"which you will observe is smaller yet. In this instance Mrs. Idiot
intended a little surprise for me. We had struggled with that
asparagus-bed for some time. The madame had studied up asparagus in her
botany. I had looked it up in the cyclopedia and the Century dictionary.
We had ordered it in various styles when we dined out at the New York
hotels, and we had frequently bought cans of it in order to familiarize
ourselves more intimately with its general personal appearance. Then we
consulted people we thought would be likely to know how to obtain the
best results, and what they told us to do we did, but somehow it didn't
work. Our asparagus crop languished. We sprinkled it in person. We put
all sorts of garden cosmetics on it to improve its complexion, but it
seemed hopeless, and finally when I footed up the asparagus item in my
account-book, and discovered that we had paid out enough money without
results of a satisfactory nature to have kept us in canned asparagus for
four years, we got discouraged, and resolved to give it up. It was
while Michael, our gardener, was removing the evidences of our failure
that he discovered the one perfect stalk, and like the honest old
gardener that he is, he immediately brought it into the house and
presented it to my wife. She naturally rejoiced that our efforts had not
been entirely vain, and in her usual spirit of self-sacrifice had the
stalk cooked as a surprise for me. As I have told you, that small
circumstance Thomas, over which we seem to have no control, got ahead of
us--"
"You was surprised, wasn't you, pa?" demanded the boy.
"Somewhat, my son," said the Idiot, "but not in the way your mother had
designed, exactly."
"Is asparagus the extent of your gardening?" queried Mrs. Pedagog.
"Oh no, indeed!" replied Mrs. Idiot. "We've had peas and beets and beans
and egg-plant and corn--almost everything, in fact, including potatoes."
"Yes, ma'am," said the Idiot, "almost everything, including potatoes.
Our pea crop was lovely. We had five podfuls for dinner on the Fourth of
July, and the children celebrated the day by podding them for the
cook. They popped open almost as noisily as a torpedo. It was really
very enjoyable. Indeed, one of the results of that pea crop has been to
give me an idea by which I may some day redeem my losses on the
asparagus-bed. An explosive pea which should be edible, and yet would
pop open with the noise of a small fire-cracker, would be a delight to
the children and serviceable for the table. I don't exactly know how to
bring about the desired results, but it seems to me if I were to mix a
little saltpetre in the water with which we irrigate our pea-trees the
required snap would be obtained. Then on the Fourth of July the
children, instead of burning their fingers and filling their parents
with nervous dread setting off fire-crackers, could sit out on the back
piazza and shell the peas for the cook--"
"I'd rather shell Spangyards," said Mollie.
"I am surprised at you, my child," said the Idiot. "A little girl like
you should be an advocate of peace, not of war."
"You can't eat Spaniards, either, can you, pa?" said Tommy, who, while
he shared Mollie's views as to the comparative value for shelling
purposes of peas and Spaniards, was nevertheless quite interested in the
development of a pea-pod that would open with a bang.
"No, Tommy," said the Idiot, "you can't eat Spaniards, and they'd be
sure to disagree with you if you could."
"That is a very interesting proposition of yours," said Mr. Brief, "but
it has its dangers. A dynamite pea would prove very attractive so long
as its explosive qualities were confined to the pod and its opening. But
how are you going to keep the saltpetre out of the peas themselves?"
"That is where the difficulty comes in," said the Idiot. "I frankly
don't know how we could insulate the peas from the effects of the
saltpetre."
[Illustration: "'IT WOULD BE DEUCEDLY AWKWARD ... IF THEY WOULD EXPLODE
IN THE MOUTH OF THE PERSON WHO WAS EATING THEM'"]
"It would be deucedly awkward," observed the Bibliomaniac, "if, as might
very well happen, one or two of the peas should become so thoroughly
impregnated with the stuff that they would explode in the mouth of the
person who was eating them, like bombs in miniature."
[Illustration: "'SHE COULD SLAM THEM DOWN ON THE HEARTH-STONES LIKE
TORPEDOES'"]
"True," said the Idiot. "The only safeguard against that would be to
compel the cook to test every pea before she cooked it. She could
slam them down on the hearth-stone like torpedoes, and every one that
didn't go off could be cooked and served with safety. Still, there would
be danger even then. A careless cook might forever ruin the tooth of a
favored guest. I guess I'd better give up the idea."
"Oh, don't, pa!" cried Tommy, his interest in explosive vegetables
worked up to a high pitch. "I'll test 'em all for you, and if they work
I don't see why you couldn't raise dynamite punkins!"
"It would be a strong temptation, my son," said the Idiot, "which is all
the more reason why I should abandon the plan. A dynamite punkin, as you
call it, would wreck the whole neighborhood if one should set it off
properly. No, we will, after all, confine our attention to vegetables of
a more pacific nature. The others might prove more profitable at first,
but when the novelty of them wore off, and one realized only their
danger, a great deal of the pleasure one derives from eating fresh
vegetables would be utterly destroyed."
Tommy looked out over the railing of the piazza, deep regret and
disappointment depicted in his brown little face; but if the glitter of
his eyes meant anything it meant that the idea of putting vegetables on
a war footing was not going to be allowed to drop into oblivion; and if
the small youth progresses in inventive genius in a fair ratio to his
past achievements in that line, I have no doubt that if a Vesuvian
pumpkin _can_ be produced at all, the day will dawn when Thomas is
hailed as its inventor.
"Is it true," asked Mr. Brief, "that home-raised peas are sweeter than
any other?"
"We think so," said Mrs. Idiot.
"We know so," amended the Idiot. "That Fourth-of-July night when we ate
those five podfuls we discovered that fact. Five podfuls of peas are not
enough to feed a family of four on, so we mixed them in with a few more
that we bought at the grocer's, and we could tell ours from the others
every time, they were so much sweeter."
The Bibliomaniac laughed scornfully.
"Pooh!" said he. "How did you know that they were yours that were sweet,
and not the grocery-bought peas?"
"How does a father know his own children?" said the Idiot. "If you'd
labored over those five pods as hard and assiduously as we did, nursing
them through their infant troubles, guarding them against locusts and
potato-bugs, carefully watching their development from infancy into the
full vigor of a mature peahood, I guess you'd know your own from those
of others. It's instinct, my dear Bibliomaniac."
"Tell about the strawberry, pa," said Tommy, who liked to hear his
father talk, in which respect I fear he takes strongly after his parent.
"Well," said the Idiot, "it's not much of a story. There was one. We had
a strawberry patch twenty feet by ten. We had plenty of straw and plenty
of patch, but the berries were timid about appearing. The results were
similar to those in our asparagus venture. One berry was discovered
trying to hide itself under half a bale of straw one morning, and while
I was looking for Mrs. Idiot, to ask her to come down to the garden and
see it grow, a miserable robin came along and bit its whole interior
out. I hope the bird enjoyed it, because on a bed-rock estimate that
berry cost twenty dollars. That is one of the things about gardening
that make me especially weary. One doesn't mind spending forty-four
dollars on a stalk of asparagus that is eaten, even surreptitiously, by
a member of one's own family; but to pay twenty dollars for a strawberry
to be wasted on a fifteen-cent robin is, to say the least, irritating."
"You forget, John," said Mrs. Idiot, with a somewhat mirthful look in
her eyes, "that we got fifteen boxes out of the strawberry-patch later."
"No, I don't," said the Idiot. "I was coming to that, and it involves a
confession. You were so blue about the loss of our one beautiful berry
that I entered into a conspiracy with Michael to make that patch yield.
The fifteen boxes of berries that we took out subsequently were bought
at a New York fruit-store and judiciously scattered about the patch
where you would find them. I had hoped you would never find it out, but
when you spoke the other day of expending thirty-eight dollars on that
strawberry-patch next year, I resolved then to undeceive you. This is
the first favorable opportunity I have had."
Mrs. Idiot laughed heartily. "I knew it all along," she said. "Michael
came to me with them and asked for instructions as to where to put them.
Really, I--ah--I arranged them under the straw myself."
"What an ass a hired man can be!" ejaculated the Idiot. "I shall
discharge Michael to-morrow."
"I wish you would," said Mrs. Idiot. "Ever since the conspiracy he has
been entirely too independent."
"Don't discharge Michael, papa," said Mollie. "He's awful nice. He's
always willin' to stop anything he's doing to play with Tommy and me."
"You bet he is!" cried Tommy. "He's a dandy, Mike is. He never says a
word when I sit under the sprinkler, and he told me the other day that
his grandfather would have been king of Ireland if Queen Victoria hadn't
come in. He said the Queen was a lady, and his grandfather gave up his
seat to her because he was a gentleman and couldn't do anything else."
"Very well," said the Idiot, suavely. "Then I won't discharge Michael.
One feels a better American, a better Republican, if he has a royal
personage in his employ. I always wondered where Michael got his
imperious manner; now I know. As a descendant of a long line of kings it
could not be otherwise. I will give him another chance. But let me give
you all fair warning. If next summer Michael does not succeed in
producing from my garden four beets, ten pods of peas, three
string-beans, and less than ten thousand onions, he goes. I shall not
pay a gardener forty dollars a month unless he can raise three dollars'
worth of vegetables a year."
"But really," said Mr. Pedagog, "haven't you raised anything in your
garden?"
"Oh yes," said the Idiot. "I've raised my water bill in the garden. I
used to pay twelve dollars a quarter for water, but now the bills come
to at least twenty-five dollars. Truly, a garden is not without profit
to some one."
VII
HOUSEHOLD POETRY
"Yes," said the Idiot, in response to an inquiry from the Poet, who was
passing a Sunday with him at Castle Idiot, "I have found that there is a
great deal of poetry in the apparently uninspiring little things of a
household. There is to me as much poetry in a poker as there is in a
snow-clad Alp, if you only have an eye to find it; and I am sure that to
thousands of housewives the whole land over a sonnet to a clothes-pin,
written by one who knows the clothes-pin's nature intimately, would be
far more appealing than a similar number of lines trying to prove that
we are all miserable phantoms flitting across a morass of woe."
The Poet pulled away thoughtfully at his pipe. He was a broad-minded
poet, and while he had never owned a poker of his own, he was ready to
admit its possibilities; but he could not follow his friend closely
enough to admit that it contained as much that was inspiring as did Mont
Blanc, for instance, a bright particular Alp of which he was very fond.
The Idiot continued:
[Illustration: "'THE JOYS AND WOES OF THE TOILERS WHO MINED IT'"]
"A ton of coal contains far more warmth than a woman's eyebrow; sends
the mind of a thoughtful person chasing backward to the time when it lay
snugly hid in the fair breast of nature; to the joys and woes of the
toilers who mined it; through a variety of complexities of life, every
one of them fraught with noble thoughts. Yet who ever wrote dainty
verses to a ton of coal, and who hasn't at one time or another in his
life written about the eyebrows of some woman?"
The Poet laughed this time. "A triolet to a ton of coal would be a
glorious thing now, wouldn't it?" he observed.
"No," said the Idiot. "A triolet could never be a glorious thing under
any circumstances; but to the extent that a ton of coal contains a
certain amount of grandeur in the service it renders to mankind, I think
the form would be ennobled somewhat by the substance. Let's try it and
see."
"You do it," said the Poet; "I really don't think I could do the
subject justice."
The Idiot got out a pencil and a pad of paper and began.
"I don't think I'll make it a triolet," he said, after biting the end of
his pencil for a few moments. "A whole ton is a good deal to cram into a
triolet. I'll just make it a plain poem of the go-as-you-please variety
instead, eh?"
"In the manner of Whitman, perhaps?" suggested the Poet, dryly.
"Just so," said the Idiot. "In the manner of Whitman; in fact, I think
the manner of Whitman is the only manner for the poetic description of a
ton of coal."
He began to scribble on the pad.
"I'm going to call this 'Content,'" he said in a few moments.
"Contentment strikes me as the main lesson a ton of coal teaches."
He scribbled on, and in four or five minutes he put down his pencil and
read the following lines:
"I'm glad I'm not as men are--
Always worrying about something, and often about nothing;
About what was and what wasn't;
Fretting about what may be and what might have been;
Wondering whether when they are called upon to do their duty
They'll be able to do it,
And generally deciding they won't,
To their own discomfort.
And if so be they're women,
Cogitating from morn till night,
From night till morn,
Wherewithal shall they be clothed,
And if their hats are on straight!
Yea!
I am glad I am not like one of these,
But am myself--
A ton of coal--jetty in my blackness and luminous in my bituminosity.
Lying here in the cellar content and not bothering a bit.
Not needing income or clothes, and wearing no hat, and with no
complexion to bother about.
Happy and serene about my duty,
Certain that I shall succeed when the time for action comes;
Knowing that I shall burn,
And in the burning glow like the polar star.
Cackling and crackling,
Hissing and smoking,
Full of heat,
A satisfaction to mankind,
And never worth less than $5.65, delivered!
Ah, me! What bliss to be a ton of coal!
I am content."
The Poet nodded his pleasure at the effort. "It is charmingly put," he
said. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that the idea of contentment is
the last one that I should ever have extracted from contemplation of
a binful of anthracite, and yet when I consider how you put it I wonder
it has not occurred to every one. You have the manner of the Whitman
parodist down fine, too."
"Thank you," said the Idiot. "It is entirely natural to me. I think,
too, that using the Whitman lack of form carries with it the notion of
the coal sliding down the chute, don't you? Coal runs into the cellar in
such an irresponsible, formless way, eh?"
"Precisely," smiled the Poet. "You have the right notion about that. The
form of a poem should really be adapted to the substance. It should be
descriptive, always. Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade' has in its
rhythm nothing more or less than the clatter of the horses' hoofs as
they and their riders dashed through the valley of death at Balaklava.
And how vividly Southey's brook comes before the mind in its mad rush
downward as one reads that wonderfully lyrical poem. Why don't you write
a book of household poetry? You seem to me to be eminently well
qualified to undertake it."
"I intend to," said the Idiot. "In fact, I've begun it already. Written
five or six. Like to see 'em?"
"Indeed I should," said the Poet. "Anything you do interests me."
The Idiot went to his desk and took from it a few pages of manuscript.
"Here is a thing on pokers I did the other night. I called it 'The Song
of the Poker Bold.'" And then he read these lines:
"Warder of the grate am I,
Ever standing near;
Poking, poking all day long,
Knowing naught of fear.
"Keeping coals up to their work,
Setting them aglow,
Minding not the scorching heat,
Rather like it so.
"Knocking ashes right and left,
Flirting with the tiles;
Bossing tongs and seeing that
The brazen kettle biles.
"And the little girls and boys
As they watch me pause,
Wishing that I'd talk and tell
'Bout old Santa Claus!
"Cracking jokes with crickets on
The merry hearth, elate;
Happy lot indeed is mine--
Warder of the grate!"
"Splendid!" cried the Poet, clapping his hands with enthusiasm.
"Splendid! A good stiff pokeresque lyric, and your characterization of
the poker as the 'Warder of the Grate' gives it a flavor of romance. You
could almost imagine the implement going out into a mediæval world in
search of knightly adventure--a sort of hearth-stone Quixote. Have you
tackled the clothes-pin yet?"
"Yes," replied the Idiot. "Indeed, my first effort was a lyric on the
clothes-pin. I started one night to do the contents of the
kitchen-dresser drawer in French forms, but the first thing I took out
was an egg-beater, and it wouldn't go, so I did the clothes-pin lyric. I
call it
"FIDELITY
"Blow, ye winds,
I fear ye not;
Blast, ye simoon,
Sere and hot!
"Hurricane,
And cyclone, too,
Blow, I have no
Fear of you.
"Lacking beauty,
Lacking grace,
Lacking handsome
Form and face;
"Lacking soul
And intellect,
Still I stand up,
Proud, erect.
"For the Fates
Have given me
Wondrous great
Tenacity.
"And success,
Both fair and fine,
Comes to him
Who holds his line.
"Burrs can stick
And so can glue--
Mucilage,
Stratena, too;
"But there's nothing
Holds so fast
As the clothes-pin
To the last."
"And you gave up the egg-beater altogether?" asked the Poet, restraining
a natural inclination to find flaws in the construction of the
clothes-pin poem.
"Oh no," said the Idiot, "I knocked off a little quatrain on that. I
called it 'The Speedy Egg-Beater,' and it goes like this:
"Great Maude S. can beat all steeds,
However speedy be their legs;
But I distance her with ease
When it comes to beating eggs."
"I really think that you would have done better to give up the
egg-beater," said the Poet, grown critical. "I've no patience with
one-rhymed quatrains. Now if you had written:
"Great Maude S. can beat all steeds,
However speedy be their legs;
But despite her doughty deeds;
I can beat her beating eggs,
"I should not have objected."
"I accept the amendment," replied the Idiot, meekly. "I realized the
weakness of the thing myself, and thought of changing it into a couplet,
where you only need one rhyme. How's this on a 'Carpet-Tack'?"
[Illustration: "'FOR THOUGH I'M BUT A CARPET-TACK
AFAR FROM MOIL AND STRIFE,
NO ONE CAN EVER TRULY SAY
THAT MINE'S A POINTLESS LIFE'"]
"However dull the day,
However dull the skies,
However dark the night may be,
My spirits ever rise.
"For though I'm but a carpet-tack,
Afar from moil and strife,
No one can ever truly say
That mine's a pointless life."
"That is very good," said the Poet. "I think almost any editor of any
comic paper would be willing to pay you three dollars for that. It is as
good as your poem on a ton of coal--simple in its expression and sweet
in sentiment."
"I thought you'd think so," said the Idiot. "It struck me so. I've got
one on a screw-driver, too, that is very much of the same order, and
conveys a moral lesson to the reader who is always reaching out after
the unattainable. It reads as follows:
"I cannot tool a tally-ho,
I cannot drive a nag;
I dare not hold the ribbons
On a hack or rumbling drag.
"I could not guide the reins upon
A simple billy-goat,
And I should hesitate to try
To drive a can-al boat.
"But I don't mind these things at all,
For I can drive a screw,
And I am happy, for that's just
What I was meant to do."
[Illustration: "'I SHOULD HESITATE TO TRY TO WRITE A CAN-AL BOAT'"]
"The fourth line of the second verse is weak, but otherwise it's good,"
commented the Poet. "It's not a _can_-al boat; it's a can-_al_ boat, and
all the poetic license in the world wouldn't excuse your taking such
a liberty with language."
"I appreciate that," said the Idiot. "But I don't see how I could get
around it."
"There's only one way," said the Poet. "I think if you omitted that
verse altogether you'd improve the poem."
"Then I should have to eliminate the billy-goat," said the Idiot. "That
takes a great deal of humor out of it. I always laugh when I encounter a
beast like that in poetry; he seems so helpless when incarcerated in a
poem."
"That may be," observed the Poet. "But it is my belief that the goat, of
all animals in the kingdom, was the last one designed to be used in
poetry, anyhow. He is bad enough in prose, and in this case will butt
your poem to oblivion if you insist on keeping him in it. Any more?"
"No," said the Idiot; "that's the last."
"Well, you've got a good start," said the Poet, rising to light his
pipe, which had gone out. "And if I were you I'd go on and finish the
book. 'The Idiot's Book of Household Poetry' would have a great sale.
It has but one drawback that I can see. You harp on one string too much.
Every one of your poems preaches contentment, satisfaction--nothing
else."
"That," said the Idiot, "is not an objection, but a virtue; for what
other lesson," he added, with a glance of pride at his surroundings,
"what other lesson, my dear Poet, should a home try to teach, and what
other sentiment can mean so much to mankind?"
[Illustration: "'I HAVEN'T EVER HAD A HOME; I'VE ALWAYS BOARDED'"]
"I don't know," said the Poet, with a little sigh. "I haven't ever had a
home; I've always boarded."
Whereupon the Idiot rose up from his chair, and putting his arm about
his friend's shoulder, said:
"How you do talk! Never had a home? Why, my dear fellow, what's this?
It's yours as long as it's mine!"
VIII
SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE HIRED MAN
"Who is that sitting down on your tennis-court, Mr. Idiot?" asked Mr.
Brief, the lawyer. "Or is it anybody? I've been trying for the last
half-hour to make out whether it's a man or one of those iron figures
with which some people decorate their lawns."
"That," replied the Idiot, calmly, "is my hired man. I pay him forty
dollars a month to sit down there and let the grass grow under his feet.
I heard you and Mr. Pedagog discussing the wonderful grassiness of my
lawn after dinner last night, and I meant to have told you then that the
credit thereof belongs entirely to the restful nature of that man's
soul. He will stand for hours rooted to one spot and looking with
apparent aimlessness out over the river. To most people this would seem
to be prompted by a sheer indisposition to work, but this would do him a
rank injustice, for his immovability is due entirely to his system. He
is letting the grass grow beneath him, and the fact that our grass is so
nourishing everywhere is due to his having stood for hours at various
times over every square inch of territory to which I hold the
title-deeds."
The Idiot gazed out of the window at his retainer with affectionate
admiration.
"He certainly clings closely to his system," said the lawyer.
[Illustration: "'I FEEL THAT I COULD GO OUT AND MOW THREE ACRES OF
GRASS'"]
"He is a model," said the Idiot. "He has done more to make my life here
easy than any one in my service. For instance, you know the hurly-burly
of existence in town. I go to my office in the morning, and whether I
have much work or little to do, I come home in the afternoon absolutely
worn out. The constant hustling and bustling of others in the city wears
upon my mind, and consequently upon my body. The rush and roar of cables
and electric-cars; the activity of messengers running to and fro in the
streets; the weary horses dragging great lumbering wagons up and down
the crowded thoroughfares, all affect my nature and impair my energy;
and then, the day's work done, I return here, where all is quiet and
still, and the very contrast between that man, standing silently on his
appointed spot, or leaning against the house, or lying off in sheer
content under some tree, and the mad scramble for lucre in the city,
invigorates my tired body until I feel that I could go out and mow three
acres of grass before dinner; in fact, I generally do."
"I did not know that a restful nature was a requisite of a successful
career as a hired man," said Mr. Pedagog.
"It is evident, then, that you have never had a hired man," rejoined the
Idiot. "Nor can you ever have studied the species at close range.
Ceaseless activity would be his ruin. If he did to-day all there is to
do, he would be out of employment to-morrow, consequently he never does
to-day's work to-day, and cultivates that leisurely attitude towards
life upon which you have commented. Do you see that small beech-tree
over there?" he added, pointing to a scrawny little sapling whose sole
virtue appeared to be its rigid uprightness.
"Is that a beech-tree?" asked Mr. Brief. "I thought it was a garden
stake."
[Illustration: "'He WOULD GO OUT DAY AFTER DAY AND SIT DOWN BESIDE IT'"]