged."
+
+"It won't be ready until to-morrow, Mr. Idiot," said the landlady, in
+surprise.
+
+"I'm sorry," said the Idiot, rising. "My scribbling-paper has run out. I
+wanted to put in this morning writing a poem on the back of it."
+
+"A poem? What about?" said Mr. Pedagog, with an irritating chuckle.
+
+"It was to be a triolet on Omniscience," said the Idiot. "And, strange
+to say, sir, you were to be the hero, if by any possibility I could
+squeeze you into a French form."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The Incorporation of the Idiot
+
+
+"How is business these days, Mr. Idiot?" asked the Poet, as the one
+addressed laid down the morning paper with a careworn expression on his
+face. "Good, I hope?"
+
+"Fair, only," replied the Idiot. "My honored employer was quite blue
+about things yesterday, and if I hadn't staved him off I think he'd have
+proposed swapping places with me. He has said quite often of late that I
+had the best of it, because all I had to earn was my salary, whereas he
+had to earn my salary and his own living besides. I offered to give him
+ten per cent. of my salary for ten per cent. of his living, but he said
+he guessed he wouldn't, adding that I seemed to be as great an Idiot as
+ever."
+
+"I fancy he was right there," said Mr. Pedagog. "I should really like to
+know how a man of your peculiar mental construction can be of the
+slightest practical value to a banker. I ask the question in all
+kindness, too, meaning to cast no reflections whatever upon either you
+or your employer. You are a roaring success in your own line, which is
+all any one could ask of you."
+
+"There's hominy for you, as the darky said to the hotel guest," returned
+the Idiot. "Any person who says that discord exists at this table
+doesn't know what he is talking about. Even the oil and the vinegar mix
+in the caster--that is, I judge they do from the oleaginous appearance
+of the vinegar. But I am very useful to my employer, Mr. Pedagog. He
+says frequently that he wouldn't know what not to do if it were not for
+me."
+
+"Aren't you losing control of your tongue?" queried the Bibliomaniac,
+looking at the Idiot in wonderment. "Don't you mean that he says he
+wouldn't know what to do if it were not for you?"
+
+"No, I don't," said the Idiot. "I never lose control of my tongue. I
+meant exactly what I said. Mr. Barlow told me, in so many words, that if
+it were not for me he wouldn't know what _not_ to do. He calls me his
+Back Action Patent Reversible Counsellor. If he is puzzled over an
+intricate point he sends for me and says: 'Such and such a thing being
+the case, Mr. Idiot, what would you do? Don't think about it, but tell
+me on impulse. Your thoughtless opinions are worth more to me than I can
+tell you.' So I tell him on impulse just what I should do, whereupon he
+does the other thing, and comes out ahead in nine cases out of ten."
+
+"And you confess it, eh?" said the Doctor, with a curve on his lip.
+
+"I certainly do," said the Idiot. "The world must take me for what I am.
+I'm not going to be one thing for myself, and build up a fictitious
+Idiot for the world. The world calls you men of pretence conceited,
+whereas, by pretending to be something that you are not, you give to the
+world what I should call convincing evidence that you are not at all
+conceited, but rather somewhat ashamed of what you know yourselves to
+be. Now, I rather believe in conceit--real honest pride in yourself as
+you know yourself to be. I am an Idiot, and it is my ambition to be a
+perfect Idiot. If I had been born a jackass, I should have endeavored to
+be a perfect jackass."
+
+"You'd have found it easy," said Mr. Pedagog, dryly.
+
+"Would I?" said the Idiot. "I'll have to take your word for it, sir, for
+_I_ have never been a jackass, and so cannot form an opinion on the
+subject."
+
+"Pride goeth before a fall," said Mr. Whitechoker, seeing a chance to
+work in a moral reflection.
+
+"Exactly," said the Idiot. "Wherefore I admire pride. It is a
+danger-signal that enables man to avoid the fall. If Adam had had any
+pride he'd never have fallen--but speaking about my controlling my
+tongue, it is not entirely out of the range of possibilities that I
+shall lose control of myself."
+
+"I expected that, sooner or later," said the Doctor. "Is it to be
+Bloomingdale or a private mad-house you are going to?"
+
+"Neither," replied the Idiot, calmly. "I shall stay here. For, as the
+poet says,
+
+  "''Tis best to bear the ills we hov
+  Nor fly to those we know not of.'"
+
+"Ho!" jeered the Poet. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that I do not
+think you are a success in quotation. Hamlet spoke those lines
+differently."
+
+"Shakespeare's Hamlet did. My little personal Shakespeare makes his
+Hamlet an entirely different, less stilted sort of person," said the
+Idiot.
+
+"You have a personal Shakespeare, have you?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Of course I have," the Idiot answered. "Haven't you?"
+
+"I have not," said the Bibliomaniac, shortly.
+
+"Well, I'm sorry for you then," sighed the Idiot, putting a fried potato
+in his mouth. "Very sorry. I wouldn't give a cent for another man's
+ideals. I want my own ideals, and I have my own ideal of Shakespeare. In
+fancy, Shakespeare and I have roamed over the fields of Warwickshire
+together, and I've had more fun imagining the kind of things he and I
+would have said to each other than I ever got out of his published
+plays, few of which have escaped the ungentle hands of the devastators."
+
+"You mean commentators, I imagine," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"I do," said the Idiot. "It's all the same, whether you call them
+commentors or devastators. The result is the same. New editions of
+Shakespeare are issued every year, and people buy them to see not what
+Shakespeare has written, but what new quip some opinionated devastator
+has tried to fasten on his memory. In a hundred years from now the works
+of Shakespeare will differ as much from what they are to-day as to-day's
+versions differ from what they were when Shakespeare wrote them. It's
+mighty discouraging to one like myself who would like to write works."
+
+"You are convicted out of your own mouth," said the Bibliomaniac. "A
+moment since you wasted your pity on me because I didn't mutilate
+Shakespeare so as to make him my own, and now you attack the
+commentators for doing precisely the same thing. They're as much
+entitled to their opinions as you are to yours."
+
+"Did you ever learn to draw parallels when you were in school?" asked
+the Idiot.
+
+"I did, and I think I've made a perfect parallel in this case. You
+attack people in one breath for what you commiserate me for not doing in
+another," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Not exactly," said the Idiot. "I don't object to the commentators for
+commentating, but I do object to their putting out their versions of
+Shakespeare as Shakespeare. I might as well have my edition published.
+It certainly would be popular, especially where, in 'Julius Caesar,' I
+introduce five Cassiuses and have them all fall on their swords
+together with military precision, like a 'Florodora' sextette, for
+instance."
+
+"Well, I hope you'll never print such an atrocity as that," cried the
+Bibliomaniac, hotly. "If there's one thing in literature without excuse
+and utterly contemptible it is the comic version, the parody of a
+masterpiece."
+
+"You need have no fear on that score," returned the Idiot. "I haven't
+time to rewrite Shakespeare, and, since I try never to stop short of
+absolute completeness, I shall not embark on the enterprise. If I do,
+however, I shall not do as the commentators do, and put on my title-page
+'Shakespeare. Edited by Willie Wilkins,' but 'Shakespeare As He Might
+Have Been, Had His Plays Been Written By An Idiot.'"
+
+"I have no doubt that you could do great work with 'Hamlet,'" observed
+the Poet.
+
+"I think so myself," said the Idiot. "But I shall never write 'Hamlet.'
+I don't want to have my fair fame exposed to the merciless hands of the
+devastators."
+
+"I shall never cease to regret," said Mr. Pedagog, after a moment's
+thought, "that you are so timid. I should very much like to see 'The
+Works of the Idiot.' I admit that my desire is more or less a morbid
+one. It is quite on a plane with the feeling that prompts me to wish to
+see that unfortunate man on the Bowery who exhibits his forehead, which
+is sixteen inches high, beginning with his eyebrows, for a dime. The
+strange, the bizarre in nature, has always interested me. The more
+unnatural the nature, the more I gloat upon it. From that point of view
+I do most earnestly hope that when you are inspired with a work you will
+let me at least see it."
+
+"Very well," answered the Idiot. "I shall put your name down as a
+subscriber to the _Idiot Monthly Magazine_, which some of my friends
+contemplate publishing. That is what I mean when I say I may shortly
+lose control of myself. These friends of mine profess to have been so
+impressed by my dicta that they have asked me if I would allow myself to
+be incorporated into a stock company, the object of which should be to
+transform my personality into printed pages. Hardly a day goes by but I
+devote a portion of my time to a poem in which the thought is
+conspicuous either by its absence or its presence. My schemes for the
+amelioration of the condition of the civilized are notorious among those
+who know me; my views on current topics are eagerly sought for; my
+business instinct, as I have already told you, is invaluable to my
+employer, and my fiction is unsurpassed in its fictitiousness. What more
+is needed for a magazine? You have the poetry, the philanthropy, the
+man of to-day, the fictitiousness, and the business instinct necessary
+for the successful modern magazine all concentrated in one person. Why
+not publish that person, say my friends, and I, feeling as I do that no
+man has a right to the selfish enjoyment of the great gifts nature has
+bestowed upon him, of course can only agree. I am to be incorporated
+with a capital stock of five hundred thousand dollars. One hundred
+thousand dollars' worth of myself I am to be permitted to retain; the
+rest my friends will subscribe for at fifty cents on the dollar. If any
+of you want shares in the enterprise I have no doubt you can be
+accommodated."
+
+"I'm obliged to you for the opportunity," said the Doctor. "But I have
+to be very careful about things I take stock in, and in general I
+regard you as a thing in which I should prefer not to take stock."
+
+"And I," observed Mr. Pedagog--"I have never up to this time taken any
+stock in you, and I make it a rule to be guided in life by precedent.
+Therefore I must be counted out."
+
+"I'll wait until you are listed at the Stock Exchange," put in the
+Bibliomaniac, "while thanking you just the same for the chance."
+
+"You can put me down for one share, to be paid for in poetry," said the
+Poet, with a wink at the Idiot.
+
+"You'll never make good," said the Idiot, slyly.
+
+"And I," said the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally imbibes, "shall
+be most happy to take five shares to be paid for in advice and
+high-balls. Moreover, if your company needs good-will to establish its
+enterprise, you may count upon me for unlimited credit."
+
+"Oh, as for that," said the Idiot, "I have plenty of good-will. Even
+Mr. Pedagog supplies me with more of it than I deserve, though by no
+means with all that I desire."
+
+"That good-will is yours as an individual, Mr. Idiot," returned the
+School-master. "As a corporation, however, I cannot permit you to trade
+upon me even for that. Your value is, in my eyes, entirely too
+fluctuating."
+
+"And it is in the fluctuating stock that the great fortunes are made,
+Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "As an individual I appreciate your
+good-will. As a corporation I am soulless, without emotions, and so
+cherish no disappointments over your refusal. I think if the scheme goes
+through it will be successful, and I fully expect to see the day when
+Idiot Preferred will be selling as high, if not higher, than Steel, and
+leaving utterly behind any other industrial that ever was known, copper
+or rope."
+
+"If, like the railways, you could issue betterment bonds you might do
+very well," said the Doctor. "I think ten million dollars spent in
+bettering you might bring you up to par."
+
+"Or a consolidated first-mortgage bond," remarked the Bibliomaniac.
+"Consolidate the Idiot with a man like Chamberlain or the German
+Emperor, and issue a five-million-dollar mortgage on the result, and you
+might find people who'd take those bonds at seventy-five."
+
+"You might if they were a dollar bond printed on cartridge-paper," said
+Mr. Pedagog. "Then purchasers could paper their walls with them."
+
+"Rail on," said the Idiot. "I can stand it. When I begin paying
+quarterly dividends at a ten-per-cent. rate you'll wish you had come
+in."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Mr. Pedagog. "It would entirely
+depend."
+
+"On what?" queried the Idiot, unwarily.
+
+"On whether that ten per cent. was declared upon your own estimate of
+your value or upon ours. On yours it would be fabulous; on ours--oh,
+well, what is the use of saying anything more about it. We are not going
+in it, and that's an end to it."
+
+"Well, I'll go in it if you change your scheme," said the Doctor. "If
+instead of an Idiot Publishing Company you will try to float yourself as
+a Consolidated Gas Company you may count on me to take a controlling
+interest."
+
+"I will submit the proposition to my friends," said the Idiot, calmly.
+"It would be something to turn out an honest gas company, which I
+should, of course, try to be, but I am afraid the public will not accept
+it. There is little demand for laughing-gas, and, besides, they would
+fear to intrust you with a controlling interest for fear that you might
+blow the product out and the bills up--coining millions by mere
+inflation. They've heard of you, Doctor, and they know that is the sort
+of thing you'd be likely to do."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+University Extension
+
+
+"I was surprised and gratified last evening, Mr. Idiot," observed the
+School-master as breakfast was served, "to see you at the University
+Extension Lecture. I did not know that you admitted the necessity of
+further instruction in any matter pertaining to human knowledge."
+
+"I don't know that I do admit the necessity," returned the Idiot.
+"Sometimes when I take an inventory of the contents of my mind it seems
+to me that about everything I need is there."
+
+"There you go again!" said the Bibliomaniac. "Why do you persist in your
+refusal to allow any one to get a favorable impression concerning you?
+Mr. Pedagog unbends sufficiently to tell you that you have at last done
+something which he can commend, and you greet him with an Idiotism which
+is practically a rebuff."
+
+"Very well said," observed the School-master, with an acquiescent nod.
+"I came to this table this morning encouraged to believe that this young
+man was beginning to see the error of his ways, and I must confess to a
+great enough interest in him to say that I was pleased at that
+encouragement. I saw him at a lecture on literature at the Lyceum Hall
+last evening, and he appeared to be interested, and yet this morning he
+seems to show that he is utterly incorrigible. May I ask, sir, why you
+attended that lecture if, as you say, your mind is already sufficiently
+well furnished?"
+
+"Certainly you may ask that question," replied the Idiot. "I went to
+that lecture to have my impressions confirmed, that is all. I have
+certain well-defined notions concerning University Extension, and I
+wished to see if they were correct. I found that they were."
+
+"The lecture was not upon University Extension, but upon Romanticism,
+and it was a most able discourse," retorted Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Very likely," said the Idiot. "I did not hear it. I did not want to
+hear it. I have my own ideas concerning Romanticism, which do not need
+confirmation or correction. I have already confirmed and corrected them.
+I went to see the audience and not to hear Professor Peterkin exploding
+theories."
+
+"It is a pity the chair you occupied was wasted upon you," snapped Mr.
+Pedagog.
+
+"I agree with you," said the Idiot. "I could have got a much better view
+of the audience if I had been permitted to sit on the stage, but
+Professor Peterkin needed all that for his gestures. However, I saw
+enough from where I sat to confirm my impression that University
+Extension is not so much of a public benefit as a social fad. There was
+hardly a soul in the audience who could not have got all that Professor
+Peterkin had to tell him out of his books; there was hardly a soul in
+the audience who could not have afforded to pay one dollar at least for
+the seat he occupied; there was not a soul in the audience who had paid
+more than ten cents for his seat or her seat, and those for whose
+benefit the lecture was presumably given, the ten-cent people, were
+crowded out. The lectures themselves are not instructive--Professor
+Peterkin's particularly--except in so far as it is instructive to hear
+what Professor Peterkin thinks on this or that subject, and his desire
+to be original forces him to cook up views which no one else ever held,
+with the result that what he says is most interesting and proper to be
+presented to the attention of a discriminating audience, but not proper
+to be presented to an audience that is supposed to come there to receive
+instruction."
+
+"You have just said that you did not listen to the lecture. How do you
+know that what you say is true?" put in the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"I know Professor Peterkin," said the Idiot.
+
+"Does he know you?" sneered Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"I don't think he would remember me if you should speak my name in his
+presence," observed the Idiot, calmly. "But that is easily accounted
+for. The Professor never remembers anybody but himself."
+
+"Well, I admit," said Mr. Pedagog, "that the Professor's lectures were
+rather advanced for the comprehension of a person like the Idiot,
+nevertheless it was an enjoyable occasion, and I doubt if the
+fulminations of our friend here will avail against University
+Extension."
+
+"You speak a sad truth," said the Idiot. "Social fads are impervious to
+fulmination, as Solomon might have said had he thought of it. As long as
+a thing is a social fad it will thrive, and, on the whole, perhaps it
+ought to thrive. Anything which gives society something to think about
+has its value, and the mere fact that it makes society _think_ is proof
+of that value."
+
+"We seem to be in a philosophic frame of mind this morning," said Mr.
+Whitechoker.
+
+"We are," returned the Idiot. "That's one thing about University
+Extension. It makes us philosophic. It has made a stoic of my dear old
+daddy."
+
+"Oh yes!" cried Mr. Pedagog. "You _have_ a father, haven't you? I had
+forgotten that."
+
+"Wherein," said the Idiot, "we differ. _I_ haven't forgotten that I have
+one, and, by-the-way, it is from him that I first heard of University
+Extension. He lives in a small manufacturing town not many miles from
+here, and is distinguished in the town because, without being stingy, he
+lives within his means. He has a way of paying his grocer's bills which
+makes of him a marked man. He hasn't much more money than he needs, but
+when the University Extension movement reached the town he was
+interested. The prime movers in the enterprise went to him and asked him
+if he wouldn't help it along, dilating upon the benefits which would
+accrue to those whose education stopped short with graduation from the
+high-schools. It was most plausible. The notion that for ten cents a
+lecture the working masses could learn something about art, history,
+and letters, could gather in something about the sciences, and all that,
+appealed to him, and while he could afford it much more ill than the
+smart people, the four hundred of the town, he chipped in. He paid fifty
+dollars and was made an honorary manager. He was proud enough of it,
+too, and he wrote a long, enthusiastic letter to me about it. It was a
+great thing, and he hoped the State, which had been appealed to to help
+the movement along, would take a hand in it. 'If we educate the masses
+to understand and to appreciate the artistic, the beautiful,' he wrote,
+'we need have little fear for the future. Ignorance is the greatest foe
+we have to contend against in our national development, and it is the
+only thing that can overthrow a nation such as ours is.' And then what
+happened? Professor Peterkin came along and delivered ten or a dozen
+lectures. The masses went once or twice and found the platform occupied
+by a man who talked to them about Romanticism and Realism; who told them
+that Dickens was trash; who exalted Tolstoi and Ibsen; but who never let
+them into the secret of what Romanticism was, and who kept them equally
+in the dark as to the significance of Realism. They also found the best
+seats in the lecture-hall occupied by the smart set in full
+evening-dress, who talked almost as much and as loudly as did Professor
+Peterkin. The masses did not even learn manners at Professor Peterkin's
+first and second lectures, and the third and fourth found them
+conspicuous by their absence. All they learned was that they were
+ignorant, and that other people were better than they, and what my
+father learned was that he had subscribed fifty dollars to promote a
+series of social functions for the diversion of the four hundred and the
+aggrandizement of Professor Peterkin. He started in for what might be
+called Romanticism, and he got a Realism that he did not like in less
+time than it takes to tell of it, and to-day in that town University
+Extension is such a fad that when, some weeks ago, the swell club of
+that place talked of appointing Thursday evening as its club night, it
+was found to be impossible, for the reason that it might interfere with
+the attendance upon the University Extension lectures. That, Mr.
+Pedagog, is a matter of history and can be proven, and last night's
+audience confirmed the impression which I had formed from what my father
+had told me. Professor Peterkin's lectures are interesting to you, a
+school-master, but they are pure Greek to me, who would like to know
+more about letters. I would gather more instruction from your table-talk
+in an hour than I could from Professor Peterkin's whole course."
+
+"You flatter me," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"No," returned the Idiot. "If you knew how little the ignorant gain from
+Peterkin you would not necessarily call it flattery if one should say he
+learned more from your conversation over a griddle-cake."
+
+"You misconceive the whole situation, I think, nevertheless," said Mr.
+Whitechoker. "As I understand it, supplementary lectures, and
+examinations based on them, are held after the lectures, when the
+practical instruction is given with great thoroughness."
+
+"I'm glad you spoke of that," said the Idiot. "I had forgotten that part
+of it. Professor Peterkin received pay for his lectures, which dealt in
+theories only; plain Mr. Barton, who delivered the supplementary
+lectures, got nothing. Professor Peterkin taught nothing, but he
+represented University Extension. Plain Mr. Barton did the work and
+represented nothing. Both reached society. Neither reached the masses.
+In my native town plain Mr. Barton's supplementary lectures, which were
+simply an effort to unravel the Peterkin complications, were attended by
+the same people in smaller crowds--people of social standing who were
+curious enough to devote an hour a week to an endeavor to find out the
+meaning of what Professor Peterkin had told them at the function the
+week before. The students examined were mostly ladies, and I happen to
+know that in a large proportion they were ladies whose husbands could
+have afforded to pay Professor Peterkin his salary ten times over as a
+private tutor."
+
+"As I look at it," said Mr. Pedagog, gravely, "it does not make much
+difference to whom your instruction is given, so long as it instructs.
+What if these lectures do interest those who are comparatively well
+off? Your society woman may be as much in need of an extended education
+as your factory girl. The University Extension idea is to convey
+knowledge to people who would not otherwise get it. It simply sets out
+to improve minds. If the social mind needs improvement, why not improve
+it? Why condemn a system because it does not discriminate in the minds
+selected for improvement?"
+
+"I don't condemn a system which sets out to improve minds irrespective
+of conditions," replied the Idiot. "But I should most assuredly condemn
+a man, or a set of men, who induced me to subscribe to a bread fund for
+the poor and who afterwards expended that money on cream-cakes for the
+Czar of Russia. The fact that the Czar of Russia wanted the cream-cakes
+and was willing to accept them would not affect my feelings in the
+matter, though I have no doubt the people in charge of the fund would
+find themselves far more conspicuous for having departed from the
+original idea. Some of them might be knighted for it if the Czar
+happened to be passionately fond of cream-cakes."
+
+"Then, having attacked this system, what would you have? Would you have
+University Extension stop?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Not at all," returned the Idiot. "Anything which can educate society is
+a good thing, but I should change the name of it from University
+Extension to Social Expansion, and I should compel those whose minds
+were broadened by it to pay the bills."
+
+"But as yet you have failed to hit the nail on the head," persisted the
+Bibliomaniac. "The masses can attend these lectures if they wish to, and
+on your own statement they don't. You don't seem to consider that point,
+or, if you do, you don't meet it."
+
+"I don't think it necessary to meet it," said the Idiot. "Though I will
+say that if you were one of the masses--a girl, say, with one dress,
+threadbare, poor, and ill-fitting, and possessed of a natural bit of
+pride--you would find little pleasure in attending a lecture your
+previous education does not permit of your comprehending, and sitting
+through an evening with a lot of finely dressed, smart folk, with their
+backs turned towards you. The plebeians have _some_ pride, my dear
+Bibliomaniac, and they are decidedly averse to mixing with the swells.
+They would like to be educated, but they don't care to be snubbed for
+the privilege of being mystified by a man like Professor Peterkin, even
+for so small a sum as ten cents an evening."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Social Expansion
+
+
+"We were talking about University Extension the other day, Mr. Pedagog,"
+said the Idiot, as the School-master folded up the newspaper and put it
+in his pocket, "and I, as you remember, suggested that it might better
+be called Social Expansion."
+
+"Did you?" said Mr. Pedagog, coldly. "I don't remember much about it. I
+rarely make a note of anything you may say."
+
+"Well, I did suggest the change of name, whether your memory is
+retentive or not, and I have been thinking the matter over a good deal
+since, and I think I've got hold of an idea," returned the Idiot.
+
+"In that case," said the Bibliomaniac, "we would better lock the door.
+If you have really got hold of an idea you should be very careful not to
+let it get away from you."
+
+"No danger of that," said the Idiot, with a smile. "I have it securely
+locked up here," tapping his forehead.
+
+"It must be lonesome," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"And rather uncomfortable--if it is a real idea," observed the Doctor.
+"An idea in the Idiot's mind must feel somewhat as a tall, stout Irish
+maid feels when she goes to her bedroom in one of those Harlem
+flat-houses."
+
+"You men are losing a great opportunity," said the Idiot, with a
+scornful glance at the three professional gentlemen. "The idea of your
+following the professions of pedagogy, medicine, and literature, when
+the three of you combined could make a fortune as an incarnate comic
+paper. I don't see why you don't make a combination like those German
+bands that play on the street corners, and go about from door to door,
+and crack your jokes just as they crack their music. I am sure you'd
+take, particularly in front of barber-shops."
+
+"It would be hard on the comic papers," said the Poet, who was getting a
+little unpopular with his fellow-boarders because of his tendency,
+recently developed, to take the Idiot's part in the breakfast-table
+discussions. "They might be so successful that the barber-shops, instead
+of taking the comic papers for their customers to read, would employ one
+or more of them to sit in the middle of the room and crack jokes aloud."
+
+"We couldn't rival the comic papers though," said the Doctor, wishing to
+save his dignity by taking the bull by the horns. "We might do the
+jokes well enough, but the comic papers are chiefly pictorial."
+
+"You'd be pictorial enough," said the Idiot. "Wasn't it you, Mr.
+Pedagog, that said the Doctor here looked like one of Cruikshank's
+physicians, or as if he had stepped out of Dickens's pages, or something
+like it?"
+
+"I never said anything of the sort!" cried the School-master,
+wrathfully; "and you know I didn't."
+
+"Who was it said that?" asked the Idiot, innocently, looking about the
+table. "It couldn't have been Mr. Whitechoker, and I know it wasn't the
+Poet or my Genial Friend who occasionally imbibes. Mr. Pedagog denies
+it; I didn't say it; Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't say it. That leaves only two
+of us--the Bibliomaniac and the Doctor himself. I don't think the Doctor
+would make a personal remark of that kind, and--well, there is but one
+conclusion. Mr. Bibliomaniac, I am surprised."
+
+"What?" roared the Bibliomaniac, glaring at the Idiot. "Do you mean to
+fasten the impertinence on me?"
+
+"Far from it," returned the Idiot, meekly. "Very far from it. It is
+fate, sir, that has done that--the circumstantial evidence against you
+is strong; but then, mercifully enough, circumstantial evidence is not
+permitted to hang a man."
+
+"Now see here, Mr. Idiot," said the Bibliomaniac, firmly and
+impressively, "I want you to distinctly understand that I am not going
+to have you put words into my mouth that I never uttered. I--"
+
+"Pray, don't attack me," said the Idiot. "I haven't made any charge
+against you. I only asked who could have said that the Doctor looked
+like a creation of Cruikshank. I couldn't have said it, because I don't
+think it. Mr. Pedagog denies it. In fact, every one here has a clear
+case of innocence excepting yourself, and I don't believe _you_ said
+it, only the chain of circumstance--"
+
+"Oh, hang your chain of circumstance!" interrupted the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"It is hung," said the Idiot, "and it appears to make you very
+uncomfortable. However, as I was saying, I think I have got hold of an
+idea involving a truly philanthropic and by no means selfish scheme of
+Social Expansion."
+
+"Heigho!" sighed Mr. Pedagog. "I sometimes think that if I had not the
+honor to be the husband of our landlady I'd move away from here. Your
+views, sir, are undermining my constitution."
+
+"You only think so, Mr. Pedagog," replied the Idiot. "You are simply
+going through a process of intellectual reconstruction at my hands. You
+feel exactly as a man feels who has been shut up in the dark for years
+and suddenly finds himself in a flood of sunlight. I am doing with you
+as an individual what I would have society do for mankind at large--in
+other words, while I am working for individual expansion upon the raw
+material I find here, I would have society buckle down to the
+enlargement of itself by the improvement of those outside of itself."
+
+"If you swim in water as well as you do in verbiage," said the
+Bibliomaniac, "you must be able to go three or four strokes without
+sinking."
+
+"Oh, as for that, I can swim like a duck," said the Idiot. "You can't
+sink me."
+
+"I fancied not," observed Mr. Pedagog, with a smile at his own joke.
+"You are so light I wonder, indeed, that you don't rise up into space,
+anyhow."
+
+"What a delightful condition of affairs that suggestion opens up!" said
+the Idiot, turning to the Poet. "If I were you I'd make a poem on that.
+Something like this, for instance:
+
+  "I am so very, very light
+    That gravitation curbs not me.
+  I rise up through the atmosphere
+    Till all the world I plainly see.
+
+  "I dance about among the clouds,
+    An airy, happy, human kite.
+  The breezes toss me here and there,
+    To my exceeding great delight.
+
+  "And when I would return to sup,
+    To breakfast, or perchance to dine,
+  I haul myself once more to earth
+    By tugging on a piece of twine."
+
+Mr. Pedagog grinned broadly at this.
+
+"You aren't entirely without your good points," he said. "If we ever
+accept your comic-paper idea we'll have to rely on you for the nonsense
+poetry."
+
+"Thank you," said the Idiot. "I'll help. If I had a man like you to give
+me the suggestions I could make a fortune out of poetry. The only
+trouble is I have to quarrel with you before I can get you to give me a
+suggestion, and I despise bickering."
+
+"So do I," returned Mr. Pedagog. "Let's give up bickering and turn our
+attention to--er--Social Extension, is it?"
+
+"Yes--or Social Expansion," said the Idiot. "Some years ago the world
+was startled to hear that in the city of New York there were not more
+than four hundred people who were entitled to social position, and, as I
+understand it, as time has progressed the number has still further
+diminished. Last year the number was only one hundred and fifty, and, as
+I read the social news of to-day, not more than twenty-five people are
+now beyond all question in the swim. At dinners, balls, functions of all
+sorts, you read the names of these same twenty-five over and over again
+as having been present. Apparently no others attended--or, if they did,
+they were not so indisputably entitled to be present that their names
+could be printed in the published accounts. Now all of this shows that
+society is dying out, and that if things keep on as they are now going
+it will not be many years before we shall become a people without
+society, a nation of plebeians."
+
+"Your statement so far is lucid and logical," said Mr. Pedagog, who did
+not admire society--so called--and who did not object to the goring of
+an ox in which he was not personally interested.
+
+"Well, why is this social contraction going on?" asked the Idiot.
+"Clearly because Social Expansion is not an accepted fact. If it were,
+society would grow. Why does it not grow? Why are its ranks not
+augmented? There is raw material enough. You would like to get into the
+swim; so would I. But we don't know how. We read books of etiquette,
+but they are far from being complete. I think I make no mistake when I
+say they are utterly valueless. They tell us no more than the funny
+journal tells us when it says:
+
+  "'Never eat pease with a spoon;
+    Never eat pie with a knife;
+  Never put salt on a prune;
+    Never throw crumbs at your wife.'"
+
+They tell most of us what we all knew before. They tell us not to wear
+our hats in the house; they tell us all the obvious things, but the
+subtleties of how to get into society they do not tell us. The comic
+papers give us some idea of how to behave in society. We know from
+reading the funny papers that a really swell young man always leans
+against a mantel-piece when he is calling; that the swell girl sits on a
+comfortable divan with her feet on a tiger-skin rug, and they converse
+in epigram. Sometimes the epigram is positively rude; when it is not
+rude it is so dull that no one wonders that the tiger's head on the rug
+represents the tiger as yawning. But, while this is instructive, it
+teaches us how to behave on special occasions only. You or I might call
+upon a young woman who did not sit on a divan, who had no tiger-skin rug
+to put her feet on, and whose parlor had a mantel-piece against which we
+could not lean comfortably. What are we to do then? As far as they go,
+the funny papers are excellent, but they don't go far enough. They give
+us attractive pictures of fashionable dinners, but it is always of the
+dinner after the game course. Some of us would like to know how society
+behaves while the soup is being served. We know that after the game
+course society girls reach across the table and clink wine-glasses with
+young men, but we do not know what they do before they get to the clink
+stage. Nowhere is this information given. Etiquette books are silent on
+the subject, and though I have sought everywhere for information, I do
+not know to this day how many salted almonds one may consume at dinner
+without embarrassing one's hostess. Now, if I can't find out, the
+million can't find out. Wherefore, instead of shutting themselves
+selfishly up and, by so doing, forcing society finally into dissolution,
+why cannot some of these people who know what is what give
+object-lessons to the million; educate them in _savoir-faire_?
+
+"Last summer there was a play put on at one of our theatres in which
+there was a scene at a race-track. At one side was a tally-ho coach. For
+the first week the coach was an utterly valueless accessory, because the
+people on it were the ordinary supers in the employ of the theatre. They
+did not know how to behave on a coach, and nobody was interested. The
+management were suddenly seized with a bright idea. They invited several
+swell young men who knew how things were done on coaches to come and do
+these things on their coach. The young men came and imparted a realism
+to the scene that made that coach the centre of attraction. People who
+went to that play departed educated in coach etiquette. Now there lies
+my scheme in a nutshell. If these twenty-five, the Old Guard of society,
+which dines but never surrenders, will give once a week a social
+function in some place like Madison Square Garden, to which the million
+may go merely as spectators, not as participators, is there any doubt
+that they would fail to be instructed? The Garden will seat eight or ten
+thousand people. Suppose, for an instance, that a dozen of your best
+exponents of what is what were to give a dinner in the middle of the
+arena, with ten thousand people looking on. Do you mean to say that of
+all that vast audience no one would learn thereby how to behave at a
+dinner?"
+
+"It is a great scheme," said the Doctor.
+
+"It is!" said the Idiot, "and I venture to say that a course of, say,
+twelve social functions given in that way would prove so popular that
+the Garden would turn away every night twice as many people as it could
+accommodate."
+
+"It would be instructive, no doubt," said the Bibliomaniac; "but how
+would it expand society? Would you have examinations?"
+
+"Most assuredly," said the Idiot. "At the end of the season I should
+have a rigid examination of all who chose to apply. I would make them
+dine in the presence of a committee of expert diners, I would have them
+pass a searching examination in the Art of Wearing a Dress Suit, in the
+Science of Entering a Drawing-room, in the Art of Behavior at Afternoon
+Teas, and all the men who applied should also be compelled to pass a
+physical examination as an assurance that they were equal to the task of
+getting an ice for a young lady at a ball."
+
+"Society would get to be too inclusive and would cease to be exclusive,"
+suggested Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"I think not," said the Idiot. "I should not give a man or a woman the
+degree of B.S. unless he or she had passed an examination of one hundred
+per cent."
+
+"B.S.?" queried Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Yes," returned the Idiot. "Bachelor of Society--a degree which, once
+earned, should entitle one to recognition as a member of the upper ten
+anywhere in Christendom."
+
+"It is superb!" cried Mr. Pedagog, enthusiastically.
+
+"Yes," said the Idiot. "At ten cents a function it would beat University
+Extension out of sight, and, further, it would preserve society. If we
+lose society we lose caste, and, worse than all, our funny men would
+have to go out of business, for there would be no fads or Willieboys
+left to ridicule."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A Beggar's Hand-book
+
+
+"Mr. Idiot," said the Poet one morning, as the waffles were served, "you
+are an inventive genius. Why don't you invent an easy way to make a
+fortune? The trouble with most methods of making money is that they
+involve too much labor."
+
+"I have thought of that," said the Idiot. "And yet the great fortunes
+have been made in a way which involved very little labor, comparatively
+speaking. You, for instance, probably work harder over a yard of poetry
+that brings you in ten dollars than any of our great railroad magnates
+have over a mile of railroad which has brought them in a million."
+
+"Which simply proves that it is ideas that count rather than labor,"
+said the Poet.
+
+"Not exactly," said the Idiot. "If you put a hundred ideas into a
+quatrain you will get less money for it than you would for a two-volume
+epic in which you have possibly only half an idea. It isn't idea so much
+as nerve that counts. The man who builds railroads doesn't advance any
+particular idea, but he shows lots of nerve, and it is nerve that makes
+wealth. I believe that if you literary men would show more nerve force
+and spare the public the infliction of what you call your ideas, you
+would make more money."
+
+"How would you show nerve in writing?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"If I knew I'd write and make my fortune," said the Idiot.
+"Unfortunately, I don't know how one can show nerve in writing, unless
+it be in taking hold of some particularly popular idiosyncrasy of
+mankind and treating it so contemptuously that every one would want to
+mob you. If you could get the public mad enough at you to want to mob
+you they'd read everything you'd write, simply to nourish their wrath,
+and you'd soon be cutting coupons for a living, and could then afford to
+take up more ideas--coupon-cutters can afford theories. For my own part,
+one reason why I do not myself take up literature for a profession is
+that I have neither the nerve nor the coupons. I'd probably run along in
+the rut like a majority of the writers of to-day, and wouldn't have the
+grit to strike out in a new line of my own. Men say, and perhaps very
+properly, this is the thing that has succeeded in the past. I'll do
+this. Something else that appears alluring enough in the abstract has
+never been done, and for that reason I won't do it. There have been
+clever men before me, men clever enough to think of this something that
+I fondly imagine is original, and they haven't done it. Doubtless they
+refrained from doing it for good and sufficient reasons, and I am not
+going to be fool enough to set my judgment up against theirs. In other
+words, I lack the nerve to go ahead and write as I feel. I prefer to
+study past successes, with the result that I am moderately successful
+only. It's the same way in every line of business. Precedent guides in
+all things, but where occasionally you find a man courageous enough to
+cast precedent to the winds, one of two things happens. Either fortune
+or ruin follows. Hence, the thing to do if you want to make a fortune is
+to eliminate the possibility of ruin as far as may be. You cannot ruin a
+man who has nothing. He is down on bed-rock, anyhow; so for a receipt
+for fortune I should say, start a pauper, show your nerve, and you'll
+make a pile, or you won't make a pile. If you make it you are fortunate.
+If you fail to make it you are no more unfortunate than you were before
+you started."
+
+"For plausibility, Mr. Idiot," said Mr. Pedagog, "you are to me a
+perfect wonder. I do not think that any one can deny, with confidence
+born of certainty, the truth of your premises, and it must be admitted
+that your conclusions are based properly upon those premises, and yet
+your conclusions are almost invariably utterly absurd, if not absolutely
+grotesque. Here is a man who says, to make a fortune become a beggar!"
+
+"Precisely," said the Idiot. "There is nothing like having a clean slate
+to work on. If you are not a beggar you have something, and having
+something promotes caution and tends to destroy nerve. As a beggar you
+have everything to gain and nothing to lose, so you can plunge. You can
+swim better in deep water than in the shallow."
+
+"Well," said the Doctor, "enlighten us on this point. You may not know
+how to show nerve as a writer--in fact, you confess that you don't. How
+would you show nerve as a beggar? Would you strive to enforce your
+demands and degenerate into a common highwayman, or would you simply go
+in for big profits, and ask passers-by for ten dollars instead of ten
+cents?"
+
+"He'd probably take a bag of dynamite into a millionaire's office and
+threaten to blow him to pieces if he didn't give him a house and lot,"
+sneered the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Not at all," said the Idiot. "That's cowardice, not nerve. If I went
+into a millionaire's office and demanded a million--or a house and lot
+even--armed with a bag full of newspapers, pretending it held dynamite,
+it might be more like nerve; but my beggar would do nothing contrary to
+the law. He'd simply be nervy, that's all--cheeky, perhaps you'd call
+it. For instance, I believe that if I were to hire in the elevated cars
+one of those advertising spaces above the windows, and were to place in
+that space a placard saying that I was by nature too lazy to work, too
+fond of life to starve, too poor to live, and too honest to steal, and
+would be placed in affluence if every man and woman who saw that sign
+would send me ten cents a week in two-cent postage-stamps for five weeks
+running, I should receive enough money to enable me to live at the most
+expensive hotel in town during that period. By living at that hotel and
+paying my bills regularly I could get credit enough to set myself up in
+business, and with credit there is practically no limit to the
+possibilities of fortune. It is simply honest nerve that counts. The
+beggar who asks you on the street for five cents to keep his family from
+starving is rebuffed. You don't believe his story, and you know that
+five cents wouldn't keep a family from starving very long. But the
+fellow who accosts you frankly for a dime because he is thirsty, and
+hasn't had a drink for two hours, in nine cases out of ten properly
+selected ones will get a quarter for his nerve."
+
+"You ought to write a _Manual for Beggars_," said the Bibliomaniac. "I
+have no doubt that the Idiot Publishing Company would publish it."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Pedagog. "A sort of beggar's _Don't_, for instance. It
+would be a benefit to all men, as well as a boon to the beggars. That
+mendicancy is a profession to-day there is no denying, and anything
+which could make of it a polite calling would be of inestimable value."
+
+"I have had it in mind for some time," said the Idiot, blandly. "I
+intended to call it _Mendicancy Made Easy_, or _the Beggar's Don't: With
+Two Chapters on Etiquette for Tramps_."
+
+"The chief trouble with such a book I should think," said the Poet,
+"would be that your beggars and tramps could not afford to buy it."
+
+"That wouldn't interfere with its circulation," returned the Idiot.
+"It's a poor tramp who can't steal. Every suburban resident in creation
+would buy a copy of the book out of sheer curiosity. I'd get my
+royalties from them; the tramps could get the books by helping
+themselves to the suburbanites' copies as they do to chickens,
+fire-wood, and pies put out to cool. As for the beggars, I'd have it put
+into their hands by the people they beg from. When a man comes up to a
+wayfarer, for instance, and says, 'Excuse me, sir, but could you spare
+a nickel to a hungry man?' I'd have the wayfarer say, 'Excuse _me_, sir,
+but unfortunately I have left my nickels in my other vest; but here is a
+copy of the Idiot's _Mendicancy Made Easy, or the Beggar's Don't_.'"
+
+"And you think the beggar would read it, do you?" asked the
+Bibliomaniac.
+
+"I don't know whether he would or not. He'd probably either read it or
+pawn it," the Idiot answered. "In either event he would be better off,
+and I would have got my ten per cent. royalty on the book. After the
+_Beggars' Manual_ I should continue my good work if I found the class
+for whom it was written had benefited by my first effort. I should
+compile as my contribution to the literature of mendicancy for the
+following season what I should call _The Beggar's Elite Directory_. This
+would enlarge my sphere a trifle. It would contain as complete lists as
+could be obtained of persons who give to street beggars, with their
+addresses, so that the beggars, instead of infesting the streets at
+night might go to the houses of these people and collect their incomes
+in a more business-like and less undignified fashion. Added to this
+would be two lists, one for tramps, stating what families in the suburbs
+kept dogs, what families gave, whether what they gave was digestible or
+not, rounding up with a list of those who do not give, and who have
+telephone connection with the police station. This would enable them to
+avoid dogs and rebuffs, would save the tramp the time he expends on
+futile efforts to find work he doesn't want, and as for the people who
+have to keep the dogs to ward off the tramps, they, too, would be
+benefited, because the tramps would begin to avoid them, and in a short
+while they would be able to dispense with the dogs. The other list
+would be for organ-grinders, who are, after all, only beggars of a
+different type. This list would comprise the names of persons who are
+musical and who would rather pay a quarter than listen to a hand-organ.
+By a judicious arrangement with these people, carried on by
+correspondence, the organ-grinder would be able to collect a large
+revenue without venturing out, except occasionally to play before the
+house of a delinquent subscriber in order to remind him that he had let
+his contract expire. So, by slow degrees, we should find beggars doing
+their work privately and not publicly, tramps circulating only among
+those whose sympathies they have aroused, and organ-grinding only a
+memory."
+
+"The last, I think, would not come about," said Mr. Pedagog. "For there
+are people who like the music of hand-organs."
+
+"True--I'm one of 'em. I'd hire a hansom to follow a piano-organ about
+the city if I could afford it, but as a rule the hand-organ lovers are
+of the one-cent class," returned the Idiot. "The quarter class are
+people who would rather not hear the hand-organ, and it is to them that
+a grinder of business capacity would naturally address himself. It is
+far pleasanter to stay at home and be paid large money for doing nothing
+than to undertake a weary march through the city to receive small sums
+for doing something. That's human nature, Mr. Pedagog."
+
+"I presume it is," said Mr. Pedagog; "but I don't think your scheme is.
+Human nature works, but your plan wouldn't."
+
+"Well, of course," said the Idiot, "you never can tell about ideals. The
+fact that an ideal is ideal is the chief argument against its amounting
+to much. But I am confident that if my _Beggar's Don't_ and _Elite
+Directory_ fail, my other book will go."
+
+"You appear to have the writing of a library in mind," sneered the
+Bibliomaniac.
+
+"I have," said the Idiot. "If I write all the books I have in mind, the
+public library will be a small affair beside mine."
+
+"And your other book is to be what?" queried Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"_Plausible Tales for Beggars to Tell_," said the Idiot. "If the beggar
+could only tell an interesting story he'd be surer of an ear in which to
+whisper it. The usual beggar's tale is commonplace. There's no art in
+it. There are no complications of absorbing interest. There is not a
+soul in creation, I venture to say, but would be willing to have a
+beggar stop right in the middle of his story. The tales I'd write for
+them would be so interesting that the attention of the wayfarer would be
+arrested at once. His mind would be riveted on the situation at once,
+and, instead of hurrying along and trying to leave the beggar behind, he
+would stop, button-hole him, and ask him to sit down on a convenient
+doorstep and continue. If a beggar could have such a story to tell as
+would enable him in the midst of one of its most exciting episodes to
+whisper hoarsely into the ear of the man whose nickel he was seeking,
+'The rest of this interesting story I will tell you in Central Park at
+nine o'clock to-morrow night,' in such a manner as would impel the
+listener to meet him in the Park the following evening, his fortune
+would be made. Such a book I hope some day to write."
+
+"I have no doubt," said Mr. Whitechoker, "that it will be an
+entertaining addition to fiction."
+
+"Nor have I," said the Idiot. "It will make the writers of to-day green
+with envy, and, as for the beggars, if it is not generally known that
+it is I and not they who are responsible for the work, the beggars will
+shortly find themselves in demand as writers of fiction for the
+magazines."
+
+"And you?" suggested the Poet.
+
+"I shall be content. Mere gratitude will force the beggars to send me
+the magazine orders, and _I'll_ write their articles and be glad of the
+opportunity, giving them ten per cent. of the profits. I know a man who
+makes fifty dollars a year at magazine work, and one of my ambitions is
+to rival the Banker-Poets and Dry Goods Essayists by achieving fame as
+the Boarding-house Dickens."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Progressive Waffles
+
+
+"I am afraid," said Mr. Pedagog, in a loud whisper to the Bibliomaniac,
+"that the Idiot isn't feeling well this morning. He has eaten three
+fish-cakes and a waffle without opening his mouth."
+
+The Idiot looked up, and, gazing wearily at Mr. Pedagog for a moment,
+shrugged his shoulders and ejaculated, "Tutt!"
+
+"He's off," said the Bibliomaniac. "Whenever he says 'Tutt!' you can
+make up your mind that his vocabulary is about to be loosed."
+
+"If my vocabulary were as warped as some other vocabularies I might
+mention," said the Idiot, helping himself to another waffle modelled
+after the six of hearts, "I'd keep it in a cage. A man who observes that
+I have eaten three fish-cakes and a waffle without opening my mouth
+hasn't a very good command of language. He simply states as a fact what
+is in reality an impossibility, granting that I eat with my mouth, which
+I am told I do."
+
+"You know what I mean," retorted Mr. Pedagog, impatiently. "I am so much
+in your society that I have acquired the very bad habit of speaking in
+the vernacular. When I say you haven't opened your mouth I do not refer
+to the opening you make for the receipt of waffles and fish-cakes, but
+for those massive openings which you require for your exuberant
+loquacity. In other words, I mean that you haven't spoken a word for at
+least three minutes, which is naturally an indication to us that you
+aren't feeling well. You and talk are synonymous as far as we are
+concerned."
+
+"I _have_ been known to speak--that is true," said the Idiot. "That I am
+not feeling very well this morning is also true. I have a headache."
+
+"A what ache?" asked the Doctor, scornfully.
+
+"A very bad headache," returned the Idiot, looking about him for a third
+waffle.
+
+"How singular!" said the Bibliomaniac. "Reminds me of a story I heard of
+a man who had lost his foot. He'd had his foot shot off at Gettysburg,
+and yet for years after he could feel the pangs of rheumatism in that
+foot from which he had previously suffered."
+
+"Pardon me for repeating," observed the Idiot. "But, as I have already
+said, and as I expect often to have to say again, Tutt! I can't blame
+you for thinking that I have no head, however. I find so little use for
+one here that in most instances I do not obtrude it upon you."
+
+"I haven't noticed any lack of head in the Idiot," put in the
+School-master. "As a rule, I can agree to almost anything my friend the
+Bibliomaniac says, but in this case I cannot accept his views. You have
+a head. I have always said you had a head--in fact, that is what I
+complain about chiefly, it is such a big head."
+
+"Thank you," said the Idiot, ignoring the shaft. "I shall never forget
+your kindness in coming to my aid, though I can't say that I think I
+needed it. Even with a racking headache sustained by these delicious
+waffles, I believe I can handle the Doctor and my bookish friend without
+assistance. I am what the mathematicians would call an arithmetical
+absurdity--I am the one that is equal to the two they represent. At
+present, however, I prefer to let them talk on. I am too much absorbed
+in thought and waffles to bandy words."
+
+"If I had a headache," said Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog, without, it must be
+said, in any way desiring to stem the waffle tide which was slowly but
+surely eating into the profits of the week--"if I had a headache I
+should not eat so many waffles, Mr. Idiot."
+
+"I suppose I ought not to," replied the Idiot, "but I can't help it,
+ma'am. Waffles are my weakness. Some men take to drink, some to gaming;
+I seek forgetfulness of woe in waffles. Mr. Whitechoker, will you kindly
+pass me that steaming ten of diamonds that is wasting its warmth upon
+the desert air before you?"
+
+Mr. Whitechoker, with a sigh which indicated that he had had his eye on
+the ten of diamonds himself, did as he was requested.
+
+"Many thanks," said the Idiot, transferring the waffle to his plate.
+"Let me see--that is how many?"
+
+"Five," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Eight," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Dear me!" ejaculated the Idiot. "Why can't you agree? I never eat less
+than twelve waffles, and now that you have failed to keep tab I shall
+have to begin all over again. Mary, bring me one dozen fresh waffles in
+squads of four. This is an ideal breakfast, Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog."
+
+"I am glad you are pleased," said the landlady, graciously. "My one aim
+is to satisfy."
+
+"You are a better shot than most women," said the Idiot. "I wonder why
+it is," he added, "that waffles are so generally modelled after
+playing-cards, and also why, having been modelled after playing-cards,
+there is not a full pack?"
+
+"Fifty-two waffles," said Mr. Whitechoker, "would be too many."
+
+"Fifty-three, including the joker," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"What do _you_ know about cards, John?" asked Mrs. Pedagog, severely.
+
+The Idiot laughed.
+
+"Did you ever hear that pretty little song of Gilbert and Sullivan's,
+Mr. Poet, 'Things are seldom what they seem'?" he asked.
+
+"Why shouldn't I know about playing-cards?" said Mr. Pedagog, acridly.
+"Mr. Whitechoker seems to be aware that a pack holds fifty-two cards--if
+he, why not I?"
+
+"I--ah--I of course have to acquaint myself with many vicious things
+with which I have very little sympathy," observed Mr. Whitechoker,
+blandly. "I regard cards as an abomination."
+
+"So do I," said Mr. Pedagog--"so do I. But even then I know a full
+house--I should say a full pack from a--er--a--er--"
+
+"Bob-tail flush," suggested the Idiot.
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Pedagog, "I am not well up in poker terms."
+
+"Then you ought to play," said the Idiot. "The man who doesn't know the
+game has usually great luck. But I am sorry, Mrs. Pedagog, that you are
+so strongly opposed to cards, for I was going to make a suggestion which
+I think would promote harmony in our little circle on waffle days. If
+you regard cards as wholly immoral, of course the suggestion is without
+value, since it involves two complete packs of cards--one cardboard pack
+and one waffle pack."
+
+"I don't object to cards as cards, Mr. Idiot," said the landlady. "It is
+the games people play with cards that I object to. They bring a great
+deal of unnecessary misery into the world, and for that reason I think
+it is better to avoid them altogether."
+
+"That is quite true," said the Idiot. "They do bring about much
+unhappiness. I know a young woman who became a victim of insomnia once
+because in a series of ten games of old maid she got the odd card seven
+times. Of course it wasn't entirely the cards' fault. Superstition had
+something to do with it. In fact, I sometimes think the fault lies with
+the people who play, and not with the cards. I owe much to the game of
+whist. It taught me to control my tongue. I should have been a regular
+talk-fiend if it hadn't been for whist."
+
+Mr. Pedagog looked unutterable things at the Idiot.
+
+"Are you laboring under the delusion that you have any control over your
+tongue?" he asked, savagely.
+
+"Most certainly," said the Idiot.
+
+"Well, I'll have to make a note of that," said Mr. Pedagog. "I have a
+friend who is making a collection of hallucinations."
+
+"If you'll give me his address," said the Idiot, "I'll send him
+thousands. For five dollars a dozen I'll invent hallucinations for him
+that people ought to have but haven't."
+
+"No," returned the School-master. "In his behalf, however, I thank you.
+He collects only real hallucinations, and he finds there are plenty of
+them without retaining a professional lunatic to supply him."
+
+"Very well," said the Idiot, returning to his waffles. "If at any time
+he finds the supply running short, I shall be glad to renew my offer."
+
+"You haven't unfolded your Harmony Promoting Scheme for Waffle Days,"
+suggested the Poet. "It has aroused my interest."
+
+"Oh, it is simple," said the Idiot. "I have noticed that on waffle days
+here most of us leave the table more or less dissatisfied. We find
+ourselves plunged into acrimonious discussions, which, to my mind,
+arise entirely from the waffles. Mr. Pedagog is a most amiable
+gentleman, and yet we find him this morning full of acerbity. On the
+surface of things I seem to be the cause of his anger, but in reality it
+is not I, but the waffles. He has seen me gradually absorbing them and
+it has irritated him. Every waffle that I eat _he_ might have had if I
+had not been here. If there had been no one here but Mr. Pedagog, he
+would have had all the waffles; as it is, his supply is limited. This
+affects his geniality. It makes him--"
+
+"Pardon me," said Mr. Pedagog. "But you are all wrong. I haven't thought
+of the things at all."
+
+"Consciously to yourself you have not," said the Idiot. "Subconsciously,
+however, you have. The Philosophy of the Unconscious teaches us that
+unknown to ourselves our actions are directly traceable to motives we
+wot not of. The truth of this is conclusively proven in this case. Even
+when I point out to you the facts in the case you deny their truth,
+thereby showing that you are not conscious of the real underlying motive
+for your irritation. Now, why is that irritation there? Because our
+several rights to the individual waffles that are served here are not
+clearly defined at the outset. When Mary brings in a steaming platter
+full of these delicious creations of the cook, Mr. Pedagog has quite as
+much right to the one with the six of hearts on it as I have, but I get
+it. He does not. Hence he is irritated, although he does not know it. So
+with Mr. Whitechoker. Five minutes ago he was hastening through the four
+of spades in order that he might come into possession of the ten of
+diamonds that lay smoking before him. As he was about to put the last
+spade in his mouth I requested him to hand me the ten of diamonds,
+having myself gulped down the deuce of clubs to get ahead of him. He
+couldn't decline to give me that waffle because he wanted it himself. He
+had to give it to me. He was irritated--though he did not know it. He
+sighed and gave me the waffle."
+
+"I did want it," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But I did not know that I
+sighed."
+
+"There you are," said the Idiot. "It is the Philosophy of the
+Unconscious again. If you are not conscious of so actual a thing as a
+sigh, how much the more unconscious must you be of something so subtle
+as motive?"
+
+"And your waffle-deck?" said the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally
+imbibes. "How will that solve the problem? It seems to me to complicate
+the problem. As it is, we have about thirty waffles, each one of which
+is a germ of irritation in the breast of the man who _doesn't_ eat it.
+If you have fifty-two waffles you have twenty-two more germs to sow
+discord in our midst."
+
+"You would have but for my scheme," said the Idiot. "I'd have a pack of
+cards at the table, and I'd deal them out just as you do in whist. Each
+card would represent the corresponding waffle. We'd begin breakfast by
+playing one hand after the manner of whist. Each man would keep his
+tricks, and when the waffles were served he would receive those, and
+those only, represented by the cards in the tricks he had taken. If you
+took a trick with the king of diamonds in it, you'd get the waffle with
+the king of diamonds on it, and so on. Every man would be clearly
+entitled through his skill in the game to the waffles that he ate."
+
+"Very good," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But suppose you had bad luck and
+took no tricks?"
+
+"Then," said the Idiot, "you'd have bad luck and get no waffles."
+
+"Tutt!" said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+And that was the sole criticism any of the boarders had to make,
+although there is reason to believe that the scheme had objectionable
+features to the majority of them, for as yet Progressive Waffles has not
+been played at Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog's.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+A Clearing-house for Poets
+
+
+"How is your Muse these days, Mr. Idiot?" asked the Bibliomaniac one
+Sunday morning while the mush was being served.
+
+"Flourishing," said the Idiot. "Just flourishing--and no more."
+
+"I should think you'd be pleased if she is flourishing," said the
+Doctor.
+
+"I'd rather she'd stop flourishing and do a little writing," said the
+Idiot. "She's a queer Muse, that one of mine. She has all the airs and
+graces of an ordinary type-writer with an unconquerable aversion to
+work."
+
+"You look upon your Muse as you would upon your type-writer, eh?" said
+Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Yes," said the Idiot. "That's all my Muse is, and she isn't even a
+capable type-writer. The general run of type-writers make sense of what
+you write, but my Muse won't. You may not believe it, but out of ten
+inspirations I had last week not one of them is fit for publication
+anywhere but in a magazine or a puzzle column. I don't know what is the
+matter with her, but when I sit down to dictate a comic sonnet she turns
+it into a serious jingle, and _vice versa_. We can't seem to get our
+moods to fit. When I want to be serious she's flippant, and when I
+become flippant she's serious."
+
+"She must be very serious most of the time," said the Doctor.
+
+"She is," said the Idiot, innocently. "But that's only because I'm
+flippant most of the time. I'm going to give her warning. If she doesn't
+brace up and take more interest in her work I'm going to get another
+Muse, that's all. I can't afford to have my income cut down fifty per
+cent. just because she happens to be fickle."
+
+"Maybe she is flirting with somebody else," suggested the Poet. "My Muse
+does that occasionally."
+
+"I doubt it," said the Idiot. "I haven't observed any other poet
+encroaching upon my particular province. Even you, good as you are,
+can't do it. But in any event I'm going to have a change. The day has
+gone by when a one-muse poet achieves greatness. I'm going to employ a
+half-dozen and try to corner the poetry market. Queer that in all these
+years that men have been writing poetry no one has thought of that.
+People get up grain corners, corners in railway stock, monopolies in gas
+and oil and everything else, about, but as yet no poet has cornered the
+market in his business."
+
+"That's easily accounted for," said the Bibliomaniac. "The poet
+controls only his own work, and if he has any sense he doesn't want to
+monopolize that."
+
+"That isn't my scheme at all," said the Idiot. "You have a monopoly of
+your own work always if you choose to avail yourself of it, and, as you
+say, a man would be crazy to do so. What I'd like to see established is
+a sort of Poetic Clearing-house Association. Supposing, for instance,
+that I opened an office in Wall Street--a Bank for Poets, in which all
+writers of verse could deposit their rhymes as they write them, and draw
+against them just as they do in ordinary banks with their money. It
+would be fine. Take a man like Swinburne, for instance, or our friend
+here. Our poet could take a sonnet he had written, endorse it, and put
+it in the bank. He'd be credited with one sonnet, and wouldn't have to
+bother his head about it afterwards. He could draw against it. If the
+Clearing-house company could dispose of it to a magazine his draft
+would be honored in cash to its full value, less discount charges, which
+would include postage and commissions to the company."
+
+"And suppose the company failed to dispose of it?" suggested the Poet.
+
+"They'd do just as ordinary banks do with checks--stamp it 'Not Good,'"
+said the Idiot. "That, however, wouldn't happen very often if the
+concern had an intelligent receiving-teller to detect counterfeits. If
+the receiving-teller were a man fit for the position and a poet brought
+in a quatrain with five lines in it, he could detect it at once and hand
+it back. So with comic poems. I might go there with a poem I thought was
+comic, and proceed to deposit it with the usual deposit slip. The teller
+would look at it a second, scrutinize the humor carefully, and then if
+it was not what I thought it, would stamp it 'Not Comic' or
+'Counterfeit.' It is perfectly simple."
+
+"Very simple," said Mr. Pedagog. "Though I should have used a synonym of
+simple to describe it. It's idiotic."
+
+"That's what people said of Columbus's idea that he could discover
+America," said the Idiot. "Everything that doesn't have dollars
+slathered all over it in plain view is idiotic."
+
+"The word slathered is new to me," said the School-master; "but I fancy
+I know what you mean."
+
+"The word slathered may be new to you," said the Idiot, "but it is a
+good word. I have used it with great effect several times. Whenever any
+one asks me that foolish question that is asked so often, 'What is the
+good word?' I always reply 'Slathered,' and the what's-the-good-word
+fiend goes off hurt in his mind. He doesn't know what I mean any more
+than I do, but it shuts him up completely, which is just so much
+gained."
+
+"I must confess," said the Poet, "that I cannot myself see where there
+is any money for your Rhyme Clearing-house. Ordinarily I quite approve
+of your schemes, but in this instance I go over to the enemy."
+
+"I don't say that it is a gold-mine," said the Idiot. "I doubt if I had
+every cent that is paid for poetry in a year by everybody to everybody
+that my income would reach one hundredth part of what I'd receive as a
+successful manufacturer of soap; but there would be more money in poetry
+than there is if by some pooling of our issues we could corner the
+market. Suppose every writer of a quatrain in America should send his
+whole product to us. We could say to the magazines, 'Gentlemen,
+quatrains are not quatraining as hard as they were. If you need a
+four-line bit of gloom and rhyme to finish off your thirty-second page,
+our price is twenty-five dollars instead of seventy-five cents, as of
+yore.' So with all other kinds of verse. We'd simply name our figure,
+force the editors to accept it, and unload. We might get caught on the
+last thirty or forty thousand, but our profits on the others would
+enable us to more than meet the losses."
+
+"And would you pay the author the twenty-five dollars?" asked Mr.
+Whitechoker.
+
+"Not if we were sane," replied the Idiot. "We'd pay the author two
+dollars and fifty cents, which is one dollar and seventy-five cents more
+than he gets now. _He_ couldn't complain."
+
+"And those that you couldn't sell?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"We'd simply mark 'Not Good' and return to the author. That's what
+happens to him now, so no objection could be raised to that. But there's
+still another side to this matter," said the Idiot. "Publishers would
+be quite as anxious to help it along as the poets. Dealing through us,
+they would be spared the necessity of interviewing poets, which I am
+informed is always painful because of the necessity which publishers
+labor under to give the poet to understand that they are in the business
+for profit, not for pleasure or mere love of sinking money in a
+magazine. So the publishers would keep a standing account of hard cash
+in our bank. Say a magazine used one hundred dollars' worth of verse in
+a month. The publisher at the beginning of the year would deposit twelve
+hundred dollars with us, and throughout the year would draw out sonnets,
+ballads, or pastels-in-metre just as he needed them. The checks would
+read something like this: 'The Poets' Clearing-house Association of the
+City of New York will pay to John Bluepencil, Editor, or Order, Ten
+Sonnets. (Signed) Blank Brothers & Co.' Or perhaps we'd receive a
+notice from a Southern publisher to this effect: 'Have drawn on you at
+sight for eight quatrains and a triolet.' Now, when you consider how
+many publishers there are who would always keep a cash balance in the
+treasury, you begin to get some notion as to how we could meet our
+running expenses and pay our quarterly dividends to our stockholders
+anyhow; and as for future dividends, I believe our loan department would
+net us a sufficient amount to make the stock gilt-edged."
+
+"You would have a loan department, eh?" said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"That would be popular," said the Poet; "but there again I dispute the
+profit. You could find plenty of poets who would borrow your funds, but
+I doubt the security of the loans."
+
+"All of your objections are based on misconceptions," said the Idiot.
+"The loan department would not lend money. It would lend poems for a
+consideration to those who are short and who need them to fulfil their
+obligations."
+
+"Who on earth would want to borrow a poem, I'd like to know?" said the
+Bibliomaniac.
+
+"Lovers, chiefly," said the Idiot. "Never having been a poet yourself,
+sir, you have no notion how far the mere faculty of being able to dash
+off a sonnet to a lady's eyebrow helps a man along in ultimately
+becoming the possessor of that eyebrow, together with the rest of the
+lady. _I_ have seen women won, sir, by a rondeau. In fact, I have myself
+completely routed countless unpoetic rivals by exploding in their ranks
+burning quatrains to the fair objects of our affections. With woman the
+man who can write a hymn of thanksgiving that he is permitted to gaze
+into her cerulean orbs has a great advantage over the wight who has to
+tell her she has dandy blue eyes in commonplace prose. The
+commonplace-prose wight knows it, too, and he'd pay ten per cent. of his
+salary during courtship if he could devise a plan by means of which he
+could pass himself off as a poet. To meet this demand, our loan
+department would be established. An unimaginative lover could come in
+and describe the woman he adored; the loan clerk would fish out a sonnet
+to fit the girl, and the lover could borrow it for ten days, just as
+brokers borrow stock. Armed with this he could go up to Harlem, or
+wherever else the maiden lived, and carry consternation into the hearts
+of his rivals by spouting the sonnet as nonchalantly as though he had
+just thought of it. So it would go on. For the following call he could
+borrow a ballad singing the glories of her raven locks, likening them to
+the beautiful night, or, if the locks were red instead of black, to the
+aurora borealis."
+
+"You'd have trouble finding a rhyme to borealis," said the Poet.
+
+"Tutt!" said the Idiot. "What's the matter with 'Glory, Alice,' 'Listen
+to my story, Alice,' 'I'm going to war so gory, Alice,' 'I fear you are
+a Tory, Alice' (this for a Revolutionary poem), or 'Come rowing in my
+dory, Alice'? There's no end to 'em."
+
+"If you'll write a rhyming dictionary I'll buy a copy," was the Poet's
+sole comment.
+
+"That will come later," said the Idiot. "Once get our clearing-house
+established, we can branch out into a general Poetry Trust and Supply
+Company that will make millions. We'll make so much money, by Jove!" he
+added, slapping the table enthusiastically, "that we can afford to go
+into the publishing business ourselves and bring out volumes of verse
+for anybody and everybody. We can deal in Fame! A man that couldn't
+write his own name so that anybody could read it could come to us and
+say: 'Gentlemen, I've got everything but brains. I want to be an author
+and 'mongst the authors stand. I am told it is delightful to see one's
+book in print. I haven't a book, but I've got a dollar or two, and if
+you'll put out a first-class book of poems under my name I'll pay all
+expenses and give you a royalty of twenty per cent. on every copy I give
+away!' No money in it? Bah! You gentlemen don't know. If you say fortune
+would not wait upon this venture _I_ say you are the kind of men who
+would sell government bonds for their value as mere engravings if you
+had the chance."
+
+"You certainly do draw a roseate picture," said Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"I do indeed," said the Idiot, "and the paint is laid on thick."
+
+"Well, I hope it goes," said the Poet. "I'll make a deposit the first
+day of three hundred and sixty-seven ballads, four hundred and
+twenty-three couplets, eighty-nine rondeaus, and one epic about ten
+yards in length, all of which I have in my desk at this moment."
+
+"Very well," said the Idiot, rising, "With that encouragement from you I
+feel warranted in ordering the 'Not Good' stamp at least."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Some Electrical Suggestions
+
+
+"If I were beginning life all over again," said the Idiot, "I'd be an
+electrician. It seems to me that of all modern pursuits, barring
+architecture perhaps, electricity is the most fascinating."
+
+"There's probably more money in it than there is in Idiocy, too, I
+fancy," said the Bibliomaniac, dryly.
+
+"Well, I should think so," assented the Idiot. "Idiocy is merely an
+intellectual diversion. Electricity is a practical science. Idiocy
+cannot be said to be anything more than a luxury, while electricity has
+become a necessity. I do not even claim that any real lasting benefit
+can come to the world through Idiocy, but in electricity are
+possibilities, not yet realized, for which the world will be distinctly
+better and happier."
+
+"It is kind of you to speak so highly of electricity," said the Doctor.
+"The science may now advance, knowing that you approve."
+
+"Approve?" cried the Idiot. "Approve is not the word, sir. I
+enthuse--and why should I not, feeling, as I do, that in the electrical
+current lies the germ of the Elixir of Life! I thoroughly believe that a
+bottle of liquefied electricity would make us all young."
+
+"Then don't take it!" said the School-master. "You have suffered from an
+aggravated case of youngness for as long a time as I have known you.
+Pray do nothing to intensify your youth."
+
+"I fear I shall be forced to deny myself that pleasure, Mr. Pedagog,"
+returned the Idiot, mildly, "for the unhappy reason that as yet the
+formula for the Electrical Elixir has not been discovered; that it will
+be discovered before I die I hope and pray, because, unlike the man in
+the hymn, I would live always. I'd like to be an immortal."
+
+"An immortal Idiot! Think of it!" said the Doctor.
+
+"I didn't expect much sympathy from you, Dr. Capsule," said the Idiot.
+"The man with car-horses to sell does not dote upon the trolley-car."
+
+"The application of the allegory is not entirely apparent," said the
+Doctor.
+
+"No?" said the Idiot. "I am surprised. I thought you intellectuals
+absorbed ideas more quickly. To deal in plain terms, since it appears to
+be necessary, a plan which involves the indefinite extension of mortal
+life and the elimination of bodily ills is not likely to receive the
+hearty endorsement of the medical profession. If a man could come home
+on a stormy night and offset the deleterious effects of wet feet by
+swallowing an electric pill, one containing two volts, like a two-grain
+quinine pill, for instance, with greater certainty than one feels in
+taking quinine, your profession would have to put up the shutters and go
+into some such business as writing articles on 'Measles as It Used to
+Be,' or 'Disorders of the Ante-Electrical Period.' The fine part of it
+all is that we should not have to rely for our medicines upon the state
+of the arsenic market, or the quinine supply, or the squill product of
+the year. Electric sparks can be made without number whether the sun
+shines or not. The failure of the Peruvian Bark Crop, or the destruction
+by an early frost of the Castor Oil Wells, would cease to be a hideous
+possibility to delicate natures. They could all fail for all mankind
+need fear, for electricity can be generated when and wherever one has
+need of it. If your electric pills were used up, and the chemist too far
+away from your house for you to get the supply replenished at the
+moment, you could put on your slippers and by walking up and down your
+carpeted floor for ten or fifteen minutes generate enough electricity to
+see you through. Of course you'd have to have a pair of
+dynamic-storage-reservoir slippers to catch the sparks as they flew, but
+I fancy they'd be less costly in the long run than the medicines we have
+to-day."
+
+"Why have wet feet at all if electricity is to be so all-powerful?"
+suggested Mr. Whitechoker. "Why not devise an electrical foot-protector
+and ward off all possibility of damp, cold feet?"
+
+"You couldn't do that with men and women constituted as they are," said
+the Idiot. "Your foot-protector would no doubt be a good thing, but so
+are rubber overshoes. Nothing will ever be patented to compel a man to
+keep his feet dry, and he won't do it except under compulsion, but once
+having his feet wet he will seek the remedy. It's the Elixir of Life
+that I bank on most, however. I don't believe there is one among us,
+excepting Mrs. Pedagog, to whom twenty-five was not the most delightful
+period of existence. To Mrs. Pedagog, as to all women, eighteen is
+the limit. But men at twenty-five and women at eighteen know so much,
+enjoy so much, regard themselves so highly! There is nothing _blase_
+about them then. Disillusion--which I think ought to be called
+dissolution--comes later. At thirty a man discovers that the things he
+knew at twenty-five aren't so; and as for a woman at twenty-five, if so
+be she is unmarried, her life is empty, and if so be she is married, she
+has cares in the shape of children and a husband, who as a theory was a
+poet, but who as a reality is a mere business machine who is oftentimes
+no fonder of staying at home than he was before he was married and went
+out to see her every night."
+
+"What a wise little pessimist he is!" said Mr. Pedagog to the Doctor.
+
+"Very. But I fail to comprehend why he branches off into Pessimism when
+Electricity was his text," said the Doctor.
+
+"Because he's the Id--" began the Bibliomaniac, but the Idiot
+interrupted him.
+
+"Don't jump fences, gentlemen, before you know whether they are made of
+barbed wire or not. I'm coming to the points you are bringing up, and if
+you are not careful they may puncture you," he said. "I am not in any
+sense a pessimist. Quite the contrary. I am an optimist. I'm not old
+enough or cross-grained enough as yet to be a pessimist, and it's
+because I don't want to be a pessimist that I want this Elixir of
+Electricity to hurry up and have itself patented. If men when they
+reached the age of twenty-five, and women at eighteen, would begin to
+take this they might live to be a thousand and yet retain all the spirit
+and feelings of twenty-five and eighteen. That's the connection, Dr.
+Capsule. If I could be twenty-five all my life I'd be as happy as a
+bird--and if I were the Poet here I'd immortalize that idea in verse--
+
+  "A man's the biggest thing alive
+  When he has got to twenty-five;
+  And as for woman, she's a queen
+  Whose summers number just eighteen."
+
+"That's a good idea," returned the Poet. "I'll make a note of that, and
+if I sell it I'll give you a commission."
+
+"No, don't do that," said the Idiot, slyly. "I shall be satisfied to see
+your name in print."
+
+The Poet having accepted this sally in the spirit in which it was
+intended, the Idiot resumed:
+
+"But of course the Elixir and the Electrical Pills are as yet all in the
+air. We haven't even taken a step in that direction. Mr. Edison and
+other wizards have been too much occupied with electric lights and
+telephones and phonographs and transatlantic notions to pay any
+attention to schemes to prolong life and keep us, despite our years,
+perpetually young."
+
+"I fancy they are likely to continue to do so," said the Doctor.
+"Whatever motive you may attribute to me for pooh-poohing your notions,
+I do so. No sane person wants to live forever, and if it were possible
+that all men might live forever, you'd soon find the world so crowded
+that the slighter actors in the human comedy would be shoved off the
+stage. There are enough people in the world now, without man's adding
+all future generations to their number and making death an
+impossibility."
+
+"That's all nonsense," said the Idiot. "My Elixir wouldn't make death an
+impossibility. Any man who thought he'd had enough at the end of a
+thousand years could stop taking the Elixir and shuffle off the mortal
+coil. As a matter of fact, not more than ten per cent. of the people in
+the world would have any faith in the Elixir at all. I know people
+to-day who do not take advantage of the many patent remedies that are
+within their reach, preferring the mustard-plaster and catnip-tea of
+their forefathers. There's where human nature works again. I believe
+that if I were myself the discoverer of the formula for my mixture, and
+for an advertisement secured a letter from a man saying, 'I was dying of
+old age, having reached the advanced period of ninety-seven; I took two
+bottles of your Electrical Elixir and am now celebrating my
+twenty-fifth birthday again,' ninety-nine per cent. of the people who
+read it would laugh and think it had strayed out of the funny column.
+People lack confidence in their fellow-men--that's all; but if they were
+twenty-five and eighteen that would all be changed. We are very trustful
+at twenty-five and eighteen, which is one of the things I like about
+those respective ages. When I was twenty-five I believed in everybody,
+including myself. Now--well, I'm older. But enough of schemes, which I
+must admit are somewhat visionary--as the telephone would have seemed
+one hundred years ago. Let us come down to realities in electricity. I
+can't see why more is not made of the phonograph for the benefit of the
+public. Take a man like Chauncey M. De Choate. He goes here and he goes
+there to make speeches, when I've no doubt he'd much prefer to stay at
+home cutting coupons off his bonds. Why can't the phonograph voice do
+_his_ duty? Instead of making the same speech over and over again, why
+can't some electrician so improve the phonograph that De Choate can say
+what he has to say through a funnel, have it impressed on a cylinder,
+duplicated and reduplicated and scattered broadcast over the world? If
+Mr. Edison could impart what poets call stentorian tones to the
+phonograph, he'd be doing a great and noble work. Again, for smaller
+things, like a dance, Why can't the phonograph be made useful at a ball?
+I attended one the other night, and when I wanted to dance the two-step
+the band played the polka; if I wished the polka it played a waltz. Some
+men can only dance the two-step--they don't know the waltz, the polka,
+or the schottische. Now why can't the phonograph come to the rescue? In
+almost any hotel in New York you can drop a nickel in a slot and hear
+Sousa's band on the phonograph. Why not extend the principle and have a
+phonograph for men who can dance nothing but the two-step, charged with
+'The Washington Post March,' and supplied with four tubes with receivers
+to put in the ears of the listeners? Make it small enough for a man to
+carry in his pocket; then at a ball he could go up to a young lady, ask
+her to dance, put two of the receivers in her ears, two in his, and trip
+the light fantastic toe utterly independently of what other people were
+dancing. It's possible. Mr. Edison could do it in five minutes, and
+every one would be satisfied. It might be rather droll to see two people
+dancing the two-step while eight others were fastened on to a lanciers
+phonograph, and a dozen or more other couples were dancing respectively
+the waltz, schottische, and Virginia reel, but we'd soon get used to
+that, and no man need become a wall-flower because he couldn't dance the
+dance that happened to be on. Furthermore, you'd be able to do away with
+the musicians, who always cast a pall over dances because of their
+superiority to the rest of the world in general and the dancers in
+particular."
+
+"How about your couple that prefer to sit out the dance on the stairs?"
+said the Poet, who, in common with the Idiot, knew several things about
+dances that Messrs. Pedagog and Whitechoker did not.
+
+"It would be particularly attractive to them," said the Idiot. "They
+could sit on the stairs and wax sentimental over any dreamy air the man
+happened to have in his vest-pocket. He could arrange all that
+beforehand--find out what song she thought divinest, and go loaded
+accordingly. And as for the things that usually happen on stairs at
+dances, as well as in conservatories at balls, with the aid of a
+phonograph a man could propose to a girl in the presence of a thousand
+people, and nobody but the maiden herself would be the wiser. I tell
+you, gentlemen," the Idiot added, enthusiastically, as he rose to
+depart, "if the phonograph people only knew their power they'd do great
+things. The patent vest-pocket phonograph for music at balls and
+proposals for bashful men alone would make their fortunes if they only
+could see it. I almost wish I were an electrician and not an Idiot."
+
+With which he left the room, and Mr. Pedagog whispered to Mrs. Pedagog
+that while he considered the Idiot very much of an idiot, there was no
+denying that at times he did get hold of ideas that were not wholly bad.
+
+"That's true," said the good landlady. "I think if you had proposed to
+me through a phonograph I should not have had to guess at what you meant
+and lead you on to express yourself more clearly. I didn't want to say
+yes until I was fully convinced that you meant what you didn't seem able
+to say."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Concerning Children
+
+
+The Poet had been away for a week, and on his return to his accustomed
+post at the breakfast-table seemed but a shadow of his former self. His
+eyes were heavy and his long locks appeared straggly enough for a man of
+far more extended reputation as a singer of melodious verse.
+
+"To judge from your appearance, Mr. Poet," said the Idiot, after
+welcoming his friend, "you've had a lively vacation. You certainly do
+not look as if you had devoted much of it to sleep."
+
+"I haven't," said the Poet, wearily, "I haven't averaged more than two
+hours of sleep daily since I went away."
+
+"I thought you told me you were going off into the country for a rest?"
+observed the Idiot.
+
+"I did--and this is what comes of it," returned the Poet. "I went to
+visit my sister up in Saratoga County. She has seven children."
+
+"Aha!" smiled the Idiot. "That's it, is it--well, I can sympathize with
+you. I've had experience with youngsters myself. I love 'em, but I like
+to take 'em on the instalment plan--very little at a time. I have a
+small cousin with a capacity for play and impudence that can't be
+equalled. His mother wrote me once and asked if I thought Hagenbeck, the
+wild-animal tamer, could be induced to take him in hand."
+
+"That's the kind," put in the Poet, his face lighting up a little upon
+discovering that there was some one at least at the board who could
+sympathize with him. "My sister's seven are all of the wild-animal
+variety. I'd rather fall in with seven tigers than put in another week
+with my beloved nephews and nieces."
+
+"Did they play Alp with you?" the Idiot asked, with a grin.
+
+"Alp?" said the Poet. "No--not that I know of. They may have, however. I
+was hardly conscious of what they were doing the last two days of my
+stay there. They simply overpowered me, and I gave in and became a toy
+for the time."
+
+"It isn't much fun being a toy," said the Idiot. "I think I'd rather
+play Alp."
+
+"What on earth is Alp?" asked Mr. Pedagog, his curiosity aroused. "I've
+heard enough absurd names for games in the last five years, but I must
+say, for pure idiocy and lack of suggestiveness, the name of Alp
+surpasses all."
+
+"That's as it should be," said the Idiot. "My small cousin invented
+Alp, and anything that boy does is apt to surpass all. He takes after me
+in some things. But Alp, while it may seem to lack suggestiveness as a
+name, is really just the name for the game. It's very simple. It is
+played by one Alp and as many chamois as desire to take a hand. As a
+rule the man plays the Alp and the children are the chamois. The man
+gets down on his hands and knees, puts his head on the floor, and has a
+white rug put on his back, the idea being that he is an Alp and the rug
+represents its snow-clad top."
+
+"And the chamois?" asked Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"The chamois climbs the Alp and jumps about on the top of it," said the
+Idiot. "My experience, based upon two hours a day of it for ten
+consecutive days, is that it's fun for the chamois but rough on the
+Alp; and I got so after a while that I really preferred business to
+pleasure and gave up playing Alp to return to work before my vacation
+was half over."
+
+"How do you score in this game of Alp?" said Mr. Pedagog, smiling
+broadly as he thought of there being an embryo idiot somewhere who could
+discomfit the one fate had thrown across his path.
+
+"I never had the strength to inquire," said the Idiot. "But my
+impression is that the game is to see which has the greater endurance,
+the chamois or the Alp. The one that gets tired of playing first loses.
+I always lost. My small cousin is a storehouse of nervous energy. I
+believe he could play choo-choo cars with a real engine and last longer
+than the engine--which being the case, I couldn't hope to hold out
+against him."
+
+"My nephews didn't play Alp," said the Poet. "I believe Alp would have
+been a positive relief to me. They made me tell them stories and poems
+from morning until night, and all night too, for one of them shared his
+room with me, and the worst of it all was that they all had to be new
+stories and new poems, so I was kept composing from one week's end to
+the other."
+
+"Why weren't you firm with them and say you wouldn't, and let that end
+it?" said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"Ha--ha!" laughed the Idiot. "That's fine, isn't it, Mr. Poet? It's very
+evident, Mr. Pedagog, that you're not acquainted with children. Now, my
+small cousin can make the same appeal over and over again in a hundred
+and fifty different ways. You may have the courage to say no a hundred
+and forty-nine times, but I have yet to meet the man who could make his
+no good with a boy of real persistent spirit. I can't do it. I've
+tried, but I've had to give in sooner or later."
+
+"Same way with me, multiplied by seven," said the Poet, with difficulty
+repressing a yawn. "I tried the no business on the morning of the third
+day, and gave it up as a hopeless case before the clock struck twelve."
+
+"I'd teach 'em," said Mr. Pedagog.
+
+"You'd have to learn 'em first," retorted the Idiot. "You can't do
+anything with children unless you understand them. You've got to
+remember several things when you have small boys to deal with. In the
+first place, they are a great deal more alert than you are. They are a
+great deal more energetic; they know what they want, and in getting it
+they haven't any dignity to restrain them, wherein they have a distinct
+advantage over you. Worst of all, down in your secret heart you want to
+laugh, even when they most affront you."
+
+"I don't," said Mr. Pedagog, shortly.
+
+"And why? Because you don't know them, cannot sympathize with them, and
+look upon them as evils to be tolerated rather than little minds to be
+cultivated. Hard a time as I have had as an Alp, I'd feel as if a great
+hole had been punched in my life if anything should deprive me of my
+cousin Sammie. He knows it and I know it, and that is why we are chums,"
+said the Idiot. "What I like about Sammie is that he believes in me," he
+added, a little wistfully. "I wouldn't mind doing that myself--if I
+could."
+
+"You might think differently if you suffered from seven Sammies the way
+the Poet does," said the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"There couldn't be seven Sammies," said the Idiot. "Sammie is unique--to
+me. But I am not at all narrow in this matter. I can very well imagine
+how Sammie could be very disagreeable to some people. I shouldn't care
+much for Alp, I suppose, if when night came on Sammie didn't climb up on
+my lap and tell me he thought I was the greatest man that ever lived
+next to his mother and father. That's the thing, Mr. Pedagog, that makes
+Alp tolerable--it's the sugar sauce to the batter pudding. There's a
+good deal of plain batter in the pudding, but with the sauce generously
+mixed in you don't mind it so much. That boy would be willing to go to
+sleep on a railway track if I told him I'd stand between him and the
+express train. If I told him I could hammer down Gibraltar with putty
+he'd believe it, and bring me his putty-blower to help along in the
+great work. That's why I think a man's so much better off if he is a
+father. Somebody has fixed a standard for him which, while he may know
+he can't live up to it, he'll try to live up to, and by aiming high he
+won't be so apt to hit low as he otherwise might. As Sammie's father
+once said to me: 'By Jove, Idiot,' he said, 'if men could _only_ be what
+their children think them!'"
+
+"Nevertheless they should be governed, curbed, brought up!" said the
+Bibliomaniac.
+
+"They should, indeed," said the Idiot. "And in such a fashion that when
+they are governed, curbed, and brought up they do not realize that they
+have been governed, curbed, and brought up. The man who plays the tyrant
+with his children isn't the man for me. Give me the man who, like my
+father, is his son's intimate, personal friend, his confidant, his chum.
+It may have worked badly in my case. I don't think it has--in any event,
+if I were ever the father of a boy I'd try to make him feel that I was
+not a despot in whose hands he was powerless, but a mainstay to fall
+back on when things seemed to be going wrong--fountain-head of good
+advice, a sympathizer--in short, a chum."
+
+"You certainly draw a pleasant picture," said Mr. Whitechoker, kindly.
+
+"Thank you," said the Idiot. "It's not original with me. My father drew
+it. But despite my personal regard for Sammie, I do think something
+ought to be done to alleviate the sufferings of the parent. Take the
+mother of a boy like Sammie, for instance. She has him all day and
+generally all night. Sammie's father goes to business at eight o'clock
+and returns at six, thinking he has worked hard, and wonders why it is
+that Sammie's mother looks so confoundedly tired. It makes him slightly
+irritable. She has been at home taking things easy all day. He has been
+in town working like a dog. What right has she to be tired? He doesn't
+realize that she has had to entertain Sammie at those hours of the day
+when Sammie is in his best form. She has found him trying to turn
+somersaults at the top of the back stairs; she has patiently borne his
+musical efforts on the piano, upon which he practises daily for a few
+minutes, generally with a hammer or a stick, or something else equally
+well calculated to beautify the keys; she has had to interfere in
+Sammie's well-meant efforts to instruct his small brother in the art of
+being an Indian who can whoop and scalp all in the same breath, thereby
+incurring for the moment Sammie's undying hatred; she has heard Sammie
+using language which an inconsiderate hired man has not scrupled to use
+in Sammie's presence; she has, with terror in her soul, watched him at
+play with a knife which some friend of the family who admires Sammie had
+given him, and has again incurred his enmity by finally, to avoid
+nervous prostration, taken that treasure from him. In short, she has
+passed a day of real tragedy. Sammie is farce to me, comedy to his
+father, and tragedy to his mother. Cannot something be done for her? Is
+there no way by means of which Sammie can be entertained during the day,
+for entertained he must be, that does not utterly destroy the nervous
+system of his mother? Can't some inventive genius who has studied the
+small boy, who knows the little ins and outs of his nature, and who,
+above all, sympathizes with those ins and outs, put his mind on the life
+of the woman of domestic inclination, and do something to make her life
+less of a burden and more of a joy?"
+
+"You are the man to do it," said the Bibliomaniac. "An inventive genius
+such as you are ought to be able to solve the problem."
+
+"Perhaps he ought to be," said the Idiot; "but we are not all what we
+ought to be, I among the number. Almost anything seems possible to me
+until I think of the mother at home all day with a dear, sweet, bright,
+energetic boy like Sammie. Then, I confess, I am utterly at a loss to
+know what to do."
+
+And then, as none of the boarders had any solution of the problem to
+suggest, I presume there was none among them who knew "How To Be
+Tranquil Though A Mother."
+
+Perhaps when women take up invention matters will seem more hopeful.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Dreamaline
+
+
+"Well, Mr. Idiot," said Mr. Pedagog, as the guests gathered about the
+table, "how goes the noble art of invention with you? You've been at it
+for some time now. Do you find that you have succeeded in your
+self-imposed mission and made the condition of the civilized less
+unbearable?"
+
+"Frankly, Mr. Pedagog, I have failed," said the Idiot, sadly. "Failed
+egregiously. I cannot find that of all the many schemes I have evolved
+for the benefit of the human race any single one has been adopted by
+those who would be benefited. Wherefore, with the exception of
+Dreamaline, which I have not yet developed to my satisfaction, I shall
+do no more inventing. What is the use? Even you, gentlemen, here have
+tacitly declined to accept my plan for the elimination of irritation on
+Waffle Days, a plan at once simple, picturesque, and efficacious. With
+such discouragement at home, what hope have I for better fortune
+abroad?"
+
+"It is dreadful to be an unappreciated genius!" said the Bibliomaniac,
+gruffly. "It's better to be a plain lunatic. A plain lunatic is at least
+free from the consciousness of failure."
+
+"Nevertheless, I'd rather be myself than any one else at this board,"
+rejoined the Idiot. "Unappreciated though I be, I am at least happy.
+Consciousness of failure need not necessarily destroy one's happiness.
+If I do the best I can with the tools I have I needn't weep because I
+fail, and with his consciousness of failure the unappreciated genius
+always has the consolation of knowing that it is not he but the world
+that is wrong. If I am a philanthropist and offer a thousand dollars to
+a charity, and the charity declines to accept it because I happen to
+have made it out of my interest in 'A Widows' and Orphans' Speculation
+Company, Large Losses a Surety,' it is the charity that loses, not I. So
+with my plans. Social expansion is not taken up by society--who dies, I
+or society? Capitalists decline to consider my proposition for a General
+Poetry Trust and Supply Company. Who loses a fine chance, I or the
+capitalists? I may be a little discouraged for the time being, but what
+of that? Invention isn't the only occupation in the world for me. I can
+give up Philanthropy and take up Misanthropy in a moment if I want
+to--and with Dreamaline I can rule the world."
+
+"Ah--just what is this Dreamaline?" asked Mr. Whitechoker, interested.
+
+"That, sir, is the question which I am now trying to answer for myself,"
+returned the Idiot. "If I could answer it, as I have said, I could rule
+the world--everybody could rule the world; that is to say, his own
+world. It is based on an old idea which has been found by some to be
+practicable, but it has never been developed to the point which I hope
+to attain."
+
+"Wake me up when he gets to the point, will you, kindly?" whispered the
+Doctor to the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"If you sleep until then you'll never wake," said the Bibliomaniac. "To
+my mind the Idiot never comes to a point."
+
+"You are a little too mysterious for me," observed Mr. Whitechoker. "I
+know no more about Dreamaline now than I did when you began."
+
+"Which is my case exactly," said the Idiot. "It is a vague, shadowy
+something as yet. It is only a germ lost in my cerebral wrinkles, but I
+hope by a persistent smoothing out of those wrinkles with what I might
+call the flat-iron of thought, I may yet lay hold of the microbe, and
+with it electrify the world. Once Dreamaline is discovered all other
+discoveries become as nothing; all other inventions for the amelioration
+of the condition of the civilized will be unnecessary, and even
+Progressive Waffles will cease to fascinate."
+
+"Perhaps," said the Bibliomaniac, "if you will give us a hint as to the
+nature of your plan in general we may be able to help you in carrying it
+out."
+
+"The Doctor might," said the Idiot. "My genial friend who occasionally
+imbibes might--even the Poet, with his taste for Welsh rarebits,
+might--but from you and Mr. Pedagog and Mr. Whitechoker I fear I should
+receive little assistance. Indeed, I am not sure but that Mr.
+Whitechoker might disapprove of the plan altogether."
+
+"Any plan which makes life happier and better is sure to meet with my
+approval," said Mr. Whitechoker.
+
+"With that encouragement, then," said the Idiot, "I will endeavor to lay
+before you my crowning invention. Dreamaline, as its name may suggest,
+should be a patent medicine, by taking which man should become oblivious
+to care."
+
+"What's the matter with champagne for that?" interrupted the Genial Old
+Gentleman who occasionally imbibes.
+
+"Champagne has some good points," said the Idiot. "But there are two
+drawbacks--the effects and the price. Both of these drawbacks, so far
+from making us oblivious to our cares, add to them. The superiority of
+Dreamaline over champagne, or even over beer, which is comparatively
+cheap, is that one dose of Dreamaline, costing one cent, will do more
+for the patient than one case of champagne or one keg of beer; it is not
+intoxicating or ruinous to the purse. Furthermore, it is more potent for
+good, since, under its genial influences, man can do that to which he
+aspires, or, what is perhaps better yet, merely imagine that he is doing
+that to which he aspires, and so avoid the disappointment which I am
+told always comes with ambition achieved.
+
+"Take, for instance, the literary man. We know of many cases in which
+the literary man has stimulated his imagination by means of drugs, and
+while under the influence has penned the most marvellous tales. That man
+sacrifices himself for the delectation of others. In order to write
+something for the world to rave over, he takes a dose which makes him
+rave, and which ultimately kills him. Dreamaline will make this
+entirely unnecessary. Instead of the writers taking hasheesh, the reader
+takes Dreamaline. Instead of one man having to smoke opium for millions,
+the millions take Dreamaline for themselves as individuals. I would have
+the scientists, then, the chemists, study the subject carefully, decide
+what quality it is in hasheesh that makes a writer conceive of these
+horrible situations, put this into a nostrum, and sell it to those who
+like horrible situations, and let them dream their own stories."
+
+"Very interesting," said the Bibliomaniac, "but all readers do not like
+horrible situations. We are not _all_ morbid."
+
+"For which we should be devoutly thankful," said the Idiot. "But your
+point is not well taken. On each bottle of what I should call 'Literary
+Dreamaline,' to distinguish it from 'Art Dreamaline,' 'Scientific
+Dreamaline,' and so on, I should have printed explicit directions
+showing consumers how the dose should be modified to meet the consumer's
+taste. One man likes a De Maupassant story. Let him take his Dreamaline
+straight, lie down and dream. He'd get his De Maupassant story with a
+vengeance. Another likes the modern story in realism--a story in which a
+prize might be offered to the reader who finds a situation, an incident
+in the three hundred odd pages of the book he reads. This man could take
+a spoonful of Dreamaline and dilute it to his taste. A drop of
+Dreamaline, which taken raw would give a man a dream like Doctor Jekyll
+and Mr. Hyde, put into a hogshead of pure water would enable the man who
+took a spoonful of it before going to bed to fall asleep and walk
+through a three-volume novel by Henry James. Thus every man could get
+what he wanted at small expense. Dreamaline for readers sold at a
+dollar a quart would give every consumer as big and varied a library as
+he wished, and would be a great saving to the eyes. People would have
+more time for other pleasures if by taking a dose of Dreamaline before
+retiring they could get all their literature in their sleeping hours.
+Then every bottle would pay for itself ten times over if on awakening
+the next morning the consumer would write out the story he had dreamed
+and publish it for the benefit of those who were afraid to take the
+medicine."
+
+"You wouldn't make much money out of it, though," said the Poet. "If one
+bottle sufficed for a library you wouldn't find much of a demand."
+
+"That could be got around in two ways," said the Idiot. "We could
+copyright every bottle of Dreamaline and require the consumers to pay us
+a royalty on every book inspired by it, or we could ourselves take what
+I would call Financial Dreamaline, one dose of which would make a man
+feel like a millionaire. Life is only feeling after all. If you feel
+like a millionaire you are as happy as a millionaire--happier, in fact,
+because in reality you do not have to wear your thumbs out cutting
+coupons on the first of every month. Then I should have Art Dreamaline.
+You could have it arranged so that by a certain dose you could have old
+masters all over your house; by another dose you could get a collection
+of modern French paintings, and by swallowing a whole bottle you could
+dream that your walls were lined with mysteries that would drive the
+Impressionists crazy with envy. In Scientific Dreamaline you would get
+ideas for invention that would revolutionize the world."
+
+"How about the poets and the humorists?" asked the Poet.
+
+"They'd be easy," said the Idiot. "I wouldn't have any hasheesh in the
+mixture for them. Welsh rarebit would do, and you'd get poems so
+mysterious and jokes so uproarious that the whole world would soon be
+filled with wonder and with laughter. In short, Dreamaline would go into
+every walk of life. Music, letters, art, poetry, finance. Every man
+according to his bent or his tastes could partake. Every man could make
+with it his own little world in which he was himself the prime mover,
+and so harmless would it be that when next morning he awoke he would be
+as tranquil and as happy as a babe. I hope, gentlemen, to see the day
+when Dreamaline is an established fact, when we cannot enter a household
+in the land that does not have hanging on its walls, after the manner of
+those glass fire hand-grenades, a wire rack holding a row of bottles
+labelled Art, Letters, Music, and so on, instead of libraries,
+picture-galleries, music-rooms, and laboratories. The rich and the poor
+alike may have it. The child who loves to have stories told to him will
+cry for it; the poor wanderer who loves opera and cannot afford even to
+pass the opera-house in a cable-car, can go into a drug-store, and for a
+cent, begged of a kind-hearted pedestrian on the street, purchase a
+sufficient quantity to imagine himself a box-holder; the ambitious
+statesman can through its influences enjoy the sensation of thinking
+himself President of the United States. Not a man, woman, or child lives
+but would find it a boon, and as harmless as a Graham cracker. That,
+gentlemen, is my crowning invention, and until I see it realized I
+invent no more. Good-morning."
+
+And in a moment he was gone.
+
+"Well!" said Mr. Pedagog. "That's the cap to the climax."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog.
+
+"Where do you suppose he got the idea?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
+
+"I don't know," said the Doctor. "But I suspect that without knowing it
+he's had some of the stuff he describes. Most of his schemes indicate
+it, and Dreamaline, I think, proves it."
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Inventions of the Idiot, by John Kendrick Bangs
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