his mind become oppressive. "Is it a mere meal? Do the Poet and Mr. and
Mrs. Pedagog and Mr. Whitechoker come here merely to get something to
eat? Or do they come for the pleasure of our society, or for the
pleasure of leaving home, or what? As I understand it, people go out to
dine not because they have not a sufficiency of food at home, but
because they wish to meet other people. That's what I do. I can always
have something better to eat at home than I can get at somebody else's
house; and furthermore, it is a more natural meal. Dinners generally are
made up of pretty little things that nobody likes, and have no
sustenance in them. A successful dinner lies not in successful cooking,
but in pleasing conversation. Wherefore, it is not the cook, but the
host and hostess who make a failure or a success of a dinner."
"Then I presume if we simply spread the table and let you talk our
guests will be satisfied?" said Mrs. Idiot, blandly.
"Precisely," the Idiot replied. "It will be delightful. Just think of
the menu! Instead of oysters I will indulge in a few opinions as to the
intellectual qualities of bivalves generally, finishing up with a
glowing tribute to the man who is content to be a clam and not talk too
much. In the place of _purée_ we will tackle some such subject as the
future of Spain. I think I could ladle out a few sound ideas on that
subject that would be as clear as the purest _consommé_. Then for fish,
that would be easy. A good trout story, with imagination sauce, would do
very well. For the _entrée_ I will give you one of my most recent poems,
and the roast will be--"
"And the rest of us are to sit and twiddle our thumbs while you
soliloquize?" demanded Mrs. Idiot. "I rather think not. I will provide
the roast, my dear John, and it will consist largely of remarks upon the
ways of cooks."
"A very proper subject for a roast," observed the Idiot, complacently,
"and in your present frame of mind I think it will be not only well
done, but rare as well, with plenty of crisp. And so we can simply talk
this dinner through. It will be novel, certainly, and if you provide
plenty of bread and butter no one need go away hungry."
"Very true," Mrs. Idiot answered. "And now that you have had your fun,
suppose we put our minds on the serious aspect of the case. Two hours
from now four people are coming here hungry--"
"I have it!" cried the Idiot, delightedly. "Let's _borrow_ a cook! I
don't believe it's ever been done before. It would be splendid, not
only in getting us out of our troubles, but in establishing an entirely
new principle in domestic science. What is the use of neighbors who will
not be neighborly and lend you their most cherished possession?"
"None at all," sighed Mrs. Idiot, despairingly.
[Illustration: "'THE PEOPLE DOWN-STAIRS BORROWED OUR DINING-ROOM
CHAIRS'"]
"Now, when we lived in our flat in New York the people up-stairs
borrowed our ice," said the Idiot; "the people down-stairs borrowed our
dining-room chairs; the people across the hall borrowed butter and milk
and eggs, and I think we once borrowed a lemon from the people on the
top floor."
"Never!" cried Mrs. Idiot.
"Yes, we did, my dear," insisted the Idiot. "At least I did. You and the
children were off in the country, and one hot summer's night, two years
ago, I was consumed with a desire for a glass of lemonade, and as there
were no lemons in the house, or the flat, I sent out to borrow. I began
at the basement and worked up towards the roof, and ultimately got what
I wanted, although, as I have said, it was the top-flat people I got it
from."
"And did you ever return it?" demanded Mrs. Idiot.
"I regret to say that I didn't," said the Idiot. "But I will, and with
interest. I wonder what two years' interest on a lemon is!" he added. "I
suppose that a borrowed lemon compounded at the rate of six per cent.
could be paid off by a lemon and one small Bermuda potato. I will send
my check for both to those people to-morrow. What was their name?"
"I never knew," said Mrs. Idiot. "I never liked them, and I never
called. I am sorry you are under obligations to them."
"Only for a lemon, though, dear," said the Idiot, "at six per cent."
"But what does all this prove?" demanded the poor little housekeeper.
"That the principle of lending is recognized among neighbors," the Idiot
explained. "If a neighbor will lend a lemon, surely a neighbor will lend
a cook. The principle involved is the same in both cases. Particularly
so in this case, for my experience with cooks has been that they are,
after all, for the most part nothing but human lemons. If the departed
Bridget had been anything but full of sourness she would not have left
us so unexpectedly."
"You don't really think for a moment, do you, that the Jimpsonberrys
would lend us their cook, or that she would come, or that I would ask
them?" said Mrs. Idiot.
"Well, I suppose not," said the Idiot. "I suppose not. _But I don't see
why!_ First, the Jimpsonberrys, as our neighbors, ought to be willing to
get us out of our trouble. Second, we don't ask their cook to come for
nothing. By coming she will receive an addition to her wages which will
help her to endow a policeman with a moderate fortune some day when she
marries him. As for your asking Mrs. Jimpsonberry to lend us her cook
for a few hours, that is the main objection. When one borrows one must
give collateral, and it may be that it would embarrass you to offer Mike
as security for the safe return of the Jimpsonberrys' cook. Anyhow, I
see weak points in my plan, and we'd better abandon it. If the
Jimpsonberrys' cook is the only available incendiary in the
neighborhood, we'd better stop where we are. When we dined at
Jimpsonberrys' last week I went away feeling that Jimpsonberry ought to
collect fire insurance on that dinner. It wasn't cooked; it was a plain
case of arson."
It was at this precise moment, when poor Mrs. Idiot was beginning to
despair of getting any advice of value from her husband, that the
telephone-bell rang, and the Idiot rose up to answer the call.
"Hello!" he said.
"Oh! Hello, old man!" he added. "That you? Glad to see you."
"Yes," he continued, after a pause. "Of course we expect you."
"Seven o'clock sharp," he remarked, a moment later. "You'll surely be
here?" Then after a second pause, he added:
"Good! You can stay all night if you wish; we've plenty of room.
Good-bye."
[Illustration: "'WHO WAS IT?' ASKED MRS. IDIOT"]
"Who was it?" asked Mrs. Idiot, as the Idiot hung up the receiver of the
telephone.
"The Poet," replied the Idiot. "He wanted to know at what hour dinner
was."
"Oh, dear!" cried Mrs. Idiot. "Why didn't you tell him the dinner isn't
for to-night, but to-morrow night?"
"Didn't need to, my dear," said the Idiot, lighting a cigarette. "We've
made a slight mistake. You invited these people, it now appears, for the
twenty-ninth."
"Certainly," said Mrs. Idiot.
"Well, my love," said the Idiot, with an affectionate glance, "to-day is
the--ah--the twenty-eighth."
Mrs. Idiot drew a sigh of relief.
"My!" she cried, "what a blessing! I wonder how I got so mixed!"
"It's economy, perhaps," suggested the Idiot. "If you will insist on
buying out-of-date diaries and last year's calendars at bargain-counters
because they are cheap, I don't really see how you can expect to keep up
with the times."
Mrs. Idiot laughed heartily. Her relief of mind was unmistakable.
"What would you have done, John, if this had really been the night?" she
asked later.
"Oh, I don't know," said the Idiot. "I think I should have taken you to
New York to dinner, and bluffed our guests into believing they had come
up on the wrong night. It is very easy for a host to put his guests in
the wrong if he wants to. I don't, but if I must, I must."
As it was, the family dinner that night was a great success in spite of
the absence of the cook, because Mrs. Idiot, who is an expert with the
chafing-dish, found several odds and ends in the late cook's domains,
which, under her expert manipulation, became dishes which the Idiot said
afterwards "remained long in the memory without proving too permanent a
tax upon the digestion."
V
ON THE MAINTENANCE OF AN ATTIC
The Idiot had been laid up for a week. That is to say, he was too
indisposed to attend to business at his office, and the family physician
thought it would be a good idea if his patient would be content to
remain quietly indoors for a little while. To this the Idiot cheerfully
consented.
"If there is one thing that I can do to perfection," he said, "it is
resting. Some men are born leisurely, some achieve leisure, and some are
discharged by their employers. I belong to the first two classes. I can
never become one of the third class, because, being my own employer, I
am naturally pleased with myself, and am not likely to dispense with my
own services."
And so he stayed at home, and for a week pottered about the house, as he
put it, and he had a glorious time.
"What are you going to do with yourself this morning, dear?" asked Mrs.
Idiot on the morning of the first day. "I've got to go to market, and
there are one or two other little things to be attended to which will
keep me out for some hours. Do you think you can amuse yourself while I
am out?"
"Well, I don't know," said the Idiot. "I can try. Of course, you know,
my dear, that I am a good deal of a baby yet. However, if you can trust
me to stay all by my lonesome for two or three hours I'll try to behave.
I promise not to take the piano apart, and I vow I won't steal any jam,
and I sha'n't float hair-brushes in the bath-tub pretending that they
are armored cruisers looking for Spaniards, and I'll try to be good, but
I can't make any promises."
Mrs. Idiot smiled, as an indulgent guardian should, and went forth. The
Idiot stayed at home and enjoyed himself. What he did is perhaps best
indicated by his remarks some time later at a Sunday-night tea at which
Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog, and Mr. Brief, the lawyer, were present.
"Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "did you ever have an attic?"
"A what?" demanded the Schoolmaster, naturally somewhat nonplussed.
"An attic," said the Idiot. "A favored spot wherein to potter, to root,
to rummage."
"Why, yes," said Mrs. Pedagog, after a moment of deliberation. "I have
had an attic, but it never seemed to me to be a particularly interesting
spot. I've used it as a sort of store-room for things I didn't know what
to do with."
"Useless things," suggested Mr. Pedagog.
"Entirely so," acquiesced the good lady.
"Then if they are useless, why keep them?" queried the Idiot. "Useless
things might better be thrown away than stored away even in an attic."
"Oh, as for that," rejoined Mrs. Pedagog, "they were useless in the
sense that there was nothing I could do with them, and yet there was
generally some quality of association or something about them that so
appealed to me that I couldn't quite throw them away, or even bring
myself to give them away."
"That is the idea," said the Idiot. "One's cherished possessions are
often stored away up-stairs and forgotten, and then sometimes years
after you'll go rummaging about the house for lack of some other
employment; an old trunk, a wooden box, will be unearthed in the attic,
and then what a flood of memories will come rushing back over you as the
long-forgotten objects come to light, one by one."
"I have had much the same experience," said Mr. Brief, "in what I might
term my professional attic. We keep a room for the storage of old
papers, and strange exhibits in litigation turn up there frequently that
bring back old-time lawsuits in a most interesting fashion."
"I suppose, then," observed Mr. Pedagog, with a shrug of tolerant
contempt, "that the attic is, in your estimation, a sort of repository
for family archives."
[Illustration: "'I SET OFF A GIANT CRACKER UNDER HIS CHAIR'"]
"That's about it," said the Idiot. "You ought to see mine. There are
archives from the Ark in mine. I've got all the portraits of my
unpopular relatives up there, and such a gallery of smug-looking
individuals you never saw. There's Uncle Jedediah, who hated me because
I set off a giant cracker under his chair one Fourth of July, and who
from that day vowed I was born to be hanged; and who sent me a crayon
portrait of himself the following Christmas--"
"That seems to me to show a kindly feeling, not one of hatred, towards
you," suggested Mrs. Pedagog.
[Illustration: "'WOULD HANG THAT PORTRAIT UPON THE WALL OF MY BEDROOM'"]
"Oh no," said the Idiot, with a laugh. "You never knew my dear old Uncle
Jed. He sent it in a pure spirit of revenge. He had to send something,
and he picked out the one thing he had reason to know I didn't want; and
he was likewise aware that my mother had a sense of the proprieties and
would hang that portrait upon the wall of my bedroom, whence it could
stare at me, disapprovingly, forevermore. Still, when I became the head
of my own house, I did not take a mean-spirited revenge on Uncle
Jedediah's portrait by selling it to one of the comic papers with a joke
under it; I gave it the nicest, warmest, most comfortable spot I could
find for it under a pile of old magazines in the attic, and the other
day when it came to light again I greeted it with an affectionate smile;
and the picture of the old gentleman rising hurriedly from over the
giant cracker on that long-forgotten Fourth, brought vividly to mind by
the portrait, brought tears to my eyes, I laughed so heartily. It
really was very affecting."
Mr. Pedagog gazed at the Idiot fondly.
"You are a great boy," he said. "You'd never suspect it, but I had a
similar case of Uncle Jed, but the years I have lived since have
softened my feelings so that I remember my old relative with a certain
degree of affection."
"I shall never believe, my dear John," said Mrs. Pedagog, "that in your
day boys ever placed giant crackers under their uncles' chairs."
"We never did, my love," Mr. Pedagog responded, quickly.
"Why, of course not," laughed the Idiot. "They couldn't, you know. They
hadn't been invented. What was your trouble with Uncle Jed, Mr.
Pedagog?"
"Oh, our difference of opinion was rather of an ethical import," replied
Mr. Pedagog, genially. "My Uncle Jed was a preacher, and he used to
speak entirely from notes which he would make out the night before and
place in the pocket of his black coat. All I did was to take the notes
of his next day's sermon out of his pocket one Saturday evening, and put
in their stead a--ah--a recipe for what we called Washington pie--and a
very good pie it was."
"John!" ejaculated Mrs. Pedagog.
[Illustration: "'STARTED TO PREACH WITH THE RECIPE FOR A WASHINGTON
PIE'"]
"I _did_, my dear," confessed the Schoolmaster, "and really I have never
regretted it, although my particular uncle gave me a distressingly acrid
and dreary lecture on my certain future when he found out what had
happened. Yet what did happen, though mischievously intended, resulted
in great good, for when the dear old gentleman stood up in the pulpit
and started to preach the next morning, with the recipe for a Washington
pie as the only available note at hand, he pulled himself together and
preached off-hand the finest sermon of his life, and he discovered then
the secret of his after-success. He became known ultimately as one of
the most brilliant preachers of his time, and from that moment never
went into the pulpit with any factitious aids to his memory."
"You mean cribs, don't you?" asked the Idiot.
"That is what college-boys call them, I believe," said Mr. Pedagog. "I
will say further that a year before he died _my_ Uncle Jed told me that
it was my mischievous act that had given him the hint which became
the keynote of his eloquence," he added, complacently. "I shall always
remember him affectionately."
"Of course," said the Idiot. "No doubt we all remember our Uncle Jeds
affectionately. I certainly do. He was my mother's brother, and he meant
well. I never really blamed him for not knowing how to sympathize with a
boyish prank, because there has never been a school of instructions for
uncles. Unclehood is about the hardest hood man has to wear, and as I
have observed uncles and their habits, they either spoil or repel the
small chaps and chappesses who happen to be made their nephews and
nieces by an accident of birth. Uncles are either intensely genial or
intensely irritable, and as far as I am concerned it is my belief that
our colleges should include in their curriculum a chair of 'Uncleism.'
Unclehood is a relationship that man has to accept. It is thrust upon
him. He can't help himself. To be a father or a mother is a matter of
volition. But even in a free country like our own, if a man has a
brother or a sister he is liable to find himself an uncle at any time
whether he wishes to be one or not. Then when it happens he's got to
reason out a course of procedure without any basis in previous
experience."
"Why don't you write a book on 'Hints to Uncles,' or 'The Complete
Aunt,'" suggested Mr. Brief. "I have no doubt it would make good
reading."
"Thanks for the idea," said the Idiot. "I think I'll do it. Not in the
hope of profit, but for the benefit of the race."
"What has all this to do with attics?" asked Mrs. Idiot.
"The natural resting-place of the bad uncle," explained the Idiot.
"Still, I maintain that it is every man's duty to keep an attic for the
useless things, as Mrs. Pedagog calls them, which some day, when he
least expects it, will carry his mind back to other days. The word
itself, attic, carries the mind back to the splendors of Athens and
other things that are out of date. When I was ill I found sincerest
pleasure in rummaging. You can't rummage in a library if your library is
properly looked after. You can't rummage in a bedroom in a well-kept
house. You all know what parlors are--designed largely for the
reception of people who come out to call upon you in their best Sunday
clothes, and who would never think of calling upon you intimately, as a
friend might, in his knickerbockers. You can't rummage there. The only
place where one may rummage with any degree of success is in the attic,
and my experience has been such that I believe my recent illness has
contributed to my health. My mind has been carried back to conditions
that used to be. Conditions which existed then and which were inferior
to conditions which now prevail make me satisfied with the present.
Where old-time conditions were better than the existing one I have
naturally discovered how to improve. Rummaging, therefore, is improving
to the mind and contributes to one's contentment."
[Illustration: "'A LITTLE BUNDLE OF MY OWN LETTERS'"]
"Then there are good economical reasons for the maintenance of an
attic," the Idiot continued. "I found enough old boyhood collections of
various things there to keep Tommy and Mollie happy for years without my
having to pay out a penny for birthday presents--old stamps, old coins,
old picture papers, and, I assure you, a lot of old newspapers, too,
with better and more readable news in them than is now to be found in
any of our modern bilious journals. Then the bundles of letters that
came out of that place--my mother's letters to me, written while I was
away at school; my father's letters in the old days at your house, Mrs.
Pedagog, which did much to keep me straight then and re-reading of which
doesn't hurt now; and, best of all," he added, with an affectionate
glance at Mrs. Idiot, "a little bundle of my own letters to a certain
person tied up with a blue ribbon, and full of pressed roses and autumn
leaves and promises--"
"In the attic?" asked Mr. Brief, with a dry smile. "Is that where Mrs.
Idiot keeps your promises?"
Mrs. Idiot blushed. "I have a cedar chest full of treasures up there,"
she said. "I thought it was locked."
"Well, anyhow, I found them," said the Idiot, cheerfully; "and while
they were not especially good reading, they were good reminders of other
days. It wouldn't be a bad idea if every married man were to read over
the letters of his days of courtship once a year. I think it would bring
back more forcibly than anything else the conditions of the contract
which he was inviting the young partner of his joys to sign. If an attic
never held anything but bundles of one's old love-letters it would
demonstrate its right to become an institution."
"Very true," said the lawyer; "but," he added, prompted by that cautious
spirit which goes always with the professional giver of advice, "suppose
that side by side with that little bundle of pressed flowers and autumn
leaves and promises one should chance to find another little bundle of
pressed flowers and autumn leaves and promises--the promises written by
some other hand than the hand that is rummaging in the cedar chest? What
then? Would that prove a pleasing find?"
"Oh, as for that," the Idiot remarked, "when I advocate the maintenance
of an attic as one of the first duties of mankind, I mean its
intelligent maintenance. The thing which makes of the British Museum,
the National Attic of Great Britain, a positive educational force is its
intelligent direction. It is the storehouse of the useless possessions
of the British Empire which have an inspiring quality. There is nothing
in it which makes a Briton think less of himself or which in any way
unpleasantly disturbs his equanimity. So with the attic of the humble
citizen. It must be intelligently directed if it is to become an
institution, and should not be made the repository of useless things
which ought to be destroyed, among which I class that other possible
bundle to which you refer."
And inasmuch as the whole party agreed to the validity of this
proposition, the subject was dropped, and the Idiot and his guests
wandered on to other things.
VI
THE IDIOT'S GARDEN
"I should think, my dear Idiot," Mr. Pedagog observed one summer
evening, as his host stood upon the back piazza of "Castle Idiot," as
they had come to call the dwelling-place of their friend, "that with all
this space you have about you, you would devote some of it to a garden."
"Why, I do," said the Idiot. "I've got a small patch down there behind
the tennis-court, fifty by one hundred feet, under cultivation. The
stuff we get is almost as good as the average canned goods, too. We had
a stalk of asparagus the other night that was magnificent as far as it
went. It was edible for quite a sixteenth of an inch, or at least I was
told so. That portion of it had already been nibbled off by my son
Thomas while it was resting in the pantry waiting to be served.
However, the inedible end which arrived was quite sturdy, and might have
stood between my family and starvation if the necessity had arisen."
"One stalk of asparagus is a pretty poor crop, I should say," observed
the lawyer, with a laugh.
"You might think so," said the Idiot. "But everything in the world is
comparative, after all. Ants build ant-hills which are several feet
lower than the Alps, and yet they are monumental, considering that they
were made by ants. All things considered, Mrs. Idiot and I were proud of
our asparagus crop, and distinctly regretted that it did not survive to
be served in proper state at dinner. If I remember rightly, Thomas was
severely reprimanded for his privateering act in biting off the green
end of it before I had a chance to see it."
"'Twasn't specially good," said Tommy, loftily.
"I am very glad it was not, my son," said the Idiot. "I should be very
sorry to hear that you had derived the slightest sensation of pleasure
from your piratical and utterly inexcusable act."
"Do you usually serve so small a portion of the product of your
garden?" asked Mr. Brief.
[Illustration: "'WE SPRINKLED IT IN PERSON'"]
[Illustration: "'HE DISCOVERED THE ONE PERFECT STALK'"]