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I AM sorry to observe,” said the Idiot, as he sat down at the breakfast-table yesterday morning, “that the good old customs of my youthful days are dying out by slow degrees, and the celebrations that once filled my childish soul with glee are no longer a part of the pleasures of the young. Actually, Mr. Whitechoker, I got through the whole day yesterday without sitting on a single pin or smashing my toes against a brickbat hid beneath a hat. What on earth can be coming over the boys of the land that they no longer avail themselves of the privileges of the fool-tide?”
“Fool-tide’s good,” said Mr. Brief. “Where did you get that?”
“Oh, I pried it out of my gray-matter ’way back in the last century,” said the Idiot. “It grew out of a simple little prank I played one April 1st upon an uncle of mine. I bored a hole in the middle of a pine log and filled it with powder. We had it that night on the hearth, and a moment later there wasn’t any hearth. In talking the matter over later with my father and mother and the old gentleman, in order to turn the discussion into more genial channels, I asked why, if the Yule-log was appropriate for the Yule-tide, the Fool-log wasn’t appropriate for the Fool-tide.”
“I hope you got the answer you deserved,” said the Bibliomaniac.
“I did,” sighed the Idiot. “I got all there was coming to me—slippers, trunk-strap, hair-brush, and plain hand; but it was worth it. All the glories of Vesuvius, Etna, Popocatepetl, and Pelée rolled into one could never thereafter induce in me anything approaching that joyous sensation that I derived from the spectacle of that fool-log and that happy hearth soaring upthrough the chimney together, hand in hand, and taking with them such portions of the flues, andirons, and other articles of fireplace vertu as cared to join them in their upward flight.”
“You must have been a holy terror as a boy,” said the Doctor. “I should not have cared to live on your block.”
“Oh, I wasn’t so bad,” observed the Idiot. “I never was vicious or malicious in what I did. If I poured vitriol into the coffee-pot at breakfast my father and mother knew that I didn’t do it to give pain to anybody. If I hid under my maiden aunt’s bed and barked like a bull-dog after she had retired, dear old Tabitha knew that it was all done in a spirit of pleasantry. When I glued my grandfather’s new teeth together with stratina, that splendid old man was perfectly aware that I had no grudge I was trying thus to repay; and certainly the French teacher at school, when he sat down on an iron bear-trap I had set for him in his chair, never entertained the notion that there was the slightest animosity in my act.”
“By jingo!” cried the Bibliomaniac. “I’d have spanked you good and hard if I’d been your mother.”
“Don’t you fret—she did it; that is, she did up to the time I was ten years old, and then she had such a shock she gave up corporeal punishment altogether,” said the Idiot.
“Had a shock, eh?” smiled the Lawyer. “Nearly killed you, I suppose, giving you what you deserved?”
“No,” said the Idiot. “Spanked me with a hair-brush without having removed a couple of Excelsior torpedoes from my pistol-pocket. On the second whack I appeared to explode. Poor woman! She didn’t know I was loaded, and from that time on she was as afraid of me as most other women are of a gun.”
“I’d have turned you over to your father,” said the Bibliomaniac, indignantly.
“She did,” said the Idiot, sadly. “I never used explosives again. In later years I took up the milder April-fool diversions, such as filling the mucilage-pot with ink andthe ink-pot with mucilage; mixing the granulated sugar with white sand; putting powdered brick into the red-pepper pot; inserting kerosene-oil into the sweet-oil bottle, and little things like that. I squandered a whole dollar one April-fool’s-day sending telegrams to my uncles and aunts, telling them to come and dine with us that night; and they all came, too, although my father and mother were dining out that evening, and—oh dear, April-fool’s-day is not what it used to be. The boys and girls of the present generation are little old men and women with no pranks left in them. Why, I don’t believe that nine out of ten boys, who are about to enter college this spring, could rig up a successful tick-tack on a window to save their lives; and the joy of carrying a piece of twine across the sidewalk from a front-door knob to a lamp-post, hat-high, and then sitting back in the seclusion of a convenient area and watching the plug-hats of the people go down before it—that is a joy that seems to be wholly untasted of the present generation of infantile dignitaries that we call theyouth of the land. What is the matter with ’em, do you suppose?”
“I guess we’re getting civilized,” said Mr. Brief. “That seems to me to be the most likely explanation of this deplorable situation, as you appear to think it. For my part, I’m glad if what you say is true. Of all rotten things in the world the practical jokes of April-fool’s-day bear away the palm. There was a time, ten years ago, when I hardly dared eat anything on the first of April. I was afraid to find my coffee made of ink, my muffin stuffed with cotton, cod-liver oil in my salad-dressing, and mayonnaise in my cream-puffs. Such tricks are the tricks of barbarians, and I shall rejoice when April 1st as a day of special privilege for idiots and savages has been removed from the calendar.”
“I am afraid,” said Mr. Whitechoker, “that I, too, must join the ranks of those who rejoice if the old-time customs of the day are now honored more in the breach than in the observance. Ever since that unhappy Sunday morning some years agowhen somebody substituted a breakfast bill-of-fare for the card containing the notes for my sermon, I have mistrusted the humor of the April-fool joke. Instead of my text, as I glanced at what I supposed was my note-card, my eyes fell upon the statement that fruit taken from the table would be charged for; instead of my firstly, secondly, thirdly, and fourthly, my eyes were confronted by Fish, Eggs, Hot Bread, and To Order. And, finally, in place of the key-line of my peroration, what should obtrude itself upon my vision but that coarse and vulgar legend: Corkage, one dollar. I never found out who did it, and, as a Christian man, I hope I never shall, for I should much deprecate the spirit of animosity with which I should inevitably regard the person who had so offended.”
“I’ll bet you preached a bully good sermon, allee samee,” said the Idiot.
“Well,” smiled Mr. Whitechoker, “the congregation did seem to think that it held more fire than usual; but I can assure you, my young friend, it was more the fire ofexternal wrath than of an inward spiritual grace.”
“Well,” said the Bibliomaniac, “we ought to be thankful the old tricks are going out. As Mr. Brief suggests, we are beginning to be civilized—”
“I don’t think it’s civilization,” said the Idiot. “I think the kids are just discouraged, that’s all. They’re clever, these youngsters, but when it comes to putting up games, they’re not in it with their far more foxy fathers. What’s the use of playing April-fool jokes on your daddy, when your daddy is playing April-fool jokes on the public all the year round? That’s the way they reason. No son of George W. Midas, the financier, is going to get any satisfaction out of handing his father a loaded cigar, when he knows that the old man is handling that sort of thing every day in his business as a promoter of the United States Hot Air Company. What fun is there in giving your sister a caramel filled with tabasco-sauce when you can watch your father selling eleven dollars’ worth of Amalgamated Licorice stock tothe dear public for forty-seven fifty? The gum-drop filled with cotton loses its charm when you contrast it with Consolidated Radium containing one part of radium and ninety-nine parts of water. Who cares to hide a clay brick under a hat for somebody to kick, when there are concerns in palatial offices all over town selling gold bricks to a public that doesn’t seem to have any kick left in it? I tell you it has discouraged the kid to see to what scientific heights the April-fool industry has been developed, and as a result he has abandoned the field. He knows he can’t compete.”
“That’s all right as an explanation of the youngster whose parent is engaged in that sort of business,” said the Doctor. “But there are others.”
“True,” said the Idiot. “The others stay out of it out of sheer pity. When they are tempted to sew up the legs of their daddy’s trousers in order to fitly celebrate the day, or to fill his collar-box with collars five sizes too small for him, they say, ‘No. Let us refrain. The governor has had troubleenough with his International Yukon Anticipated Brass shares this year. He’s had all the fooling he can stand. We will give the old gentleman a rest!’ Fact is, come to look at it, the decadence of April 1st as a day of foolery for the young is no mystery, after all. The youngsters are not more civilized than we used to be, but they have had the intelligence to perceive the exact truth of the situation.”
“Which is?” asked Mr. Brief.
“That the ancient art of practical joking has become a business. April-fool’s-day has been incorporated by the leading financiers of the age, and is doing a profitable trade all over the world all the year round. Private enterprise is simply unable to compete.”
“I am rather surprised, nevertheless,” said Mr. Brief, “that you yourself have abandoned the field. You are just the sort of person who would keep on in that kind of thing, despite the discouragements.”
“Oh, I haven’t abandoned the field,” said the Idiot. “I did play an April-fool joke last Friday.”
“What was that?” asked Mr. Whitechoker, interested.
“I told Mrs. Pedagog that I would pay my bill to-morrow,” replied the Idiot, as he rose from the table and left the room.
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WELL, Mr. Idiot,” said Mrs. Pedagog, genially, as the Idiot entered the breakfast-room, “what can I do for you this fine spring morning? Will you have tea or coffee?”
“I think I’d like a cup of boiled iron, with two lumps of quinine and a spoonful of condensed nerve-milk in it,” replied the Idiot, wearily. “Somehow or other I have managed to mislay my spine this morning. Ethereal mildness has taken the place of my backbone.”
“Those tired feelings, eh?” said Mr. Brief.
“Yeppy,” replied the Idiot. “Regular thing with me. Every year along about the middle of April I have to fasten a poker on my back with straps, in order to standup straight; and as for my knees—well, I never know where they are in the merry, merry spring-time. I’m quite sure that if I didn’t wear brass caps on them my legs would bend backward. I wonder if this neighborhood is malarious.”
“Not in the slightest degree,” observed the Doctor. “This is the healthiest neighborhood in town. The trouble with you is that you have a swampy mind, and it is the miasmatic oozings of your intellect that reduce you to the condition of physical flabbiness of which you complain. You might swallow the United States Steel Trust, and it wouldn’t help you a bit, and ten thousand bottles of nerve-milk, or any other tonic known to science, would be powerless to reach the seat of your disorder. What you need to stiffen you up is a pair of those armored trousers the Crusaders used to wear in the days of chivalry, to bolster up your legs, and a strait-jacket to keep your back up.”
“Thank you, kindly,” said the Idiot. “If you’ll give me a prescription, which I can have made up at your tailor’s, I’ll have itfilled, unless you’ll add to my ever-increasing obligation to you by lending me your own strait-jacket. I promise to keep it straight and to return it the moment you feel one of your fits coming on.”
The Doctor’s response was merely a scornful gesture, and the Idiot went on:
“It’s always seemed a very queer thing to me that this season of the year should be so popular with everybody,” he said. “To me it’s the mushiest of times. Mushy bones; mushy poetry; mush for breakfast, fried, stewed, and boiled. The roads are mushy; lovers thaw out and get mushier than ever.
“In the spring the blasts of winter all are stilled in solemn hush.In the spring the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of mush.In the spring—”
“In the spring the blasts of winter all are stilled in solemn hush.In the spring the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of mush.In the spring—”
“In the spring the blasts of winter all are stilled in solemn hush.In the spring the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of mush.In the spring—”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself to trifle with so beautiful a poem,” interrupted the Bibliomaniac, indignantly.
“Who’s trifling with a beautiful poem?” demanded the Idiot.
“You are—‘Locksley Hall’—and you know it,” retorted the Bibliomaniac.
“Locksley nothing,” said the Idiot. “What I was reciting is not from ‘Locksley Hall’ at all. It’s a little thing of my own that I wrote six years ago called ‘Spring Unsprung.’ It may not contain much delicate sentiment, but it’s got more solid information in it of a valuable kind than you’ll find in ten ‘Locksley Halls’ or a dozen Etiquette Columns in theLady’s Away From Home Magazine. It has saved a lot of people from pneumonia and other disorders of early spring, I am quite certain, and the only person I ever heard criticise it unfavorably was a doctor I know who said it spoiled his business.”
“I should admire to hear it,” said the Poet. “Can’t you let us have it?”
“Certainly,” replied the Idiot. “It goes on like this:
“In the spring I’ll take you driving, take you driving, Maudy dear,But I beg of you be careful at this season of the year.It is true the birds are singing, singing sweetly all their notes,But you’ll later find them wearing canton-flannel ’round their throats.It is true the lark doth warble, ‘Spring is here,’ with bird-like fire,‘All is warmth and all is genial,’ but I fear the lark’s a liar.All is warmth for fifteen minutes, that is true; but wait awhile,And you’ll find that April’s weather has not ever changed its style;And beware of April’s weather, it is pleasant for a spell,But, like little Johnny’s future, you can’t always sometimes tell.Often modest little violets, peeping up from out their bedsIn the balmy morn by night-time have bad colds within their heads;And the buttercup and daisy twinkling gayly on the lawn,Sing by night a different story from their carollings at dawn;And the blossoms of the morning, hailing spring with joyous frenzy,When the twilight falls upon them often droop with influenzy.So, dear Maudy, when we’re driving, put your linen duster on,And your lovely Easter bonnet, if you wish to, you may don;But be careful to have with you sundry garments warm and thick:Woollen gloves, a muff, and ear-tabs, from the ice-box get the pick;There’s no telling what may happen ere we’ve driven twenty miles,April flirts with chill December, and is full of other wiles.Bring your parasol, O Maudy—it is good fortête-à-têtes;At the same time you would better also bring your hockey skates.There’s no telling from the noon-tide, with the sun a-shining bright,Just what kind of winter weather we’ll be up against by night.”
“In the spring I’ll take you driving, take you driving, Maudy dear,But I beg of you be careful at this season of the year.It is true the birds are singing, singing sweetly all their notes,But you’ll later find them wearing canton-flannel ’round their throats.It is true the lark doth warble, ‘Spring is here,’ with bird-like fire,‘All is warmth and all is genial,’ but I fear the lark’s a liar.All is warmth for fifteen minutes, that is true; but wait awhile,And you’ll find that April’s weather has not ever changed its style;And beware of April’s weather, it is pleasant for a spell,But, like little Johnny’s future, you can’t always sometimes tell.Often modest little violets, peeping up from out their bedsIn the balmy morn by night-time have bad colds within their heads;And the buttercup and daisy twinkling gayly on the lawn,Sing by night a different story from their carollings at dawn;And the blossoms of the morning, hailing spring with joyous frenzy,When the twilight falls upon them often droop with influenzy.So, dear Maudy, when we’re driving, put your linen duster on,And your lovely Easter bonnet, if you wish to, you may don;But be careful to have with you sundry garments warm and thick:Woollen gloves, a muff, and ear-tabs, from the ice-box get the pick;There’s no telling what may happen ere we’ve driven twenty miles,April flirts with chill December, and is full of other wiles.Bring your parasol, O Maudy—it is good fortête-à-têtes;At the same time you would better also bring your hockey skates.There’s no telling from the noon-tide, with the sun a-shining bright,Just what kind of winter weather we’ll be up against by night.”
“In the spring I’ll take you driving, take you driving, Maudy dear,But I beg of you be careful at this season of the year.It is true the birds are singing, singing sweetly all their notes,But you’ll later find them wearing canton-flannel ’round their throats.It is true the lark doth warble, ‘Spring is here,’ with bird-like fire,‘All is warmth and all is genial,’ but I fear the lark’s a liar.All is warmth for fifteen minutes, that is true; but wait awhile,And you’ll find that April’s weather has not ever changed its style;And beware of April’s weather, it is pleasant for a spell,But, like little Johnny’s future, you can’t always sometimes tell.Often modest little violets, peeping up from out their bedsIn the balmy morn by night-time have bad colds within their heads;And the buttercup and daisy twinkling gayly on the lawn,Sing by night a different story from their carollings at dawn;And the blossoms of the morning, hailing spring with joyous frenzy,When the twilight falls upon them often droop with influenzy.So, dear Maudy, when we’re driving, put your linen duster on,And your lovely Easter bonnet, if you wish to, you may don;But be careful to have with you sundry garments warm and thick:Woollen gloves, a muff, and ear-tabs, from the ice-box get the pick;There’s no telling what may happen ere we’ve driven twenty miles,April flirts with chill December, and is full of other wiles.Bring your parasol, O Maudy—it is good fortête-à-têtes;At the same time you would better also bring your hockey skates.There’s no telling from the noon-tide, with the sun a-shining bright,Just what kind of winter weather we’ll be up against by night.”
“Referring to the advice,” said Mr. Brief, “that’s good. I don’t think much of the poetry.”
“There was a lot more of it,” said the Idiot, “but it escapes me at the moment. Four lines I do remember, however:
“Pin no faith to weather prophets—all their prophecies are fakes,Roulette-wheels are plain and simple to the notions April takes.Keep your children in the nursery—never mind it if they pout—And, above all, do not let your furnace take an evening out.”
“Pin no faith to weather prophets—all their prophecies are fakes,Roulette-wheels are plain and simple to the notions April takes.Keep your children in the nursery—never mind it if they pout—And, above all, do not let your furnace take an evening out.”
“Pin no faith to weather prophets—all their prophecies are fakes,Roulette-wheels are plain and simple to the notions April takes.Keep your children in the nursery—never mind it if they pout—And, above all, do not let your furnace take an evening out.”
“Well,” said the Poet, “if you’re going to the poets for advice, I presume your rhymes are all right. But I don’t think it is the mission of the poet to teach people common-sense.”
“That’s the trouble with the whole tribe of poets,” said the Idiot. “They think they are licensed to do and say all sorts of things that other people can’t do and say. In a way I agree with you that a poem shouldn’t necessarily be a treatise on etiquette or a sequence of health hints, but it should avoid misleading its readers. Take that fellow who wrote
“‘Sweet primrose time! When thou art hereI go by grassy ledgesOf long lane-side, and pasture mead,And moss-entangled hedges.’
“‘Sweet primrose time! When thou art hereI go by grassy ledgesOf long lane-side, and pasture mead,And moss-entangled hedges.’
“‘Sweet primrose time! When thou art hereI go by grassy ledgesOf long lane-side, and pasture mead,And moss-entangled hedges.’
That’s very lovely, and, as far as it goes, it is all right. There’s no harm in doing what the poet so delicately suggests, but I think there should have been other stanzas for the protection of the reader like this:
“But have a care, oh, readers fair,To take your mackintoshes,And on your feet be sure to wearA pair of stanch galoshes.“Nor should you fail when seeking outThe primrose, golden yeller,To have at hand somewhere aboutA competent umbrella.
“But have a care, oh, readers fair,To take your mackintoshes,And on your feet be sure to wearA pair of stanch galoshes.“Nor should you fail when seeking outThe primrose, golden yeller,To have at hand somewhere aboutA competent umbrella.
“But have a care, oh, readers fair,To take your mackintoshes,And on your feet be sure to wearA pair of stanch galoshes.
“Nor should you fail when seeking outThe primrose, golden yeller,To have at hand somewhere aboutA competent umbrella.
Thousands of people are inspired by lines like the original to go gallivanting all over the country in primrose time, to return at dewy eve with all the incipient symptoms of pneumonia. Then there’s the case of Wordsworth. He was one of the loveliest of the Nature poets, but he’s eternally advising people to go out in the early spring and lie on the grass somewhere, listening to cuckoos doing their cooking, watching thedaffodils at their daily dill, and hearing the crocus cuss; and some sentimental reader out in New Jersey thinks that if Wordsworth could do that sort of thing, and live to be eighty years old, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t do the same thing. What’s the result? He lies on the grass for two hours and suffers from rheumatism for the next ten years.”
“Tut!” said the Poet. “I am surprised at you. You can’t blame Wordsworth because some New Jerseyman makes a jackass of himself.”
“In a way all writers should be responsible for the effect of what they write on their readers,” said the Idiot. “When a poet of Wordsworth’s eminence, directly or indirectly, advises people to go out and lie on the grass in early spring, he owes it to his public to caution them that in some localities it is not a good thing to do. A rhymed foot-note—
“This habit, by-the-way, is goodIn climes south of the Mersey;But, I would have it understood,It’s risky in New Jersey—
“This habit, by-the-way, is goodIn climes south of the Mersey;But, I would have it understood,It’s risky in New Jersey—
“This habit, by-the-way, is goodIn climes south of the Mersey;But, I would have it understood,It’s risky in New Jersey—
would fulfil all the requirements of the special individual to whom I have referred, and would have shown that the poet himself was ever mindful of the welfare of his readers.”
The Poet was apparently unconvinced, so the Idiot continued:
“Mind you, old man, I think all this poetry is beautiful,” he said; “but you poets are too prone to confine your attention to the pleasant aspects of the season. Here, for instance, is a poet who asks
‘What are the dearest treasures of spring?’
‘What are the dearest treasures of spring?’
‘What are the dearest treasures of spring?’
and then goes on to name the cheapest as an answer to his question. The primrose, the daffodil, the rosy haze that veils the forest bare, the sparkle of the myriad-dimpled sea, a kissing-match between the sunbeams and the rain-drops, reluctant hopes, the twitter of swallows on the wing, and all that sort of thing. You’d think spring was an iridescent dream of ecstatic things; but of the tired feeling that comes over you, the spineof jelly, the wabbling knee, the chills and fever that come from sniffing ‘the scented breath of dewy April’s eve,’ the doctor’s bills, and such like things are never mentioned. It isn’t fair. It’s all right to tell about the other things, but don’t forget the drawbacks. If I were writing that poem I’d have at least two stanzas like this:
“And other dearest treasures of springAre daily draughts of withering, blithering squills,To cure my aching bones of darksome chills;And at the door my loved physician’s ring;“The tender sneezes of the early day;The sudden drop of Mr. Mercury;The veering winds from S. to N. by E.—And hunting flats to move to in the May.
“And other dearest treasures of springAre daily draughts of withering, blithering squills,To cure my aching bones of darksome chills;And at the door my loved physician’s ring;“The tender sneezes of the early day;The sudden drop of Mr. Mercury;The veering winds from S. to N. by E.—And hunting flats to move to in the May.
“And other dearest treasures of springAre daily draughts of withering, blithering squills,To cure my aching bones of darksome chills;And at the door my loved physician’s ring;
“The tender sneezes of the early day;The sudden drop of Mr. Mercury;The veering winds from S. to N. by E.—And hunting flats to move to in the May.
You see, that makes not only a more comprehensive picture, but does not mislead anybody into the belief the spring is all velvet, which it isn’t by any means.”
“Oh, bosh!” cried the Poet, very much nettled, as he rose from the table. “I suppose if you had your way you’d have allpoetry submitted first to a censor, the way they do with plays in London.”
“No, I wouldn’t have a censor; he’d only increase taxes unnecessarily,” said the Idiot, folding up his napkin, and also rising to leave. “I’d just let the Board of Health pass on them; it isn’t a question of morals so much as of sanitation.”
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AHA!” cried the Poet, briskly rubbing his hands together, and drawing a deep breath of satisfaction, “these be great days for people who are fond of the chase, who love the open, and who would commune with Nature in her most lovely mood. Just look out of that window, Mr. Idiot, and drink in the joyous sunshine. Egad! sir, even the asphalted pavement and the brick-and-mortar façade of the houses opposite, bathed in that golden light, seem glorified.”
“Thanks,” said the Idiot, wearily, “but I guess I won’t. I’m afraid that while I was drinking in those glorified flats opposite and digesting the golden-mellow asphalt, you would fasten that poetic grip of yours uponmy share of the blossoming buckwheats. Furthermore, I’ve been enjoying the chase for two weeks now, and, to tell you the honest truth, I am long on it. There is such a thing as chasing too much, so if you don’t mind I’ll sublet my part of the contract for gazing out of the window at gilt-edged Nature as she appears in the city to you. Mary, move Mr. Poet’s chair over to the window so that he may drink in the sunshine comfortably, and pass his share of the sausages to me.”
“What have you been chasing, Mr. Idiot?” asked the Doctor. “Birds or the fast-flitting dollar?”
“Flats,” said the Idiot.
“I didn’t know you Wall Street people needed to hunt flats,” said the Bibliomaniac. “I thought they just walked into your offices and presented themselves for skinning.”
“I don’t mean the flats we live on,” explained the Idiot. “It’s the flats we live in that I have been after.”
The landlady looked up inquiringly. Mr. Idiot’s announcement sounded ominous.
“To my mind, flat-hunting,” the Idiot continued, “is one of the most interesting branches of sport. It involves quite as much uncertainty as the pursuit of the whirring partridge; your game is quite as difficult to lure as the speckled trout darting hither and yon in the grassy pool; it involves no shedding of innocent blood, as in the case of a ride across-country with a pack in full pursuit of the fox; and strikes me as possessing greater dignity than running forty miles through the cabbage-patches of Long Island in search of a bag ofainse seed. When the sporting instinct arises in my soul and reaches that full-tide where nothing short of action will hold it in control, I never think of starting for Maine to shoot the festive moose, nor do I squander my limited resources on a foggy hunt for the elusive canvasback in the Maryland marshes. I just go to the nearest cab-stand, strike a bargain with Mr. Jehu for an afternoon’s use of his hansom, and go around the town hunting flats. It requires very little previous preparation; it involves no prolongedabsences from home; you do not need rubber boots unless you propose to investigate the cellars or intend to go far afield into the suburban boroughs of this great city; and is in all ways pleasant, interesting, and, I may say, educational.”
“Educational, eh?” laughed the Bibliomaniac. “Some people have queer ideas of what is educational. I must say I fail to see anything particularly instructive in flat-hunting.”
“That’s because you never approached it in a proper spirit,” said the Idiot. “Anybody who is at all interested in sociology, however, cannot help but find instruction in a contemplation of how people are housed. You can’t get any idea of how the other halves live by reading the society news in the Sunday newspapers or peeping in at the second story of the tenement-houses as you go down-town on the elevated railroads. You’ve got to go out and investigate for yourself, and that’s where flat-hunting comes in as an educational diversion. Of course, all men are not interested in the same lineof investigation. You, as a bibliomaniac, prefer to go hunting rare first editions; Dr. Pellet, armed to the teeth with capsules, lies in wait for a pot-shot at some new kind of human ailment, and rejoices as loudly over the discovery of a new disease as you do over finding a copy of the rare first edition of theTelephone Book for 1899; another man goes to Africa to investigate the condition of our gorillan cousin of the jungle; Lieutenant Peary goes and hides behind a snow-ball up North, so that his fellows of the Arctic Exploration Society may have something to look for every other summer; and I—I go hunting for flats. I don’t sneer at you and the others for liking the things you do. You shouldn’t sneer at me for liking the things I do. It is, after all, the diversity of our tastes that makes our human race interesting.”
“But the rest of us generally bag something,” said the Lawyer. “What the dickens do you get beyond sheer physical weariness for your pains?”
“The best of all the prizes of the hunt,”said the Idiot; “the spirit of content with my lot as a boarder. I’ve been through twenty-eight flats in the last three weeks, and I know whereof I speak. I have seen the gorgeous apartments of the Redmere, where you can get a Louis Quinze drawing-room, a Renaissance library, a superb Grecian dining-room, and a cold-storage box to keep your high-balls in for four thousand dollars per annum.”
“Weren’t there any bedrooms?” asked Mr. Whitechoker.
“Oh yes,” said the Idiot. “Three, automatically ventilated from holes in the ceiling leading to an air-shaft, size six by nine, and brilliantly lighted by electricity. There was also a small pigeon-hole in a corrugated iron shack on the roof for the cook; a laundry next to the coal-bin in the cellar; and a kitchen about four feet square connecting with the library.”
“Mercy!” cried Mrs. Pedagog. “Do they expect children to live in such a place as that?”
“No,” said the Idiot. “You have to givebonds as security against children of any kind at the Redmere. If you happen to have any, you are required by the terms of your lease to send them to boarding-school; and if you haven’t any, the lease requires that you shall promise to have none during your tenancy. The owners of such properties have a lot of heart about them, and they take good care to protect the children against the apartments they put up.”
“And what kind of people, pray, live in such places as that?” demanded the Bibliomaniac.
“Very nice people,” said the Idiot. “People, for the most part, who spend their winters at Palm Beach, their springs in London, their summers at Newport or on the Continent, and their autumns in the Berkshires.”
“I don’t see why they need a home at all if that’s the way they do,” said Mrs. Pedagog.
“It’s very simple,” said the Idiot. “You’ve got to have an address to get your name in theSocial Register.”
“Four thousand dollars is pretty steepfor an address,” commented the Bibliomaniac.
“It would be for me,” said the Idiot. “But it is cheap for them. Moreover, in the case of the Redmere it’s the swellest address in town. Three of the most important divorces of the last social season took place at the Redmere. Social position comes high, Mr. Bib, but there are people who must have it. It is to them what baked beans are to the Bostonian’s Sunday breakfast—asine qua non.”
“May I ask whatever induced you to look for a four-thousand-dollar apartment?” asked Mr. Pedagog. “You have frequently stated that your income barely equalled twenty-four hundred dollars a year.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” asked the Idiot. “It doesn’t cost any more to look for a four-thousand-dollar apartment than it does to go chasing after a two-dollar-a-week hall-bedroom, and it impresses the cab-driver with a sense of responsibility. But bagging these gorgeous apartments does not constitute the real joy of flat-hunting. For solidsatisfaction and real sport the chase for a fifteen-hundred-dollar apartment in a decent neighborhood bears away the palm. You can get plenty of roomy suites in the neighborhood of a boiler-factory, or next door to a distillery, or back of a fire-engine house, at reasonable rents, and along the elevated railway lines much that is impressive is to be found by those who can sleep with trains running alongside of their pillows all night; but when you get away from these, the real thing at that figure is elusive. Over by the Park you can get two pigeon-holes and a bath, with a southern exposure, for nineteen hundred dollars a year; if you are willing to dispense with the southern exposure you can get three Black Holes of Calcutta and a butler’s pantry, in the same neighborhood, for sixteen hundred dollars, but you have to provide your own air. Farther down-town you will occasionally find the thing you want with a few extras in the shape of cornet-players, pianola-bangers, and peroxide sopranos on either side of you, and an osteopathic veterinary surgeon on the groundfloor thrown in. Then there are paper flats that can be had for twelve hundred dollars, but you can’t have any pictures in them, because the walls won’t stand the weight, and any nail of reasonable length would stick through into the next apartment. A friend of mine lived in one of these affairs once, and when he inadvertently leaned against the wall one night he fell through into his neighbor’s bath-tub. Of course, that sort of thing promotes sociability; but for a home most people want just a little privacy. And so the list runs on. You would really be astonished at the great variety of discomfortable dwelling-places that people build. Such high-art decorations as you encounter—purple friezes surmounting yellow dadoes; dragons peeping out of fruit-baskets; idealized tomatoes in full bloom chasing one another all around the bedroom walls. Then the architectural inconveniences they present with their best bedrooms opening into the kitchen; their parlors with marble wash-stands with running water in the corner; their libraries fitted up with marvelloussteam-radiators and china-closets, and their kitchens so small that the fire in the range scorches the wall opposite, and over which nothing but an asbestos cook, with a figure like a third rail, could preside. And, best of all, there are the janitors! Why, Mr. Bib, the study of the janitor and his habits alone is worthy of the life-long attention of the best entomologist that ever lived—and yet you say there is nothing educational in flat-hunting.”
“Oh, well,” said the Bibliomaniac, “I meant for me. There are a lot of things that would be educational to you that I should regard as symptomatic of profound ignorance. Everything is relative in this world.”
“That is true,” said the Idiot; “and that is why every April 1st I go out and gloat over the miseries of the flat-dwellers. As long as I can do that I am happy in my little cubby-hole under Mrs. Pedagog’s hospitable roof.”
“Ah! I am glad to hear you say that,” said Mrs. Pedagog. “I was a bit fearful,Mr. Idiot, that you had it in mind to move away from us.”
“No indeed, Mrs. Pedagog,” replied the Idiot, rising from the table. “You need have no fear of that. You couldn’t get me out of here with a crow-bar. If I did not have entire confidence in your lovely house and yourself, you don’t suppose I would permit myself to get three months behind in my board, do you?”
open quote
POTATOES, sir?” said Mary, the waitress at Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog’s High-Class Home for Single Gentlemen, stopping behind the Idiot’s chair and addressing the back of his neck in the usual boarding-house fashion.
“Yes, I want some potatoes, Mary; but before I take them,” the Idiot replied, “I must first ascertain whether or not you wear the union label, and what is the exact status also of the potatoes. My principles are such that I cannot permit a non-union housemaid to help me to a scab potato, whereas, if you belong to the sisterhood, and our stewed friend Murphy here has been raised upon a union farm, then, indeed, do I wish not only one potato but many.”
Mary’s reply was a giggle.
“Ah!” said the Idiot. “The merry ha-ha, eh? All right, Mary. That is for the present sufficient evidence that your conscience is clear on this very important matter. As for the potatoes, we will eat them not exactly under protest, but with a distinctly announced proviso in advance that we assume that they have qualified themselves for admission into a union stomach. I hesitate to think of what will happen in my interior department if Murphy is deceiving us.”
Whereupon the Idiot came into possession of a goodly portion of the stewed potatoes, and Mary fled to the kitchen, where she informed the presiding genius of the range that the young gentleman was crazier than ever.
“He’s talkin’ about the unions, now, Bridget,” said she.
“Is he agin ’em?” demanded Bridget, with a glitter in her eye.
“No, he’s for ’em; he wouldn’t even drink milk from a non-union cow,” said Mary.
“He’s a foine gintleman,” said Bridget. “Oi’ll make his waffles a soize larger.”
Meanwhile the Bibliomaniac had chosen to reflect seriously upon the Idiot’s intelligence for his approval of unions.
“They are responsible for pretty nearly all the trouble there is at the present moment,” he snapped out, angrily.
“Oh, go along with you,” retorted the Idiot. “The trouble we have these days, like all the rest of the troubles of the past, go right back to that old original non-union apple that Eve ate and Adam got the core of. You know that as well as I do. Even Adam and Eve, untutored children of nature though they were, saw it right off, and organized a union on the spot, which has in the course of centuries proven the most beneficent institution of the ages. With all due respect to the character of this dwelling-place of ours—a home for single gentlemen—the union is the thing. If you don’t belong to one you may be tremendously independent, but you’re blooming lonesome.”
“The matrimonial union,” smiled Mrs.Pedagog, “is indeed a blessed institution, and, having been married twice, I can testify from experience; but, truly, Mr. Idiot, I wish you wouldn’t put notions into Mary’s head about the other kind. I should be sorry if she were to join that housemaid’s union we hear so much about. I have trouble enough now with my domestic help without having a walking delegate on my hands as well.”
“No doubt,” acquiesced the Idiot. “In their beginnings all great movements have their inconveniences, but in the end, properly developed, a housemaid’s union wouldn’t be a bad thing for employers, and I rather think it might prove a good thing. Suppose one of your servants misbehaves herself, for instance—I remember one occasion in this very house when it required the united efforts of yourself, Mr. Pedagog, three policemen, and your humble servant to effectively discharge a three-hundred-pound queen of the kitchen, who had looked not wisely but too often on the cooking sherry. Now suppose that highly cultivated inebriate hadbelonged to a self-respecting union? You wouldn’t have had to discharge her at all. A telephone message to the union headquarters, despatched while the lady was indulging in one of her tantrums, would have brought an inspector to the house, the queen would have been caught with the goods on, and her card would have been taken from her, so that by the mere automatic operation of the rules of her own organization she could no longer work for you. Thus you would have been spared some highly seasoned language which I have for years tried to forget; Mr. Pedagog’s eye would not have been punched so that you could not tell your blue-eyed boy from your black-eyed babe; I should never have lost the only really satisfactory red necktie I ever owned; and three sturdy policemen, one of whom had often previously acted as the lady’s brother on her evenings at home, and the others, of whom we had reason to believe were cousins not many times removed, would not have been confronted by the ungrateful duty of clubbing one who had frequently fed them generouslyupon your cold mutton and my beer.”
“Is that one of the things the union would do?” queried Mrs. Pedagog, brightening.
“It is one of the things the unionshoulddo,” said the Idiot. “Similarly with your up-stairs girl, if perchance you have one. Suppose she got into the habit, which I understand is not all an uncommon case, of sweeping the dust under the bureau of your bedroom or under the piano in the drawing-room. Suppose she is really an adept in the art of dust concealment, having a full comprehension of all sixty methods—hiding it under tables, sofas, bookcases, and rugs, in order to save her back? You wouldn’t have to bother with her at all under a properly equipped union. Upon the discovery of her delinquencies you would merely have to send for the union inspector, lift up the rug and show her the various vintages of sweepings the maid has left there: November ashes; December match-ends; threads, needles, and pins left over from the February meeting of the Ibsen Sewing-Circle at yourhouse; your missing tortoise-shell hair-pin that you hadn’t laid eyes on since September; the grocer’s bill for October that you told the grocer you never received—all this in March. Do you suppose that that inspector, with all this evidence before her eyes, could do otherwise than prefer charges against the offender at the next meeting of the Committee on Discipline? Not on your life, madam. And, what is more, have you the slightest doubt that one word of reprimand from that same Committee on Discipline would prove far more effective in reforming that particular offender than anything you could say backed by the eloquence of Burke and the thunderbolts of Jove?”
“You paint a beautiful picture,” said the Doctor. “But suppose you happened to draw a rotten cook in the domestic lottery—a good woman, but a regular scorcher. Where does your inspector come in there? Going to invite her to dine with you so as to demonstrate the girl’s incompetence?”
“Not at all,” said the Idiot. “That would make trouble right away. The cook veryproperly would say that the inspector was influenced by the social attention she was receiving from the head of the house, and the woman’s effectiveness as a disciplinarian would be immediately destroyed. I’d put half portions of the burned food in a sealed package and send it to the Committee on Culinary Improvement for their inspection. A better method which time would probably bring into practice would be for the union itself to establish a system of domiciliary visits, by which the cook’s work should be subjected to a constant inspection by the union—the object being, of course, to prevent trouble rather than to punish after the event. The inspector’s position would be something like that of the bank examiner, who turns up at our financial institutions at unexpected moments, and sees that everything is going right.”
“Oh, bosh!” said the Doctor. “You are talking of ideals.”
“Certainly I am,” returned the Idiot. “Why shouldn’t I? What’s the use of wasting one’s breath on anything else?”
“Well, it’s all rot!” put in Mr. Brief. “There never was any such union as that, and there never will be.”
“You are the last person in the world to say a thing like that, Mr. Brief,” said the Idiot—”you, who belong to the nearest approach to the ideal union that the world has ever known!”
“What! Me?” demanded the Lawyer. “Me? I belong to a union?”
“Of course you do—or at least you told me you did,” said the Idiot.
“Well, you are the worst!” retorted Mr. Brief, angrily. “When did I ever tell you that I belonged to a union?”
“Last Friday night at dinner, and in the presence of this goodly company,” said the Idiot. “You were bragging about it, too—said that no institution in existence had done more to uplift the moral tone of the legal profession; that through its efforts the corrupt practitioner and the shyster were gradually being driven to the wall—”
“Well, this beats me,” said Mr. Brief. “Irecall telling at dinner on Friday night about the Bar Association—”
“Precisely,” said the Idiot. “That’s what I referred to. If the Bar Association isn’t a Lawyer’s Union Number Six of the highest type, I don’t know what is. It is conducted by the most brilliant minds in the profession; its honors are eagerly sought after by the brainiest laborers in the field of Coke and Blackstone; its stern, relentless eye is fixed upon the evil-doer, and it is an effective instrument for reform not only in its own profession, but in the State as well. What I would have the Housemaid’s Union do for domestic servants and for the home, the Bar Association does for the legal profession and for the State, and if the lawyers can do this thing there is no earthly reason why the housemaids shouldn’t.”
“Pah!” ejaculated Mr. Brief. “You place the bar and domestic service on the same plane of importance, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” said the Idiot. “Shouldn’t think of doing so. Twenty people need housemaids, where one requires a lawyer;therefore the domestic is the more important of the two.”
“Humph!” said Mr. Brief, with an angry laugh. “Intellectual qualifications, I suppose, go for nothing in the matter.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said the Idiot. “I guess, however, that there are more housemaids earning a living to-day than lawyers—and, besides—oh, well, never mind—What’s the use? I don’t wish to quarrel about it.”
“Go on—don’t mind me—I’m really interested to know what further you can say,” snapped Mr. Brief. “Besides—what?”
“Only this, that when it comes to the intellectuals—Well, really, Mr. Brief,” asked the Idiot, “really now, did you ever hear of anybody going to an intelligence office for a lawyer?”
Mr. Brief’s reply was not inaudible, for just at that moment he swallowed his coffee the wrong way, and in the effort to bring him to, the thread of the argument snapped, and up to the hour of going to press had not been tied together again.
THE Idiot was very late at breakfast—so extremely late, in fact, that some apprehension was expressed by his fellow-boarders as to the state of his health.
“I hope he isn’t ill,” said Mr. Whitechoker. “He is usually so prompt at his meals that I fear something is the matter with him.”
“He’s all right,” said the Doctor, whose room adjoins that of the Idiot in Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog’s Select Home for Single Gentlemen. “He’ll be down in a minute. He’s suffering from an overdose of vacation—rested too hard.”
Just then the subject of the conversation appeared in the doorway, pale and haggard, but with an eye that boded ill for the larder.
“Quick!” he cried, as he entered. “Lead me to a square meal. Mary, please give me four bowls of mush, ten medium soft-boiled eggs, a barrel of saute potatoes, and eighteen dollars’ worth of corned-beef hash. I’ll have two pots of coffee, Mrs. Pedagog, please, four pounds of sugar, and a can of condensed milk. If there is any extra charge you may put it on the bill, and some day, when the common stock of the Continental Hen Trust goes up thirty or forty points, I’ll pay.”
“What’s the matter with you, Mr. Idiot?” asked Mr. Brief. “Been fasting for a week?”
“No,” replied the Idiot. “I’ve just taken my first week’s vacation, and, between you and me, I’ve come back to business so as to get rested for the second.”
“Doesn’t look as though vacation agreed with you,” said the Bibliomaniac.
“It doesn’t,” said the Idiot. “Hereafter I am an advocate of the rest-while-you-work system. Never take a day off if you can help it. There’s nothing so restful as paying attention to business, and no greater promoter of weariness of spirit and vexationof your digestion than the modern style of vacating. No more for mine, if you please.”
“Humph!” sneered the Bibliomaniac. “I suppose you went to Coney Island to get rested up, bumping the bump and looping the loop, and doing a lot of other crazy things.”
“Not I,” quoth the Idiot. “I didn’t have sense enough to go to some quiet place like Coney Island, where you can get seven square meals a day, and then climb into a Ferris-wheel and be twirled around in the air until they have been properly shaken down. I took one of the Four Hundred vacations. Know what that is?”
“No,” said Mr. Brief. “I didn’t know there were four hundred vacations with only three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. What do you mean?”
“I mean the kind of vacation the people in the Four Hundred take,” explained the Idiot. “I’ve been to a house-party up in Newport with some friends of mine who’re ’in the swim,’ and I tell you it’s hard swimming. You’ll never hear me talking abouta leisure class in this country again. Those people don’t know what leisure is. I don’t wonder they’re always such a tired-looking lot.”
“I was not aware that you were in with the Smart Set,” said the Bibliomaniac.
“Oh yes,” said the Idiot. “I’m in with several of ’em—’way in; so far in that I’m sometimes afraid I’ll never get out. We’re carrying a whole lot of wild-cats on margin for Billie Van Gelder, the cotillon leader. Tommy de Cahoots, the famous yachtsman, owes us about eight thousand dollars more than he can spare from his living expenses on one of his plunges into Copper, and altogether we are pretty long on swells in our office.”
“And do you mean to say those people invite you out?” asked the Bibliomaniac.
“All the time,” said the Idiot. “Just as soon as one of our swell customers finds he can’t pay his margins he comes down to the office and gets very chummy with all of us. The deeper he is in it the more affable he becomes. The result is there are house-partiesand yacht-cruises and all that sort of thing galore on tap for us every summer.”
“And you accept them, eh?” said the Bibliomaniac, scornfully.
“As a matter of business, of course,” replied the Idiot. “We’ve got to get something out of it. If one of our customers can’t pay cash, why, we get what we can. In this particular case Mr. Reginald Squandercash had me down at Newport for five full days, and I know now why he can’t pay up his little shortage of eight hundred dollars. He’s got the money, but he needs it for other things, and, now that I know it, I shall recommend the firm to give him an extension of thirty days. By that time he will have collected from the De Boodles, whom he is launching in society, C. O. D., and will be able to square matters with us.”
“Your conversation is Greek to me,” said the Bibliomaniac. “Who are the De Boodles, and for what do they owe your friend Reginald Squandercash money?”
“The De Boodles,” explained the Idiot,“are what are known as climbers, and Reginald Squandercash is a booster.”
“A what?” cried the Bibliomaniac.
“A booster,” said the Idiot. “There are several boosters in the Four Hundred. For a consideration they will boost wealthy climbers into society. The climbers are people like the De Boodles, who have suddenly come into great wealth, and who wish to be in it with others of great wealth who are also of high social position. They don’t know how to do the trick, so they seek out some booster like Reggie, strike a bargain with him, and he steers ’em up against the ‘Among-Those-Present’ game until finally you find the De Boodles have a social cinch.”
“Do you mean to say that society tolerates such a business as that?” demanded the Bibliomaniac.
“Tolerates?” laughed the Idiot. “What a word to use! Tolerate? Why, society encourages, because society shares the benefits. Take this especial vacation of mine. Society had two five-o’clock teas, four of the swellest dinners you ever sat down to, acotillon where the favors were of solid silver and real ostrich feathers, a whole day’s clam-bake on Reggie’s steam-yacht, with automobile-runs and coaching-trips galore. Nobody ever declines one of Reggie’s invitations, because what he has from a society point of view is the best the market affords. Why, the floral decorations alone at thefête champêtrehe gave in honor of the De Boodles at his villa last Thursday night must have cost five thousand dollars, and everything was on the same scale. I don’t believe a cent less than seventy-five hundred dollars was burned up in the fire-works, and every lady present received a souvenir of the occasion that cost at least one hundred dollars.”
“Your story doesn’t quite hold together,” said Mr. Brief. “If your friend Reggie has a villa and a steam-yacht, and automobiles and coaches, and givesfêtes champêtresthat cost fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, I don’t see why he has to make himself a booster of inferior people who want to get into society. What does he gain by it? It surely isn’t sport to do a thing like that,and I should think he’d find it a dreadful bore.”
“The man must live,” said the Idiot. “He boosts for a living.”
“When he has the wealth of Monte Cristo at his command?” demanded Mr. Brief.
“Reggie hasn’t a cent to his name,” said the Idiot. “I’ve already told you he owes us eight hundred dollars he can’t pay.”
“Then who in thunder pays for the villa and the lot and all those hundred-dollar souvenirs?” asked the Doctor.
“Why, this year, the De Boodles,” said the Idiot. “Last year it was Colonel and Mrs. Moneybags, whose daughter, Miss Fayette Moneybags, is now clinching the position Reggie sold her at Newport over in London, whither Reggie has consigned her to his sister, an impecunious American duchess—the Duchess of Nocash—who is also in the boosting business. The chances are Miss Moneybags will land one of England’s most deeply indebted peers, and, if she does, Reggie will receive a handsome check forsteering the family up against so attractive a proposition.”
“And you mean to tell us that a plain man like old John De Boodle, of Nevada, is putting out his hard-earned wealth in that way?” demanded Mr. Brief.
“I didn’t mean to mention any names,” said the Idiot. “But you’ve spotted the victim. Old John De Boodle, who made his sixty million dollars in six months, after having kept a saloon on the frontier for forty years, is the man. His family wants to get in the swim, and Reggie is turning the trick for them; and, after all, what better way is there for De Boodle to get in? He might take sixty villas at Newport and not get even a peep at the divorce colony there, much less a glimpse of the monogamous set acting independently. Not a monkey in the Zoo would dine with the De Boodles, and in his most eccentric moment I doubt if Tommy Dare would take them up, unless there was somebody to stand sponsor for them. A cool million might easily be expended without results by the De Boodles themselves;but hand that money over to Reggie Squandercash, whose blood is as blue as his creditors’ sometimes get, and you can look for results. What the Frohman’s are to the stage, Reggie Squandercash is to society. He’s right in it; popular as all spenders are; lavish as all people spending other people’s money are apt to be. Old De Boodle, egged on by Mrs. De Boodle and Miss Mary Ann De Boodle (now known as Miss Marianne De Boodle), goes to Reggie and says: ‘The old lady and my girl are nutty on society. Can you land ’em?’ ‘Certainly,’ says Reggie, ‘if your pocket is long enough.’ ‘How long is that?’ asks De Boodle, wincing a bit. ‘A hundred thousand a month, and no extras, until you’re in,’ says Reggie. ‘No reduction for families?’ asks De Boodle, anxiously. ‘No,’ says Reggie. ‘Harder job.’ ‘All right,’ says De Boodle, ‘here’s my check for the first month.’ That’s how Reggie gets his Newport villa, his servants, his horses, yacht, automobiles, and coaches. Then he invites the De Boodles up to visit him. They accept, and the fun begins.First it’s a little dinner to meet my friends Mr. and Mrs. De Boodle, of Nevada. Everybody there, hungry, dinner from Sherry’s, best wines in the market. De Boodles covered with diamonds, a great success, especially old John De Boodle, who tells racy stories over thedemi-tassewhen the ladies have gone into the drawing-room. De Boodle voted a character. Next thing, bridge-whist party. Everybody there. Society a good winner. The De Boodles magnificent losers. Popularity cinched. Next, yachting-party. Everybody on board. De Boodle on deck in fine shape. Champagne flows like Niagara. Poker game in main cabin. Food everywhere. De Boodles much easier. Stiffness wearing off, and so on and so on, until finally Miss De Boodle’s portrait is printed in nineteen Sunday newspapers all over the country. They’re launched, and Reggie comes into his own with a profit for the season in a cash balance of fifty thousand dollars. He’s had a bully time all summer, entertained like a prince, and comes to the rainy season with a tidylittle umbrella to keep him out of the wet.”
“And can he count on that as a permanent business?” asked Mr. Whitechoker.
“My dear sir, the rock of Gibraltar is no solider and no more permanent,” said the Idiot. “For as long as there is a Four Hundred in existence, human nature is such that there will also be a million who will want to get into it.”
“At such a cost?” demanded the Bibliomaniac.
“At any cost,” replied the Idiot. “Even people who know they cannot swim want to get in it.”