for a four-thousand-dollar apartment than it does to go chasing after a
two-dollar-a-week hall-bedroom, and it impresses the cab-driver with a
sense of responsibility. But bagging these gorgeous apartments does not
constitute the real joy of flat-hunting. For solid satisfaction and
real sport the chase for a fifteen-hundred-dollar apartment in a decent
neighborhood bears away the palm. You can get plenty of roomy suites in
the neighborhood of a boiler-factory, or next door to a distillery, or
back of a fire-engine house, at reasonable rents, and along the elevated
railway lines much that is impressive is to be found by those who can
sleep with trains running alongside of their pillows all night; but when
you get away from these, the real thing at that figure is elusive. Over
by the Park you can get two pigeon-holes and a bath, with a southern
exposure, for nineteen hundred dollars a year; if you are willing to
dispense with the southern exposure you can get three Black Holes of
Calcutta and a butler's pantry, in the same neighborhood, for sixteen
hundred dollars, but you have to provide your own air. Farther down-town
you will occasionally find the thing you want with a few extras in the
shape of cornet-players, pianola-bangers, and peroxide sopranos on
either side of you, and an osteopathic veterinary surgeon on the ground
floor thrown in. Then there are paper flats that can be had for twelve
hundred dollars, but you can't have any pictures in them, because the
walls won't stand the weight, and any nail of reasonable length would
stick through into the next apartment. A friend of mine lived in one of
these affairs once, and when he inadvertently leaned against the wall
one night he fell through into his neighbor's bath-tub. Of course, that
sort of thing promotes sociability; but for a home most people want just
a little privacy. And so the list runs on. You would really be
astonished at the great variety of discomfortable dwelling-places that
people build. Such high-art decorations as you encounter--purple friezes
surmounting yellow dadoes; dragons peeping out of fruit-baskets;
idealized tomatoes in full bloom chasing one another all around the
bedroom walls. Then the architectural inconveniences they present with
their best bedrooms opening into the kitchen; their parlors with marble
wash-stands with running water in the corner; their libraries fitted up
with marvellous steam-radiators and china-closets, and their kitchens
so small that the fire in the range scorches the wall opposite, and over
which nothing but an asbestos cook, with a figure like a third rail,
could preside. And, best of all, there are the janitors! Why, Mr. Bib,
the study of the janitor and his habits alone is worthy of the life-long
attention of the best entomologist that ever lived--and yet you say
there is nothing educational in flat-hunting."
"Oh, well," said the Bibliomaniac, "I meant for me. There are a lot of
things that would be educational to you that I should regard as
symptomatic of profound ignorance. Everything is relative in this
world."
"That is true," said the Idiot; "and that is why every April 1st I go
out and gloat over the miseries of the flat-dwellers. As long as I can
do that I am happy in my little cubby-hole under Mrs. Pedagog's
hospitable roof."
"Ah! I am glad to hear you say that," said Mrs. Pedagog. "I was a bit
fearful, Mr. Idiot, that you had it in mind to move away from us."
"No indeed, Mrs. Pedagog," replied the Idiot, rising from the table.
"You need have no fear of that. You couldn't get me out of here with a
crow-bar. If I did not have entire confidence in your lovely house and
yourself, you don't suppose I would permit myself to get three months
behind in my board, do you?"
X
THE HOUSEMAID'S UNION
"Potatoes, sir?" said Mary, the waitress at Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog's
High-Class Home for Single Gentlemen, stopping behind the Idiot's chair
and addressing the back of his neck in the usual boarding-house fashion.
"Yes, I want some potatoes, Mary; but before I take them," the Idiot
replied, "I must first ascertain whether or not you wear the union
label, and what is the exact status also of the potatoes. My principles
are such that I cannot permit a non-union housemaid to help me to a scab
potato, whereas, if you belong to the sisterhood, and our stewed friend
Murphy here has been raised upon a union farm, then, indeed, do I wish
not only one potato but many."
Mary's reply was a giggle.
"Ah!" said the Idiot. "The merry ha-ha, eh? All right, Mary. That is for
the present sufficient evidence that your conscience is clear on this
very important matter. As for the potatoes, we will eat them not exactly
under protest, but with a distinctly announced proviso in advance that
we assume that they have qualified themselves for admission into a union
stomach. I hesitate to think of what will happen in my interior
department if Murphy is deceiving us."
Whereupon the Idiot came into possession of a goodly portion of the
stewed potatoes, and Mary fled to the kitchen, where she informed the
presiding genius of the range that the young gentleman was crazier than
ever.
"He's talkin' about the unions, now, Bridget," said she.
"Is he agin 'em?" demanded Bridget, with a glitter in her eye.
"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 _fete champetre_ 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 _fetes champetres_ 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