Chapter II: Part 2

"Of course it would, Mr. Bib," the Idiot agreed. "And that's what we want. If there's anything in this world that I hate more than another it is a sombre comic opera. I've been to a lot of 'em, and I give you my word of honor that next to a funeral a comic opera that lacks gayety is one of the most depressing functions known to modern science. Some of 'em are enough to make an undertaker weep with jealous rage. I went to one of 'em last week called 'The Skylark,' with an old chum of mine who is a surgeon. You can imagine what sort of a thing it was when I tell you that after the first act he suggested we leave the theatre and come back here and have some fun cutting my leg off. He vowed that if he ever went to another opera by the same people he'd take ether beforehand."

"I shouldn't think that would be necessary," sneered the Bibliomaniac. "If it was as bad as all that, why didn't it put you to sleep?"

"It did," said the Idiot. "But the music kept waking us up again. There was no escape from it except that of actual physical flight."

"Well, about this collaboration of ours," suggested the Poet. "What do you think we should do first?"

"Write an opening chorus, of course," said the Idiot. "What did you suppose? A finale? Something like this:

"If you want to know who we are,
Just ask the Evening Star,
As he smiles on high
In the deep-blue sky,
With his tralala-la-la-la.
We are maidens sweet
With tripping feet,
And the googoo eyes
Of the skippity-hi's,
And the smile of the fair gazoo;
And you'll find our names
'Mongst the wondrous dames
Of the Who's Who-hoo-hoo-hoo."

"Get that sung with spirit by sixty-five ladies with blond wigs and gold slippers, otherwise dressed up in the uniform of a troop of Russian cavalry, and you've got your venture launched."

"Where can you find people like that?" asked the Bibliomaniac.

"New York's full of 'em," replied the Idiot.

"I don't mean the people to act that sort of thing--but where would you lay your scene?" explained the Bibliomaniac.

"Oh, any old place in the Pacific Ocean," said the Idiot. "Make your own geography--everybody else does. There's a million islands out there of one kind or another, and as defenceless as a two-weeks'-old infant. If you want a real one, fish it out and fire ahead. If you don't, make one up for yourself and call it 'The Isle of Piccolo,' or something of that sort. After you've got your chorus going, introduce your villain, who should be a man with a deep bass voice and a piratical past. He's the chap who rules the roost and is going to marry the heroine to-morrow. That will make a bully song:

"I'm a pirate bold
With a heart so cold
That it turns the biggest joys to solemn sorrow;
And the hero-ine,
With her eyes so fine,
I am going to--marry--to-morrow.

CHORUS

"He is go-ing to-marry--to-morrow
The maid with a heart full of sorrow;
For her we are sorry
For she weds to-morry--
She is going to-marry--to-morrow."

"Gee!" added the Idiot, enthusiastically, "can't you almost hear that already?"

"I am sorry to say," said Mr. Brief, "that I can. You ought to call your heroine Drivelina."

"Splendid!" cried the Idiot. "Drivelina goes. Well, then, on comes Drivelina, and this beast of a pirate grabs her by the hand and makes love to her as if he thought wooing was a game of snap-the-whip. She sings a soprano solo of protest, and the pirate summons his hirelings to cast Drivelina into a Donjuan cell, when boom! an American war-ship appears on the horizon. The crew, under the leadership of a man with a squeaky tenor voice, named Lieutenant Somebody or Other, comes ashore, puts Drivelina under the protection of the American flag, while his crew sing the following:

"We are jackies, jackies, jackies,
And we smoke the best tobaccys
You can find from Zanzibar to Honeyloo.
And we fight for Uncle Sammy,
Yes, indeed we do, for damme
You can bet your life that that's the thing
to do,
Doodle-do!
You can bet your life that that's the thing to
doodle--doodle--doodle--doodle-do."

"Eh! What?" demanded the Idiot.

"Well--what yourself?" asked the Lawyer. "This is your job. What next?"

"Well--the pirate gets lively, tries to assassinate the lieutenant, who kills half the natives with his sword, and is about to slay the pirate when he discovers that he is his long-lost father," said the Idiot. "The heroine then sings a pathetic love-song about her baboon baby, in a green light to the accompaniment of a lot of pink satin monkeys banging cocoanut-shells together. This drowsy lullaby puts the lieutenant and his forces to sleep, and the curtain falls on their capture by the pirate and his followers, with the chorus singing:

"Hooray for the pirate bold,
With his pockets full of gold;
He's going to marry to-morrow.
To-morrow he'll marry,
Yes, by the Lord Harry,
He's go-ing--to-marry--to-mor-row!
And that's a thing to doodle--doodle-doo."

"There," said the Idiot, after a pause. "How is that for a first act?"

"It's about as lucid as most of them," said the Poet, "but, after all, you have got a story there, and you said you didn't need one."

"I said you didn't need one to start with," corrected the Idiot. "And I've proved it. I didn't have that story in mind when I started. That's where the easiness of the thing comes in. Why, I didn't even have to think of a name for the heroine. The inspiration for that popped right out of Mr. Brief's mouth as smoothly as though the name Drivelina had been written on his heart for centuries. Then the title--'The Isle of Piccolo'--that's a dandy, and I give you my word of honor, I'd never even thought of a title for the opera until that revealed itself like a flash from the blue; and as for the coon song, 'My Baboon Baby,' there's a chance there for a Zanzibar act that will simply make Richard Wagner and Reginald de Koven writhe with jealousy. Can't you imagine the lilt of it:

"My bab-boon--ba-habee,
My bab-boon--ba-habee--
I love you dee-her-lee
Yes dee-hee-hee-er-lee.
My baboon--ba-ha-bee,
My baboon--ba-ha-bee,
My baboon--ba-hay-hay-hay-hay-hay-hay-bee-bee."

"And all those pink satin monkeys bumping their cocoanut-shells together in the green moonlight--"

"Well, after the first act, what?" asked the Bibliomaniac.

"The usual intermission," said the Idiot. "You don't have to write that. The audience generally knows what to do."

"But your second act?" asked the Poet.

"Oh, come off," said the Idiot, rising. "We were to do this thing in collaboration. So far, I've done the whole blooming business. I'll leave the second act to you. When you collaborate, Mr. Poet, you've got to do a little colabbing on your own account. What did you think you were to do--collect the royalties?"

"I'm told," said the Lawyer, "that that is sometimes the hardest thing to do in a comic opera."

"Well, I'll be self-sacrificing," said the Idiot, "and bear my full share of it."

"It seems to me," said the Bibliomaniac, "that that opera produced in the right place might stand a chance of a run."

"Thank you," said the Idiot. "After all, Mr. Bib, you are a man of some penetration. How long a run?"

"One consecutive night," said the Bibliomaniac.

"Ah--and where?" demanded the Idiot, with a smile.

"At Bloomingdale," answered the Bibliomaniac, severely.

"That's a very good idea," said the Idiot. "When you go back there, Mr. Bib, I wish you'd suggest it to the superintendent."

VI

HE DISCUSSES FAME

"Mr. Poet," said the Idiot, the other morning as his friend, the Rhymster, took his place beside him at the breakfast-table, "tell me: How long have you been writing poetry?"

"Oh, I don't know," said the Poet, modestly. "I don't know that I've ever written any. I've turned out a lot of rhymes in my day, and have managed to make a fair living with them, but poetry is a different thing. The divine afflatus doesn't come to every one, you know; and I doubt if anybody will be able to say whether my work has shown an occasional touch of inspiration, or not until I have been dead fifty or a hundred years."

"Tut!" exclaimed the Idiot. "That's all nonsense. I am able to say now whether or not your work shows the occasional touch of inspiration. It does. In fact, it shows more than that. It shows a semi-occasional touch of inspiration. How long have you been in the business?"

"Eighteen years," sighed the Poet. "I began when I was twelve with a limerick. As I remember the thing, it went like this:

"There was a young man of Cohasset
Turned on the red-hot water-faucet.
When asked: 'Is it hot?'
He answered, 'Well, thot
Is a pretty mild way for to class it.'"

"Good!" said the Idiot. "That wasn't a bad beginning for a boy of twelve."

"So my family thought," said the Poet. "My mother sent it to the Under the Evening Lamp Department of our town paper, and three weeks later I was launched. I've had the _cacoethes scribendi_ ever since--but, alas! I got more fame in that brief hour of success than I have ever been able to win since. It is a mighty hard job, Mr. Idiot, making a name for yourself these days."

"That's the point I was getting at," said the Idiot, "and I wanted to have a talk with you on the subject. I've read a lot of your stuff in the past eight or ten years, and, in my humble judgment, it is better than any of that rhymed nonsense of Henry Wintergreen Boggs, whose name appears in the newspapers every day in the year; of Susan Aldershot Spinks, whose portrait is almost as common an occurrence in the papers as that of Lydia Squinkham; of Circumflex Jones, the eminent sweet-singer of Arizona; or of Henderson Hartley MacFadd, the Canadian Browning, of whom the world is constantly hearing so much. I have wondered if you were going about it in the right way. What is your plan for winning fame?"

"Oh, I keep plodding away, doing the best I can all the while," said the Poet. "If there's any good in my stuff, or any stuff in my goods, I'll get my reward some day."

"Fifty or a hundred years after you're dead, eh?" said the Idiot.

"Yes," smiled the Poet.

"Well--your board-bills won't be high then, anyhow," said the Idiot. "That's one satisfaction, I presume. They tell me Homer hasn't eaten a thing for over twenty centuries. Seems to me, though, that if I were a poet I'd go in for a little fame while I was alive. It's all very nice to work the skin off your knuckles, and to twist your gray matter inside out until it crocks and fades, so that your great-grandchildren can swell around the country sporting a name that has become a household word, but I'm blessed if I care for that sort of thing. I don't believe in storing up caramels for some twenty-first-century baby that bears my name to cut his teeth on, when I have a sweet tooth of my own that is pining away for the lack of nourishment; and, if I were you, I'd go in for the new method. What if Browning and Tennyson and Longfellow and Poe did have to labor for years to win the laurel crown, that's no reason why you should do it. You might just as well reason that because your forefathers went from one city to another in a stage-coach you should eschew railways."

"I quite agree with you," replied the Poet. "But in literature there is no royal road to fame that I know of."

"What!" cried the Idiot. "No royal road to fame in letters! Why, where have you been living all these years, Mr. Poet? This is the age of the Get Fame-Quick Scheme. You can make a reputation in five minutes, if you only know the ropes. I know of at least two department stores where you can go and buy all you want of it, and in all its grades--from notoriety down to the straight goods."

"Fame? At a department store!" put in Mr. Whitechoker, incredulously.

"Certainly," said the Idiot. "Ready-made laurels on demand. Why not? It's the easiest thing in the world. Fact is, between you and me, I am considering a plan now for the promoting of a corporation to be called the United States Fame Company, Limited, the main purpose of which shall be to earn money for its stockholders by making its customers famous at so much per head. It won't make any difference whether the customer wishes to be famous as an actor, a novelist, or a poet, or any other old thing. We'll turn the trick for him, and guarantee him more than a taste of immortality."

"You may put me down for four dollars' worth of notoriety," said Mr. Brief, with a laugh.

"All right," said the Idiot, dryly. "There's a lot in your profession who like the cheap sort. But I warn you in advance that if you go in for cheap notoriety, you'll find it a pretty hard job getting anybody to sell you any eighteen-karat distinction later."

"Well," said the Poet, "I don't know that I can promise to be one of your customers until I know something of the quality of the fame you have to sell. Tell me of somebody you've made a name for, and I'll take the matter into consideration if I like the style of laurel you have placed on his brow."

"Lean over here and I'll whisper," said the Idiot. "I don't mind telling you, but I don't believe in giving away the secrets of the trade to the rest of these gentlemen."

The Poet did as he was bade, and the Idiot whispered a certain great name in his ear.

"No!" cried the Poet, incredulously.

"Yes, sir. Fact!" said the Idiot. "He was made famous in a night. The first thing we did was to get him to elongate his signature. He was writing as--P. K. Dubbins we'll call him, for the sake of the argument. Now a name like that couldn't be made great under any circumstances whatsoever, so we made him write it out in full: Philander Kenilworth Dubbins--regular broadside, you see. P. K. Dubbins was a pop-shot, but Philander Kenilworth Dubbins spreads out like a dum-dum bullet or hits you like a blast from a Gatling gun. Printed, it takes up a whole line of a newspaper column; put at the top of an advertisement, it strikes the eye with the convincing force of a circus-poster. You can't help seeing it, and it makes, when spoken, a mouthful that is nothing short of impressive and sonorous."

"Still," suggested Mr. Brief, with a wink at the Bibliomaniac, "you have only multiplied your difficulties by three. If it was hard for your friend Dubbins to make one name famous, I can't see that he improves matters by trying to make three names famous."

"On the modern business principle that to accomplish anything you must work on a large scale," said the Idiot. "Philander Kenilworth Dubbins was a better proposition than P. K. Dubbins. The difference between them in the mere matter of potentialities is the difference between a corner grocery and a department store, or a kite with a tail and one without. Well, having created the name, the next thing to do was to exploit it, and we advertised Dubbins for all there was in him. We got Mr. William Jones Brickbat, the eminent novelist, to say that he had read Dubbins's poems, and had not yet died; we got Edward Pinkham, the author of "The Man with the Watering-pot," to send us a type-written letter, saying that Dubbins was a coming man, and that his latest book, _Howls from Helicon_, contained many inspired lines. But, best of all, we prevailed upon the manufacturers of celluloid soap to print a testimonial from Dubbins himself, saying that there was no other soap like it in the market. That brought his name prominently before every magazine-reader in the country, because the celluloid-soap people are among the biggest advertisers of the day, and everywhere that soap ad went, why, Dubbins's testimonial went also, as faithfully as Mary's Little Lamb. After that we paid a shirt-making concern down-town to put out a new collar called "The Helicon," which they advertised widely with a picture of Dubbins's head sticking up out of the middle of it; and, finally, as a crowning achievement, we leased Dubbins for a year to a five-cent cigar company, who have placarded the fences, barns, and chicken-coops from Maine to California with the name of Dubbins--'Flora Dubbins: The Best Five-Cent Smoke in the Market.'"

"And thus you made the name of Dubbins famous in letters!" sneered the Doctor.

"That was only the preliminary canter," replied the Idiot. "So far, Dubbins's greatness was confined to fences, barns, chicken-coops, and the advertising columns of the magazines. The next thing was to get him written up in the newspapers. That sort of thing can't be bought, but you can acquire it by subtlety. Plan one was to make an after-dinner speaker out of Dubbins. This was easy. There are a million public dinners every year, but a limited supply of good speakers; so, with a little effort, we got Dubbins on five toast-cards, hired a humorist out in Wisconsin to write five breezy speeches for him, Dubbins committed them to memory, and they went off like hot-cakes. Morning papers would come out with Dubbins's picture printed in between that of Bishop Potter and a member of the cabinet, who also spoke. Copies of Dubbins's speeches were handed to the reporters before the dinner began, so that it didn't make any difference whether Dubbins spoke them or not--the papers had 'em next morning just the same, and inside of six months you couldn't read an account of any public banquet without running up against the name of Philander Kenilworth Dubbins."

"Well, I declare!" ejaculated Mr. Whitechoker. "What a strange affair!"

"Then we got Dubbins's publishers to take a hand," said the Idiot. "They issued a monthly budget of gossip concerning their authors, which newspaper editors all over quoted in their interesting items of the day. From these paragraphs the public learned that Dubbins wrote between 4 A.M. and breakfast-time; that Dubbins never penned a line without having a tame rabbit, named Romola, sitting alongside of his ink-pot; that Dubbins got his ideas for his wonderful poem, 'The Mystery of Life,' from hearing a canary inadvertently whistle a bar of 'Hiawatha;' that Dubbins was the best-dressed author in the State of New York, affecting green plaid waistcoats, pink shirts, and red neckties; witty things that Dubbins's boy had said about Dubbins's work to Dubbins himself were also spread all over the land, until finally Philander Kenilworth Dubbins became a select series of household words in every town, city, and hamlet in the United States. And there he is to-day--a great man, bearing a great name, made for him by his friends. _Howls from Helicon_ is full of bad poems, but Dubbins is a son of Parnassus just the same. Now we propose to do it for others. For five dollars down, Mr. Poet, I'll make you conspicuous; for ten, I'll make you notorious; for fifty, I'll make you famous; for a hundred, I'll give you immortality."

"Good!" cried the Poet. "Immortality for a hundred dollars is cheap. I'll take that."

"You will?" said the Idiot, joyfully. "Put up your money."

"All right," laughed the Poet. "I'll pay--C. O. D."

"Another hundred gone!" moaned the Idiot, as the party broke up and its members went their several ways. "I think it's abominable that this commercial spirit of the age should have affected even you poets. You ought to have gone into business, old man, and left the Muses alone. You've got too good a head for poetry."

VII

ON THE DECADENCE OF APRIL-FOOL'S-DAY

"I am sorry to observe," said the Idiot, as he sat down at the breakfast-table yesterday morning, "that the good old customs of my youthful days are dying out by slow degrees, and the celebrations that once filled my childish soul with glee are no longer a part of the pleasures of the young. Actually, Mr. Whitechoker, I got through the whole day yesterday without sitting on a single pin or smashing my toes against a brickbat hid beneath a hat. What on earth can be coming over the boys of the land that they no longer avail themselves of the privileges of the fool-tide?"

"Fool-tide's good," said Mr. Brief. "Where did you get that?"

"Oh, I pried it out of my gray-matter 'way back in the last century," said the Idiot. "It grew out of a simple little prank I played one April 1st upon an uncle of mine. I bored a hole in the middle of a pine log and filled it with powder. We had it that night on the hearth, and a moment later there wasn't any hearth. In talking the matter over later with my father and mother and the old gentleman, in order to turn the discussion into more genial channels, I asked why, if the Yule-log was appropriate for the Yule-tide, the Fool-log wasn't appropriate for the Fool-tide."

"I hope you got the answer you deserved," said the Bibliomaniac.

"I did," sighed the Idiot. "I got all there was coming to me--slippers, trunk-strap, hair-brush, and plain hand; but it was worth it. All the glories of Vesuvius, Etna, Popocatepetl, and Pelee rolled into one could never thereafter induce in me anything approaching that joyous sensation that I derived from the spectacle of that fool-log and that happy hearth soaring up through the chimney together, hand in hand, and taking with them such portions of the flues, andirons, and other articles of fireplace vertu as cared to join them in their upward flight."

"You must have been a holy terror as a boy," said the Doctor. "I should not have cared to live on your block."

"Oh, I wasn't so bad," observed the Idiot. "I never was vicious or malicious in what I did. If I poured vitriol into the coffee-pot at breakfast my father and mother knew that I didn't do it to give pain to anybody. If I hid under my maiden aunt's bed and barked like a bull-dog after she had retired, dear old Tabitha knew that it was all done in a spirit of pleasantry. When I glued my grandfather's new teeth together with stratina, that splendid old man was perfectly aware that I had no grudge I was trying thus to repay; and certainly the French teacher at school, when he sat down on an iron bear-trap I had set for him in his chair, never entertained the notion that there was the slightest animosity in my act."

"By jingo!" cried the Bibliomaniac. "I'd have spanked you good and hard if I'd been your mother."

"Don't you fret--she did it; that is, she did up to the time I was ten years old, and then she had such a shock she gave up corporeal punishment altogether," said the Idiot.

"Had a shock, eh?" smiled the Lawyer. "Nearly killed you, I suppose, giving you what you deserved?"

"No," said the Idiot. "Spanked me with a hair-brush without having removed a couple of Excelsior torpedoes from my pistol-pocket. On the second whack I appeared to explode. Poor woman! She didn't know I was loaded, and from that time on she was as afraid of me as most other women are of a gun."

"I'd have turned you over to your father," said the Bibliomaniac, indignantly.

"She did," said the Idiot, sadly. "I never used explosives again. In later years I took up the milder April-fool diversions, such as filling the mucilage-pot with ink and the ink-pot with mucilage; mixing the granulated sugar with white sand; putting powdered brick into the red-pepper pot; inserting kerosene-oil into the sweet-oil bottle, and little things like that. I squandered a whole dollar one April-fool's-day sending telegrams to my uncles and aunts, telling them to come and dine with us that night; and they all came, too, although my father and mother were dining out that evening, and--oh dear, April-fool's-day is not what it used to be. The boys and girls of the present generation are little old men and women with no pranks left in them. Why, I don't believe that nine out of ten boys, who are about to enter college this spring, could rig up a successful tick-tack on a window to save their lives; and the joy of carrying a piece of twine across the sidewalk from a front-door knob to a lamp-post, hat-high, and then sitting back in the seclusion of a convenient area and watching the plug-hats of the people go down before it--that is a joy that seems to be wholly untasted of the present generation of infantile dignitaries that we call the youth of the land. What is the matter with 'em, do you suppose?"

"I guess we're getting civilized," said Mr. Brief. "That seems to me to be the most likely explanation of this deplorable situation, as you appear to think it. For my part, I'm glad if what you say is true. Of all rotten things in the world the practical jokes of April-fool's-day bear away the palm. There was a time, ten years ago, when I hardly dared eat anything on the first of April. I was afraid to find my coffee made of ink, my muffin stuffed with cotton, cod-liver oil in my salad-dressing, and mayonnaise in my cream-puffs. Such tricks are the tricks of barbarians, and I shall rejoice when April 1st as a day of special privilege for idiots and savages has been removed from the calendar."

"I am afraid," said Mr. Whitechoker, "that I, too, must join the ranks of those who rejoice if the old-time customs of the day are now honored more in the breach than in the observance. Ever since that unhappy Sunday morning some years ago when somebody substituted a breakfast bill-of-fare for the card containing the notes for my sermon, I have mistrusted the humor of the April-fool joke. Instead of my text, as I glanced at what I supposed was my note-card, my eyes fell upon the statement that fruit taken from the table would be charged for; instead of my firstly, secondly, thirdly, and fourthly, my eyes were confronted by Fish, Eggs, Hot Bread, and To Order. And, finally, in place of the key-line of my peroration, what should obtrude itself upon my vision but that coarse and vulgar legend: Corkage, one dollar. I never found out who did it, and, as a Christian man, I hope I never shall, for I should much deprecate the spirit of animosity with which I should inevitably regard the person who had so offended."

"I'll bet you preached a bully good sermon, allee samee," said the Idiot.

"Well," smiled Mr. Whitechoker, "the congregation did seem to think that it held more fire than usual; but I can assure you, my young friend, it was more the fire of external wrath than of an inward spiritual grace."

"Well," said the Bibliomaniac, "we ought to be thankful the old tricks are going out. As Mr. Brief suggests, we are beginning to be civilized--"

"I don't think it's civilization," said the Idiot. "I think the kids are just discouraged, that's all. They're clever, these youngsters, but when it comes to putting up games, they're not in it with their far more foxy fathers. What's the use of playing April-fool jokes on your daddy, when your daddy is playing April-fool jokes on the public all the year round? That's the way they reason. No son of George W. Midas, the financier, is going to get any satisfaction out of handing his father a loaded cigar, when he knows that the old man is handling that sort of thing every day in his business as a promoter of the United States Hot Air Company. What fun is there in giving your sister a caramel filled with tabasco-sauce when you can watch your father selling eleven dollars' worth of Amalgamated Licorice stock to the dear public for forty-seven fifty? The gum-drop filled with cotton loses its charm when you contrast it with Consolidated Radium containing one part of radium and ninety-nine parts of water. Who cares to hide a clay brick under a hat for somebody to kick, when there are concerns in palatial offices all over town selling gold bricks to a public that doesn't seem to have any kick left in it? I tell you it has discouraged the kid to see to what scientific heights the April-fool industry has been developed, and as a result he has abandoned the field. He knows he can't compete."

"That's all right as an explanation of the youngster whose parent is engaged in that sort of business," said the Doctor. "But there are others."

"True," said the Idiot. "The others stay out of it out of sheer pity. When they are tempted to sew up the legs of their daddy's trousers in order to fitly celebrate the day, or to fill his collar-box with collars five sizes too small for him, they say, 'No. Let us refrain. The governor has had trouble enough with his International Yukon Anticipated Brass shares this year. He's had all the fooling he can stand. We will give the old gentleman a rest!' Fact is, come to look at it, the decadence of April 1st as a day of foolery for the young is no mystery, after all. The youngsters are not more civilized than we used to be, but they have had the intelligence to perceive the exact truth of the situation."

"Which is?" asked Mr. Brief.

"That the ancient art of practical joking has become a business. April-fool's-day has been incorporated by the leading financiers of the age, and is doing a profitable trade all over the world all the year round. Private enterprise is simply unable to compete."

"I am rather surprised, nevertheless," said Mr. Brief, "that you yourself have abandoned the field. You are just the sort of person who would keep on in that kind of thing, despite the discouragements."

"Oh, I haven't abandoned the field," said the Idiot. "I did play an April-fool joke last Friday."

"What was that?" asked Mr. Whitechoker, interested.

"I told Mrs. Pedagog that I would pay my bill to-morrow," replied the Idiot, as he rose from the table and left the room.

VIII

SPRING AND ITS POETRY

"Well, Mr. Idiot," said Mrs. Pedagog, genially, as the Idiot entered the breakfast-room, "what can I do for you this fine spring morning? Will you have tea or coffee?"

"I think I'd like a cup of boiled iron, with two lumps of quinine and a spoonful of condensed nerve-milk in it," replied the Idiot, wearily. "Somehow or other I have managed to mislay my spine this morning. Ethereal mildness has taken the place of my backbone."

"Those tired feelings, eh?" said Mr. Brief.

"Yeppy," replied the Idiot. "Regular thing with me. Every year along about the middle of April I have to fasten a poker on my back with straps, in order to stand up straight; and as for my knees--well, I never know where they are in the merry, merry spring-time. I'm quite sure that if I didn't wear brass caps on them my legs would bend backward. I wonder if this neighborhood is malarious."

"Not in the slightest degree," observed the Doctor. "This is the healthiest neighborhood in town. The trouble with you is that you have a swampy mind, and it is the miasmatic oozings of your intellect that reduce you to the condition of physical flabbiness of which you complain. You might swallow the United States Steel Trust, and it wouldn't help you a bit, and ten thousand bottles of nerve-milk, or any other tonic known to science, would be powerless to reach the seat of your disorder. What you need to stiffen you up is a pair of those armored trousers the Crusaders used to wear in the days of chivalry, to bolster up your legs, and a strait-jacket to keep your back up."

"Thank you, kindly," said the Idiot. "If you'll give me a prescription, which I can have made up at your tailor's, I'll have it filled, unless you'll add to my ever-increasing obligation to you by lending me your own strait-jacket. I promise to keep it straight and to return it the moment you feel one of your fits coming on."

The Doctor's response was merely a scornful gesture, and the Idiot went on:

"It's always seemed a very queer thing to me that this season of the year should be so popular with everybody," he said. "To me it's the mushiest of times. Mushy bones; mushy poetry; mush for breakfast, fried, stewed, and boiled. The roads are mushy; lovers thaw out and get mushier than ever.

"In the spring the blasts of winter all are stilled in
solemn hush.
In the spring the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts
of mush.
In the spring--"

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself to trifle with so beautiful a poem," interrupted the Bibliomaniac, indignantly.

"Who's trifling with a beautiful poem?" demanded the Idiot.

"You are--'Locksley Hall'--and you know it," retorted the Bibliomaniac.

"Locksley nothing," said the Idiot. "What I was reciting is not from 'Locksley Hall' at all. It's a little thing of my own that I wrote six years ago called 'Spring Unsprung.' It may not contain much delicate sentiment, but it's got more solid information in it of a valuable kind than you'll find in ten 'Locksley Halls' or a dozen Etiquette Columns in the _Lady's Away From Home Magazine_. It has saved a lot of people from pneumonia and other disorders of early spring, I am quite certain, and the only person I ever heard criticise it unfavorably was a doctor I know who said it spoiled his business."

"I should admire to hear it," said the Poet. "Can't you let us have it?"

"Certainly," replied the Idiot. "It goes on like this:

"In the spring I'll take you driving, take you driving, Maudy dear,
But I beg of you be careful at this season of the year.
It is true the birds are singing, singing sweetly all their notes,
But you'll later find them wearing canton-flannel 'round their
throats.
It is true the lark doth warble, 'Spring is here,' with bird-like
fire,
'All is warmth and all is genial,' but I fear the lark's a liar.
All is warmth for fifteen minutes, that is true; but wait awhile,
And you'll find that April's weather has not ever changed its
style;
And beware of April's weather, it is pleasant for a spell,
But, like little Johnny's future, you can't always sometimes tell.
Often modest little violets, peeping up from out their beds
In the balmy morn by night-time have bad colds within their heads;
And the buttercup and daisy twinkling gayly on the lawn,
Sing by night a different story from their carollings at dawn;
And the blossoms of the morning, hailing spring with joyous frenzy,
When the twilight falls upon them often droop with influenzy.
So, dear Maudy, when we're driving, put your linen duster on,
And your lovely Easter bonnet, if you wish to, you may don;
But be careful to have with you sundry garments warm and thick:
Woollen gloves, a muff, and ear-tabs, from the ice-box get the
pick;
There's no telling what may happen ere we've driven twenty miles,
April flirts with chill December, and is full of other wiles.
Bring your parasol, O Maudy--it is good for _tete-a-tetes_;
At the same time you would better also bring your hockey skates.
There's no telling from the noon-tide, with the sun a-shining
bright,
Just what kind of winter weather we'll be up against by night."

"Referring to the advice," said Mr. Brief, "that's good. I don't think much of the poetry."

"There was a lot more of it," said the Idiot, "but it escapes me at the moment. Four lines I do remember, however:

"Pin no faith to weather prophets--all their prophecies are fakes,
Roulette-wheels are plain and simple to the notions April takes.
Keep your children in the nursery--never mind it if they pout--
And, above all, do not let your furnace take an evening out."

"Well," said the Poet, "if you're going to the poets for advice, I presume your rhymes are all right. But I don't think it is the mission of the poet to teach people common-sense."

"That's the trouble with the whole tribe of poets," said the Idiot. "They think they are licensed to do and say all sorts of things that other people can't do and say. In a way I agree with you that a poem shouldn't necessarily be a treatise on etiquette or a sequence of health hints, but it should avoid misleading its readers. Take that fellow who wrote

"'Sweet primrose time! When thou art here
I go by grassy ledges
Of long lane-side, and pasture mead,
And moss-entangled hedges.'

That's very lovely, and, as far as it goes, it is all right. There's no harm in doing what the poet so delicately suggests, but I think there should have been other stanzas for the protection of the reader like this:

"But have a care, oh, readers fair,
To take your mackintoshes,
And on your feet be sure to wear
A pair of stanch galoshes.

"Nor should you fail when seeking out
The primrose, golden yeller,
To have at hand somewhere about
A competent umbrella.

Thousands of people are inspired by lines like the original to go gallivanting all over the country in primrose time, to return at dewy eve with all the incipient symptoms of pneumonia. Then there's the case of Wordsworth. He was one of the loveliest of the Nature poets, but he's eternally advising people to go out in the early spring and lie on the grass somewhere, listening to cuckoos doing their cooking, watching the daffodils at their daily dill, and hearing the crocus cuss; and some sentimental reader out in New Jersey thinks that if Wordsworth could do that sort of thing, and live to be eighty years old, there's no reason why he shouldn't do the same thing. What's the result? He lies on the grass for two hours and suffers from rheumatism for the next ten years."

"Tut!" said the Poet. "I am surprised at you. You can't blame Wordsworth because some New Jerseyman makes a jackass of himself."

"In a way all writers should be responsible for the effect of what they write on their readers," said the Idiot. "When a poet of Wordsworth's eminence, directly or indirectly, advises people to go out and lie on the grass in early spring, he owes it to his public to caution them that in some localities it is not a good thing to do. A rhymed foot-note--

"This habit, by-the-way, is good
In climes south of the Mersey;
But, I would have it understood,
It's risky in New Jersey--

would fulfil all the requirements of the special individual to whom I have referred, and would have shown that the poet himself was ever mindful of the welfare of his readers."

The Poet was apparently unconvinced, so the Idiot continued:

"Mind you, old man, I think all this poetry is beautiful," he said; "but you poets are too prone to confine your attention to the pleasant aspects of the season. Here, for instance, is a poet who asks

'What are the dearest treasures of spring?'

and then goes on to name the cheapest as an answer to his question. The primrose, the daffodil, the rosy haze that veils the forest bare, the sparkle of the myriad-dimpled sea, a kissing-match between the sunbeams and the rain-drops, reluctant hopes, the twitter of swallows on the wing, and all that sort of thing. You'd think spring was an iridescent dream of ecstatic things; but of the tired feeling that comes over you, the spine of jelly, the wabbling knee, the chills and fever that come from sniffing 'the scented breath of dewy April's eve,' the doctor's bills, and such like things are never mentioned. It isn't fair. It's all right to tell about the other things, but don't forget the drawbacks. If I were writing that poem I'd have at least two stanzas like this:

"And other dearest treasures of spring
Are daily draughts of withering, blithering squills,
To cure my aching bones of darksome chills;
And at the door my loved physician's ring;

"The tender sneezes of the early day;
The sudden drop of Mr. Mercury;
The veering winds from S. to N. by E.--
And hunting flats to move to in the May.

You see, that makes not only a more comprehensive picture, but does not mislead anybody into the belief the spring is all velvet, which it isn't by any means."

"Oh, bosh!" cried the Poet, very much nettled, as he rose from the table. "I suppose if you had your way you'd have all poetry submitted first to a censor, the way they do with plays in London."

"No, I wouldn't have a censor; he'd only increase taxes unnecessarily," said the Idiot, folding up his napkin, and also rising to leave. "I'd just let the Board of Health pass on them; it isn't a question of morals so much as of sanitation."

IX

ON FLAT-HUNTING

"Aha!" cried the Poet, briskly rubbing his hands together, and drawing a deep breath of satisfaction, "these be great days for people who are fond of the chase, who love the open, and who would commune with Nature in her most lovely mood. Just look out of that window, Mr. Idiot, and drink in the joyous sunshine. Egad! sir, even the asphalted pavement and the brick-and-mortar facade of the houses opposite, bathed in that golden light, seem glorified."

"Thanks," said the Idiot, wearily, "but I guess I won't. I'm afraid that while I was drinking in those glorified flats opposite and digesting the golden-mellow asphalt, you would fasten that poetic grip of yours upon my share of the blossoming buckwheats. Furthermore, I've been enjoying the chase for two weeks now, and, to tell you the honest truth, I am long on it. There is such a thing as chasing too much, so if you don't mind I'll sublet my part of the contract for gazing out of the window at gilt-edged Nature as she appears in the city to you. Mary, move Mr. Poet's chair over to the window so that he may drink in the sunshine comfortably, and pass his share of the sausages to me."

"What have you been chasing, Mr. Idiot?" asked the Doctor. "Birds or the fast-flitting dollar?"

"Flats," said the Idiot.

"I didn't know you Wall Street people needed to hunt flats," said the Bibliomaniac. "I thought they just walked into your offices and presented themselves for skinning."

"I don't mean the flats we live on," explained the Idiot. "It's the flats we live in that I have been after."

The landlady looked up inquiringly. Mr. Idiot's announcement sounded ominous.

"To my mind, flat-hunting," the Idiot continued, "is one of the most interesting branches of sport. It involves quite as much uncertainty as the pursuit of the whirring partridge; your game is quite as difficult to lure as the speckled trout darting hither and yon in the grassy pool; it involves no shedding of innocent blood, as in the case of a ride across-country with a pack in full pursuit of the fox; and strikes me as possessing greater dignity than running forty miles through the cabbage-patches of Long Island in search of a bag of ainse seed. When the sporting instinct arises in my soul and reaches that full-tide where nothing short of action will hold it in control, I never think of starting for Maine to shoot the festive moose, nor do I squander my limited resources on a foggy hunt for the elusive canvasback in the Maryland marshes. I just go to the nearest cab-stand, strike a bargain with Mr. Jehu for an afternoon's use of his hansom, and go around the town hunting flats. It requires very little previous preparation; it involves no prolonged absences from home; you do not need rubber boots unless you propose to investigate the cellars or intend to go far afield into the suburban boroughs of this great city; and is in all ways pleasant, interesting, and, I may say, educational."

"Educational, eh?" laughed the Bibliomaniac. "Some people have queer ideas of what is educational. I must say I fail to see anything particularly instructive in flat-hunting."

"That's because you never approached it in a proper spirit," said the Idiot. "Anybody who is at all interested in sociology, however, cannot help but find instruction in a contemplation of how people are housed. You can't get any idea of how the other halves live by reading the society news in the Sunday newspapers or peeping in at the second story of the tenement-houses as you go down-town on the elevated railroads. You've got to go out and investigate for yourself, and that's where flat-hunting comes in as an educational diversion. Of course, all men are not interested in the same line of investigation. You, as a bibliomaniac, prefer to go hunting rare first editions; Dr. Pellet, armed to the teeth with capsules, lies in wait for a pot-shot at some new kind of human ailment, and rejoices as loudly over the discovery of a new disease as you do over finding a copy of the rare first edition of the _Telephone Book for 1899_; another man goes to Africa to investigate the condition of our gorillan cousin of the jungle; Lieutenant Peary goes and hides behind a snow-ball up North, so that his fellows of the Arctic Exploration Society may have something to look for every other summer; and I--I go hunting for flats. I don't sneer at you and the others for liking the things you do. You shouldn't sneer at me for liking the things I do. It is, after all, the diversity of our tastes that makes our human race interesting."

"But the rest of us generally bag something," said the Lawyer. "What the dickens do you get beyond sheer physical weariness for your pains?"

"The best of all the prizes of the hunt," said the Idiot; "the spirit of content with my lot as a boarder. I've been through twenty-eight flats in the last three weeks, and I know whereof I speak. I have seen the gorgeous apartments of the Redmere, where you can get a Louis Quinze drawing-room, a Renaissance library, a superb Grecian dining-room, and a cold-storage box to keep your high-balls in for four thousand dollars per annum."

"Weren't there any bedrooms?" asked Mr. Whitechoker.

"Oh yes," said the Idiot. "Three, automatically ventilated from holes in the ceiling leading to an air-shaft, size six by nine, and brilliantly lighted by electricity. There was also a small pigeon-hole in a corrugated iron shack on the roof for the cook; a laundry next to the coal-bin in the cellar; and a kitchen about four feet square connecting with the library."

"Mercy!" cried Mrs. Pedagog. "Do they expect children to live in such a place as that?"

"No," said the Idiot. "You have to give bonds as security against children of any kind at the Redmere. If you happen to have any, you are required by the terms of your lease to send them to boarding-school; and if you haven't any, the lease requires that you shall promise to have none during your tenancy. The owners of such properties have a lot of heart about them, and they take good care to protect the children against the apartments they put up."

"And what kind of people, pray, live in such places as that?" demanded the Bibliomaniac.

"Very nice people," said the Idiot. "People, for the most part, who spend their winters at Palm Beach, their springs in London, their summers at Newport or on the Continent, and their autumns in the Berkshires."

"I don't see why they need a home at all if that's the way they do," said Mrs. Pedagog.

"It's very simple," said the Idiot. "You've got to have an address to get your name in the _Social Register_."

"Four thousand dollars is pretty steep for an address," commented the Bibliomaniac.

"It would be for me," said the Idiot. "But it is cheap for them. Moreover, in the case of the Redmere it's the swellest address in town. Three of the most important divorces of the last social season took place at the Redmere. Social position comes high, Mr. Bib, but there are people who must have it. It is to them what baked beans are to the Bostonian's Sunday breakfast--a _sine qua non_."

"May I ask whatever induced you to look for a four-thousand-dollar apartment?" asked Mr. Pedagog. "You have frequently stated that your income barely equalled twenty-four hundred dollars a year."

"Why shouldn't I?" asked the Idiot. "It doesn't cost any more to look for a four-thousand-dollar apartment than it does to go chasing after a two-dollar-a-week hall-bedroom, and it impresses the cab-driver with a sense of responsibility. But bagging these gorgeous apartments does not constitute the real joy of flat-hunting. For solid satisfaction and real sport the chase for a fifteen-hundred-dollar apartment in a decent neighborhood bears away the palm. You can get plenty of roomy suites in the neighborhood of a boiler-factory, or next door to a distillery, or back of a fire-engine house, at reasonable rents, and along the elevated railway lines much that is impressive is to be found by those who can sleep with trains running alongside of their pillows all night; but when you get away from these, the real thing at that figure is elusive. Over by the Park you can get two pigeon-holes and a bath, with a southern exposure, for nineteen hundred dollars a year; if you are willing to dispense with the southern exposure you can get three Black Holes of Calcutta and a butler's pantry, in the same neighborhood, for sixteen hundred dollars, but you have to provide your own air. Farther down-town you will occasionally find the thing you want with a few extras in the shape of cornet-players, pianola-bangers, and peroxide sopranos on either side of you, and an osteopathic veterinary surgeon on the ground floor thrown in. Then there are paper flats that can be had for twelve hundred dollars, but you can't have any pictures in them, because the walls won't stand the weight, and any nail of reasonable length would stick through into the next apartment. A friend of mine lived in one of these affairs once, and when he inadvertently leaned against the wall one night he fell through into his neighbor's bath-tub. Of course, that sort of thing promotes sociability; but for a home most people want just a little privacy. And so the list runs on. You would really be astonished at the great variety of discomfortable dwelling-places that people build. Such high-art decorations as you encounter--purple friezes surmounting yellow dadoes; dragons peeping out of fruit-baskets; idealized tomatoes in full bloom chasing one another all around the bedroom walls. Then the architectural inconveniences they present with their best bedrooms opening into the kitchen; their parlors with marble wash-stands with running water in the corner; their libraries fitted up with marvellous steam-radiators and china-closets, and their kitchens so small that the fire in the range scorches the wall opposite, and over which nothing but an asbestos cook, with a figure like a third rail, could preside. And, best of all, there are the janitors! Why, Mr. Bib, the study of the janitor and his habits alone is worthy of the life-long attention of the best entomologist that ever lived--and yet you say there is nothing educational in flat-hunting."

"Oh, well," said the Bibliomaniac, "I meant for me. There are a lot of things that would be educational to you that I should regard as symptomatic of profound ignorance. Everything is relative in this world."

"That is true," said the Idiot; "and that is why every April 1st I go out and gloat over the miseries of the flat-dwellers. As long as I can do that I am happy in my little cubby-hole under Mrs. Pedagog's hospitable roof."

"Ah! I am glad to hear you say that," said Mrs. Pedagog. "I was a bit fearful, Mr. Idiot, that you had it in mind to move away from us."

"No indeed, Mrs. Pedagog," replied the Idiot, rising from the table. "You need have no fear of that. You couldn't get me out of here with a crow-bar. If I did not have entire confidence in your lovely house and yourself, you don't suppose I would permit myself to get three months behind in my board, do you?"

X

THE HOUSEMAID'S UNION

"Potatoes, sir?" said Mary, the waitress at Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog's High-Class Home for Single Gentlemen, stopping behind the Idiot's chair and addressing the back of his neck in the usual boarding-house fashion.