he can. If he can't make love on my wall, let him make love somewhere
else."
"But where?" cried the Poet. "Your swains up here have no home,
apparently."
"Or Jimpsonberry's wall," said the Idiot. "By the way, do you know
anything about moths?"
XIV
SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE MOTH
"Do you know anything about the habits of moths?" repeated the Idiot.
"Moths?" echoed the Poet, eying the Idiot closely, the transition from
live wires to moths proving rather too sudden for his comprehension.
"No, I don't know anything about moths except that I have heard that
they are an unmitigated nuisance."
"They are worse than a nuisance," said the Idiot. "They are a devouring
element, and they are worse than fire. If your house catches fire you
can summon an engine and have it put out, and what damage it does you
can collect for if you are careful enough to keep your possessions
insured; but with the moth it is different. There isn't any moth
department in town that you can ring up, nor is there a
moth-extinguisher that you can keep close at hand to fight them with.
Furthermore, there is no moth-insurance company here or elsewhere to
protect the man who suffers damage at their teeth, that I know of.
"He is a mean, sneaking, underhanded element, the moth is. Fire has a
decent sense of the proprieties. Moths have none at all. When fire
attacks you it smokes, and crackles, and hisses, and roars, and lets you
know in clarion tones that it has come. The moth steals upon you in the
dead of night, and chews up your best trousers, gorges himself upon your
wife's furs, tickles his palate with your swellest flannel golf-shirt,
munches away upon your handsomest rug, punches holes in your best
sofa-cushions with his tusks, and then silently folds his tent and
steals away without so much as a thank-you for his meal. For unmitigated
meanness commend me to the moth!"
"You seem to speak with feeling," said the Poet, with a smile. "Have you
suffered?"
[Illustration: "'AN UNPAID GROCER'S BILL BECOMES AN ABSOLUTE PLEASURE'"]
"Suffered?" cried the Idiot. "Suffered is not the word. They have
tortured me. Alongside of the moth and his nefarious work even a
book-agent pales into insignificance, and an unpaid grocer's bill
becomes an absolute pleasure. You can meet a book-agent on his own
ground, for you know his limitations. I have done so myself. Only
yesterday one of them called upon me to sell me a Cyclopedia of Cookery,
and before he got away I had actually sold him a copy of your poems."
"Ah," said the Poet, shaking his head. "You sold my gift, did you?"
"Not a bit of it," laughed the Idiot. "When your book came out I bought
a copy, and two days later you sent me another with an inscription,
which I treasure affectionately. I sold him the one I bought."
"You are a beautiful Idiot," said the Poet, slapping his knee
enthusiastically.
"I don't lay claim so much to beauty as to sublimity," said the Idiot,
lighting a cigar. "And even that is not to my credit. Beauty and
sublimity are gifts. No amount of cultivation can produce genius when it
does not exist. When I see a beautiful woman it is not she that I
admire. I admire the gracious Hand that made her."
"Give me that idea, old man!" cried the Poet.
"It is yours from this on," said the Idiot, with a sigh. "I am not equal
to it. I may be able to think thoughts, but thoughts are of no more use
to me than a piano is to a man who can't read music. But we are becoming
discursive. We were talking about moths, not thoughts. You said that I
must have suffered, and I said that I had been tortured, and I have. My
evening clothes have been ruined by them; my best shirts have been eaten
by them; my silk hat, in which I have taken much pride, has four bald
spots on its side because of their insatiable appetite, and as far as I
can find out, I have no redress. You can't sue a moth for damages, you
know, with any degree of satisfaction."
"Why should you expect to sue a moth for damages any more than to have a
mosquito indicted for assault?" suggested the Poet.
"Oh, as for that," said the Idiot, "you can treat the mosquito without
much difficulty. He merits capital punishment, and if you are yourself
alert you can squash him at the moment of his crime. But the moth is
different. You are absolutely helpless in the face of him. He works
in secret."
"I am told that there are such things as camphor-balls," observed the
Poet.
"There are," said the Idiot. "And I truly think the moth enjoys them as
much as a young girl enjoys a military ball. Whenever we give a
camphor-ball the moths attend, and as far as I can find out dance all
through it. They seem to enjoy functions of that nature. Furthermore, I
have yet to meet the man who likes to go about in a suit of clothes that
smells like a drug-store. I don't. I hate the odor of camphor, and if I
have my choice of going to a dinner in a perforated dress-suit or in one
that is redolent of the camphor-ball, I prefer the one with holes in it.
What I can't understand is why a race as proud as the one to which you
and I belong should have to knuckle under to an inferior lot of insects
such as the moth represents."
[Illustration: "'THE LION, THE ELEPHANT, THE TIGER, ALL HAVE THEIR WORK
TO DO'"]
"I suppose there is something about it that we cannot understand," said
the Poet, dreamily. "All created things have their uses. The lion, the
elephant, the tiger, the boa-constrictor, all have their work to do in
life. Even the mosquito has his mission, whatever it may be. You must
admit this. Why not, therefore, admit that the moth serves a purpose in
the great scheme of life?"
"My dear Poet," said the Idiot, "far be it from me to deny the truth of
what you say. There is hardly a living creature that I have ever
encountered in all my life that has not had some truly utilitarian
quality in its make-up. The lion is a splendid creature, and with the
bear and the fox and the rhinoceros and the tapir he serves a purpose.
They at least teach boys geography, and teach it interestingly. The boy
who knows where the tapir hath its lair knows more geography than I do.
My son Tommy has learned more of geography from a visit to the circus
where those animals are shown than he ever learned from books. I can
quite see likewise the utilitarian value of the mosquito. He keeps the
sea-shore from being overcrowded, and he prevents some people from
sleeping too much. He is an accomplished vocalist, and from my own point
of view is superior to a Wagner opera, since Wagner opera puts me to
sleep, while the magnificent discords of the mosquito keep me awake. But
the moth is beyond me. What his contribution to the public welfare
may be I cannot reason out, although I have tried."
"And you find nothing in his favor?" asked the Poet.
"Much," replied the Idiot, "but he has no system. His mission is to eat
old clothes, but he is such a very disgusting glutton that he does not
discriminate between old and new, and I have no use for him. If in his
search for a meal he would choose the garments of three years ago, which
I ought not to wear because they are so old-fashioned as to make me
conspicuous when I do wear them, it would be all right. But the moth is
no such discriminating person. He is not a lover of old vintages. When
he calls in a number of his brother moths to dine at his expense he does
not treat them to an overcoat of '89, or to a dress-suit of '93, or to a
silk hat laid down in '95. He wants the latest thing, and as far as I
can find out he gets it. I have just been compelled to lay in a new
stock of under and over clothes because the ones I had have been served
upon his table."
"The moth must live," observed the Poet.
[Illustration: "'THEY EAT UP MY NEW CLOTHES'"]
[Illustration: "'WASTED MY ENERGY UPON THE UNRESPONSIVE AIR'"]
"I'm perfectly willing he should if he'll only discriminate," retorted
the Idiot. "We have enough old clothes in this house, my dear Poet, to
give a banquet of seventeen courses to six hundred moths every night for
the next six months. If they would content themselves with that I should
be satisfied. But they won't. They eat up my new clothes; they destroy
my new hats; they munch away upon my most treasured golf-vests. That is
why I asked you if you knew anything about moths. I am anxious to reform
them. As you have said, I have gone into inventing, and my inventions
are wholly designed to meet long-felt wants in all households. The man
who invents a scheme to circumvent or properly to satisfy the appetite
of the moth will find his name indissolubly linked with fame. I have
thought, and thought, and thought about it. The moth must either be
domesticated or extinguished. I have tried to extinguish him, but
without avail. When he has flown forth I have endeavored to punch him in
the head, and I have wasted my energy upon the unresponsive air. Did you
ever undertake to punch a moth in the head?"
"Never," said the Poet. "I am not a fighter."
"My dear boy," rejoined the Idiot, "I don't know a hero in real life or
in fiction who could meet a moth on his own ground. I read about Mr.
Willie B. Travers, of New York, who can drive four horses about the
arena at the horse show without turning a hair. I read about Emerson
McJones, of Boston, putting up his face against the administration on a
question of national import. I have read of the prowess of Alexander, of
Cæsar, of D'Artagnan, of Bonaparte, and of Teddy Roosevelt, but there
isn't a man among 'em who can fight the moth. You can bombard him with a
gatling-gun loaded to the muzzle with camphor-balls, and he still waves
his banner defiantly in your face. You may lunge at him with a rapier,
and he jumps lightly aside, and to express his contempt bites a hole in
your parlor hangings. You can turn the hose on him, and he soars
buoyantly away out of reach. You can't kill him, because you can't catch
him. You can't drive him away, and until we go back to the dress of the
knights of old and wear nickel-plated steel clothing, and live in rooms
of solid masonry, we can't starve him out. There is, therefore, only one
thing to do, and that is to domesticate him. If you in the course of
your investigations into nature have ever discovered any trait in the
moth that science can lay hold upon, something through which we can
appeal to his better nature, if he has such a thing, you will be
conferring a great boon upon the whole domestic world. What I want to
find out is if he possesses some particularly well-defined taste; if
there is any one kind of texture or fabric that he likes better than
another. If there is such a thing I'll have a brand-new suit made of
that same material especially for him, furnish a nice comfortable, warm
spot in the attic as a dining-room, and let him feed there forevermore,
when and how he pleases. The manners and customs of moths are an open
book to most of us. His tastes are as mysterious as the ocean's depths."
The Poet shook his head dubiously. "I am afraid, my dear Idiot, that you
have at last tackled a problem that will prove too much for you. How to
get at the point you desire is, I fear, impossible of discovery," he
said.
"It would seem so," replied the Idiot. "But I shall not despair. If the
ordinary cook of commerce can be made humanly intelligent I do not see
any reason why we should abandon so comparatively simple a proposition
as the domesticization of the moth."
Tommy and Mollie had been listening with great interest, and as the
Idiot finished Mollie observed that she thought the best way to do was
to ask the moth what he liked most, but Tommy had a less conciliatory
plan.
"Best thing's to get rid of 'em altogether, pa," he said. "Mollie and
I'll squash 'em for you for fi' cents apiece."
Which struck the Poet as the most practical idea that had been advanced
during the discussion.
XV
SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE BURGLAR
"Are you ever bothered much by burglars off here in the country?" asked
Mr. Pedagog one spring afternoon, as he and the Idiot and the youngsters
strolled about the Idiot's small farm.
"No," said the Idiot. "They've only visited me twice."
"Only twice, eh?" observed the Schoolmaster. "Well, I should think that
was often enough, considering that you haven't lived here more than a
year and a half."
"It was," said the Idiot. "I didn't say I wanted them to come again, did
I?"
"Of course not," returned Mr. Pedagog. "But you said 'only twice,' as if
two visits of that nature were less than might have been expected."
"Well, aren't they?" asked the Idiot. "Just make a little calculation.
I've lived on this place precisely five hundred and ninety-four days,
and, of course, an equal number of nights. It seems to me that in
breaking into my house only twice when they might have come every night
shows a degree of restraint upon our Suburban Burglary Company that is
worthy of the highest commendation. You, of course, refer to
professional burglars, don't you?"
Mr. Pedagog laughed. "Are there any amateur burglars?"
"Are there!" ejaculated the Idiot. "Well, rather. There is the Gasman,
and man who inspects the water-meter, and the Iceman, and the Plumber.
If you refer to that class, why, I have them with me always."
"Which of the two classes do you prefer?" asked Mr. Pedagog, with a
chuckle.
"Well, I'm not quite sure as to that," returned the Idiot. "I've often
wondered myself whether I preferred the straight-out honest pirate, who
does his work surreptitiously by night, and who doesn't pretend to be
anything but a pirate, or the sleek, insinuating chap, who comes into
our house by day, and runs up a bill against you which in his heart of
hearts he knows is not a proper one. There are burglars and burglars in
this world, Mr. Pedagog, and the one who lands in the penitentiary is
not always a bigger rascal than the fellow who holds the respect of the
community and sets himself up as a prominent citizen. Highwaymen may be
divided into classes, some of them respectable, others not. There was
Dick Turpin, who ran honest risks to obtain a living; there are men in
Wall Street who work greater ruin, and are held in higher esteem. There
is the footpad who takes your watch, and pawns it to buy bread for his
starving family, and there is the very charming young person who sits
behind a table at a church fair, and charges you seven dollars for a
fifty-cent sofa-cushion. So it goes. Socially I prefer the esteemed
citizen who makes me pay twenty-eight dollars for ten dollars' worth of
gas; but when it comes down to a strict business basis I must say I have
lost less money through the operations of the professional thief than
through those of the amateur highwayman. Take a recent case in my own
experience, for instance. Only last week I sent anonymously a small
clock which cost me twenty dollars to a guild fair here in town, and
Mrs. Idiot bought it for a birthday present for me for forty dollars. In
other words, I have a twenty-dollar clock on my hands that has cost me
sixty dollars."
"But you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have contributed to
the good work of the guild," suggested Mr. Pedagog.
"That is true enough," said the Idiot; "but the guild is only forty
dollars to the good. They'd have been better off if I had given them
fifty dollars in cash, and I'd have saved ten."
"But you have the clock," insisted Mr. Pedagog.
"I certainly have," replied the Idiot; "and if time is money I shall
soon be rich, for that clock makes time to beat the band. If it keeps on
as it has started and we stand by it, we shall soon be about a month
ahead of the sun. It gains a week every forty-eight hours. If that clock
were truthful, I should be a centenarian at forty."
"But you're not sorry you gave it?" said Mr. Pedagog, deprecatingly.
"Not at all," said the Idiot. "My only regret is that Mrs. I. bought it.
But," he added, hastily, "she needn't know that."
"I won't say a word," said Mr. Pedagog.
"I won't, neither, pa," said Tommy, with a degree of complacency which
showed that the temptation to tell was great.
"Well, I won't say mor'n two or three words about it, anyhow," put in
Mollie, not anxious to commit herself to perpetual silence on the
subject.
"It is the most beautiful clock I ever saw," said the Idiot, quickly,
realizing the possibilities of Mollie's two or three words.
"That's what I fink," said Mollie, "and I'm goin' to tell mamma that you
said so."
"All right," said the Idiot. "Suppose you and Tommy run right up and
tell her now."
"I'd rather hear you talk, pa," said Tommy.
"He does take after you, doesn't he?" said Mr. Pedagog.
"Yes," said the Idiot, "he does. He likes to hear me talk as much as I
do, bless him!"
"It is a commendable sign in a son," observed Mr. Pedagog. "But tell
about the two professionals. Did they get anything?"
"They did," said the Idiot. "And at the same time I lost nothing. The
first chap came on the scene, along about two o'clock in the morning. He
was a very industrious mechanic, and I regret to say he was not
adequately paid for his services. He tackled the safe." At this point
the Idiot threw back his head and laughed heartily.
"I have seen the safe," said Mr. Pedagog, "and to tell you the truth, my
dear Idiot, I have wondered at your choosing so obvious a receptacle for
your valuables. It does not, to my mind, deny itself as a safe should.
It advertises the fact that your silver, your wife's jewels perhaps, are
within. I have spoken once or twice to our friend Mr. Brief about it."
"No doubt," replied the Idiot. "However, I can't see why a safe has any
disadvantages."
"It lies in this," said Mr. Pedagog, impressively. "You confess at once
to the burglar the exact location of the things he's after. Without a
safe your silver, or Mrs. Idiot's jewels, such as they are, might be
found anywhere in the house. But when you take the trouble to buy a
safe, any burglar in creation who has ordinary common-sense must know
that your valuables are concentrated in that one spot."
"That, I rejoice to say," said the Idiot, "is the burglar's view."
"You should not rejoice," said Mr. Pedagog, with some of his old-time
severity. "You make his work so comparatively easy that he is content to
follow a base profession, as you have termed it. Truly, I wonder at you.
You place on your first floor a bald safe--"
"I haven't seen any advertised as having a full head of hair," observed
the Idiot, complacently.
"You misunderstand me," said Mr. Pedagog. "When I say bald I mean
evident, plain, obvious. You practically say: Here are the things which
I value. What is to be found within this safe, Mr. Burglar, _are the
very things you are after_. Therefore, say you to the burglar: Attack
this safe. Break it open, rifle it of its contents; in other words, here
is the swag, as I believe it is called."
"You are wholly right," said the Idiot. "I bought that safe for that
precise reason, and I bought a big one and a strong one. But you don't
know the story of that safe, do you, Mr. Pedagog?"
"I do not," said the Schoolmaster.
"Then let me tell you," said the Idiot. "That safe has been broken open,
and by a professional burglar. The burglar had his tools, and he had
his expert knowledge of their use. He arrived at my house, as I recall
the situation, somewhere about--ah--two o'clock at night. He bored at
the lock until three. He fooled about the combination. He did everything
that a respectable burglar might be expected to do, and--"
"He failed, of course, since you say you have lost nothing," said Mr.
Pedagog.
"Not at all," said the Idiot. "After two hours and fifty-five minutes'
work on that safe he got it open. And--"
"And?" queried Mr. Pedagog.
"He found it empty," said the Idiot; "absolutely empty. There was not a
spoon, a fork, a tea-pot, or a diamond necklace, or even a scrap of
paper in it."
"Then why do you have it," said Mr. Pedagog.
"Merely to keep the burglar busy while he is in my house, and to make
him expert in honest work. An ordinary mechanic, intelligent enough to
get that safe open by night or by day, would be entitled to at least two
dollars for his services. The individual involved got it open; and when
he opened it--"
"Found nothing!" cried Mr. Pedagog.
"Exactly," said the Idiot, pulling away on his cigar. "I suppose I
should have left a check inside payable to bearer for a dollar and a
half to compensate him for his trouble, but I am so neglectful that I
really didn't."
"And you bought a safe--"
"Merely to provide employment for the unemployed burglar," said the
Idiot. "That is all a safe is good for, Mr. Pedagog. Experience has
shown that the house-safe isn't worth the paint it is covered with in
the matter of protection. But as a decoy it works to a charm. A safe, in
other words, is a splendid thing to keep things out of, as well as to
keep the burglar busy while he is your guest. If our particular visitor
had not spent all his time breaking the safe open he might have been
able to locate our spoons."
"It is a pity," said Mr. Pedagog, dryly, "that you did not add to the
impression the futility of his work made upon his mind a short note of
admonition indicating to him that he might be in better business."
"My dear Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "that would have been rude.
Invited or otherwise, the man was a guest in my house, and a note of
that kind would have savored of sarcasm, or, if not, would have placed
me in the position of having taken advantage of my guest's weakness to
be facetious at his expense."
"You take an original view of it," said Mr. Pedagog.
"Not a bit of it," returned the Idiot. "I got the idea from a Boston
girl. Once when she and her sister-in-law found themselves alone at
night in a huge country-house they were suddenly overcome with fear of
burglars, and rather than run any personal risk from the midnight
marauder they left a big card on top of the safe inscribed with these
words: 'Dear Sir,--The combination of this safe is 11-16-91. There is
nothing in it. If you must have our silver, call at the Shawmut Safe
Deposit Company, where it is now stored.' The two girls were cousins of
mine."
The Schoolmaster smiled again. "There must be a streak of your
particular kind of genius running all through your family," said he.
"True--there is," said the Idiot. "I'm not the only Idiot in my tribe."
"And the second burglar. How about him?" asked Mr. Pedagog.
"Oh, he was easy," said the Idiot. "I compromised with him. You see, I
met him on his way out. I was coming home late, and just as I arrived he
was leaving. I invited him back, lit the gas in the dining-room, and
asked him to join me in a bit of cold tongue and a bottle of beer. He
tried to shuffle out of it, but when I said I preferred to reason with
him rather than have him arrested he sat down, and we talked the
situation over. I discovered that for about three hundred dollars' worth
of my stuff that he had in a bag slung over his shoulder he might get as
much as fifty dollars, and at great risk. I showed him how foolish that
was, and offered to give him forty dollars if he'd leave the stuff, so
saving me two hundred and sixty dollars, and avoiding all trouble for
himself. He didn't like it at first, but under the genial influence of
the beer and the cold tongue and my conversation he finally yielded, and
walked out of my house with a check drawn to bearer for forty dollars in
his pocket."
"I am astonished at you!" cried Mr. Pedagog. "You compounded a felony."
"Not exactly," said the Idiot. "I should have done so if I hadn't
stopped payment on the check the next day."
"Oh," said Mr. Pedagog, "I see!"
"All I lost was the revenue-stamp on the check," said the Idiot.
"And did you ever hear from the man again?"
"Yes," observed the Idiot. "I met him on the train a day or two
later--sat next to him in the smoking-car, in fact."
"And did he know you?"
"Yes. We had a very pleasant chat going to town. He said he was moving
away from here. He couldn't stand it, he said. He was going to work in
some new field where a man could get living pay for his work. Said he'd
been robbed by some of our best people; what's the use of working for
nothing? he asked. The poor man was kept down, and all that sort of
talk."
"And you parted friends?"
"Yes," said the Idiot. "I felt rather sorry for him, and when he said
good-bye I gave him a cigar and a five-dollar bill, and that was the end
of him. I have since received a letter from him in which he said that my
kindness was appreciated, and that I could leave my valuables out on the
lawn all night hereafter with perfect impunity. 'There isn't a thief in
our whole suburban gang would be mean enough to touch it after your
kindness to me,' he wrote."