"''Tis best to bear the ills we hovNor fly to those we know not of.'"
"''Tis best to bear the ills we hovNor fly to those we know not of.'"
"Ho!" jeered the Poet. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that I do not think you are a success in quotation. Hamlet spoke those lines differently."
"Shakespeare's Hamlet did. My little personal Shakespeare makes his Hamlet an entirely different, less stilted sort of person," said the Idiot.
"You have a personal Shakespeare, have you?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
"Of course I have," the Idiot answered. "Haven't you?"
"I have not," said the Bibliomaniac, shortly.
"Well, I'm sorry for you then," sighed the Idiot, putting a fried potato in his mouth. "Very sorry. I wouldn't give a cent for another man's ideals. I want my own ideals, and I have my own ideal of Shakespeare. In fancy, Shakespeare and I have roamed over the fields of Warwickshire together, and I've had more fun imagining the kind of things he and I would have said to each other than I ever got out of his published plays, few of which have escaped the ungentle hands of the devastators."
"You mean commentators, I imagine," said Mr. Pedagog.
"I do," said the Idiot. "It's all the same, whether you call them commentors or devastators. The result is the same. New editions of Shakespeare are issued every year, and people buy them to see not what Shakespeare has written, but what new quip some opinionated devastator has tried to fasten on his memory. In a hundred years from now the works of Shakespeare will differ as much from what they are to-day as to-day's versions differ from what they were when Shakespeare wrote them. It's mighty discouraging to one like myself who would like to write works."
"You are convicted out of your own mouth," said the Bibliomaniac. "A moment since you wasted your pity on me because I didn't mutilate Shakespeare so as to make him my own, and now you attack the commentators for doing precisely the same thing. They're as much entitled to their opinions as you are to yours."
"Did you ever learn to draw parallels when you were in school?" asked the Idiot.
"I did, and I think I've made a perfect parallel in this case. You attack people in one breath for what you commiserate me for not doing in another," said the Bibliomaniac.
"Not exactly," said the Idiot. "I don't object to the commentators for commentating, but I do object to their putting out their versions of Shakespeare as Shakespeare. I might as well have my edition published. It certainly would be popular, especially where, in 'Julius Cæsar,' I introduce five Cassiuses and have them all fall on their swords together with military precision, like a 'Florodora' sextette, for instance."
"Well, I hope you'll never print such an atrocity as that," cried the Bibliomaniac, hotly. "If there's one thing in literature without excuse and utterly contemptible it is the comic version, the parody of a masterpiece."
"You need have no fear on that score," returned the Idiot. "I haven't time to rewrite Shakespeare, and, since I try never to stop short of absolute completeness, I shall not embark on the enterprise. If I do, however, I shall not do as the commentators do, and put on my title-page 'Shakespeare. Edited by Willie Wilkins,' but 'Shakespeare As He Might Have Been, Had His Plays Been Written By An Idiot.'"
"I have no doubt that you could do great work with 'Hamlet,'" observed the Poet.
"I think so myself," said the Idiot. "But I shall never write 'Hamlet.' I don't want to have my fair fame exposed to the merciless hands of the devastators."
"I shall never cease to regret," said Mr. Pedagog, after a moment's thought, "that you are so timid. I should very much like to see 'The Works of the Idiot.' I admit that my desire is more or less a morbid one. It is quite on a plane with the feeling that prompts me to wish to see that unfortunate man on the Bowery who exhibits his forehead, which is sixteen inches high, beginning with his eyebrows, for a dime. The strange, the bizarre in nature, has always interested me. The more unnatural the nature, the more I gloat upon it. From that point of view I do most earnestly hope that when you are inspired with a work you will let me at least see it."
"Very well," answered the Idiot. "I shall put your name down as a subscriber to theIdiot Monthly Magazine, which some of my friends contemplate publishing. That is what I mean when I say I may shortly lose control of myself. These friends of mine profess to have been so impressed by my dicta that they have asked me if I would allow myself to be incorporated into a stock company, the object of which should be to transform my personality into printed pages. Hardly a day goes by but I devote a portion of my time to a poem in which the thought is conspicuous either by its absence or its presence. My schemes for the amelioration of the condition of the civilized are notorious among those who know me; my views on current topics are eagerly sought for; my business instinct, as I have already told you, is invaluable to my employer, and my fiction is unsurpassed in its fictitiousness. What more is needed for a magazine? You have the poetry, the philanthropy, the man of to-day, the fictitiousness, and the business instinct necessary for the successful modern magazine all concentrated in one person. Why not publish that person, say my friends, and I, feeling as I do that no man has a right to the selfish enjoyment of the great gifts nature has bestowed upon him, of course can only agree. I am to be incorporated with a capital stock of five hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand dollars' worth of myself I am to be permitted to retain; the rest my friends will subscribe for at fifty cents on the dollar. If any of you want shares in the enterprise I have no doubt you can be accommodated."
"I'm obliged to you for the opportunity," said the Doctor. "But I have to be very careful about things I take stock in, and in general I regard you as a thing in which I should prefer not to take stock."
"And I," observed Mr. Pedagog—"I have never up to this time taken any stock in you, and I make it a rule to be guided in life by precedent. Therefore I must be counted out."
"I'll wait until you are listed at the Stock Exchange," put in the Bibliomaniac, "while thanking you just the same for the chance."
"You can put me down for one share, to be paid for in poetry," said the Poet, with a wink at the Idiot.
"You'll never make good," said the Idiot, slyly.
"And I," said the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally imbibes, "shall be most happy to take five shares to be paid for in advice and high-balls. Moreover, if your company needs good-will to establish its enterprise, you may count upon me for unlimited credit."
"Oh, as for that," said the Idiot, "I have plenty of good-will. Even Mr. Pedagog supplies me with more of it than I deserve, though by no means with all that I desire."
"That good-will is yours as an individual, Mr. Idiot," returned the School-master. "As a corporation, however, I cannot permit you to trade upon me even for that. Your value is, in my eyes, entirely too fluctuating."
"And it is in the fluctuating stock that the great fortunes are made, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "As an individual I appreciate your good-will. As a corporation I am soulless, without emotions, and so cherish no disappointments over your refusal. I think if the scheme goes through it will be successful, and I fully expect to see the day when Idiot Preferred will be selling as high, if not higher, than Steel, and leaving utterly behind any other industrial that ever was known, copper or rope."
"If, like the railways, you could issue betterment bonds you might do very well," said the Doctor. "I think ten million dollars spent in bettering you might bring you up to par."
"Or a consolidated first-mortgage bond," remarked the Bibliomaniac. "Consolidate the Idiot with a man like Chamberlain or the German Emperor, and issue a five-million-dollar mortgage on the result, and you might find people who'd take those bonds at seventy-five."
"You might if they were a dollar bond printed on cartridge-paper," said Mr. Pedagog. "Then purchasers could paper their walls with them."
"Rail on," said the Idiot. "I can stand it. When I begin paying quarterly dividends at a ten-per-cent. rate you'll wish you had come in."
"I don't know about that," said Mr. Pedagog. "It would entirely depend."
"On what?" queried the Idiot, unwarily.
"On whether that ten per cent. was declared upon your own estimate of your value or upon ours. On yours it would be fabulous; on ours—oh, well, what is the use of saying anything more about it. We are not going in it, and that's an end to it."
"Well, I'll go in it if you change your scheme," said the Doctor. "If instead of an Idiot Publishing Company you will try to float yourself as a Consolidated Gas Company you may count on me to take a controlling interest."
"I will submit the proposition to my friends," said the Idiot, calmly. "It would be something to turn out an honest gas company, which I should, of course, try to be, but I am afraid the public will not accept it. There is little demand for laughing-gas, and, besides, they would fear to intrust you with a controlling interest for fear that you might blow the product out and the bills up—coining millions by mere inflation. They've heard of you, Doctor, and they know that is the sort of thing you'd be likely to do."
"I was surprised and gratified last evening, Mr. Idiot," observed the School-master as breakfast was served, "to see you at the University Extension Lecture. I did not know that you admitted the necessity of further instruction in any matter pertaining to human knowledge."
"I don't know that I do admit the necessity," returned the Idiot. "Sometimes when I take an inventory of the contents of my mind it seems to me that about everything I need is there."
"There you go again!" said the Bibliomaniac. "Why do you persist in your refusal to allow any one to get a favorable impression concerning you? Mr. Pedagog unbends sufficiently to tell you that you have at last done something which he can commend, and you greet him with an Idiotism which is practically a rebuff."
"Very well said," observed the School-master, with an acquiescent nod. "I came to this table this morning encouraged to believe that this young man was beginning to see the error of his ways, and I must confess to a great enough interest in him to say that I was pleased at that encouragement. I saw him at a lecture on literature at the Lyceum Hall last evening, and he appeared to be interested, and yet this morning he seems to show that he is utterly incorrigible. May I ask, sir, why you attended that lecture if, as you say, your mind is already sufficiently well furnished?"
"Certainly you may ask that question," replied the Idiot. "I went to that lecture to have my impressions confirmed, that is all. I have certain well-defined notions concerning University Extension, and I wished to see if they were correct. I found that they were."
"The lecture was not upon University Extension, but upon Romanticism, and it was a most able discourse," retorted Mr. Pedagog.
"Very likely," said the Idiot. "I did not hear it. I did not want to hear it. I have my own ideas concerning Romanticism, which do not need confirmation or correction. I have already confirmed and corrected them. I went to see the audience and not to hear Professor Peterkin exploding theories."
"It is a pity the chair you occupied was wasted upon you," snapped Mr. Pedagog.
"I agree with you," said the Idiot. "I could have got a much better view of the audience if I had been permitted to sit on the stage, but Professor Peterkin needed all that for his gestures. However, I saw enough from where I sat to confirm my impression that University Extension is not so much of a public benefit as a social fad. There was hardly a soul in the audience who could not have got all that Professor Peterkin had to tell him out of his books; there was hardly a soul in the audience who could not have afforded to pay one dollar at least for the seat he occupied; there was not a soul in the audience who had paid more than ten cents for his seat or her seat, and those for whose benefit the lecture was presumably given, the ten-cent people, were crowded out. The lectures themselves are not instructive—Professor Peterkin's particularly—except in so far as it is instructive to hear what Professor Peterkin thinks on this or that subject, and his desire to be original forces him to cook up views which no one else ever held, with the result that what he says is most interesting and proper to be presented to the attention of a discriminating audience, but not proper to be presented to an audience that is supposed to come there to receive instruction."
"You have just said that you did not listen to the lecture. How do you know that what you say is true?" put in the Bibliomaniac.
"I know Professor Peterkin," said the Idiot.
"Does he know you?" sneered Mr. Pedagog.
"I don't think he would remember me if you should speak my name in his presence," observed the Idiot, calmly. "But that is easily accounted for. The Professor never remembers anybody but himself."
"Well, I admit," said Mr. Pedagog, "that the Professor's lectures were rather advanced for the comprehension of a person like the Idiot, nevertheless it was an enjoyable occasion, and I doubt if the fulminations of our friend here will avail against University Extension."
"You speak a sad truth," said the Idiot. "Social fads are impervious to fulmination, as Solomon might have said had he thought of it. As long as a thing is a social fad it will thrive, and, on the whole, perhaps it ought to thrive. Anything which gives society something to think about has its value, and the mere fact that it makes societythinkis proof of that value."
"We seem to be in a philosophic frame of mind this morning," said Mr. Whitechoker.
"We are," returned the Idiot. "That's one thing about University Extension. It makes us philosophic. It has made a stoic of my dear old daddy."
"Oh yes!" cried Mr. Pedagog. "Youhavea father, haven't you? I had forgotten that."
"Wherein," said the Idiot, "we differ.Ihaven't forgotten that I have one, and, by-the-way, it is from him that I first heard of University Extension. He lives in a small manufacturing town not many miles from here, and is distinguished in the town because, without being stingy, he lives within his means. He has a way of paying his grocer's bills which makes of him a marked man. He hasn't much more money than he needs, but when the University Extension movement reached the town he was interested. The prime movers in the enterprise went to him and asked him if he wouldn't help it along, dilating upon the benefits which would accrue to those whose education stopped short with graduation from the high-schools. It was most plausible. The notion that for ten cents a lecture the working masses could learn something about art, history, and letters, could gather in something about the sciences, and all that, appealed to him, and while he could afford it much more ill than the smart people, the four hundred of the town, he chipped in. He paid fifty dollars and was made an honorary manager. He was proud enough of it, too, and he wrote a long, enthusiastic letter to me about it. It was a great thing, and he hoped the State, which had been appealed to to help the movement along, would take a hand in it. 'If we educate the masses to understand and to appreciate the artistic, the beautiful,' he wrote, 'we need have little fear for the future. Ignorance is the greatest foe we have to contend against in our national development, and it is the only thing that can overthrow a nation such as ours is.' And then what happened? Professor Peterkin came along and delivered ten or a dozen lectures. The masses went once or twice and found the platform occupied by a man who talked to them about Romanticism and Realism; who told them that Dickens was trash; who exalted Tolstoi and Ibsen; but who never let them into the secret of what Romanticism was, and who kept them equally in the dark as to the significance of Realism. They also found the best seats in the lecture-hall occupied by the smart set in full evening-dress, who talked almost as much and as loudly as did Professor Peterkin. The masses did not even learn manners at Professor Peterkin's first and second lectures, and the third and fourth found them conspicuous by their absence. All they learned was that they were ignorant, and that other people were better than they, and what my father learned was that he had subscribed fifty dollars to promote a series of social functions for the diversion of the four hundred and the aggrandizement of Professor Peterkin. He started in for what might be called Romanticism, and he got a Realism that he did not like in less time than it takes to tell of it, and to-day in that town University Extension is such a fad that when, some weeks ago, the swell club of that place talked of appointing Thursday evening as its club night, it was found to be impossible, for the reason that it might interfere with the attendance upon the University Extension lectures. That, Mr. Pedagog, is a matter of history and can be proven, and last night's audience confirmed the impression which I had formed from what my father had told me. Professor Peterkin's lectures are interesting to you, a school-master, but they are pure Greek to me, who would like to know more about letters. I would gather more instruction from your table-talk in an hour than I could from Professor Peterkin's whole course."
"You flatter me," said Mr. Pedagog.
"No," returned the Idiot. "If you knew how little the ignorant gain from Peterkin you would not necessarily call it flattery if one should say he learned more from your conversation over a griddle-cake."
"You misconceive the whole situation, I think, nevertheless," said Mr. Whitechoker. "As I understand it, supplementary lectures, and examinations based on them, are held after the lectures, when the practical instruction is given with great thoroughness."
"I'm glad you spoke of that," said the Idiot. "I had forgotten that part of it. Professor Peterkin received pay for his lectures, which dealt in theories only; plain Mr. Barton, who delivered the supplementary lectures, got nothing. Professor Peterkin taught nothing, but he represented University Extension. Plain Mr. Barton did the work and represented nothing. Both reached society. Neither reached the masses. In my native town plain Mr. Barton's supplementary lectures, which were simply an effort to unravel the Peterkin complications, were attended by the same people in smaller crowds—people of social standing who were curious enough to devote an hour a week to an endeavor to find out the meaning of what Professor Peterkin had told them at the function the week before. The students examined were mostly ladies, and I happen to know that in a large proportion they were ladies whose husbands could have afforded to pay Professor Peterkin his salary ten times over as a private tutor."
"As I look at it," said Mr. Pedagog, gravely, "it does not make much difference to whom your instruction is given, so long as it instructs. What if these lectures do interest those who are comparatively well off? Your society woman may be as much in need of an extended education as your factory girl. The University Extension idea is to convey knowledge to people who would not otherwise get it. It simply sets out to improve minds. If the social mind needs improvement, why not improve it? Why condemn a system because it does not discriminate in the minds selected for improvement?"
"I don't condemn a system which sets out to improve minds irrespective of conditions," replied the Idiot. "But I should most assuredly condemn a man, or a set of men, who induced me to subscribe to a bread fund for the poor and who afterwards expended that money on cream-cakes for the Czar of Russia. The fact that the Czar of Russia wanted the cream-cakes and was willing to accept them would not affect my feelings in the matter, though I have no doubt the people in charge of the fund would find themselves far more conspicuous for having departed from the original idea. Some of them might be knighted for it if the Czar happened to be passionately fond of cream-cakes."
"Then, having attacked this system, what would you have? Would you have University Extension stop?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
"Not at all," returned the Idiot. "Anything which can educate society is a good thing, but I should change the name of it from University Extension to Social Expansion, and I should compel those whose minds were broadened by it to pay the bills."
"But as yet you have failed to hit the nail on the head," persisted the Bibliomaniac. "The masses can attend these lectures if they wish to, and on your own statement they don't. You don't seem to consider that point, or, if you do, you don't meet it."
"I don't think it necessary to meet it," said the Idiot. "Though I will say that if you were one of the masses—a girl, say, with one dress, threadbare, poor, and ill-fitting, and possessed of a natural bit of pride—you would find little pleasure in attending a lecture your previous education does not permit of your comprehending, and sitting through an evening with a lot of finely dressed, smart folk, with their backs turned towards you. The plebeians havesomepride, my dear Bibliomaniac, and they are decidedly averse to mixing with the swells. They would like to be educated, but they don't care to be snubbed for the privilege of being mystified by a man like Professor Peterkin, even for so small a sum as ten cents an evening."
"We were talking about University Extension the other day, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot, as the School-master folded up the newspaper and put it in his pocket, "and I, as you remember, suggested that it might better be called Social Expansion."
"Did you?" said Mr. Pedagog, coldly. "I don't remember much about it. I rarely make a note of anything you may say."
"Well, I did suggest the change of name, whether your memory is retentive or not, and I have been thinking the matter over a good deal since, and I think I've got hold of an idea," returned the Idiot.
"In that case," said the Bibliomaniac, "we would better lock the door. If you have really got hold of an idea you should be very careful not to let it get away from you."
"No danger of that," said the Idiot, with a smile. "I have it securely locked up here," tapping his forehead.
"It must be lonesome," said Mr. Pedagog.
"And rather uncomfortable—if it is a real idea," observed the Doctor. "An idea in the Idiot's mind must feel somewhat as a tall, stout Irish maid feels when she goes to her bedroom in one of those Harlem flat-houses."
"You men are losing a great opportunity," said the Idiot, with a scornful glance at the three professional gentlemen. "The idea of your following the professions of pedagogy, medicine, and literature, when the three of you combined could make a fortune as an incarnate comic paper. I don't see why you don't make a combination like those German bands that play on the street corners, and go about from door to door, and crack your jokes just as they crack their music. I am sure you'd take, particularly in front of barber-shops."
"It would be hard on the comic papers," said the Poet, who was getting a little unpopular with his fellow-boarders because of his tendency, recently developed, to take the Idiot's part in the breakfast-table discussions. "They might be so successful that the barber-shops, instead of taking the comic papers for their customers to read, would employ one or more of them to sit in the middle of the room and crack jokes aloud."
"We couldn't rival the comic papers though," said the Doctor, wishing to save his dignity by taking the bull by the horns. "We might do the jokes well enough, but the comic papers are chiefly pictorial."
"You'd be pictorial enough," said the Idiot. "Wasn't it you, Mr. Pedagog, that said the Doctor here looked like one of Cruikshank's physicians, or as if he had stepped out of Dickens's pages, or something like it?"
"I never said anything of the sort!" cried the School-master, wrathfully; "and you know I didn't."
"Who was it said that?" asked the Idiot, innocently, looking about the table. "It couldn't have been Mr. Whitechoker, and I know it wasn't the Poet or my Genial Friend who occasionally imbibes. Mr. Pedagog denies it; I didn't say it; Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't say it. That leaves only two of us—the Bibliomaniac and the Doctor himself. I don't think the Doctor would make a personal remark of that kind, and—well, there is but one conclusion. Mr. Bibliomaniac, I am surprised."
"What?" roared the Bibliomaniac, glaring at the Idiot. "Do you mean to fasten the impertinence on me?"
"Far from it," returned the Idiot, meekly. "Very far from it. It is fate, sir, that has done that—the circumstantial evidence against you is strong; but then, mercifully enough, circumstantial evidence is not permitted to hang a man."
"Now see here, Mr. Idiot," said the Bibliomaniac, firmly and impressively, "I want you to distinctly understand that I am not going to have you put words into my mouth that I never uttered. I—"
"Pray, don't attack me," said the Idiot. "I haven't made any charge against you. I only asked who could have said that the Doctor looked like a creation of Cruikshank. I couldn't have said it, because I don't think it. Mr. Pedagog denies it. In fact, every one here has a clear case of innocence excepting yourself, and I don't believeyousaid it, only the chain of circumstance—"
"Oh, hang your chain of circumstance!" interrupted the Bibliomaniac.
"It is hung," said the Idiot, "and it appears to make you very uncomfortable. However, as I was saying, I think I have got hold of an idea involving a truly philanthropic and by no means selfish scheme of Social Expansion."
"Heigho!" sighed Mr. Pedagog. "I sometimes think that if I had not the honor to be the husband of our landlady I'd move away from here. Your views, sir, are undermining my constitution."
"You only think so, Mr. Pedagog," replied the Idiot. "You are simply going through a process of intellectual reconstruction at my hands. You feel exactly as a man feels who has been shut up in the dark for years and suddenly finds himself in a flood of sunlight. I am doing with you as an individual what I would have society do for mankind at large—in other words, while I am working for individual expansion upon the raw material I find here, I would have society buckle down to the enlargement of itself by the improvement of those outside of itself."
"If you swim in water as well as you do in verbiage," said the Bibliomaniac, "you must be able to go three or four strokes without sinking."
"Oh, as for that, I can swim like a duck," said the Idiot. "You can't sink me."
"I fancied not," observed Mr. Pedagog, with a smile at his own joke. "You are so light I wonder, indeed, that you don't rise up into space, anyhow."
"What a delightful condition of affairs that suggestion opens up!" said the Idiot, turning to the Poet. "If I were you I'd make a poem on that. Something like this, for instance:
"I am so very, very lightThat gravitation curbs not me.I rise up through the atmosphereTill all the world I plainly see."I dance about among the clouds,An airy, happy, human kite.The breezes toss me here and there,To my exceeding great delight."And when I would return to sup,To breakfast, or perchance to dine,I haul myself once more to earthBy tugging on a piece of twine."
"I am so very, very lightThat gravitation curbs not me.I rise up through the atmosphereTill all the world I plainly see.
"I dance about among the clouds,An airy, happy, human kite.The breezes toss me here and there,To my exceeding great delight.
"And when I would return to sup,To breakfast, or perchance to dine,I haul myself once more to earthBy tugging on a piece of twine."
Mr. Pedagog grinned broadly at this.
"You aren't entirely without your good points," he said. "If we ever accept your comic-paper idea we'll have to rely on you for the nonsense poetry."
"Thank you," said the Idiot. "I'll help. If I had a man like you to give me the suggestions I could make a fortune out of poetry. The only trouble is I have to quarrel with you before I can get you to give me a suggestion, and I despise bickering."
"So do I," returned Mr. Pedagog. "Let's give up bickering and turn our attention to—er—Social Extension, is it?"
"Yes—or Social Expansion," said the Idiot. "Some years ago the world was startled to hear that in the city of New York there were not more than four hundred people who were entitled to social position, and, as I understand it, as time has progressed the number has still further diminished. Last year the number was only one hundred and fifty, and, as I read the social news of to-day, not more than twenty-five people are now beyond all question in the swim. At dinners, balls, functions of all sorts, you read the names of these same twenty-five over and over again as having been present. Apparently no others attended—or, if they did, they were not so indisputably entitled to be present that their names could be printed in the published accounts. Now all of this shows that society is dying out, and that if things keep on as they are now going it will not be many years before we shall become a people without society, a nation of plebeians."
"Your statement so far is lucid and logical," said Mr. Pedagog, who did not admire society—so called—and who did not object to the goring of an ox in which he was not personally interested.
"Well, why is this social contraction going on?" asked the Idiot. "Clearly because Social Expansion is not an accepted fact. If it were, society would grow. Why does it not grow? Why are its ranks not augmented? There is raw material enough. You would like to get into the swim; so would I. But we don't know how. We read books of etiquette, but they are far from being complete. I think I make no mistake when I say they are utterly valueless. They tell us no more than the funny journal tells us when it says:
"'Never eat pease with a spoon;Never eat pie with a knife;Never put salt on a prune;Never throw crumbs at your wife.'"
"'Never eat pease with a spoon;Never eat pie with a knife;Never put salt on a prune;Never throw crumbs at your wife.'"
They tell most of us what we all knew before. They tell us not to wear our hats in the house; they tell us all the obvious things, but the subtleties of how to get into society they do not tell us. The comic papers give us some idea of how to behave in society. We know from reading the funny papers that a really swell young man always leans against a mantel-piece when he is calling; that the swell girl sits on a comfortable divan with her feet on a tiger-skin rug, and they converse in epigram. Sometimes the epigram is positively rude; when it is not rude it is so dull that no one wonders that the tiger's head on the rug represents the tiger as yawning. But, while this is instructive, it teaches us how to behave on special occasions only. You or I might call upon a young woman who did not sit on a divan, who had no tiger-skin rug to put her feet on, and whose parlor had a mantel-piece against which we could not lean comfortably. What are we to do then? As far as they go, the funny papers are excellent, but they don't go far enough. They give us attractive pictures of fashionable dinners, but it is always of the dinner after the game course. Some of us would like to know how society behaves while the soup is being served. We know that after the game course society girls reach across the table and clink wine-glasses with young men, but we do not know what they do before they get to the clink stage. Nowhere is this information given. Etiquette books are silent on the subject, and though I have sought everywhere for information, I do not know to this day how many salted almonds one may consume at dinner without embarrassing one's hostess. Now, if I can't find out, the million can't find out. Wherefore, instead of shutting themselves selfishly up and, by so doing, forcing society finally into dissolution, why cannot some of these people who know what is what give object-lessons to the million; educate them insavoir-faire?
"Last summer there was a play put on at one of our theatres in which there was a scene at a race-track. At one side was a tally-ho coach. For the first week the coach was an utterly valueless accessory, because the people on it were the ordinary supers in the employ of the theatre. They did not know how to behave on a coach, and nobody was interested. The management were suddenly seized with a bright idea. They invited several swell young men who knew how things were done on coaches to come and do these things on their coach. The young men came and imparted a realism to the scene that made that coach the centre of attraction. People who went to that play departed educated in coach etiquette. Now there lies my scheme in a nutshell. If these twenty-five, the Old Guard of society, which dines but never surrenders, will give once a week a social function in some place like Madison Square Garden, to which the million may go merely as spectators, not as participators, is there any doubt that they would fail to be instructed? The Garden will seat eight or ten thousand people. Suppose, for an instance, that a dozen of your best exponents of what is what were to give a dinner in the middle of the arena, with ten thousand people looking on. Do you mean to say that of all that vast audience no one would learn thereby how to behave at a dinner?"
"It is a great scheme," said the Doctor.
"It is!" said the Idiot, "and I venture to say that a course of, say, twelve social functions given in that way would prove so popular that the Garden would turn away every night twice as many people as it could accommodate."
"It would be instructive, no doubt," said the Bibliomaniac; "but how would it expand society? Would you have examinations?"
"Most assuredly," said the Idiot. "At the end of the season I should have a rigid examination of all who chose to apply. I would make them dine in the presence of a committee of expert diners, I would have them pass a searching examination in the Art of Wearing a Dress Suit, in the Science of Entering a Drawing-room, in the Art of Behavior at Afternoon Teas, and all the men who applied should also be compelled to pass a physical examination as an assurance that they were equal to the task of getting an ice for a young lady at a ball."
"Society would get to be too inclusive and would cease to be exclusive," suggested Mr. Whitechoker.
"I think not," said the Idiot. "I should not give a man or a woman the degree of B.S. unless he or she had passed an examination of one hundred per cent."
"B.S.?" queried Mr. Pedagog.
"Yes," returned the Idiot. "Bachelor of Society—a degree which, once earned, should entitle one to recognition as a member of the upper ten anywhere in Christendom."
"It is superb!" cried Mr. Pedagog, enthusiastically.
"Yes," said the Idiot. "At ten cents a function it would beat University Extension out of sight, and, further, it would preserve society. If we lose society we lose caste, and, worse than all, our funny men would have to go out of business, for there would be no fads or Willieboys left to ridicule."
"Mr. Idiot," said the Poet one morning, as the waffles were served, "you are an inventive genius. Why don't you invent an easy way to make a fortune? The trouble with most methods of making money is that they involve too much labor."
"I have thought of that," said the Idiot. "And yet the great fortunes have been made in a way which involved very little labor, comparatively speaking. You, for instance, probably work harder over a yard of poetry that brings you in ten dollars than any of our great railroad magnates have over a mile of railroad which has brought them in a million."
"Which simply proves that it is ideas that count rather than labor," said the Poet.
"Not exactly," said the Idiot. "If you put a hundred ideas into a quatrain you will get less money for it than you would for a two-volume epic in which you have possibly only half an idea. It isn't idea so much as nerve that counts. The man who builds railroads doesn't advance any particular idea, but he shows lots of nerve, and it is nerve that makes wealth. I believe that if you literary men would show more nerve force and spare the public the infliction of what you call your ideas, you would make more money."
"How would you show nerve in writing?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
"If I knew I'd write and make my fortune," said the Idiot. "Unfortunately, I don't know how one can show nerve in writing, unless it be in taking hold of some particularly popular idiosyncrasy of mankind and treating it so contemptuously that every one would want to mob you. If you could get the public mad enough at you to want to mob you they'd read everything you'd write, simply to nourish their wrath, and you'd soon be cutting coupons for a living, and could then afford to take up more ideas—coupon-cutters can afford theories. For my own part, one reason why I do not myself take up literature for a profession is that I have neither the nerve nor the coupons. I'd probably run along in the rut like a majority of the writers of to-day, and wouldn't have the grit to strike out in a new line of my own. Men say, and perhaps very properly, this is the thing that has succeeded in the past. I'll do this. Something else that appears alluring enough in the abstract has never been done, and for that reason I won't do it. There have been clever men before me, men clever enough to think of this something that I fondly imagine is original, and they haven't done it. Doubtless they refrained from doing it for good and sufficient reasons, and I am not going to be fool enough to set my judgment up against theirs. In other words, I lack the nerve to go ahead and write as I feel. I prefer to study past successes, with the result that I am moderately successful only. It's the same way in every line of business. Precedent guides in all things, but where occasionally you find a man courageous enough to cast precedent to the winds, one of two things happens. Either fortune or ruin follows. Hence, the thing to do if you want to make a fortune is to eliminate the possibility of ruin as far as may be. You cannot ruin a man who has nothing. He is down on bed-rock, anyhow; so for a receipt for fortune I should say, start a pauper, show your nerve, and you'll make a pile, or you won't make a pile. If you make it you are fortunate. If you fail to make it you are no more unfortunate than you were before you started."
"For plausibility, Mr. Idiot," said Mr. Pedagog, "you are to me a perfect wonder. I do not think that any one can deny, with confidence born of certainty, the truth of your premises, and it must be admitted that your conclusions are based properly upon those premises, and yet your conclusions are almost invariably utterly absurd, if not absolutely grotesque. Here is a man who says, to make a fortune become a beggar!"
"Precisely," said the Idiot. "There is nothing like having a clean slate to work on. If you are not a beggar you have something, and having something promotes caution and tends to destroy nerve. As a beggar you have everything to gain and nothing to lose, so you can plunge. You can swim better in deep water than in the shallow."
"Well," said the Doctor, "enlighten us on this point. You may not know how to show nerve as a writer—in fact, you confess that you don't. How would you show nerve as a beggar? Would you strive to enforce your demands and degenerate into a common highwayman, or would you simply go in for big profits, and ask passers-by for ten dollars instead of ten cents?"
"He'd probably take a bag of dynamite into a millionaire's office and threaten to blow him to pieces if he didn't give him a house and lot," sneered the Bibliomaniac.
"Not at all," said the Idiot. "That's cowardice, not nerve. If I went into a millionaire's office and demanded a million—or a house and lot even—armed with a bag full of newspapers, pretending it held dynamite, it might be more like nerve; but my beggar would do nothing contrary to the law. He'd simply be nervy, that's all—cheeky, perhaps you'd call it. For instance, I believe that if I were to hire in the elevated cars one of those advertising spaces above the windows, and were to place in that space a placard saying that I was by nature too lazy to work, too fond of life to starve, too poor to live, and too honest to steal, and would be placed in affluence if every man and woman who saw that sign would send me ten cents a week in two-cent postage-stamps for five weeks running, I should receive enough money to enable me to live at the most expensive hotel in town during that period. By living at that hotel and paying my bills regularly I could get credit enough to set myself up in business, and with credit there is practically no limit to the possibilities of fortune. It is simply honest nerve that counts. The beggar who asks you on the street for five cents to keep his family from starving is rebuffed. You don't believe his story, and you know that five cents wouldn't keep a family from starving very long. But the fellow who accosts you frankly for a dime because he is thirsty, and hasn't had a drink for two hours, in nine cases out of ten properly selected ones will get a quarter for his nerve."
"You ought to write aManual for Beggars," said the Bibliomaniac. "I have no doubt that the Idiot Publishing Company would publish it."
"Yes," said Mr. Pedagog. "A sort of beggar'sDon't, for instance. It would be a benefit to all men, as well as a boon to the beggars. That mendicancy is a profession to-day there is no denying, and anything which could make of it a polite calling would be of inestimable value."
"I have had it in mind for some time," said the Idiot, blandly. "I intended to call itMendicancy Made Easy, orthe Beggar's Don't: With Two Chapters on Etiquette for Tramps."
"The chief trouble with such a book I should think," said the Poet, "would be that your beggars and tramps could not afford to buy it."
"That wouldn't interfere with its circulation," returned the Idiot. "It's a poor tramp who can't steal. Every suburban resident in creation would buy a copy of the book out of sheer curiosity. I'd get my royalties from them; the tramps could get the books by helping themselves to the suburbanites' copies as they do to chickens, fire-wood, and pies put out to cool. As for the beggars, I'd have it put into their hands by the people they beg from. When a man comes up to a wayfarer, for instance, and says, 'Excuse me, sir, but could you spare a nickel to a hungry man?' I'd have the wayfarer say, 'Excuseme, sir, but unfortunately I have left my nickels in my other vest; but here is a copy of the Idiot'sMendicancy Made Easy, or the Beggar's Don't.'"
"And you think the beggar would read it, do you?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
"I don't know whether he would or not. He'd probably either read it or pawn it," the Idiot answered. "In either event he would be better off, and I would have got my ten per cent. royalty on the book. After theBeggars' ManualI should continue my good work if I found the class for whom it was written had benefited by my first effort. I should compile as my contribution to the literature of mendicancy for the following season what I should callThe Beggar's Élite Directory. This would enlarge my sphere a trifle. It would contain as complete lists as could be obtained of persons who give to street beggars, with their addresses, so that the beggars, instead of infesting the streets at night might go to the houses of these people and collect their incomes in a more business-like and less undignified fashion. Added to this would be two lists, one for tramps, stating what families in the suburbs kept dogs, what families gave, whether what they gave was digestible or not, rounding up with a list of those who do not give, and who have telephone connection with the police station. This would enable them to avoid dogs and rebuffs, would save the tramp the time he expends on futile efforts to find work he doesn't want, and as for the people who have to keep the dogs to ward off the tramps, they, too, would be benefited, because the tramps would begin to avoid them, and in a short while they would be able to dispense with the dogs. The other list would be for organ-grinders, who are, after all, only beggars of a different type. This list would comprise the names of persons who are musical and who would rather pay a quarter than listen to a hand-organ. By a judicious arrangement with these people, carried on by correspondence, the organ-grinder would be able to collect a large revenue without venturing out, except occasionally to play before the house of a delinquent subscriber in order to remind him that he had let his contract expire. So, by slow degrees, we should find beggars doing their work privately and not publicly, tramps circulating only among those whose sympathies they have aroused, and organ-grinding only a memory."
"The last, I think, would not come about," said Mr. Pedagog. "For there are people who like the music of hand-organs."
"True—I'm one of 'em. I'd hire a hansom to follow a piano-organ about the city if I could afford it, but as a rule the hand-organ lovers are of the one-cent class," returned the Idiot. "The quarter class are people who would rather not hear the hand-organ, and it is to them that a grinder of business capacity would naturally address himself. It is far pleasanter to stay at home and be paid large money for doing nothing than to undertake a weary march through the city to receive small sums for doing something. That's human nature, Mr. Pedagog."
"I presume it is," said Mr. Pedagog; "but I don't think your scheme is. Human nature works, but your plan wouldn't."
"Well, of course," said the Idiot, "you never can tell about ideals. The fact that an ideal is ideal is the chief argument against its amounting to much. But I am confident that if myBeggar's Don'tandÉlite Directoryfail, my other book will go."
"You appear to have the writing of a library in mind," sneered the Bibliomaniac.
"I have," said the Idiot. "If I write all the books I have in mind, the public library will be a small affair beside mine."
"And your other book is to be what?" queried Mr. Whitechoker.
"Plausible Tales for Beggars to Tell," said the Idiot. "If the beggar could only tell an interesting story he'd be surer of an ear in which to whisper it. The usual beggar's tale is commonplace. There's no art in it. There are no complications of absorbing interest. There is not a soul in creation, I venture to say, but would be willing to have a beggar stop right in the middle of his story. The tales I'd write for them would be so interesting that the attention of the wayfarer would be arrested at once. His mind would be riveted on the situation at once, and, instead of hurrying along and trying to leave the beggar behind, he would stop, button-hole him, and ask him to sit down on a convenient doorstep and continue. If a beggar could have such a story to tell as would enable him in the midst of one of its most exciting episodes to whisper hoarsely into the ear of the man whose nickel he was seeking, 'The rest of this interesting story I will tell you in Central Park at nine o'clock to-morrow night,' in such a manner as would impel the listener to meet him in the Park the following evening, his fortune would be made. Such a book I hope some day to write."
"I have no doubt," said Mr. Whitechoker, "that it will be an entertaining addition to fiction."
"Nor have I," said the Idiot. "It will make the writers of to-day green with envy, and, as for the beggars, if it is not generally known that it is I and not they who are responsible for the work, the beggars will shortly find themselves in demand as writers of fiction for the magazines."
"And you?" suggested the Poet.
"I shall be content. Mere gratitude will force the beggars to send me the magazine orders, andI'llwrite their articles and be glad of the opportunity, giving them ten per cent. of the profits. I know a man who makes fifty dollars a year at magazine work, and one of my ambitions is to rival the Banker-Poets and Dry Goods Essayists by achieving fame as the Boarding-house Dickens."
"I am afraid," said Mr. Pedagog, in a loud whisper to the Bibliomaniac, "that the Idiot isn't feeling well this morning. He has eaten three fish-cakes and a waffle without opening his mouth."
The Idiot looked up, and, gazing wearily at Mr. Pedagog for a moment, shrugged his shoulders and ejaculated, "Tutt!"
"He's off," said the Bibliomaniac. "Whenever he says 'Tutt!' you can make up your mind that his vocabulary is about to be loosed."
"If my vocabulary were as warped as some other vocabularies I might mention," said the Idiot, helping himself to another waffle modelled after the six of hearts, "I'd keep it in a cage. A man who observes that I have eaten three fish-cakes and a waffle without opening my mouth hasn't a very good command of language. He simply states as a fact what is in reality an impossibility, granting that I eat with my mouth, which I am told I do."
"You know what I mean," retorted Mr. Pedagog, impatiently. "I am so much in your society that I have acquired the very bad habit of speaking in the vernacular. When I say you haven't opened your mouth I do not refer to the opening you make for the receipt of waffles and fish-cakes, but for those massive openings which you require for your exuberant loquacity. In other words, I mean that you haven't spoken a word for at least three minutes, which is naturally an indication to us that you aren't feeling well. You and talk are synonymous as far as we are concerned."
"Ihavebeen known to speak—that is true," said the Idiot. "That I am not feeling very well this morning is also true. I have a headache."
"A what ache?" asked the Doctor, scornfully.
"A very bad headache," returned the Idiot, looking about him for a third waffle.
"How singular!" said the Bibliomaniac. "Reminds me of a story I heard of a man who had lost his foot. He'd had his foot shot off at Gettysburg, and yet for years after he could feel the pangs of rheumatism in that foot from which he had previously suffered."
"Pardon me for repeating," observed the Idiot. "But, as I have already said, and as I expect often to have to say again, Tutt! I can't blame you for thinking that I have no head, however. I find so little use for one here that in most instances I do not obtrude it upon you."
"I haven't noticed any lack of head in the Idiot," put in the School-master. "As a rule, I can agree to almost anything my friend the Bibliomaniac says, but in this case I cannot accept his views. You have a head. I have always said you had a head—in fact, that is what I complain about chiefly, it is such a big head."
"Thank you," said the Idiot, ignoring the shaft. "I shall never forget your kindness in coming to my aid, though I can't say that I think I needed it. Even with a racking headache sustained by these delicious waffles, I believe I can handle the Doctor and my bookish friend without assistance. I am what the mathematicians would call an arithmetical absurdity—I am the one that is equal to the two they represent. At present, however, I prefer to let them talk on. I am too much absorbed in thought and waffles to bandy words."
"If I had a headache," said Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog, without, it must be said, in any way desiring to stem the waffle tide which was slowly but surely eating into the profits of the week—"if I had a headache I should not eat so many waffles, Mr. Idiot."
"I suppose I ought not to," replied the Idiot, "but I can't help it, ma'am. Waffles are my weakness. Some men take to drink, some to gaming; I seek forgetfulness of woe in waffles. Mr. Whitechoker, will you kindly pass me that steaming ten of diamonds that is wasting its warmth upon the desert air before you?"
Mr. Whitechoker, with a sigh which indicated that he had had his eye on the ten of diamonds himself, did as he was requested.
"Many thanks," said the Idiot, transferring the waffle to his plate. "Let me see—that is how many?"
"Five," said Mr. Pedagog.
"Eight," said the Bibliomaniac.
"Dear me!" ejaculated the Idiot. "Why can't you agree? I never eat less than twelve waffles, and now that you have failed to keep tab I shall have to begin all over again. Mary, bring me one dozen fresh waffles in squads of four. This is an ideal breakfast, Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog."
"I am glad you are pleased," said the landlady, graciously. "My one aim is to satisfy."
"You are a better shot than most women," said the Idiot. "I wonder why it is," he added, "that waffles are so generally modelled after playing-cards, and also why, having been modelled after playing-cards, there is not a full pack?"
"Fifty-two waffles," said Mr. Whitechoker, "would be too many."
"Fifty-three, including the joker," said Mr. Pedagog.
"What doyouknow about cards, John?" asked Mrs. Pedagog, severely.
The Idiot laughed.
"Did you ever hear that pretty little song of Gilbert and Sullivan's, Mr. Poet, 'Things are seldom what they seem'?" he asked.
"Why shouldn't I know about playing-cards?" said Mr. Pedagog, acridly. "Mr. Whitechoker seems to be aware that a pack holds fifty-two cards—if he, why not I?"
"I—ah—I of course have to acquaint myself with many vicious things with which I have very little sympathy," observed Mr. Whitechoker, blandly. "I regard cards as an abomination."
"So do I," said Mr. Pedagog—"so do I. But even then I know a full house—I should say a full pack from a—er—a—er—"
"Bob-tail flush," suggested the Idiot.
"Sir," said Mr. Pedagog, "I am not well up in poker terms."
"Then you ought to play," said the Idiot. "The man who doesn't know the game has usually great luck. But I am sorry, Mrs. Pedagog, that you are so strongly opposed to cards, for I was going to make a suggestion which I think would promote harmony in our little circle on waffle days. If you regard cards as wholly immoral, of course the suggestion is without value, since it involves two complete packs of cards—one cardboard pack and one waffle pack."
"I don't object to cards as cards, Mr. Idiot," said the landlady. "It is the games people play with cards that I object to. They bring a great deal of unnecessary misery into the world, and for that reason I think it is better to avoid them altogether."
"That is quite true," said the Idiot. "They do bring about much unhappiness. I know a young woman who became a victim of insomnia once because in a series of ten games of old maid she got the odd card seven times. Of course it wasn't entirely the cards' fault. Superstition had something to do with it. In fact, I sometimes think the fault lies with the people who play, and not with the cards. I owe much to the game of whist. It taught me to control my tongue. I should have been a regular talk-fiend if it hadn't been for whist."
Mr. Pedagog looked unutterable things at the Idiot.
"Are you laboring under the delusion that you have any control over your tongue?" he asked, savagely.
"Most certainly," said the Idiot.
"Well, I'll have to make a note of that," said Mr. Pedagog. "I have a friend who is making a collection of hallucinations."
"If you'll give me his address," said the Idiot, "I'll send him thousands. For five dollars a dozen I'll invent hallucinations for him that people ought to have but haven't."
"No," returned the School-master. "In his behalf, however, I thank you. He collects only real hallucinations, and he finds there are plenty of them without retaining a professional lunatic to supply him."
"Very well," said the Idiot, returning to his waffles. "If at any time he finds the supply running short, I shall be glad to renew my offer."
"You haven't unfolded your Harmony Promoting Scheme for Waffle Days," suggested the Poet. "It has aroused my interest."
"Oh, it is simple," said the Idiot. "I have noticed that on waffle days here most of us leave the table more or less dissatisfied. We find ourselves plunged into acrimonious discussions, which, to my mind, arise entirely from the waffles. Mr. Pedagog is a most amiable gentleman, and yet we find him this morning full of acerbity. On the surface of things I seem to be the cause of his anger, but in reality it is not I, but the waffles. He has seen me gradually absorbing them and it has irritated him. Every waffle that I eathemight have had if I had not been here. If there had been no one here but Mr. Pedagog, he would have had all the waffles; as it is, his supply is limited. This affects his geniality. It makes him—"
"Pardon me," said Mr. Pedagog. "But you are all wrong. I haven't thought of the things at all."
"Consciously to yourself you have not," said the Idiot. "Subconsciously, however, you have. The Philosophy of the Unconscious teaches us that unknown to ourselves our actions are directly traceable to motives we wot not of. The truth of this is conclusively proven in this case. Even when I point out to you the facts in the case you deny their truth, thereby showing that you are not conscious of the real underlying motive for your irritation. Now, why is that irritation there? Because our several rights to the individual waffles that are served here are not clearly defined at the outset. When Mary brings in a steaming platter full of these delicious creations of the cook, Mr. Pedagog has quite as much right to the one with the six of hearts on it as I have, but I get it. He does not. Hence he is irritated, although he does not know it. So with Mr. Whitechoker. Five minutes ago he was hastening through the four of spades in order that he might come into possession of the ten of diamonds that lay smoking before him. As he was about to put the last spade in his mouth I requested him to hand me the ten of diamonds, having myself gulped down the deuce of clubs to get ahead of him. He couldn't decline to give me that waffle because he wanted it himself. He had to give it to me. He was irritated—though he did not know it. He sighed and gave me the waffle."
"I did want it," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But I did not know that I sighed."
"There you are," said the Idiot. "It is the Philosophy of the Unconscious again. If you are not conscious of so actual a thing as a sigh, how much the more unconscious must you be of something so subtle as motive?"
"And your waffle-deck?" said the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally imbibes. "How will that solve the problem? It seems to me to complicate the problem. As it is, we have about thirty waffles, each one of which is a germ of irritation in the breast of the man whodoesn'teat it. If you have fifty-two waffles you have twenty-two more germs to sow discord in our midst."
"You would have but for my scheme," said the Idiot. "I'd have a pack of cards at the table, and I'd deal them out just as you do in whist. Each card would represent the corresponding waffle. We'd begin breakfast by playing one hand after the manner of whist. Each man would keep his tricks, and when the waffles were served he would receive those, and those only, represented by the cards in the tricks he had taken. If you took a trick with the king of diamonds in it, you'd get the waffle with the king of diamonds on it, and so on. Every man would be clearly entitled through his skill in the game to the waffles that he ate."
"Very good," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But suppose you had bad luck and took no tricks?"
"Then," said the Idiot, "you'd have bad luck and get no waffles."
"Tutt!" said Mr. Pedagog.
And that was the sole criticism any of the boarders had to make, although there is reason to believe that the scheme had objectionable features to the majority of them, for as yet Progressive Waffles has not been played at Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog's.
"How is your Muse these days, Mr. Idiot?" asked the Bibliomaniac one Sunday morning while the mush was being served.
"Flourishing," said the Idiot. "Just flourishing—and no more."
"I should think you'd be pleased if she is flourishing," said the Doctor.
"I'd rather she'd stop flourishing and do a little writing," said the Idiot. "She's a queer Muse, that one of mine. She has all the airs and graces of an ordinary type-writer with an unconquerable aversion to work."
"You look upon your Muse as you would upon your type-writer, eh?" said Mr. Pedagog.
"Yes," said the Idiot. "That's all my Muse is, and she isn't even a capable type-writer. The general run of type-writers make sense of what you write, but my Muse won't. You may not believe it, but out of ten inspirations I had last week not one of them is fit for publication anywhere but in a magazine or a puzzle column. I don't know what is the matter with her, but when I sit down to dictate a comic sonnet she turns it into a serious jingle, andvice versa. We can't seem to get our moods to fit. When I want to be serious she's flippant, and when I become flippant she's serious."
"She must be very serious most of the time," said the Doctor.
"She is," said the Idiot, innocently. "But that's only because I'm flippant most of the time. I'm going to give her warning. If she doesn't brace up and take more interest in her work I'm going to get another Muse, that's all. I can't afford to have my income cut down fifty per cent. just because she happens to be fickle."
"Maybe she is flirting with somebody else," suggested the Poet. "My Muse does that occasionally."
"I doubt it," said the Idiot. "I haven't observed any other poet encroaching upon my particular province. Even you, good as you are, can't do it. But in any event I'm going to have a change. The day has gone by when a one-muse poet achieves greatness. I'm going to employ a half-dozen and try to corner the poetry market. Queer that in all these years that men have been writing poetry no one has thought of that. People get up grain corners, corners in railway stock, monopolies in gas and oil and everything else, about, but as yet no poet has cornered the market in his business."
"That's easily accounted for," said the Bibliomaniac. "The poet controls only his own work, and if he has any sense he doesn't want to monopolize that."
"That isn't my scheme at all," said the Idiot. "You have a monopoly of your own work always if you choose to avail yourself of it, and, as you say, a man would be crazy to do so. What I'd like to see established is a sort of Poetic Clearing-house Association. Supposing, for instance, that I opened an office in Wall Street—a Bank for Poets, in which all writers of verse could deposit their rhymes as they write them, and draw against them just as they do in ordinary banks with their money. It would be fine. Take a man like Swinburne, for instance, or our friend here. Our poet could take a sonnet he had written, endorse it, and put it in the bank. He'd be credited with one sonnet, and wouldn't have to bother his head about it afterwards. He could draw against it. If the Clearing-house company could dispose of it to a magazine his draft would be honored in cash to its full value, less discount charges, which would include postage and commissions to the company."
"And suppose the company failed to dispose of it?" suggested the Poet.
"They'd do just as ordinary banks do with checks—stamp it 'Not Good,'" said the Idiot. "That, however, wouldn't happen very often if the concern had an intelligent receiving-teller to detect counterfeits. If the receiving-teller were a man fit for the position and a poet brought in a quatrain with five lines in it, he could detect it at once and hand it back. So with comic poems. I might go there with a poem I thought was comic, and proceed to deposit it with the usual deposit slip. The teller would look at it a second, scrutinize the humor carefully, and then if it was not what I thought it, would stamp it 'Not Comic' or 'Counterfeit.' It is perfectly simple."
"Very simple," said Mr. Pedagog. "Though I should have used a synonym of simple to describe it. It's idiotic."
"That's what people said of Columbus's idea that he could discover America," said the Idiot. "Everything that doesn't have dollars slathered all over it in plain view is idiotic."
"The word slathered is new to me," said the School-master; "but I fancy I know what you mean."
"The word slathered may be new to you," said the Idiot, "but it is a good word. I have used it with great effect several times. Whenever any one asks me that foolish question that is asked so often, 'What is the good word?' I always reply 'Slathered,' and the what's-the-good-word fiend goes off hurt in his mind. He doesn't know what I mean any more than I do, but it shuts him up completely, which is just so much gained."
"I must confess," said the Poet, "that I cannot myself see where there is any money for your Rhyme Clearing-house. Ordinarily I quite approve of your schemes, but in this instance I go over to the enemy."
"I don't say that it is a gold-mine," said the Idiot. "I doubt if I had every cent that is paid for poetry in a year by everybody to everybody that my income would reach one hundredth part of what I'd receive as a successful manufacturer of soap; but there would be more money in poetry than there is if by some pooling of our issues we could corner the market. Suppose every writer of a quatrain in America should send his whole product to us. We could say to the magazines, 'Gentlemen, quatrains are not quatraining as hard as they were. If you need a four-line bit of gloom and rhyme to finish off your thirty-second page, our price is twenty-five dollars instead of seventy-five cents, as of yore.' So with all other kinds of verse. We'd simply name our figure, force the editors to accept it, and unload. We might get caught on the last thirty or forty thousand, but our profits on the others would enable us to more than meet the losses."
"And would you pay the author the twenty-five dollars?" asked Mr. Whitechoker.
"Not if we were sane," replied the Idiot. "We'd pay the author two dollars and fifty cents, which is one dollar and seventy-five cents more than he gets now.Hecouldn't complain."
"And those that you couldn't sell?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
"We'd simply mark 'Not Good' and return to the author. That's what happens to him now, so no objection could be raised to that. But there's still another side to this matter," said the Idiot. "Publishers would be quite as anxious to help it along as the poets. Dealing through us, they would be spared the necessity of interviewing poets, which I am informed is always painful because of the necessity which publishers labor under to give the poet to understand that they are in the business for profit, not for pleasure or mere love of sinking money in a magazine. So the publishers would keep a standing account of hard cash in our bank. Say a magazine used one hundred dollars' worth of verse in a month. The publisher at the beginning of the year would deposit twelve hundred dollars with us, and throughout the year would draw out sonnets, ballads, or pastels-in-metre just as he needed them. The checks would read something like this: 'The Poets' Clearing-house Association of the City of New York will pay to John Bluepencil, Editor, or Order, Ten Sonnets. (Signed) Blank Brothers & Co.' Or perhaps we'd receive a notice from a Southern publisher to this effect: 'Have drawn on you at sight for eight quatrains and a triolet.' Now, when you consider how many publishers there are who would always keep a cash balance in the treasury, you begin to get some notion as to how we could meet our running expenses and pay our quarterly dividends to our stockholders anyhow; and as for future dividends, I believe our loan department would net us a sufficient amount to make the stock gilt-edged."
"You would have a loan department, eh?" said Mr. Pedagog.
"That would be popular," said the Poet; "but there again I dispute the profit. You could find plenty of poets who would borrow your funds, but I doubt the security of the loans."
"All of your objections are based on misconceptions," said the Idiot. "The loan department would not lend money. It would lend poems for a consideration to those who are short and who need them to fulfil their obligations."
"Who on earth would want to borrow a poem, I'd like to know?" said the Bibliomaniac.
"Lovers, chiefly," said the Idiot. "Never having been a poet yourself, sir, you have no notion how far the mere faculty of being able to dash off a sonnet to a lady's eyebrow helps a man along in ultimately becoming the possessor of that eyebrow, together with the rest of the lady.Ihave seen women won, sir, by a rondeau. In fact, I have myself completely routed countless unpoetic rivals by exploding in their ranks burning quatrains to the fair objects of our affections. With woman the man who can write a hymn of thanksgiving that he is permitted to gaze into her cerulean orbs has a great advantage over the wight who has to tell her she has dandy blue eyes in commonplace prose. The commonplace-prose wight knows it, too, and he'd pay ten per cent. of his salary during courtship if he could devise a plan by means of which he could pass himself off as a poet. To meet this demand, our loan department would be established. An unimaginative lover could come in and describe the woman he adored; the loan clerk would fish out a sonnet to fit the girl, and the lover could borrow it for ten days, just as brokers borrow stock. Armed with this he could go up to Harlem, or wherever else the maiden lived, and carry consternation into the hearts of his rivals by spouting the sonnet as nonchalantly as though he had just thought of it. So it would go on. For the following call he could borrow a ballad singing the glories of her raven locks, likening them to the beautiful night, or, if the locks were red instead of black, to the aurora borealis."
"You'd have trouble finding a rhyme to borealis," said the Poet.
"Tutt!" said the Idiot. "What's the matter with 'Glory, Alice,' 'Listen to my story, Alice,' 'I'm going to war so gory, Alice,' 'I fear you are a Tory, Alice' (this for a Revolutionary poem), or 'Come rowing in my dory, Alice'? There's no end to 'em."