Chapter III: Part 3

"Yes, I want some potatoes, Mary; but before I take them," the Idiot replied, "I must first ascertain whether or not you wear the union label, and what is the exact status also of the potatoes. My principles are such that I cannot permit a non-union housemaid to help me to a scab potato, whereas, if you belong to the sisterhood, and our stewed friend Murphy here has been raised upon a union farm, then, indeed, do I wish not only one potato but many."

Mary's reply was a giggle.

"Ah!" said the Idiot. "The merry ha-ha, eh? All right, Mary. That is for the present sufficient evidence that your conscience is clear on this very important matter. As for the potatoes, we will eat them not exactly under protest, but with a distinctly announced proviso in advance that we assume that they have qualified themselves for admission into a union stomach. I hesitate to think of what will happen in my interior department if Murphy is deceiving us."

Whereupon the Idiot came into possession of a goodly portion of the stewed potatoes, and Mary fled to the kitchen, where she informed the presiding genius of the range that the young gentleman was crazier than ever.

"He's talkin' about the unions, now, Bridget," said she.

"Is he agin 'em?" demanded Bridget, with a glitter in her eye.

"No, he's for 'em; he wouldn't even drink milk from a non-union cow," said Mary.

"He's a foine gintleman," said Bridget. "Oi'll make his waffles a soize larger."

Meanwhile the Bibliomaniac had chosen to reflect seriously upon the Idiot's intelligence for his approval of unions.

"They are responsible for pretty nearly all the trouble there is at the present moment," he snapped out, angrily.

"Oh, go along with you," retorted the Idiot. "The trouble we have these days, like all the rest of the troubles of the past, go right back to that old original non-union apple that Eve ate and Adam got the core of. You know that as well as I do. Even Adam and Eve, untutored children of nature though they were, saw it right off, and organized a union on the spot, which has in the course of centuries proven the most beneficent institution of the ages. With all due respect to the character of this dwelling-place of ours--a home for single gentlemen--the union is the thing. If you don't belong to one you may be tremendously independent, but you're blooming lonesome."

"The matrimonial union," smiled Mrs. Pedagog, "is indeed a blessed institution, and, having been married twice, I can testify from experience; but, truly, Mr. Idiot, I wish you wouldn't put notions into Mary's head about the other kind. I should be sorry if she were to join that housemaid's union we hear so much about. I have trouble enough now with my domestic help without having a walking delegate on my hands as well."

"No doubt," acquiesced the Idiot. "In their beginnings all great movements have their inconveniences, but in the end, properly developed, a housemaid's union wouldn't be a bad thing for employers, and I rather think it might prove a good thing. Suppose one of your servants misbehaves herself, for instance--I remember one occasion in this very house when it required the united efforts of yourself, Mr. Pedagog, three policemen, and your humble servant to effectively discharge a three-hundred-pound queen of the kitchen, who had looked not wisely but too often on the cooking sherry. Now suppose that highly cultivated inebriate had belonged to a self-respecting union? You wouldn't have had to discharge her at all. A telephone message to the union headquarters, despatched while the lady was indulging in one of her tantrums, would have brought an inspector to the house, the queen would have been caught with the goods on, and her card would have been taken from her, so that by the mere automatic operation of the rules of her own organization she could no longer work for you. Thus you would have been spared some highly seasoned language which I have for years tried to forget; Mr. Pedagog's eye would not have been punched so that you could not tell your blue-eyed boy from your black-eyed babe; I should never have lost the only really satisfactory red necktie I ever owned; and three sturdy policemen, one of whom had often previously acted as the lady's brother on her evenings at home, and the others, of whom we had reason to believe were cousins not many times removed, would not have been confronted by the ungrateful duty of clubbing one who had frequently fed them generously upon your cold mutton and my beer."

"Is that one of the things the union would do?" queried Mrs. Pedagog, brightening.

"It is one of the things the union _should_ do," said the Idiot. "Similarly with your up-stairs girl, if perchance you have one. Suppose she got into the habit, which I understand is not all an uncommon case, of sweeping the dust under the bureau of your bedroom or under the piano in the drawing-room. Suppose she is really an adept in the art of dust concealment, having a full comprehension of all sixty methods--hiding it under tables, sofas, bookcases, and rugs, in order to save her back? You wouldn't have to bother with her at all under a properly equipped union. Upon the discovery of her delinquencies you would merely have to send for the union inspector, lift up the rug and show her the various vintages of sweepings the maid has left there: November ashes; December match-ends; threads, needles, and pins left over from the February meeting of the Ibsen Sewing-Circle at your house; your missing tortoise-shell hair-pin that you hadn't laid eyes on since September; the grocer's bill for October that you told the grocer you never received--all this in March. Do you suppose that that inspector, with all this evidence before her eyes, could do otherwise than prefer charges against the offender at the next meeting of the Committee on Discipline? Not on your life, madam. And, what is more, have you the slightest doubt that one word of reprimand from that same Committee on Discipline would prove far more effective in reforming that particular offender than anything you could say backed by the eloquence of Burke and the thunderbolts of Jove?"

"You paint a beautiful picture," said the Doctor. "But suppose you happened to draw a rotten cook in the domestic lottery--a good woman, but a regular scorcher. Where does your inspector come in there? Going to invite her to dine with you so as to demonstrate the girl's incompetence?"

"Not at all," said the Idiot. "That would make trouble right away. The cook very properly would say that the inspector was influenced by the social attention she was receiving from the head of the house, and the woman's effectiveness as a disciplinarian would be immediately destroyed. I'd put half portions of the burned food in a sealed package and send it to the Committee on Culinary Improvement for their inspection. A better method which time would probably bring into practice would be for the union itself to establish a system of domiciliary visits, by which the cook's work should be subjected to a constant inspection by the union--the object being, of course, to prevent trouble rather than to punish after the event. The inspector's position would be something like that of the bank examiner, who turns up at our financial institutions at unexpected moments, and sees that everything is going right."

"Oh, bosh!" said the Doctor. "You are talking of ideals."

"Certainly I am," returned the Idiot. "Why shouldn't I? What's the use of wasting one's breath on anything else?"

"Well, it's all rot!" put in Mr. Brief. "There never was any such union as that, and there never will be."

"You are the last person in the world to say a thing like that, Mr. Brief," said the Idiot--"you, who belong to the nearest approach to the ideal union that the world has ever known!"

"What! Me?" demanded the Lawyer. "Me? I belong to a union?"

"Of course you do--or at least you told me you did," said the Idiot.

"Well, you are the worst!" retorted Mr. Brief, angrily. "When did I ever tell you that I belonged to a union?"

"Last Friday night at dinner, and in the presence of this goodly company," said the Idiot. "You were bragging about it, too--said that no institution in existence had done more to uplift the moral tone of the legal profession; that through its efforts the corrupt practitioner and the shyster were gradually being driven to the wall--"

"Well, this beats me," said Mr. Brief. "I recall telling at dinner on Friday night about the Bar Association--"

"Precisely," said the Idiot. "That's what I referred to. If the Bar Association isn't a Lawyer's Union Number Six of the highest type, I don't know what is. It is conducted by the most brilliant minds in the profession; its honors are eagerly sought after by the brainiest laborers in the field of Coke and Blackstone; its stern, relentless eye is fixed upon the evil-doer, and it is an effective instrument for reform not only in its own profession, but in the State as well. What I would have the Housemaid's Union do for domestic servants and for the home, the Bar Association does for the legal profession and for the State, and if the lawyers can do this thing there is no earthly reason why the housemaids shouldn't."

"Pah!" ejaculated Mr. Brief. "You place the bar and domestic service on the same plane of importance, do you?"

"No, I don't," said the Idiot. "Shouldn't think of doing so. Twenty people need housemaids, where one requires a lawyer; therefore the domestic is the more important of the two."

"Humph!" said Mr. Brief, with an angry laugh. "Intellectual qualifications, I suppose, go for nothing in the matter."

"Well, I don't know about that," said the Idiot. "I guess, however, that there are more housemaids earning a living to-day than lawyers--and, besides--oh, well, never mind--What's the use? I don't wish to quarrel about it."

"Go on--don't mind me--I'm really interested to know what further you can say," snapped Mr. Brief. "Besides--what?"

"Only this, that when it comes to the intellectuals--Well, really, Mr. Brief," asked the Idiot, "really now, did you ever hear of anybody going to an intelligence office for a lawyer?"

Mr. Brief's reply was not inaudible, for just at that moment he swallowed his coffee the wrong way, and in the effort to bring him to, the thread of the argument snapped, and up to the hour of going to press had not been tied together again.

XI

THE GENTLE ART OF BOOSTING

The Idiot was very late at breakfast--so extremely late, in fact, that some apprehension was expressed by his fellow-boarders as to the state of his health.

"I hope he isn't ill," said Mr. Whitechoker. "He is usually so prompt at his meals that I fear something is the matter with him."

"He's all right," said the Doctor, whose room adjoins that of the Idiot in Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog's Select Home for Single Gentlemen. "He'll be down in a minute. He's suffering from an overdose of vacation--rested too hard."

Just then the subject of the conversation appeared in the doorway, pale and haggard, but with an eye that boded ill for the larder.

"Quick!" he cried, as he entered. "Lead me to a square meal. Mary, please give me four bowls of mush, ten medium soft-boiled eggs, a barrel of saute potatoes, and eighteen dollars' worth of corned-beef hash. I'll have two pots of coffee, Mrs. Pedagog, please, four pounds of sugar, and a can of condensed milk. If there is any extra charge you may put it on the bill, and some day, when the common stock of the Continental Hen Trust goes up thirty or forty points, I'll pay."

"What's the matter with you, Mr. Idiot?" asked Mr. Brief. "Been fasting for a week?"

"No," replied the Idiot. "I've just taken my first week's vacation, and, between you and me, I've come back to business so as to get rested for the second."

"Doesn't look as though vacation agreed with you," said the Bibliomaniac.

"It doesn't," said the Idiot. "Hereafter I am an advocate of the rest-while-you-work system. Never take a day off if you can help it. There's nothing so restful as paying attention to business, and no greater promoter of weariness of spirit and vexation of your digestion than the modern style of vacating. No more for mine, if you please."

"Humph!" sneered the Bibliomaniac. "I suppose you went to Coney Island to get rested up, bumping the bump and looping the loop, and doing a lot of other crazy things."

"Not I," quoth the Idiot. "I didn't have sense enough to go to some quiet place like Coney Island, where you can get seven square meals a day, and then climb into a Ferris-wheel and be twirled around in the air until they have been properly shaken down. I took one of the Four Hundred vacations. Know what that is?"

"No," said Mr. Brief. "I didn't know there were four hundred vacations with only three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. What do you mean?"

"I mean the kind of vacation the people in the Four Hundred take," explained the Idiot. "I've been to a house-party up in Newport with some friends of mine who're 'in the swim,' and I tell you it's hard swimming. You'll never hear me talking about a leisure class in this country again. Those people don't know what leisure is. I don't wonder they're always such a tired-looking lot."

"I was not aware that you were in with the Smart Set," said the Bibliomaniac.

"Oh yes," said the Idiot. "I'm in with several of 'em--'way in; so far in that I'm sometimes afraid I'll never get out. We're carrying a whole lot of wild-cats on margin for Billie Van Gelder, the cotillon leader. Tommy de Cahoots, the famous yachtsman, owes us about eight thousand dollars more than he can spare from his living expenses on one of his plunges into Copper, and altogether we are pretty long on swells in our office."

"And do you mean to say those people invite you out?" asked the Bibliomaniac.

"All the time," said the Idiot. "Just as soon as one of our swell customers finds he can't pay his margins he comes down to the office and gets very chummy with all of us. The deeper he is in it the more affable he becomes. The result is there are house-parties and yacht-cruises and all that sort of thing galore on tap for us every summer."

"And you accept them, eh?" said the Bibliomaniac, scornfully.

"As a matter of business, of course," replied the Idiot. "We've got to get something out of it. If one of our customers can't pay cash, why, we get what we can. In this particular case Mr. Reginald Squandercash had me down at Newport for five full days, and I know now why he can't pay up his little shortage of eight hundred dollars. He's got the money, but he needs it for other things, and, now that I know it, I shall recommend the firm to give him an extension of thirty days. By that time he will have collected from the De Boodles, whom he is launching in society, C. O. D., and will be able to square matters with us."

"Your conversation is Greek to me," said the Bibliomaniac. "Who are the De Boodles, and for what do they owe your friend Reginald Squandercash money?"

"The De Boodles," explained the Idiot, "are what are known as climbers, and Reginald Squandercash is a booster."

"A what?" cried the Bibliomaniac.

"A booster," said the Idiot. "There are several boosters in the Four Hundred. For a consideration they will boost wealthy climbers into society. The climbers are people like the De Boodles, who have suddenly come into great wealth, and who wish to be in it with others of great wealth who are also of high social position. They don't know how to do the trick, so they seek out some booster like Reggie, strike a bargain with him, and he steers 'em up against the 'Among-Those-Present' game until finally you find the De Boodles have a social cinch."

"Do you mean to say that society tolerates such a business as that?" demanded the Bibliomaniac.

"Tolerates?" laughed the Idiot. "What a word to use! Tolerate? Why, society encourages, because society shares the benefits. Take this especial vacation of mine. Society had two five-o'clock teas, four of the swellest dinners you ever sat down to, a cotillon where the favors were of solid silver and real ostrich feathers, a whole day's clam-bake on Reggie's steam-yacht, with automobile-runs and coaching-trips galore. Nobody ever declines one of Reggie's invitations, because what he has from a society point of view is the best the market affords. Why, the floral decorations alone at the _fete champetre_ he gave in honor of the De Boodles at his villa last Thursday night must have cost five thousand dollars, and everything was on the same scale. I don't believe a cent less than seventy-five hundred dollars was burned up in the fire-works, and every lady present received a souvenir of the occasion that cost at least one hundred dollars."

"Your story doesn't quite hold together," said Mr. Brief. "If your friend Reggie has a villa and a steam-yacht, and automobiles and coaches, and gives _fetes champetres_ that cost fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, I don't see why he has to make himself a booster of inferior people who want to get into society. What does he gain by it? It surely isn't sport to do a thing like that, and I should think he'd find it a dreadful bore."

"The man must live," said the Idiot. "He boosts for a living."

"When he has the wealth of Monte Cristo at his command?" demanded Mr. Brief.

"Reggie hasn't a cent to his name," said the Idiot. "I've already told you he owes us eight hundred dollars he can't pay."

"Then who in thunder pays for the villa and the lot and all those hundred-dollar souvenirs?" asked the Doctor.

"Why, this year, the De Boodles," said the Idiot. "Last year it was Colonel and Mrs. Moneybags, whose daughter, Miss Fayette Moneybags, is now clinching the position Reggie sold her at Newport over in London, whither Reggie has consigned her to his sister, an impecunious American duchess--the Duchess of Nocash--who is also in the boosting business. The chances are Miss Moneybags will land one of England's most deeply indebted peers, and, if she does, Reggie will receive a handsome check for steering the family up against so attractive a proposition."

"And you mean to tell us that a plain man like old John De Boodle, of Nevada, is putting out his hard-earned wealth in that way?" demanded Mr. Brief.

"I didn't mean to mention any names," said the Idiot. "But you've spotted the victim. Old John De Boodle, who made his sixty million dollars in six months, after having kept a saloon on the frontier for forty years, is the man. His family wants to get in the swim, and Reggie is turning the trick for them; and, after all, what better way is there for De Boodle to get in? He might take sixty villas at Newport and not get even a peep at the divorce colony there, much less a glimpse of the monogamous set acting independently. Not a monkey in the Zoo would dine with the De Boodles, and in his most eccentric moment I doubt if Tommy Dare would take them up, unless there was somebody to stand sponsor for them. A cool million might easily be expended without results by the De Boodles themselves; but hand that money over to Reggie Squandercash, whose blood is as blue as his creditors' sometimes get, and you can look for results. What the Frohman's are to the stage, Reggie Squandercash is to society. He's right in it; popular as all spenders are; lavish as all people spending other people's money are apt to be. Old De Boodle, egged on by Mrs. De Boodle and Miss Mary Ann De Boodle (now known as Miss Marianne De Boodle), goes to Reggie and says: 'The old lady and my girl are nutty on society. Can you land 'em?' 'Certainly,' says Reggie, 'if your pocket is long enough.' 'How long is that?' asks De Boodle, wincing a bit. 'A hundred thousand a month, and no extras, until you're in,' says Reggie. 'No reduction for families?' asks De Boodle, anxiously. 'No,' says Reggie. 'Harder job.' 'All right,' says De Boodle, 'here's my check for the first month.' That's how Reggie gets his Newport villa, his servants, his horses, yacht, automobiles, and coaches. Then he invites the De Boodles up to visit him. They accept, and the fun begins. First it's a little dinner to meet my friends Mr. and Mrs. De Boodle, of Nevada. Everybody there, hungry, dinner from Sherry's, best wines in the market. De Boodles covered with diamonds, a great success, especially old John De Boodle, who tells racy stories over the _demi-tasse_ when the ladies have gone into the drawing-room. De Boodle voted a character. Next thing, bridge-whist party. Everybody there. Society a good winner. The De Boodles magnificent losers. Popularity cinched. Next, yachting-party. Everybody on board. De Boodle on deck in fine shape. Champagne flows like Niagara. Poker game in main cabin. Food everywhere. De Boodles much easier. Stiffness wearing off, and so on and so on, until finally Miss De Boodle's portrait is printed in nineteen Sunday newspapers all over the country. They're launched, and Reggie comes into his own with a profit for the season in a cash balance of fifty thousand dollars. He's had a bully time all summer, entertained like a prince, and comes to the rainy season with a tidy little umbrella to keep him out of the wet."

"And can he count on that as a permanent business?" asked Mr. Whitechoker.

"My dear sir, the rock of Gibraltar is no solider and no more permanent," said the Idiot. "For as long as there is a Four Hundred in existence, human nature is such that there will also be a million who will want to get into it."

"At such a cost?" demanded the Bibliomaniac.

"At any cost," replied the Idiot. "Even people who know they cannot swim want to get in it."

XII

HE MAKES A SUGGESTION TO THE POET

"Good-morning, Homer, my boy," said the Idiot, genially, as the Poet entered the breakfast-room. "All hail to thee. Thou art the bright particular bird of plumage I most hoped to see this rare and beauteous summer morning. No sweet-singing robin-redbreast or soft-honking canvasback for yours truly this A.M., when a living, breathing, palpitating son of the Muses lurks near at hand. I fain would make thee a proposition, Shakespeare dear!"

"Back pedal there! Avaunt with your flowery speech, oh Idiot!" cried the Doctor. "Else will I call an ambulance."

"No ambulance for mine," chortled the Idiot.

"Nay, Sweet Gas-bags," quoth the Doctor. "But for once I fear me we may be scorched by this Pelee of words that thou spoutest forth."

"What's the proposition, Mr. Idiot?" asked the Poet. "I'm always open to anything of the kind, as the Subway said when an automobile fell into it.'"

"I thirst for laurels," said the Idiot, "and I propose that you and I collaborate on a book of poems for early publication. With your name on the title-page and my poems in the book I think we can make a go of it."

"What's the lay?" asked the Poet, amused, but wary. "Sonnets, or French forms, or just plain snatches of song?"

"Any old thing as long as it runs smoothly," replied the Idiot. "Only the poems must fit the title of the book, which is to be _Now_."

"_Now?_" said the Poet.

"_Now!_" repeated the Idiot. "I find in reading over the verse of the day that the 'Now' poem always finds a ready market. Therefore, there must be money in it, and where the money goes there the laurels are. You know what Browning Robinson, the Laureate of Wall Street, wrote in his 'Message to Posterity':

"'Oh, when you come to crown my brow,
Bring me no bay nor sorrel;
Give me no parsley wreath, but just
The legal long green laurel.'"

"I never heard that poem before," laughed the Poet, "though the sentiment in these commercial days is not unfamiliar."

"True," said the Idiot. "Alfred Austin Biggs, of Texas, voiced the same idea when he said:

"'Crown me not with spinach,
Wreathe me not with hay;
Place no salad on my head
When you bring the bay.
Give me not the water-cresses
To adorn my flowing tresses,
But at e'en
Crown my pockets good and strong
With the green--
The green that's long.'"

"Do you remember that?" asked the Idiot.

"Only faintly," said the Poet. "I think you read it to me once before, just after you--er--ah--rather just after Alfred Austin Biggs, of Texas--wrote it."

The Idiot laughed. "I see you're on," he said. "Anyhow, it's good sentiment, whether I wrote it or Biggs. Fact is, in my judgment, what the poet of to-day ought to do is to collect the long green from the present and the laurel from posterity. That's a fair division. But what do you say to my proposition?"

"Well, it's certainly--er--cheeky enough," said the Poet. "Do I understand it?--you want me to father your poems. To tell the truth, until I hear some of them, I can't promise to be more than an uncle to them."

"That's all right," said the Idiot. "You ought to be cautious, as a matter of protection to your own name. I've got some of the goods right here. Here's a little thing called 'Summer-tide!' It shows the whole 'Now' principle in a nutshell. Listen to this:

"Now the festive frog is croaking in the mere,
And the canvasback is honking in the bay,
And the summer-girl is smiling full of cheer
On the willieboys that chance along her way.

"Now the skeeter sings his carols to the dawn,
And bewails the early closing of the bar
That prevents the little nips he seeks each morn
On the sea-shore where the fatling boarders are.

"Now the landlord of the pastoral hotel
Spends his mornings, nights, and eke his afternoons,
Scheming plans to get more milk from out the well,
And a hundred novel ways of cooking prunes.

"Now the pumpkin goes a pumpking through the fields,
And the merry visaged cows are chewing cud;
And the profits that the plumber's business yields
Come a-tumbling to the earth with deadly thud.

"And from all of this we learn the lesson sweet,
The soft message of Dame Nature, grand and clear,
That the winter-time is gone with storm and sleet,
And the soft and jolly summer-tide is here.

How's that? Pretty fair?"

"Well, I might consent to be a cousin to a poem of that kind. I've read worse and written some that are quite as bad. But you know, Mr. Idiot, even so great a masterpiece as that won't make a book," said the Poet.

"Of course it won't," retorted the Idiot. "That's only for the summer. Here's another one on winter. Just listen:

"Now the man who deals in mittens and in tabs
Is a-smiling broadly--aye, from ear to ear--
As he reaches out his hand and fondly grabs
All the shining, golden shekels falling near.

"Now the snow lies on the hill-side and the roof,
And the birdling to the sunny southland flies;
While the frowning summer landlord stands aloof,
And to solemncholy meditation hies.

"Now the tinkling of the sleigh-bells tinge the air,
And the coal-man is as happy as can be;
While the hulking, sulking, grizzly seeks his lair,
And the ice-man's soul is filled with misery.

"Clad in frost are all the distant mountain-peaks,
And the furnace is as hungry as a boy;
While the plumber, as he gloats upon the leaks,
Is the model that the painter takes for 'Joy.'

"And from all of this we learn the lesson sweet--
The glad message of Dame Nature, grand and clear:
That the summer-time has gone with all its heat,
And the crisp and frosty winter days are here.

You see, Mr. Poet, that out of that one idea alone--that cataloguing of the things of the four seasons--you can get four poems that are really worth reading," said the Idiot. "We could call that section 'The Seasons,' and make it the first part of the book. In the second part we could do the same thing, only in greater detail, for each one of the months. Just as a sample, take the month of February. We could run something like this in on February:

"Now o'er the pavement comes a hush
As pattering feet wade deep in slush
That every Feb.
Doth flow and ebb."

"I see," said the Poet. "It wouldn't take long to fill up a book with stuff like that."

"To make the appeal stronger, let me take the month of July, which is now on," resumed the Idiot. "You may find it even more convincing:

"Now the fly--
The rhubarb-pie--
The lightning in the sky--
Thermometers so spry--
That leap up high--
The roads all dry,
The hoboes nigh,
The town a-fry,
The mad ki-yi
A-snarling by,
The crickets cry--
All tell us that it is July.

Eh?"

"I don't believe anybody would believe I wrote it, that's all," said the Poet, shaking his head dubiously. "They'd find out, sooner or later, that you did it, just as they discovered that Will Carleton wrote 'Paradise Lost,' and Dick Davis was the real author of Shakespeare. Why don't you publish the thing over your own name?"

"Too modest," said the Idiot. "What do you think of this:

"Now the festive candidate
Goes a-sporting through the State,
And he kisses babes from Quogue to Kalamazoo;
For he really wants to win
Without spending any tin,
And he thinks he has a chance to kiss it through."

"That's fair, only I don't think you'll find many candidates doing that sort of thing nowadays," said the Poet. "Most public men I know of would rather spend their money than kiss the babies. That style of campaigning has gone out."

"It has in the cities," said the Idiot. "But back in the country it is still done, and the candidate who turns his back on the infant might as well give up the race. I know, because a cousin of mine ran for supervisor once, and he was licked out of his boots because he tried to do his kissing by proxy--said he'd give the kisses in a bunch to a committee of young ladies, who could distribute them for him. Result was everybody was down on him--even the young ladies."

"I guess he was a cousin of yours, all right," laughed the Doctor; "that scheme bears the Idiot brand."

"Here's one on the opening of the opera season," said the Idiot:

"Now the fiddlers tune their fiddles
To the lovely taradiddles
Of old Wagner, Mozart, Bizet, and the rest.
Now the trombone is a-tooting
Out its scaley shute-the-chuteing
And the oboe is hoboing with a zest.

"Now the dressmakers are working--
Not a single minute shirking--
Making gowns with frills and fal-lals mighty queer,
For the Autumn days are flying,
And there's really no denying
That the season of the opera is near."

Mr. Brief took a hand in the discussion at this moment.

"Then you can have a blanket verse," he said, scribbling with his pencil on a piece of paper in front of him. "Something like this:

"And as Time goes on a-stalking,
And the Idiot still is talking
In his usual blatant manner, loud and free,
With his silly jokes and rhyme,
It is--well it's any time
From Creation to the jumping-off place that you'll find at the far
end of Eterni-tie."

"That settles it," said the Idiot, rising. "I withdraw my proposition. Let's call it off, Mr. Poet."

"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Brief. "Isn't my verse good?"

"Yes," said the Idiot. "Just as good as mine, and that being the case it isn't worth doing. When lawyers can write as good poetry as real poets, it doesn't pay to be a real poet. I'm going in for something else. I guess I'll apply for a job as a motorman, and make a name for myself there."

"Can a motorman make a name for himself?" asked the Doctor.

"Oh yes," said the Idiot. "Easily. By being civil. A civil motorman would be unique."

"But he wouldn't make a fortune," suggested the Poet.

"Yes he would, too," said the Idiot. "If he could prove he really was civil, the vaudeville people would pay him a thousand dollars a week and tour the country with him. He'd draw mobs."

With which the Idiot left the dining-room.

"I think his poems would sell," smiled Mrs. Pedagog.

"Yes," said Mr. Pedagog. "Chopped up fine and properly advertised, they might make a very successful new kind of breakfast food--provided the paper on which they were written was not too indigestible."

XIII

HE DISCUSSES THE MUSIC CURE

"Good-morning, Doctor," said the Idiot, as Capsule, M.D., entered the dining-room, "I am mighty glad you've come. I've wanted for a long time to ask you about this music cure that everybody is talking about, and get you, if possible, to write me out a list of musical nostrums for every-day use. I noticed last night, before going to bed, that my medicine-chest was about run out. There's nothing but one quinine pill and a soda-mint drop left in it, and if there's anything in the music cure, I don't think I'll have it filled again. I prefer Wagner to squills, and, compared to the delights of Mozart, Hayden, and Offenbach, those of paregoric are nit."

"Still rambling, eh?" vouchsafed the Doctor. "You ought to submit your tongue to some scientific student of dynamics. I am inclined to think, from my own observation of its ways, that it contains the germ of perpetual motion."

"I will consider your suggestion," replied the Idiot. "Meanwhile, let us consult harmoniously together on the original point. Is there anything in this music cure, and is it true that our medical schools are hereafter to have conservatories attached to them, in which aspiring young M.D.'s are to be taught the _materia musica_ in addition to the _materia medica_?"

"I had heard of no such idiotic proposition," returned the Doctor. "And as for the music cure, I don't know anything about it; haven't heard everybody talking about it; and doubt the existence of any such thing outside of that mysterious realm which is bounded by the four corners of your own bright particular cerebellum. What do you mean by the music cure?"

"Why, the papers have been full of it lately," explained the Idiot. "The claim is made that in music lies the panacea for all human ills. It may not be able to perform a surgical operation like that which is required for the removal of a leg, and I don't believe even Wagner ever composed a measure that could be counted on successfully to eliminate one's vermiform appendix from its chief sphere of usefulness; but for other things, like measles, mumps, the snuffles, or indigestion, it is said to be wonderfully efficacious. What I wanted to find out from you was just what composers were best for which specific troubles."

"You'll have to go to somebody else for the information," said the Doctor. "I never heard of the theory, and, as I said before, I don't believe anybody else has, barring your own sweet self."

"I have seen a reference to it somewhere," put in Mr. Whitechoker, coming to the Idiot's rescue. "As I recall the matter, some lady had been cured of a nervous affection by a scientific application of some musical poultice or other, and the general expectation seems to be that some day we shall find in music a cure for all our human ills, as the Idiot suggests."

"Thank you, Mr. Whitechoker," said the Idiot, gratefully. "I saw that same item and several others besides, and I have only told the truth when I say that a large number of people are considering the possibilities of music as a substitute for drugs. I am surprised that Dr. Capsule has neither heard nor thought about it, for I should think it would prove to be a pleasant and profitable field for speculation. Even I, who am only a dabbler in medicine and know no more about it than the effects of certain remedies upon my own symptoms, have noticed that music of a certain sort is a sure emollient for nervous conditions."

"For example?" said the Doctor. "Of course, we don't doubt your word; but when a man makes a statement based upon personal observation it is profitable to ask him what his precise experience has been, merely for the purpose of adding to our own knowledge."

"Well," said the Idiot, "the first instance that I can recall is that of a Wagner opera and its effects upon me. For a number of years I suffered a great deal from insomnia. I could not get two hours of consecutive sleep, and the effect of my sufferings was to make me nervous and irritable. Suddenly somebody presented me with a couple of tickets for a performance of 'Parsifal,' and I went. It began at five o'clock in the afternoon. For twenty minutes all went serenely, and then the music began to work. I fell into a deep and refreshing slumber. The intermission came, and still I slept on. Everybody else went home, dressed for the evening part of the performance, had their dinner, and returned. Still I slept, and continued so to do until midnight, when one of the gentlemanly ushers came and waked me up, and told me that the performance was over. I rubbed my eyes, and looked about me. It was true--the great auditorium was empty, and was gradually darkening. I put on my hat and walked out refreshed, having slept from five-twenty until twelve, or six hours and forty minutes straight. That was one instance. Two weeks later I went again, this time to hear 'Goetterdaemmerung.' The results were the same, only the effect was instantaneous. The curtain had hardly risen before I retired to the little ante-room of the box our party occupied and dozed off into a fathomless sleep. I didn't wake up this time until nine o'clock the next day, the rest of the party having gone off without awakening me as a sort of joke. Clearly Wagner, according to my way of thinking, then, deserves to rank among the most effective narcotics known to modern science. I have tried all sorts of other things--sulfonal, trionel, bromide powders, and all the rest, and not one of them produced anything like the soporific results that two doses of Wagner brought about in one instant. And, best of all, there was no reaction: no splitting headache or shaky hand the next day, but just the calm, quiet, contented feeling that goes with the sense of having got completely rested up."

"You run a dreadful risk, however," said the Doctor, with a sarcastic smile. "The Wagner habit is a terrible thing to acquire, Mr. Idiot."

"That may be," said the Idiot; "worse than the sulfonal habit by a great deal, I am told; but I am in no danger of becoming a victim to it while it costs from five to seven dollars a dose. In addition to this experience, I have also the testimony of a friend of mine who was cured of a frightful attack of the colic by Sullivan's 'Lost Chord,' played on a cornet. He had spent the day down at Asbury Park, and had eaten not wisely but too copiously. Among other things that he turned loose in his inner man were two plates of lobster salad, a glass of fresh cider, and a saucerful of pistache ice-cream. He was a painter by profession, and the color scheme he thus introduced into his digestive apparatus was too much for his artistic soul. He was not fitted by temperament to assimilate anything quite so strenuously chromatic as that, and, as a consequence, shortly after he had retired to his studio for the night, the conflicting tints began to get in their deadly work, and within two hours he was completely doubled up. The pain he suffered was awful. Agony was bliss alongside of the pangs that now afflicted him, and all the palliatives and pain-killers known to man were tried without avail, and then, just as he was about to give himself up for lost, an amateur cornetist who occupied a studio on the floor above began to play the 'Lost Chord.' A counter-pain set in immediately. At the second bar of the 'Lost Chord' the awful pain that was gradually gnawing away at his vitals seemed to lose its poignancy in the face of the greater suffering, and physical relief was instant. As the musician proceeded, the internal disorder yielded gradually to the external and finally passed away, entirely leaving him so far from prostrate that by 1 A. M. he was out of bed and actually girding himself with a shot-gun and an Indian club to go up-stairs for a physical encounter with the cornetist."

"And you reason from this that Sullivan's 'Lost Chord' is a cure for cholera morbus, eh?" sneered the Doctor.

"It would seem so," said the Idiot. "While the music continued my friend was a well man, ready to go out and fight like a warrior; but when the cornetist stopped the colic returned, and he had to fight it out in the old way. In these incidents in my own experience I find ample justification for my belief, and that of others, that some day the music cure for human ailments will be recognized and developed to the full. Families going off to the country for the summer, instead of taking a medicine-chest along with them, will be provided with a music-box with cylinders for mumps, measles, summer complaint, whooping-cough, chicken-pox, chills and fever, and all the other ills the flesh is heir to. Scientific experiment will demonstrate before long just what composition will cure specific ills. If a baby has whooping-cough, an anxious mother, instead of ringing up the doctor, will go to the piano and give the child a dose of 'Hiawatha.' If a small boy goes swimming and catches a cold in his head and is down with a fever, his nurse, an expert on the accordion, can bring him back to health again with three bars of 'Under the Bamboo Tree' after each meal. Instead of dosing the kids with cod-liver oil when they need a tonic, they will be set to work at a mechanical piano and braced up on 'Narcissus.' 'There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night' will become an effective remedy for a sudden chill. People suffering from sleeplessness can dose themselves back to normal conditions with Wagner the way I did. Tchaikowsky, to be well shaken before taken, will be an effective remedy for a torpid liver, and the man or woman who suffers from lassitude will doubtless find in the lively airs of our two-step composers an efficient tonic to bring their vitality up to a high standard of activity. Nothing in it? Why, Doctor, there's more in it that's in sight to-day that is promising and suggestive of great things in the future than there was of the principle of gravitation in the rude act of that historic pippin that left the parent tree and swatted Sir Isaac Newton on the nose."

"And the drug stores will be driven out of business, I presume," said the Doctor.

"No," said the Idiot. "They will substitute music for drugs, that is all. Every man who can afford it will have his own medical phonograph, or music-box, and the drug stores will sell cylinders and records for them instead of quinine, carbonate of soda, squills, paregoric, and other nasty-tasting things they have now. This alone will serve to popularize sickness, and, instead of being driven out of business, their trade will pick up."

"And the doctor, and the doctor's gig, and all the appurtenances of his profession--what becomes of them?" demanded the Doctor.

"We'll have to have the doctor just the same to prescribe for us, only he will have to be a musician, but the gig--I'm afraid that will have to go," said the Idiot.

"And why, pray?" asked the Doctor. "Because there are no more drugs, must the physician walk?"

"Not at all," said the Idiot. "But he'd be better equipped if he drove about in a piano-organ or, if he preferred, an auto on a steam-calliope."

XIV

HE DEFENDS CAMPAIGN METHODS

"Good-morning, gentlemen," said the Idiot, cheerily, as he entered the breakfast-room. "This is a fine Sunday morning in spite of the gloom into which the approaching death of the campaign should plunge us all."

"You think that, do you?" observed the Bibliomaniac. "Well, I don't agree with you. I for one am sick and tired of politics, and it will be a great relief to me when it is all over."

"Dear me, what a blase old customer you are, Mr. Bib," returned the Idiot. "Do you mean to say that a Presidential campaign does not keep your nerve-centres in a constant state of pleasurable titillation? Why, to me it is what a bag full of nuts must be to a squirrel. I fairly gloat over these quadrennial political campaigns of ours. They are to me among the most exhilarating institutions of modern life. They satisfy all one's zest for warfare without the distressing shedding of blood which attends real war, and regarded from the standpoint of humor, I know of nothing that, to the eye of an ordinarily keen observer, is more provocative of good, honest, wholesome mirth."

"I don't see it," said Mr. Bib. "To my mind, the average political campaign is just a vulgar scrap in which men who ought to know better descend to all sorts of despicable trickery merely to gain the emoluments of office. This quest for the flesh-pots of politics, so far from being diverting, is, to my notion, one of the most deplorable exhibitions of human weakness that modern civilization, so called, has produced. A couple of men are put up for the most dignified office known to the world--both are gentlemen by birth and education, men of honor, men who, you would think, would scorn baseness as they hate poison--and then what happens? For three weary months the followers of each attack the character and intelligence of the other until, if you really believed what was said of either, neither in your estimation would have a shred of reputation left. Is that either diverting or elevating or educational or, indeed, anything but deplorable?"

"It's perfectly fine," said the Idiot, "to think that we have men in the country whose characters are such that they can stand four months of such a test. That's what I find elevating in it. When a man who is nominated for the Presidency in June or July can emerge in November unscathed in spite of the minute scrutiny to which himself and his record and the record of his sisters and his cousins and his aunts have been subjected, it's time for the American rooster to get upon his hind legs and give three cheers for himself and the people to whom he belongs. Even old Diogenes, who spent his life looking for an honest man, would have to admit every four years that he could spot him instantly by merely coming to this country and taking his choice from among the several candidates."

"You must admit, however," said the Bibliomaniac, "that a man with an honorable name must find it unpleasant to have such outrageous stories told of him."

"Not a bit of it," laughed the Idiot. "The more outrageous the better. For instance, when _The Sunday Jigger_ comes out with a four-page revelation of your Republican candidate's past, in which we learn how, in 1873, he put out the eyes of a maiden aunt with a red-hot poker, and stabbed a negro cook in the back with a skewer, because she would not permit him to put rat-poison in his grandfather's coffee, you know perfectly well that that story has been put forth for the purpose of turning the maiden aunt, negro, and grandfather votes against him. You know well enough that he either never did what is charged against him, or at least that the story is greatly exaggerated--he may have stuck a pin into the cook, and played some boyish trick upon some of his relatives--but the story on the face of it is untrue and therefore harmless. Similarly with the Democratic candidate. When the _Daily Flim Flam_ asserts that he believes that the working-man is entitled to four cents a day for sixteen hours' work, and has repeatedly avowed that bread and water is the proper food for motormen, everybody with common-sense realizes at once that even the _Flim Flam_ doesn't believe the story. It hurts no one, therefore, and provokes a great deal of innocent mirth. You don't yourself believe that last yarn about the Prohibition candidate, do you?"

"I haven't heard any yarn about him," said the Bibliomaniac.

"That he is the owner of a brewery up in Rochester, and backs fifteen saloons and a pool-room in New York?" said the Idiot.

"Of course I don't," said the Bibliomaniac. "Who does?"

"Nobody," said the Idiot; "and therefore the story doesn't hurt the man's reputation a bit, or interfere with his chances of election in the least. Take that other story published in a New York newspaper that on the 10th of last August Thompson Bondifeller's yacht was seen anchored for six hours off Tom Watson's farm, two hundred miles from the sea, and that the Populist candidate, disguised as a bank president, went off with the trust magnate on a cruise from Atlanta, Georgia, to Oklahoma--you don't believe that, do you?"

"It's preposterous on the face of it," said Mr. Bib.

"Well, that's the way the thing works," said the Idiot. "And that's why I think there's a lot of bully good fun to be had out of a political campaign. I love anything that arouses the imagination of a people too much given over to the pursuit of the cold, hard dollar. If it wasn't for these quadrennial political campaigns to spur the fancy on to glorious flights we should become a dull, hard, prosaic, unimaginative people, and that would be death to progress. No people can progress that lacks imagination. Politics is an emery-wheel that keeps our wits polished."

"Well, granting all that you say is true," said the Bibliomaniac, "the intrusion upon a man's private life that politics makes possible--surely you cannot condone that."

The Idiot laughed.

"That's the strangest argument of all," he said. "The very idea of a man who deliberately chooses public life as the sphere of his activities seeking to hide behind his private life is preposterous. The fellow who does that, Mr. Bib, wants to lead a double life, and that is reprehensible. The man who offers himself to the people hasn't any business to tie a string to any part of him. If Jim Jones wants to be President of the United States the people who are asked to put him there have a right to know what kind of a person Jim Jones is in his dressing-gown and slippers. If he beats his mother-in-law, and eats asparagus with the sugar-tongs, and doesn't pay his grocer, the public have a right to know it. If he has children, the voters are perfectly justified in asking what kind of children they are, since the voters own the White House furniture, and if the Jim Jones children wipe their feet on plush chairs, and shoot holes in the paintings with their bean-snappers and putty-blowers, Uncle Sam, as a landlord and owner of the premises, ought to be warned beforehand. You wouldn't yourself rent a furnished residence to a man whose children were known to have built bonfires in the parlor of their last known home, would you?"

"I think not," smiled the Bibliomaniac.