The Idiot

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THE IDIOT

by

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS

Author of "Coffee and Repartee" "The Water Ghost, and Others" "Three
Weeks in Politics" Etc.

Illustrated

New York
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1895
Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.

TO WILLIAM K. OTIS

ILLUSTRATIONS

"CERTAINLY. I ASKED FOR ANOTHER CUP"

"THE NUISANCE OF HAVING TO PAY"

"SHE COULD NOT POSSIBLY GET ABOARD AGAIN"

"DEMANDS TICKETS FOR TWO"

"THEY ARE GIVEN TO REHEARSING AT ALL HOURS"

"'HA! HA! I HAVE HIM NOW!'"

"HAS YOUR FRIEND COMPLETED HIS ARTICLE ON OLD JOKES?"

THEY DEPARTED

"YOU FISH ALL DAY, AND HAVE NO LUCK"

HE COULD BE HEARD THROWING THINGS ABOUT

"HE WAS NOT MURDERED"

"SUPERINTENDENT SMITHERS HAS NOT ABSCONDED"

THE INSPIRED BOARDER PAID HIS BILL

"I KNOW YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE IT ISN'T THERE"

"YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HEARD IN SAN FRANCISCO"

THE PROPHETOGRAPH

"I GRASPED IT IN MY TWO HANDS"

"PIANO-PLAYING ISN'T ALWAYS MUSIC"

"THE MOON ITSELF WILL BE USED"

"DECLINES TO BE RIDDEN"

"THE BIBLIOMANIAC WOULD BE RAISING BULBS"

"DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH TO CHOOSE HIS OWN FACE"

"JANITORS HAVE TO BE SEEN TO"

"MY ELOQUENCE FLOATED UP THE AIR-SHAFT"

THE IDIOT

I

For some weeks after the happy event which transformed the popular Mrs.
Smithers into the charming Mrs. John Pedagog all went well at that lady's
select home for single gentlemen. It was only proper that during the
honey-moon, at least, of the happy couple hostilities between the Idiot
and his fellow-boarders should cease. It was expecting too much of
mankind, however, to look for a continued armistice, and the morning
arrived when Nature once more reasserted herself, and trouble began. Just
what it was that prompted the remark no one knows, but it happened that
the Idiot did say that he thought that, after all, life on a canal-boat
had its advantages. Mr. Pedagog, who had come into the dining-room in a
slightly irritable frame of mind, induced perhaps by Mrs. Pedagog's
insistence that as he was now part proprietor of the house he should be
a little more prompt in making his contributions towards its maintenance,
chose to take the remark as implying a reflection upon the way things
were managed in the household.

"Humph!" he said. "I had hoped that your habit of airing your idiotic
views had been put aside for once and for all."

"Very absurd hope, my dear sir," observed the Idiot. "Views that are not
aired become musty. Why shouldn't I give them an atmospheric opportunity
once in a while?"

"Because they are the sort of views to which suffocation is the most
appropriate end," snapped the School-Master. "Any man who asserts, as you
have asserted, that life on a canal-boat has its advantages, ought to go
further, and prove his sincerity by living on one."

"I can't afford it," said the Idiot, meekly. "It isn't cheap by any
manner of means. In the first place, you can't live happily on a
canal-boat unless you can afford to keep horses. In fact, canal-boat life
is a combination of the most expensive luxuries, since it combines
yachting and driving with domesticity. Nevertheless, if you will put your
mind on it, you will find that with a canal-boat for your home you can do
a great many things that you can't do with a house."

"I decline to put my mind on a canal-boat," said Mr. Pedagog, sharply,
passing his coffee back to Mrs. Pedagog for another lump of sugar,
thereby contributing to that good lady's discomfiture, since before their
marriage the mere fact that the coffee had been poured by her fair hand
had given it all the sweetness it needed; or at least that was what the
School-Master had said, and more than once at that.

"You are under no obligation to do so," the Idiot returned. "Though if I
had a mind like yours I'd put it on a canal-boat and have it towed away
somewhere out of sight. These other gentlemen, however, I think, will
agree with me when I say that the mere fact that a canal-boat can be
moved about the country, and is in no sense a fixture anywhere, shows
that as a dwelling-place it is superior to a house. Take this house, for
instance. This neighborhood used to be the best in town. It is still far
from being the worst neighborhood in town, but it is, as it has been for
several years, deteriorating. The establishment of a Turkish bath on one
corner and a grocery-store on the other has taken away much of that air
of refinement which characterized it when the block was devoted to
residential purposes entirely. Now just suppose for a moment that this
street were a canal, and that this house were a canal-boat. The canal
could run down as much as it pleased, the neighborhood could deteriorate
eternally, but it could not affect the value of this house as the home of
refined people as long as it was possible to hitch up a team of horses to
the front stoop and tow it into a better locality. I'd like to wager
every man at this table that Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't take five minutes to
make up her mind to tow this house up to a spot near Central Park, if it
were a canal-boat and the streets were water instead of a mixture of
water, sand, and Belgian blocks."

"No takers," said the Bibliomaniac.

"Tutt-tutt-tutt," ejaculated Mr. Pedagog.

[Illustration: "THE NUISANCE OF HAVING TO PAY"]

"You seem to lose sight of another fact," said the Idiot, warming up to
his subject. "If man had had the sense in the beginning to adopt the
canal-boat system of life, and we were used to that sort of thing, it
would not be so hard upon us in summer-time, when we have to live in
hotels in order that we and our families may reap the benefits of a
period of country life. We could simply drive off to that section of the
country where we desired to be. Hotels would not be needed if a man could
take his house along with him into the fields, and one phase of life
which has more bad than good in it would be entirely obliterated. There
is nothing more disturbing to the serenity of a domestic man's mind than
the artificial manner of living that prevails in most summer hotels. The
nuisance of having to pay bills every Monday morning under the penalty of
losing one's luggage would be obviated, and all the comforts of home
would be directly within reach. The trouble incident upon getting the
trunks packed and the children ready for a long day's journey by rail,
and the fatigue arising from such a journey, would be reduced to a
minimum. The troubles attendant upon going into a far country, and
leaving one's house in the sole charge of a lot of servants for a month
or two every year, would be done away with entirely; and if at any time
it became necessary to discharge one of these servants, she could be put
off the boat in an instant, and then the boat could be pushed out into
the middle of the canal, so that the discharged domestic could not
possibly get aboard again and take her revenge by smashing your crockery
and fixtures. That is one of the worst features of living in a stationary
house. You are entirely at the mercy of vindictive servants. They know
precisely where you live, and you cannot escape them. They can come back
when there is no man around, and raise several varieties of Ned with your
wife and children. With a movable house, such as the canal-boat would be,
you could always go off and leave your family in perfect safety."

[Illustration: "SHE COULD NOT POSSIBLY GET ABOARD AGAIN"]

"How about safety in a storm?" asked the Bibliomaniac.

"Safety in a storm?" echoed the Idiot. "That seems an absurd sort of a
question to one who knows anything about canal-boats. I, for one, never
heard of a canal-boat being seriously damaged in a storm as long as it
was anchored in the canal proper. It certainly isn't any more dangerous
to be in a canal-boat in a storm than it is to be in a house that
offers resistance to the winds, and is shaken from roof to cellar at
every blast. More houses have been blown from their foundations than
canal-boats sunk, provided ordinary care has been taken to protect
them."

"And you think the canal-boat would be healthy?" asked the Doctor. "How
about dampness and all that?"

"That is a professional question," returned the Idiot, "which I think you
could answer better than I. I don't see why a canal-boat shouldn't be
healthy, however. The dampness would not amount to very much. It would be
outside of one's dwelling, and not within it, as is the case with so many
houses. A canal-boat having no cellar could not have a damp one, and if
by some untoward circumstance it should spring a leak, the water could
be pumped out at once and the leak plugged up. However this might be,
I'll offer another wager to this board on that point, and that is that
more people die in houses than on canal-boats."

"We'd rather give you our money right out," retorted the Doctor.

"Thank you," said the Idiot. "But I don't need money. I don't like money.
Money is responsible for more extravagance than any other commodity in
existence. Besides, it and I are not intimate enough to get along very
well together, and when I have any I immediately do my level best to rid
myself of it. But to return to our canal-boat, I note a look of
disapproval in Mr. Whitechoker's eyes. He doesn't seem to think any
more of my scheme than do the rest of you--which I regret, since I
believe that he would be the gainer if land edifices were supplanted by
the canal system as proposed by myself. Take church on a rainy morning,
for instance. A great many people stay at home from church on rainy
mornings just because they do not want to venture out in the wet. Suppose
we all lived in canal-boats? Would not people be deprived of this flimsy
pretext for staying at home if their homes could be towed up to the
church door? Or, better yet, granting that the churches followed out the
same plan, and were themselves constructed like canal-boats, how easy it
would be for the sexton to drive the church around the town and collect
the absentees. In the same manner it would be glorious for men like
ourselves, who have to go to their daily toil. For a consideration, Mrs.
Pedagog could have us driven to our various places of business every
morning, returning for us in the evening. Think how fine it would be for
me, for instance, instead of having to come home every night in an
overcrowded elevated train or on a cable-car, to have the office-boy come
and announce, 'Mrs. Pedagog's Select Home for Gentlemen is at the door,
Mr. Idiot.' I could step right out of my office into my charming little
bedroom up in the bow, and the time usually expended on the cars could be
devoted to dressing for tea. Then we could stop in at the court-house for
our legal friend; and as for Doctor Capsule, wouldn't he revel in driving
this boarding-house about town on his daily rounds among his patients?"

"What would become of my office hours?" asked the Doctor. "If this house
were whirling giddily all about the city from morning until night, I
don't know what would become of my office patients."

"They might die a little sooner or live a little longer, that is all,"
said the Idiot. "If they weren't able to find the house at all, however,
I think it would be better for us, for much as I admire you, Doctor, I
think your office hours are a nuisance to the rest of us. I had to elbow
my way out of the house this morning between a double line of sufferers
from mumps and influenza, and other pleasingly afflicted patients of
yours, and I didn't like it very much."

"I don't believe they liked it much either," returned the Doctor. "One
man with a sprained ankle told me about you. You shoved him in passing."

"Well, you can apologize to him in my behalf," returned the Idiot; "but
you might add that he must expect very much the same treatment whenever
he and a boy with mumps stand between me and the door. Sprained ankles
aren't contagious, and I preferred shoving him to the other alternative."

The Doctor was silent, and the Idiot rose to go. "Where will the house be
this evening about six-thirty, Mrs. Pedagog?" he asked, as he pushed his
chair back from the table.

"Where? Why, here, of course," returned the landlady.

"Why, yes--of course," observed the Idiot, with an impatient gesture.
"How foolish of me! I've really been so wrapped up in my canal-boat ideal
that I came to believe that it might possibly be real and not a dream,
after all. I almost believed that perhaps I should find that the house
had been towed somewhere up into Westchester County on my return, so that
we might all escape the city's tax on personal property, which I am told
is unusually high this year."

With which sally the Idiot kissed his hand to Mr. Pedagog and retired
from the scene.

II

"Let's write a book," suggested the Idiot, as he took his place at the
board and unfolded his napkin.

"What about?" asked the Doctor, with a smile at the idea of the Idiot's
thinking of embarking on literary pursuits.

"About four hundred pages long," said the Idiot. "I feel inspired."

"You are inspired," said the School-Master. "In your way you are a
genius. I really never heard of such a variegated Idiot as you are in all
my experience, and that means a great deal, I can tell you, for in the
course of my career as an instructor of youth I have encountered many
idiots."

"Were they idiots before or after having drank at the fount of your
learning?" asked the Idiot, placidly.

Mr. Pedagog glared, and the Idiot was apparently satisfied. To make Mr.
Pedagog glare appeared to be one of the chiefest of his ambitions.

"You will kindly remember, Mr. Idiot," said Mrs. Pedagog at this point,
"that Mr. Pedagog is my husband, and such insinuations at my table are
distinctly out of place."

"I ask your pardon, Mrs. Pedagog," rejoined the offender, meekly.
"Nevertheless, as apart from the question in hand as to whether Mr.
Pedagog inspires idiocy or not, I should like to get the views of this
gathering on the point you make regarding the table. _Is_ this your
table? Is it not rather the table of those who sit about it to regale
their inner man with the good things under which I remember once or twice
in my life to have heard it groan? To my mind, the latter is the truth.
It is _our_ table, because we buy it, and I am forced to believe that
some of us pay for it. I am prepared to admit that if Mr. Brief, for
instance, is delinquent in his weekly payments, his interest in the table
reverts to you until he shall have liquidated, and he is not privileged
to say a word that you do not approve of; but I, for instance, who since
January 1st have been compelled to pay in advance, am at least sole
lessee, and for the time being proprietor of the portion for which I have
paid. You have sold it to me. I have entered into possession, and while
in possession, as a matter of right and not on sufferance, haven't I the
privilege of freedom of speech?"

"You certainly exercise the privilege whether you have it or not,"
snapped Mr. Pedagog.

"Well, I believe in exercise," said the Idiot. "Exercise brings strength,
and if exercising the privilege is going to strengthen it, exercise it I
shall, if I have to hire a gymnasium for the purpose. But to return to
Mrs. Pedagog's remark. It brings up another question that has more or
less interested me. Because Mrs. Smithers married Mr. Pedagog, do we lose
all of our rights in Mr. Pedagog? Before the happy event that reduced our
number from ten to nine--"

"We are still ten, are we not?" asked Mr. Whitechoker, counting the
guests.

"Not if Mr. Pedagog and the late Mrs. Smithers have become one," said the
Idiot. "But, as I was saying, before the happy event that reduced our
number from ten to nine we were permitted to address our friend Pedagog
in any terms we saw fit, and whenever he became sufficiently interested
to indulge in repartee we were privileged to return it. Have we
relinquished that privilege? I don't remember to have done so."

"It's a question worthy of your giant intellect," said Mr. Pedagog,
scornfully. "For myself, I do not at all object to anything you may
choose to say to me or of me. Your assaults are to me as water is to a
duck's back."

"I am sorry," said the Idiot. "I hate family disagreements, and here we
have Mrs. Pedagog taking one side and Mr. Pedagog the other. But whatever
decision may ultimately be reached, of one thing Mrs. Pedagog must be
assured. I on principle side against Mr. Pedagog, and if it be the wish
of my good landlady that I shall refrain from playing intellectual
battledore and shuttlecock with her husband, whom we all revere, I
certainly shall refrain. Hereafter if I indulge in anything that in any
sense resembles repartee with our landlord, I wish it distinctly
understood that an apology goes with it."

"That's all right, my boy," said the School-Master. "You mean well. You
are a little new, that's all, and we all understand you."

"I don't understand him," growled the Doctor, still smarting under the
recollection of former breakfast-table discomfitures. "I wish we could
get him translated."

"If you prescribed for me once or twice I think it likely I should be
translated in short order," retorted the Idiot. "I wonder how I'd go
translated into French?"

"You couldn't be expressed in French," put in the Lawyer. "It would take
some barbarian tongue to do you justice."

"Very well," said the Idiot. "Proceed. Do me justice."

"I can't begin to," said Mr. Brief, angrily.

"That's what I thought," said the Idiot. "That's the reason why you
always do me such great injustice. You lawyers always have to be doing
something, even if it is only holding down a chair so that it won't blow
out of your office window. If you haven't any justice to mete out, you
take another tack and dispense injustice with lavish hand. However, I'll
forgive you if you'll tell me one thing. What's libel, Mr. Brief?"

"None of your business," growled the Lawyer.

"A very good general definition," said the Idiot, approvingly. "If
there's any business in the world that I should hate to have known as
mine it is that of libel. I think, however, your definition is not
definite. What I wanted to know was just how far I could go with remarks
at this table and be safe from prosecution."

"Nobody would ever prosecute you, for two reasons," said the lawyer. "In
a civil action for money damages a verdict against you for ten cents
wouldn't be worth a rap, because the chances are you couldn't pay. In a
criminal action your conviction would be a bad thing, because you would
be likely to prove a corrupting influence in any jail in creation.
Besides, you'd be safe before a jury, anyhow. You are just the sort of
idiot that the intelligent jurors of to-day admire, and they'd acquit you
of any crime. A man has a right to a trial at the hands of a jury of his
peers. I don't think even in a jury-box twelve idiots equal to yourself
could be found, so don't worry."

"Thanks. Have a cigarette?" said the Idiot, tossing one over to the
Lawyer. "It's all I have. If I had a half-dollar I should pay you for
your opinion; but since I haven't, I offer you my all. The temperature of
my coffee seems to have fallen, Mrs. Pedagog. Will you kindly let me have
another cup?"

"Certainly," said Mrs. Pedagog. "Mary, get the Idiot another cup."

Mary did as she was told, placing the empty bit of china at Mrs.
Pedagog's side.

"It is for the Idiot, Mary," said Mrs. Pedagog, coldly. "Take it to him."

"Empty, ma'am?" asked the maid.

"Certainly, Mary," said the Idiot, perceiving Mrs. Pedagog's point. "I
asked for another cup, not for more coffee."

[Illustration: "CERTAINLY. I ASKED FOR ANOTHER CUP"]

Mrs. Pedagog smiled quietly at her own joke. At hair-splitting she could
give the Idiot points.

"I am surprised that Mary should have thought I wanted more coffee,"
continued the Idiot, in an aggrieved tone. "It shows that she too thinks
me out of my mind."

"You are not out of your mind," said the Bibliomaniac. "It would be a
good thing if you were. In replenishing your mental supply you might have
the luck to get better quality."

"I probably should have the luck," said the Idiot. "I have had a great
store of it in my life. From the very start I have had luck. When I think
that I was born myself, and not you, I feel as if I had had more than my
share of good-fortune--more luck than the law allows. How much luck does
the law allow, Mr. Brief?"

"Bosh!" said Mr. Brief, with a scornful wave of his hand, as if he
were ridding himself of a troublesome gnat. "Don't bother me with such
mind-withering questions."

"All right," said the Idiot. "I'll ask you an easier one. Why does not
the world recognize matrimony?"

Mr. Whitechoker started. Here, indeed, was a novel proposition.

"I--I--must confess," said he, "that of all the idiotic questions
I--er--I have ever had the honor of hearing asked that takes the--"

"Cake?" suggested the Idiot.

"--palm!" said Mr. Whitechoker, severely.

"Well, perhaps so," said the Idiot. "But matrimony is the science, or the
art, or whatever you call it, of making two people one, is it not?"

"It certainly is," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But what of it?"

"The world does not recognize the unity," said the Idiot. "Take our good
proprietors, for instance. They were made one by yourself, Mr.
Whitechoker. I had the pleasure of being an usher at the ceremony,
yielding the position of best man gracefully, as is my wont, to the
Bibliomaniac. He was best man, but not the better man, by a simple
process of reasoning. Now no one at this board disputes that Mr. and Mrs.
Pedagog are one, but how about the world? Mr. Pedagog takes Mrs. Pedagog
to a concert. Are they one there?"

"Why not?" asked Mr. Brief.

"That's what I want to know--why not? The world, as represented by the
ticket-taker at the door, says they are not--or implies that they are
not, by demanding tickets for two. They attempt to travel out to Niagara
Falls. The railroad people charge them two fares; the hackman charges
them two fares; the hotel bills are made out for two people. It is the
same wherever they go in the world, and I regret to say that even in our
own home there is a disposition to regard them as two. When I spoke of
there being nine persons here instead of ten, Mr. Whitechoker himself
disputed my point--and yet it was not so much his fault as the fault of
Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog themselves. Mrs. Pedagog seems to cast doubt upon
the unity by providing two separate chairs for the two halves that make
up the charming entirety. Two cups are provided for their coffee. Two
forks, two knives, two spoons, two portions of all the delicacies of the
season which are lavished upon us out of season--generally after it--fall
to their lot. They do not object to being called a happy _couple_, when
they should be known as a happy single. Now what I want to know is why
the world does not accept the shrinkage which has been pronounced valid
by the church and is recognized by the individual? Can any one here tell
me that?"

[Illustration: "DEMANDS TICKETS FOR TWO"]

No one could, apparently. At least no one endeavored to. The Idiot looked
inquiringly at all, and then, receiving no reply to his question, he rose
from the table.

"I think," he said, as he started to leave the room--"I think we ought to
write that book. If we made it up of the things you people don't know, it
would be one of the greatest books of the century. At any rate, it would
be great enough in bulk to fill the biggest library in America."

III

"I wish I were beginning life all over again," said the Idiot one spring
morning, as he took his accustomed place at Mrs. Pedagog's table.

"I wish you were," said Mr. Pedagog from behind his newspaper. "Then your
parents would have you shut up in a nursery, and it is even conceivable
that you would be receiving those disciplinary attentions with a slipper
that you seem to me so frequently to deserve, were you at this present
moment in the nursery stage of your development."

"My!" ejaculated the Idiot. "What a wonder you are, Mr. Pedagog! It is a
good thing you are not a justice in a criminal court."

"And what, may I venture to ask," said Mr. Pedagog, glancing at the Idiot
over his spectacles--"what has given rise to that extraordinary remark,
the connection of which with anything that has been said or done this
morning is distinctly not apparent?"

"I only meant that a man who was so given over to long sentences as you
are would probably make too severe a judge in a criminal court," replied
the Idiot, meekly. "Do you make use of the same phraseology in the
class-room that you dazzle us with, I should like to know?"

"And why not, pray?" said Mr. Pedagog.

"No special reason," said the Idiot; "only it does seem to me that an
instructor of youth ought to be more careful in his choice of adverbs
than you appear to be. Of course Doctor Bolus here is under no obligation
to speak more grammatically or correctly than he does. People call him in
to prescribe, not to indulge in rhetorical periods, and he can write his
prescriptions in a sort of intuitive Latin and nobody be the wiser, but
you, who are said to be sowing the seeds of knowledge in the brain of
youth, should be more careful."

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