The Genial Idiot: His Views and Reviews

“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 fête champêtre 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 fêtes champêtres 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 Pelée 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 justThe 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 headWhen you bring the bay.Give me not the water-cressesTo adorn my flowing tresses,But at e’enCrown my pockets good and strongWith 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 cheerOn the willieboys that chance along her way.“Now the skeeter sings his carols to the dawn,And bewails the early closing of the barThat prevents the little nips he seeks each mornOn the sea-shore where the fatling boarders are.“Now the landlord of the pastoral hotelSpends 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 yieldsCome 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?”