"'HE DISCOVERED THE ONE PERFECT STALK'"
"Sometimes we don't serve anything at all from it," said the Idiot, "which you will observe is smaller yet. In this instance Mrs. Idiot intended a little surprise for me. We had struggled with that asparagus-bed for some time. The madame had studied up asparagus in her botany. I had looked it up in the cyclopedia and the Century dictionary. We had ordered it in various styles when we dined out at the New York hotels, and we had frequently bought cans of it in order to familiarize ourselves more intimately with its general personal appearance. Then we consulted people we thought would be likely to know how to obtain the best results, and what they told us to do we did, but somehow it didn't work. Our asparagus crop languished. We sprinkled it in person. We put all sorts of garden cosmetics on it to improve its complexion, but it seemed hopeless, and finally when I footed up the asparagus item in my account-book, and discovered that we had paid out enough money without results of a satisfactory nature to have kept us in canned asparagus for four years, we got discouraged, and resolved to give it up. It was while Michael, our gardener, was removing the evidences of our failure that he discovered the one perfect stalk, and like the honest old gardener that he is, he immediately brought it into the house and presented it to my wife. She naturally rejoiced that our efforts had not been entirely vain, and in her usual spirit of self-sacrifice had the stalk cooked as a surprise for me. As I have told you, that small circumstance Thomas, over which we seem to have no control, got ahead of us—"
"You was surprised, wasn't you, pa?" demanded the boy.
"Somewhat, my son," said the Idiot, "but not in the way your mother had designed, exactly."
"Is asparagus the extent of your gardening?" queried Mrs. Pedagog.
"Oh no, indeed!" replied Mrs. Idiot. "We've had peas and beets and beans and egg-plant and corn—almost everything, in fact, including potatoes."
"Yes, ma'am," said the Idiot, "almost everything, including potatoes. Our pea crop was lovely. We had five podfuls for dinner on the Fourth of July, and the children celebrated the day by podding them for the cook. They popped open almost as noisily as a torpedo. It was really very enjoyable. Indeed, one of the results of that pea crop has been to give me an idea by which I may some day redeem my losses on the asparagus-bed. An explosive pea which should be edible, and yet would pop open with the noise of a small fire-cracker, would be a delight to the children and serviceable for the table. I don't exactly know how to bring about the desired results, but it seems to me if I were to mix a little saltpetre in the water with which we irrigate our pea-trees the required snap would be obtained. Then on the Fourth of July the children, instead of burning their fingers and filling their parents with nervous dread setting off fire-crackers, could sit out on the back piazza and shell the peas for the cook—"
"I'd rather shell Spangyards," said Mollie.
"I am surprised at you, my child," said the Idiot. "A little girl like you should be an advocate of peace, not of war."
"You can't eat Spaniards, either, can you, pa?" said Tommy, who, while he shared Mollie's views as to the comparative value for shelling purposes of peas and Spaniards, was nevertheless quite interested in the development of a pea-pod that would open with a bang.
"'IT WOULD BE DEUCEDLY AWKWARD ... IF THEY WOULD EXPLODE IN THE MOUTH OF THE PERSON WHO WAS EATING THEM'"
"No, Tommy," said the Idiot, "you can't eat Spaniards, and they'd be sure to disagree with you if you could."
"That is a very interesting proposition of yours," said Mr. Brief, "but it has its dangers. A dynamite pea would prove very attractive so long as its explosive qualities were confined to the pod and its opening. But how are you going to keep the saltpetre out of the peas themselves?"
"That is where the difficulty comes in," said the Idiot. "I frankly don't know how we could insulate the peas from the effects of the saltpetre."
"It would be deucedly awkward," observed the Bibliomaniac, "if, as might very well happen, one or two of the peas should become so thoroughly impregnated with the stuff that they would explode in the mouth of the person who was eating them, like bombs in miniature."
"'SHE COULD SLAM THEM DOWN ON THE HEARTH-STONES LIKE TORPEDOES'"
"True," said the Idiot. "The only safeguard against that would be to compel the cook to test every pea before she cooked it. She could slam them down on the hearth-stone like torpedoes, and every one that didn't go off could be cooked and served with safety. Still, there would be danger even then. A careless cook might forever ruin the tooth of a favored guest. I guess I'd better give up the idea."
"Oh, don't, pa!" cried Tommy, his interest in explosive vegetables worked up to a high pitch. "I'll test 'em all for you, and if they work I don't see why you couldn't raise dynamite punkins!"
"It would be a strong temptation, my son," said the Idiot, "which is all the more reason why I should abandon the plan. A dynamite punkin, as you call it, would wreck the whole neighborhood if one should set it off properly. No, we will, after all, confine our attention to vegetables of a more pacific nature. The others might prove more profitable at first, but when the novelty of them wore off, and one realized only their danger, a great deal of the pleasure one derives from eating fresh vegetables would be utterly destroyed."
Tommy looked out over the railing of the piazza, deep regret and disappointment depicted in his brown little face; but if the glitter of his eyes meant anything it meant that the idea of putting vegetables on a war footing was not going to be allowed to drop into oblivion; and if the small youth progresses in inventive genius in a fair ratio to his past achievements in that line, I have no doubt that if a Vesuvian pumpkincanbe produced at all, the day will dawn when Thomas is hailed as its inventor.
"Is it true," asked Mr. Brief, "that home-raised peas are sweeter than any other?"
"We think so," said Mrs. Idiot.
"We know so," amended the Idiot. "That Fourth-of-July night when we ate those five podfuls we discovered that fact. Five podfuls of peas are not enough to feed a family of four on, so we mixed them in with a few more that we bought at the grocer's, and we could tell ours from the others every time, they were so much sweeter."
The Bibliomaniac laughed scornfully.
"Pooh!" said he. "How did you know that they were yours that were sweet, and not the grocery-bought peas?"
"How does a father know his own children?" said the Idiot. "If you'd labored over those five pods as hard and assiduously as we did, nursing them through their infant troubles, guarding them against locusts and potato-bugs, carefully watching their development from infancy into the full vigor of a mature peahood, I guess you'd know your own from those of others. It's instinct, my dear Bibliomaniac."
"Tell about the strawberry, pa," said Tommy, who liked to hear his father talk, in which respect I fear he takes strongly after his parent.
"Well," said the Idiot, "it's not much of a story. There was one. We had a strawberry patch twenty feet by ten. We had plenty of straw and plenty of patch, but the berries were timid about appearing. The results were similar to those in our asparagus venture. One berry was discovered trying to hide itself under half a bale of straw one morning, and while I was looking for Mrs. Idiot, to ask her to come down to the garden and see it grow, a miserable robin came along and bit its whole interior out. I hope the bird enjoyed it, because on a bed-rock estimate that berry cost twenty dollars. That is one of the things about gardening that make me especially weary. One doesn't mind spending forty-four dollars on a stalk of asparagus that is eaten, even surreptitiously, by a member of one's own family; but to pay twenty dollars for a strawberry to be wasted on a fifteen-cent robin is, to say the least, irritating."
"You forget, John," said Mrs. Idiot, with a somewhat mirthful look in her eyes, "that we got fifteen boxes out of the strawberry-patch later."
"No, I don't," said the Idiot. "I was coming to that, and it involves a confession. You were so blue about the loss of our one beautiful berry that I entered into a conspiracy with Michael to make that patch yield. The fifteen boxes of berries that we took out subsequently were bought at a New York fruit-store and judiciously scattered about the patch where you would find them. I had hoped you would never find it out, but when you spoke the other day of expending thirty-eight dollars on that strawberry-patch next year, I resolved then to undeceive you. This is the first favorable opportunity I have had."
Mrs. Idiot laughed heartily. "I knew it all along," she said. "Michael came to me with them and asked for instructions as to where to put them. Really, I—ah—I arranged them under the straw myself."
"What an ass a hired man can be!" ejaculated the Idiot. "I shall discharge Michael to-morrow."
"I wish you would," said Mrs. Idiot. "Ever since the conspiracy he has been entirely too independent."
"Don't discharge Michael, papa," said Mollie. "He's awful nice. He's always willin' to stop anything he's doing to play with Tommy and me."
"You bet he is!" cried Tommy. "He's a dandy, Mike is. He never says a word when I sit under the sprinkler, and he told me the other day that his grandfather would have been king of Ireland if Queen Victoria hadn't come in. He said the Queen was a lady, and his grandfather gave up his seat to her because he was a gentleman and couldn't do anything else."
"Very well," said the Idiot, suavely. "Then I won't discharge Michael. One feels a better American, a better Republican, if he has a royal personage in his employ. I always wondered where Michael got his imperious manner; now I know. As a descendant of a long line of kings it could not be otherwise. I will give him another chance. But let me give you all fair warning. If next summer Michael does not succeed in producing from my garden four beets, ten pods of peas, three string-beans, and less than ten thousand onions, he goes. I shall not pay a gardener forty dollars a month unless he can raise three dollars' worth of vegetables a year."
"But really," said Mr. Pedagog, "haven't you raised anything in your garden?"
"Oh yes," said the Idiot. "I've raised my water bill in the garden. I used to pay twelve dollars a quarter for water, but now the bills come to at least twenty-five dollars. Truly, a garden is not without profit to some one."
"Yes," said the Idiot, in response to an inquiry from the Poet, who was passing a Sunday with him at Castle Idiot, "I have found that there is a great deal of poetry in the apparently uninspiring little things of a household. There is to me as much poetry in a poker as there is in a snow-clad Alp, if you only have an eye to find it; and I am sure that to thousands of housewives the whole land over a sonnet to a clothes-pin, written by one who knows the clothes-pin's nature intimately, would be far more appealing than a similar number of lines trying to prove that we are all miserable phantoms flitting across a morass of woe."
The Poet pulled away thoughtfully at his pipe. He was a broad-minded poet, and while he had never owned a poker of his own, he was ready to admit its possibilities; but he could not follow his friend closely enough to admit that it contained as much that was inspiring as did Mont Blanc, for instance, a bright particular Alp of which he was very fond.
The Idiot continued:
"'THE JOYS AND WOES OF THE TOILERS WHO MINED IT'"
"A ton of coal contains far more warmth than a woman's eyebrow; sends the mind of a thoughtful person chasing backward to the time when it lay snugly hid in the fair breast of nature; to the joys and woes of the toilers who mined it; through a variety of complexities of life, every one of them fraught with noble thoughts. Yet who ever wrote dainty verses to a ton of coal, and who hasn't at one time or another in his life written about the eyebrows of some woman?"
The Poet laughed this time. "A triolet to a ton of coal would be a glorious thing now, wouldn't it?" he observed.
"No," said the Idiot. "A triolet could never be a glorious thing under any circumstances; but to the extent that a ton of coal contains a certain amount of grandeur in the service it renders to mankind, I think the form would be ennobled somewhat by the substance. Let's try it and see."
"You do it," said the Poet; "I really don't think I could do the subject justice."
The Idiot got out a pencil and a pad of paper and began.
"I don't think I'll make it a triolet," he said, after biting the end of his pencil for a few moments. "A whole ton is a good deal to cram into a triolet. I'll just make it a plain poem of the go-as-you-please variety instead, eh?"
"In the manner of Whitman, perhaps?" suggested the Poet, dryly.
"Just so," said the Idiot. "In the manner of Whitman; in fact, I think the manner of Whitman is the only manner for the poetic description of a ton of coal."
He began to scribble on the pad.
"I'm going to call this 'Content,'" he said in a few moments. "Contentment strikes me as the main lesson a ton of coal teaches."
He scribbled on, and in four or five minutes he put down his pencil and read the following lines:
"I'm glad I'm not as men are—Always worrying about something, and often about nothing;About what was and what wasn't;Fretting about what may be and what might have been;Wondering whether when they are called upon to do their dutyThey'll be able to do it,And generally deciding they won't,To their own discomfort.And if so be they're women,Cogitating from morn till night,From night till morn,Wherewithal shall they be clothed,And if their hats are on straight!Yea!I am glad I am not like one of these,But am myself—A ton of coal—jetty in my blackness and luminous in my bituminosity.Lying here in the cellar content and not bothering a bit.Not needing income or clothes, and wearing no hat, and with no complexion to bother about.Happy and serene about my duty,Certain that I shall succeed when the time for action comes;Knowing that I shall burn,And in the burning glow like the polar star.Cackling and crackling,Hissing and smoking,Full of heat,A satisfaction to mankind,And never worth less than $5.65, delivered!Ah, me! What bliss to be a ton of coal!I am content."
The Poet nodded his pleasure at the effort. "It is charmingly put," he said. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that the idea of contentment is the last one that I should ever have extracted from contemplation of a binful of anthracite, and yet when I consider how you put it I wonder it has not occurred to every one. You have the manner of the Whitman parodist down fine, too."
"Thank you," said the Idiot. "It is entirely natural to me. I think, too, that using the Whitman lack of form carries with it the notion of the coal sliding down the chute, don't you? Coal runs into the cellar in such an irresponsible, formless way, eh?"
"Precisely," smiled the Poet. "You have the right notion about that. The form of a poem should really be adapted to the substance. It should be descriptive, always. Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade' has in its rhythm nothing more or less than the clatter of the horses' hoofs as they and their riders dashed through the valley of death at Balaklava. And how vividly Southey's brook comes before the mind in its mad rush downward as one reads that wonderfully lyrical poem. Why don't you write a book of household poetry? You seem to me to be eminently well qualified to undertake it."
"I intend to," said the Idiot. "In fact, I've begun it already. Written five or six. Like to see 'em?"
"Indeed I should," said the Poet. "Anything you do interests me."
The Idiot went to his desk and took from it a few pages of manuscript.
"Here is a thing on pokers I did the other night. I called it 'The Song of the Poker Bold.'" And then he read these lines:
"Warder of the grate am I,Ever standing near;Poking, poking all day long,Knowing naught of fear."Keeping coals up to their work,Setting them aglow,Minding not the scorching heat,Rather like it so."Knocking ashes right and left,Flirting with the tiles;Bossing tongs and seeing thatThe brazen kettle biles."And the little girls and boysAs they watch me pause,Wishing that I'd talk and tell'Bout old Santa Claus!"Cracking jokes with crickets onThe merry hearth, elate;Happy lot indeed is mine—Warder of the grate!"
"Splendid!" cried the Poet, clapping his hands with enthusiasm. "Splendid! A good stiff pokeresque lyric, and your characterization of the poker as the 'Warder of the Grate' gives it a flavor of romance. You could almost imagine the implement going out into a mediæval world in search of knightly adventure—a sort of hearth-stone Quixote. Have you tackled the clothes-pin yet?"
"Yes," replied the Idiot. "Indeed, my first effort was a lyric on the clothes-pin. I started one night to do the contents of the kitchen-dresser drawer in French forms, but the first thing I took out was an egg-beater, and it wouldn't go, so I did the clothes-pin lyric. I call it
"Blow, ye winds,I fear ye not;Blast, ye simoon,Sere and hot!"Hurricane,And cyclone, too,Blow, I have noFear of you."Lacking beauty,Lacking grace,Lacking handsomeForm and face;"Lacking soulAnd intellect,Still I stand up,Proud, erect."For the FatesHave given meWondrous greatTenacity."And success,Both fair and fine,Comes to himWho holds his line."Burrs can stickAnd so can glue—Mucilage,Stratena, too;"But there's nothingHolds so fastAs the clothes-pinTo the last."
"And you gave up the egg-beater altogether?" asked the Poet, restraining a natural inclination to find flaws in the construction of the clothes-pin poem.
"Oh no," said the Idiot, "I knocked off a little quatrain on that. I called it 'The Speedy Egg-Beater,' and it goes like this:
"Great Maude S. can beat all steeds,However speedy be their legs;But I distance her with easeWhen it comes to beating eggs."
"I really think that you would have done better to give up the egg-beater," said the Poet, grown critical. "I've no patience with one-rhymed quatrains. Now if you had written:
"Great Maude S. can beat all steeds,However speedy be their legs;But despite her doughty deeds;I can beat her beating eggs,
"I should not have objected."
"I accept the amendment," replied the Idiot, meekly. "I realized the weakness of the thing myself, and thought of changing it into a couplet, where you only need one rhyme. How's this on a 'Carpet-Tack'?"
"'FOR THOUGH I'M BUT A CARPET-TACKAFAR FROM MOIL AND STRIFE,NO ONE CAN EVER TRULY SAYTHAT MINE'S A POINTLESS LIFE'"
"However dull the day,However dull the skies,However dark the night may be,My spirits ever rise."For though I'm but a carpet-tack,Afar from moil and strife,No one can ever truly sayThat mine's a pointless life."
"That is very good," said the Poet. "I think almost any editor of any comic paper would be willing to pay you three dollars for that. It is as good as your poem on a ton of coal—simple in its expression and sweet in sentiment."
"I thought you'd think so," said the Idiot. "It struck me so. I've got one on a screw-driver, too, that is very much of the same order, and conveys a moral lesson to the reader who is always reaching out after the unattainable. It reads as follows:
"I cannot tool a tally-ho,I cannot drive a nag;I dare not hold the ribbonsOn a hack or rumbling drag."I could not guide the reins uponA simple billy-goat,And I should hesitate to tryTo drive a can-al boat."But I don't mind these things at all,For I can drive a screw,And I am happy, for that's justWhat I was meant to do."
"'I SHOULD HESITATE TO TRY TO WRITE A CAN-AL BOAT'"
"The fourth line of the second verse is weak, but otherwise it's good," commented the Poet. "It's not acan-al boat; it's a can-alboat, and all the poetic license in the world wouldn't excuse your taking such a liberty with language."
"I appreciate that," said the Idiot. "But I don't see how I could get around it."
"There's only one way," said the Poet. "I think if you omitted that verse altogether you'd improve the poem."
"Then I should have to eliminate the billy-goat," said the Idiot. "That takes a great deal of humor out of it. I always laugh when I encounter a beast like that in poetry; he seems so helpless when incarcerated in a poem."
"'I HAVEN'T EVER HAD A HOME; I'VE ALWAYS BOARDED'"
"That may be," observed the Poet. "But it is my belief that the goat, of all animals in the kingdom, was the last one designed to be used in poetry, anyhow. He is bad enough in prose, and in this case will butt your poem to oblivion if you insist on keeping him in it. Any more?"
"No," said the Idiot; "that's the last."
"Well, you've got a good start," said the Poet, rising to light his pipe, which had gone out. "And if I were you I'd go on and finish the book. 'The Idiot's Book of Household Poetry' would have a great sale. It has but one drawback that I can see. You harp on one string too much. Every one of your poems preaches contentment, satisfaction—nothing else."
"That," said the Idiot, "is not an objection, but a virtue; for what other lesson," he added, with a glance of pride at his surroundings, "what other lesson, my dear Poet, should a home try to teach, and what other sentiment can mean so much to mankind?"
"I don't know," said the Poet, with a little sigh. "I haven't ever had a home; I've always boarded."
Whereupon the Idiot rose up from his chair, and putting his arm about his friend's shoulder, said:
"How you do talk! Never had a home? Why, my dear fellow, what's this? It's yours as long as it's mine!"
"Who is that sitting down on your tennis-court, Mr. Idiot?" asked Mr. Brief, the lawyer. "Or is it anybody? I've been trying for the last half-hour to make out whether it's a man or one of those iron figures with which some people decorate their lawns."
"That," replied the Idiot, calmly, "is my hired man. I pay him forty dollars a month to sit down there and let the grass grow under his feet. I heard you and Mr. Pedagog discussing the wonderful grassiness of my lawn after dinner last night, and I meant to have told you then that the credit thereof belongs entirely to the restful nature of that man's soul. He will stand for hours rooted to one spot and looking with apparent aimlessness out over the river. To most people this would seem to be prompted by a sheer indisposition to work, but this would do him a rank injustice, for his immovability is due entirely to his system. He is letting the grass grow beneath him, and the fact that our grass is so nourishing everywhere is due to his having stood for hours at various times over every square inch of territory to which I hold the title-deeds."
The Idiot gazed out of the window at his retainer with affectionate admiration.
"He certainly clings closely to his system," said the lawyer.
"'I FEEL THAT I COULD GO OUT AND MOW THREE ACRES OF GRASS'"
"He is a model," said the Idiot. "He has done more to make my life here easy than any one in my service. For instance, you know the hurly-burly of existence in town. I go to my office in the morning, and whether I have much work or little to do, I come home in the afternoon absolutely worn out. The constant hustling and bustling of others in the city wears upon my mind, and consequently upon my body. The rush and roar of cables and electric-cars; the activity of messengers running to and fro in the streets; the weary horses dragging great lumbering wagons up and down the crowded thoroughfares, all affect my nature and impair my energy; and then, the day's work done, I return here, where all is quiet and still, and the very contrast between that man, standing silently on his appointed spot, or leaning against the house, or lying off in sheer content under some tree, and the mad scramble for lucre in the city, invigorates my tired body until I feel that I could go out and mow three acres of grass before dinner; in fact, I generally do."
"I did not know that a restful nature was a requisite of a successful career as a hired man," said Mr. Pedagog.
"It is evident, then, that you have never had a hired man," rejoined the Idiot. "Nor can you ever have studied the species at close range. Ceaseless activity would be his ruin. If he did to-day all there is to do, he would be out of employment to-morrow, consequently he never does to-day's work to-day, and cultivates that leisurely attitude towards life upon which you have commented. Do you see that small beech-tree over there?" he added, pointing to a scrawny little sapling whose sole virtue appeared to be its rigid uprightness.
"Is that a beech-tree?" asked Mr. Brief. "I thought it was a garden stake."
"'He WOULD GO OUT DAY AFTER DAY AND SIT DOWN BESIDE IT'"
"It is a beech-tree," said the Idiot. "I planted it myself last autumn, and while it has as yet borne no beeches, I think if we give it time, and it withstands the rigors of the climate, it will produce its fruit. But it was not of its possibilities as a beech-bearing tree that I intended to speak. I wanted to indicate to you by a material object the value of having a hired man who likes to lean against things. At the close of this last winter that tree, instead of being as erect as a grenadier, as it now is, was all askew. The strong westerly winds which are constantly blowing across that open stretch bent the thing until it seemed that the tree was bound to be deformed; but Mike overcame the difficulty. He would go out day after day and sit down beside it and lean against it for two and three hours at a time, with the result that the tendency to curve was overcome, and a tree that I feared was doomed to fail now bids fair to resemble a successful telegraph-pole in its uprightness. And, of course, the added warmth of his body pressing down upon the earth which covers its roots gave it an added impulse to grow."
"It is a wonderful system," smiled Mr. Brief. "I wonder it is not adopted everywhere."
"It is, pretty much," said the Idiot. "Most hired men do the same thing. I don't think Mike differs radically from others of his kind. Of course, there are exceptions. My neighbor Jimpsonberry, for instance, has a man who is so infernally unrestful that he makes everybody tired. He is up every morning mowing Jimpsonberry's lawn at five o'clock, waking up every sleepy soul within ear-shot with the incessant and disturbing clicking of his machine. Mike would never think of making such a nuisance of himself. Furthermore, Jimpsonberry's lawn is kept so close-cropped that the grass doesn't get any chance, and in the heat of midsummer turns to a dull brick-red."
After a pause, during which the company seemed to be deeply cogitating the philosophical bearing of the subject under discussion, the Idiot resumed:
"There is another aspect of this matter," he said, "which Jimpsonberry's man brings to my mind. You know as well as I do that heat is contagious. If you feel as cool as a cucumber, and then all of a sudden see somebody who is dripping with perspiration and looking for all the world like a human kettle simmering on a kitchen-range, you begin to simmer yourself. It is mere sympathy, of course, but you simmer just the same, get uncomfortable and hot in the collar, and are shortly as badly off as the other fellow. So it is with Jimpsonberry's man. Time and time again he has spoiled all my pleasure by making me realize by a glance at his red face and sweating arms how beastly hot it is, when before I had seen him I felt tolerably comfortable. Mike, on the other hand, is not so inconsiderate, and I am confident would let the grass grow a mile high before he would consent to interfere with my temperature by pushing the mower up and down the lawn on a humid day."
"Do you keep this interesting specimen of still life all through the year?" asked Mr. Brief, "or do you give him a much-needed vacation in winter? I should think he would be worn out with all this standing around, for nothing that I know of is more tiresome than doing nothing."
"No," said the Idiot. "Mike never seems to need a vacation. Sitting down and leaning against things and standing around don't seem to tire him in the least. It might tire you or me, but you see he's used to it. The only effect it has on him, as I view the matter, is that it wears out his clothes. It doesn't impair his lack of vigor at all. So by the simple act of occasionally renewing his wardrobe, which I do every time I discard a suit of my own, I revive his wasted vitality, and he does not require to be sent to Europe, or to take an extended tour in the White Mountains to recuperate. I keep him all through the winter, and his system is quite the same then as in summer, except that he does his sitting around and leaning indoors instead of in the open."
"I suppose he looks after the furnace and keeps the walks clear of snow in winter time?" suggested Mr. Pedagog, who was beginning to take an interest in this marvellously restful personage.
"'HE SHOVELS OFF A FOOT-PATH'"
"Yes," said the Idiot; "and he attends to the windows as well. As a minder of the furnace he is invaluable. My house is as cool as a roof-garden all through the winter, and thanks to his unwillingness to over-exert himself shovelling coal into the furnace, I burn only about half as much as my neighbors, and my house is never overheated. This in itself is an indication of the virtue of Mike's method. One-half of the colds contracted by children nowadays are the result of overheated houses. Mike's method gives me a cool house at very moderate expense, owing to the great saving of coal, the children do not get colds because of overheating, and the expense of having a doctor every other day is averted. Then his snow-shovelling scheme goes back to the first principles of nature. Mike is not overawed by convention, and instead of following the steps of other men who shovel the snow entirely off, he shovels off a footpath to enable me to go to business, and then sits down and oversees the sun while it melts the balance. Sometimes, if the sun does not do the work promptly enough to suit him, he gets up little contests for the children. He divides up certain portions of the walk into equal parts, and starts the small boys on a race to see which one will get the portion assigned to him cleaned off first, the prize being something in the nature of an apple, which the cook orders from the market. I believe my son Thomas won ten apples last winter, although I am told that the Jimpsonberry boy, whose father's man is cross, and insists on doing all the work himself, is the champion snow-shoveller of the street."
"Yes, he is, pa," put in Tommy. "Mike owes him 'leven apples. I only won eight."
"Well, that is a very good record, Thomas," said the Idiot, "and I will see to it that next winter you have a brand-new snow-shovel with which to enter the contest."
"Mike lets us chop the kindling-wood, too," said Tommy, suddenly perceiving a chance to put in a good word for the genial Mike. "I think he's the nicest hired man as ever was."
"He'll stop anything he's doing to talk to me," ventured Mollie, not wishing to be backward in laying wreaths upon the brow of their friend.
"Yes, I have noticed that," said the Idiot. "Indeed, next to his extreme restfulness there is no quality that I know of in Mike that shines out so conspicuously as his intense love for children. He will neglect his own interests, as Mollie has suggested, to talk to the little ones, and I rather like him for it. No boy dares go near the Jimpsonberry man, who has exerted himself into a perpetual state of nervous exhaustion."
"Well, if he cleans your windows, that is something," observed Mrs. Pedagog, whose experience in keeping a boarding-house years before entitled her to speak as one having authority.
"Unless his system is the same in that work as in the other branches committed to his care," said Mr. Brief.
"'SPEND A WHOLE DAY ON ONE WINDOW'"
"It isn't quite," said the Idiot. "He really does exert himself in window-cleaning. I have frequently seen him spend a whole day on one window. His window-washing system is a very ingenious one, nevertheless."
"It is, indeed," said Mrs. Idiot, with a show of feeling.
"A new window-washing system?" grinned Mr. Pedagog.
"Yes," said the Idiot. "It is his own invention. He washes them on the outside in summer and on the inside in winter. The result is this opalescent glass which you see. You would hardly guess that these windows are of French plate. Still, we don't mind so much. I couldn't ask him to wash them on the outside in winter, it is so dreadfully cold, and in the summer, of course, they are always open, and no one, unless he were disagreeable enough to go snooping about after unpleasant details, would notice that they are not immaculate."
"And you pay this man forty dollars for this?" demanded Mr. Brief.
"Oh, for this and other things. I pay him two dollars a month for the work he does. I pay him ten dollars a month because he's good to the children. I pay him ten dollars more for his civility, which is unvarying—he always puts his hat on when he comes into the house, having noticed, perhaps, that only those who are my social equals are entitled to appear bareheaded in my presence."
"And the other eighteen?" persisted the lawyer, by nature a cross-examiner.
"Well, I don't grudge him that because—" a sort of a fond light lit up the Idiot's eyes as he gazed down upon Mike, still sitting on the tennis-court—"I don't grudge him that other eighteen dollars because it costs Mike twenty dollars a month to live; and he uses the rest of it to put his boy through college, so that when he grows up to be a man he will be something more than a hired man."
"Ah!" said Mr. Brief.
"Yes," said the Idiot; "I found that out from a third party some time ago, and I thought after all I'd keep him, for I know nobody else would have him, and then what would become of the boy in college?"
"It's rather strange, I think," observed Mrs. Idiot one evening, as she and the Idiot sat down to dine, "that the Dawkinses haven't been here for three or four months."
"I've noticed it myself," said the Idiot. "We used to see 'em every day about. What's up? You and Polly Dawkins had a fight?"
"Not that I know of," said Mrs. Idiot. "The last time we met she was very cordial, and asked most affectionately after you and the children. I presumed that possibly you and Dick had had some kind of a falling out."
"Not a bit of it. Dick and I couldn't quarrel any more than you and Polly could. Perhaps as we grow older our ideals differ. Polly's rather anthropological in her talks, isn't she?"
"A trifle," said Mrs. Idiot. "And musical and literary and scientific."
"While you?" queried the Idiot.
"'WELL, I'M FOND OF GOLF'"
"Well, I'm fond of golf and—ah—well—"
"Golf again," laughed the Idiot. "I guess that's it, Bess. When a woman wants to talk about the origin of the species and has to hear about a splendid putt, and her observations upon the sonata are invariably interrupted by animadversions upon the morals of caddies, and her criticisms of Browning end in a discussion of the St. Andrew's Rules, she's apt to shy off into a more congenial atmosphere, don't you think?"
"I am sure," retorted Mrs. Idiot, "that while I admit I am more interested in golf than in anything else outside of you and the children, I can and do talk sometimes of other things than caddies, and beautiful drives, and stymies. You are very much mistaken if you think otherwise."
"That is very true, my dear," said the Idiot. "And nobody knows it better than I do. I've heard you talk charmingly about lots of things besides stymies, and foozles, and putts, and drives, but you don't know anything about the men of the Stone Age, and you couldn't tell the difference between a sonata and a fugue any more than I. Furthermore, you have no patience with Browning, so that when Polly Dawkins asks if you likeSordello, you are more likely than not to say that you never ate any, but on the whole for small fish prefer whitebait."
Mrs. Idiot laughed.
"No, indeed," she replied. "I'd fall back on golf if Polly mentionedSordelloto me. You may remember that you sent it to me when we were engaged, and I loved you so much—then—that I read it. If I hadn't loved you I couldn't have done it."
"Well," smiled the Idiot, "what did you think of it?"
"I think Browning had a good lie, but he foozled," said Mrs. Idiot, with her eyes atwinkle, and the Idiot subsided for at least ten seconds.
"I wish you'd say that to Polly some time," he observed. "It's so very true, and put with an originality which cannot but appeal to the most hardened of literary women."
"I will if I ever get the chance," said Mrs. Idiot.
"Suppose we make the chance?" suggested the Idiot. "Let's go down there and call to-night. I'll work the conversation up so that you can get that off as an impromptu."