entered the breakfast-room. "All hail to thee. Thou art the bright
particular bird of plumage I most hoped to see this rare and beauteous
summer morning. No sweet-singing robin-redbreast or soft-honking
canvasback for yours truly this A.M., when a living, breathing,
palpitating son of the Muses lurks near at hand. I fain would make thee
a proposition, Shakespeare dear!"
"Back pedal there! Avaunt with your flowery speech, oh Idiot!" cried the
Doctor. "Else will I call an ambulance."
"No ambulance for mine," chortled the Idiot.
"Nay, Sweet Gas-bags," quoth the Doctor. "But for once I fear me we may
be scorched by this Pelee of words that thou spoutest forth."
"What's the proposition, Mr. Idiot?" asked the Poet. "I'm always open to
anything of the kind, as the Subway said when an automobile fell into
it.'"
"I thirst for laurels," said the Idiot, "and I propose that you and I
collaborate on a book of poems for early publication. With your name on
the title-page and my poems in the book I think we can make a go of it."
"What's the lay?" asked the Poet, amused, but wary. "Sonnets, or French
forms, or just plain snatches of song?"
"Any old thing as long as it runs smoothly," replied the Idiot. "Only
the poems must fit the title of the book, which is to be _Now_."
"_Now?_" said the Poet.
"_Now!_" repeated the Idiot. "I find in reading over the verse of the
day that the 'Now' poem always finds a ready market. Therefore, there
must be money in it, and where the money goes there the laurels are.
You know what Browning Robinson, the Laureate of Wall Street, wrote in
his 'Message to Posterity':
"'Oh, when you come to crown my brow,
Bring me no bay nor sorrel;
Give me no parsley wreath, but just
The legal long green laurel.'"
"I never heard that poem before," laughed the Poet, "though the
sentiment in these commercial days is not unfamiliar."
"True," said the Idiot. "Alfred Austin Biggs, of Texas, voiced the same
idea when he said:
"'Crown me not with spinach,
Wreathe me not with hay;
Place no salad on my head
When you bring the bay.
Give me not the water-cresses
To adorn my flowing tresses,
But at e'en
Crown my pockets good and strong
With the green--
The green that's long.'"
"Do you remember that?" asked the Idiot.
"Only faintly," said the Poet. "I think you read it to me once before,
just after you--er--ah--rather just after Alfred Austin Biggs, of
Texas--wrote it."
The Idiot laughed. "I see you're on," he said. "Anyhow, it's good
sentiment, whether I wrote it or Biggs. Fact is, in my judgment, what
the poet of to-day ought to do is to collect the long green from the
present and the laurel from posterity. That's a fair division. But what
do you say to my proposition?"
"Well, it's certainly--er--cheeky enough," said the Poet. "Do I
understand it?--you want me to father your poems. To tell the truth,
until I hear some of them, I can't promise to be more than an uncle to
them."
"That's all right," said the Idiot. "You ought to be cautious, as a
matter of protection to your own name. I've got some of the goods right
here. Here's a little thing called 'Summer-tide!' It shows the whole
'Now' principle in a nutshell. Listen to this:
"Now the festive frog is croaking in the mere,
And the canvasback is honking in the bay,
And the summer-girl is smiling full of cheer
On the willieboys that chance along her way.
"Now the skeeter sings his carols to the dawn,
And bewails the early closing of the bar
That prevents the little nips he seeks each morn
On the sea-shore where the fatling boarders are.
"Now the landlord of the pastoral hotel
Spends his mornings, nights, and eke his afternoons,
Scheming plans to get more milk from out the well,
And a hundred novel ways of cooking prunes.
"Now the pumpkin goes a pumpking through the fields,
And the merry visaged cows are chewing cud;
And the profits that the plumber's business yields
Come a-tumbling to the earth with deadly thud.
"And from all of this we learn the lesson sweet,
The soft message of Dame Nature, grand and clear,
That the winter-time is gone with storm and sleet,
And the soft and jolly summer-tide is here.
How's that? Pretty fair?"
"Well, I might consent to be a cousin to a poem of that kind. I've read
worse and written some that are quite as bad. But you know, Mr. Idiot,
even so great a masterpiece as that won't make a book," said the Poet.
"Of course it won't," retorted the Idiot. "That's only for the summer.
Here's another one on winter. Just listen:
"Now the man who deals in mittens and in tabs
Is a-smiling broadly--aye, from ear to ear--
As he reaches out his hand and fondly grabs
All the shining, golden shekels falling near.
"Now the snow lies on the hill-side and the roof,
And the birdling to the sunny southland flies;
While the frowning summer landlord stands aloof,
And to solemncholy meditation hies.
"Now the tinkling of the sleigh-bells tinge the air,
And the coal-man is as happy as can be;
While the hulking, sulking, grizzly seeks his lair,
And the ice-man's soul is filled with misery.
"Clad in frost are all the distant mountain-peaks,
And the furnace is as hungry as a boy;
While the plumber, as he gloats upon the leaks,
Is the model that the painter takes for 'Joy.'
"And from all of this we learn the lesson sweet--
The glad message of Dame Nature, grand and clear:
That the summer-time has gone with all its heat,
And the crisp and frosty winter days are here.
You see, Mr. Poet, that out of that one idea alone--that cataloguing of
the things of the four seasons--you can get four poems that are really
worth reading," said the Idiot. "We could call that section 'The
Seasons,' and make it the first part of the book. In the second part we
could do the same thing, only in greater detail, for each one of the
months. Just as a sample, take the month of February. We could run
something like this in on February:
"Now o'er the pavement comes a hush
As pattering feet wade deep in slush
That every Feb.
Doth flow and ebb."
"I see," said the Poet. "It wouldn't take long to fill up a book with
stuff like that."
"To make the appeal stronger, let me take the month of July, which is
now on," resumed the Idiot. "You may find it even more convincing:
"Now the fly--
The rhubarb-pie--
The lightning in the sky--
Thermometers so spry--
That leap up high--
The roads all dry,
The hoboes nigh,
The town a-fry,
The mad ki-yi
A-snarling by,
The crickets cry--
All tell us that it is July.
Eh?"
"I don't believe anybody would believe I wrote it, that's all," said
the Poet, shaking his head dubiously. "They'd find out, sooner or later,
that you did it, just as they discovered that Will Carleton wrote
'Paradise Lost,' and Dick Davis was the real author of Shakespeare. Why
don't you publish the thing over your own name?"
"Too modest," said the Idiot. "What do you think of this:
"Now the festive candidate
Goes a-sporting through the State,
And he kisses babes from Quogue to Kalamazoo;
For he really wants to win
Without spending any tin,
And he thinks he has a chance to kiss it through."
"That's fair, only I don't think you'll find many candidates doing that
sort of thing nowadays," said the Poet. "Most public men I know of would
rather spend their money than kiss the babies. That style of campaigning
has gone out."
"It has in the cities," said the Idiot. "But back in the country it is
still done, and the candidate who turns his back on the infant might as
well give up the race. I know, because a cousin of mine ran for
supervisor once, and he was licked out of his boots because he tried to
do his kissing by proxy--said he'd give the kisses in a bunch to a
committee of young ladies, who could distribute them for him. Result was
everybody was down on him--even the young ladies."
"I guess he was a cousin of yours, all right," laughed the Doctor; "that
scheme bears the Idiot brand."
"Here's one on the opening of the opera season," said the Idiot:
"Now the fiddlers tune their fiddles
To the lovely taradiddles
Of old Wagner, Mozart, Bizet, and the rest.
Now the trombone is a-tooting
Out its scaley shute-the-chuteing
And the oboe is hoboing with a zest.
"Now the dressmakers are working--
Not a single minute shirking--
Making gowns with frills and fal-lals mighty queer,
For the Autumn days are flying,
And there's really no denying
That the season of the opera is near."
Mr. Brief took a hand in the discussion at this moment.
"Then you can have a blanket verse," he said, scribbling with his pencil
on a piece of paper in front of him. "Something like this:
"And as Time goes on a-stalking,
And the Idiot still is talking
In his usual blatant manner, loud and free,
With his silly jokes and rhyme,
It is--well it's any time
From Creation to the jumping-off place that you'll find at the far
end of Eterni-tie."
"That settles it," said the Idiot, rising. "I withdraw my proposition.
Let's call it off, Mr. Poet."
"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Brief. "Isn't my verse good?"
"Yes," said the Idiot. "Just as good as mine, and that being the case it
isn't worth doing. When lawyers can write as good poetry as real poets,
it doesn't pay to be a real poet. I'm going in for something else. I
guess I'll apply for a job as a motorman, and make a name for myself
there."
"Can a motorman make a name for himself?" asked the Doctor.
"Oh yes," said the Idiot. "Easily. By being civil. A civil motorman
would be unique."
"But he wouldn't make a fortune," suggested the Poet.
"Yes he would, too," said the Idiot. "If he could prove he really was
civil, the vaudeville people would pay him a thousand dollars a week and
tour the country with him. He'd draw mobs."
With which the Idiot left the dining-room.
"I think his poems would sell," smiled Mrs. Pedagog.
"Yes," said Mr. Pedagog. "Chopped up fine and properly advertised, they
might make a very successful new kind of breakfast food--provided the
paper on which they were written was not too indigestible."
XIII
HE DISCUSSES THE MUSIC CURE
"Good-morning, Doctor," said the Idiot, as Capsule, M.D., entered the
dining-room, "I am mighty glad you've come. I've wanted for a long time
to ask you about this music cure that everybody is talking about, and
get you, if possible, to write me out a list of musical nostrums for
every-day use. I noticed last night, before going to bed, that my
medicine-chest was about run out. There's nothing but one quinine pill
and a soda-mint drop left in it, and if there's anything in the music
cure, I don't think I'll have it filled again. I prefer Wagner to
squills, and, compared to the delights of Mozart, Hayden, and Offenbach,
those of paregoric are nit."
"Still rambling, eh?" vouchsafed the Doctor. "You ought to submit your
tongue to some scientific student of dynamics. I am inclined to think,
from my own observation of its ways, that it contains the germ of
perpetual motion."
"I will consider your suggestion," replied the Idiot. "Meanwhile, let us
consult harmoniously together on the original point. Is there anything
in this music cure, and is it true that our medical schools are
hereafter to have conservatories attached to them, in which aspiring
young M.D.'s are to be taught the _materia musica_ in addition to the
_materia medica_?"
"I had heard of no such idiotic proposition," returned the Doctor. "And
as for the music cure, I don't know anything about it; haven't heard
everybody talking about it; and doubt the existence of any such thing
outside of that mysterious realm which is bounded by the four corners of
your own bright particular cerebellum. What do you mean by the music
cure?"
"Why, the papers have been full of it lately," explained the Idiot.
"The claim is made that in music lies the panacea for all human ills. It
may not be able to perform a surgical operation like that which is
required for the removal of a leg, and I don't believe even Wagner ever
composed a measure that could be counted on successfully to eliminate
one's vermiform appendix from its chief sphere of usefulness; but for
other things, like measles, mumps, the snuffles, or indigestion, it is
said to be wonderfully efficacious. What I wanted to find out from you
was just what composers were best for which specific troubles."
"You'll have to go to somebody else for the information," said the
Doctor. "I never heard of the theory, and, as I said before, I don't
believe anybody else has, barring your own sweet self."
"I have seen a reference to it somewhere," put in Mr. Whitechoker,
coming to the Idiot's rescue. "As I recall the matter, some lady had
been cured of a nervous affection by a scientific application of some
musical poultice or other, and the general expectation seems to be that
some day we shall find in music a cure for all our human ills, as the
Idiot suggests."
"Thank you, Mr. Whitechoker," said the Idiot, gratefully. "I saw that
same item and several others besides, and I have only told the truth
when I say that a large number of people are considering the
possibilities of music as a substitute for drugs. I am surprised that
Dr. Capsule has neither heard nor thought about it, for I should think
it would prove to be a pleasant and profitable field for speculation.
Even I, who am only a dabbler in medicine and know no more about it than
the effects of certain remedies upon my own symptoms, have noticed that
music of a certain sort is a sure emollient for nervous conditions."
"For example?" said the Doctor. "Of course, we don't doubt your word;
but when a man makes a statement based upon personal observation it is
profitable to ask him what his precise experience has been, merely for
the purpose of adding to our own knowledge."
"Well," said the Idiot, "the first instance that I can recall is that of
a Wagner opera and its effects upon me. For a number of years I suffered
a great deal from insomnia. I could not get two hours of consecutive
sleep, and the effect of my sufferings was to make me nervous and
irritable. Suddenly somebody presented me with a couple of tickets for a
performance of 'Parsifal,' and I went. It began at five o'clock in the
afternoon. For twenty minutes all went serenely, and then the music
began to work. I fell into a deep and refreshing slumber. The
intermission came, and still I slept on. Everybody else went home,
dressed for the evening part of the performance, had their dinner, and
returned. Still I slept, and continued so to do until midnight, when one
of the gentlemanly ushers came and waked me up, and told me that the
performance was over. I rubbed my eyes, and looked about me. It was
true--the great auditorium was empty, and was gradually darkening. I put
on my hat and walked out refreshed, having slept from five-twenty until
twelve, or six hours and forty minutes straight. That was one instance.
Two weeks later I went again, this time to hear 'Goetterdaemmerung.' The
results were the same, only the effect was instantaneous. The curtain
had hardly risen before I retired to the little ante-room of the box our
party occupied and dozed off into a fathomless sleep. I didn't wake up
this time until nine o'clock the next day, the rest of the party having
gone off without awakening me as a sort of joke. Clearly Wagner,
according to my way of thinking, then, deserves to rank among the most
effective narcotics known to modern science. I have tried all sorts of
other things--sulfonal, trionel, bromide powders, and all the rest, and
not one of them produced anything like the soporific results that two
doses of Wagner brought about in one instant. And, best of all, there
was no reaction: no splitting headache or shaky hand the next day, but
just the calm, quiet, contented feeling that goes with the sense of
having got completely rested up."
"You run a dreadful risk, however," said the Doctor, with a sarcastic
smile. "The Wagner habit is a terrible thing to acquire, Mr. Idiot."
"That may be," said the Idiot; "worse than the sulfonal habit by a great
deal, I am told; but I am in no danger of becoming a victim to it while
it costs from five to seven dollars a dose. In addition to this
experience, I have also the testimony of a friend of mine who was cured
of a frightful attack of the colic by Sullivan's 'Lost Chord,' played on
a cornet. He had spent the day down at Asbury Park, and had eaten not
wisely but too copiously. Among other things that he turned loose in his
inner man were two plates of lobster salad, a glass of fresh cider, and
a saucerful of pistache ice-cream. He was a painter by profession, and
the color scheme he thus introduced into his digestive apparatus was too
much for his artistic soul. He was not fitted by temperament to
assimilate anything quite so strenuously chromatic as that, and, as a
consequence, shortly after he had retired to his studio for the night,
the conflicting tints began to get in their deadly work, and within two
hours he was completely doubled up. The pain he suffered was awful.
Agony was bliss alongside of the pangs that now afflicted him, and all
the palliatives and pain-killers known to man were tried without avail,
and then, just as he was about to give himself up for lost, an amateur
cornetist who occupied a studio on the floor above began to play the
'Lost Chord.' A counter-pain set in immediately. At the second bar of
the 'Lost Chord' the awful pain that was gradually gnawing away at his
vitals seemed to lose its poignancy in the face of the greater
suffering, and physical relief was instant. As the musician proceeded,
the internal disorder yielded gradually to the external and finally
passed away, entirely leaving him so far from prostrate that by 1 A. M.
he was out of bed and actually girding himself with a shot-gun and
an Indian club to go up-stairs for a physical encounter with the
cornetist."
"And you reason from this that Sullivan's 'Lost Chord' is a cure for
cholera morbus, eh?" sneered the Doctor.
"It would seem so," said the Idiot. "While the music continued my friend
was a well man, ready to go out and fight like a warrior; but when the
cornetist stopped the colic returned, and he had to fight it out in the
old way. In these incidents in my own experience I find ample
justification for my belief, and that of others, that some day the music
cure for human ailments will be recognized and developed to the full.
Families going off to the country for the summer, instead of taking a
medicine-chest along with them, will be provided with a music-box with
cylinders for mumps, measles, summer complaint, whooping-cough,
chicken-pox, chills and fever, and all the other ills the flesh is heir
to. Scientific experiment will demonstrate before long just what
composition will cure specific ills. If a baby has whooping-cough, an
anxious mother, instead of ringing up the doctor, will go to the piano
and give the child a dose of 'Hiawatha.' If a small boy goes swimming
and catches a cold in his head and is down with a fever, his nurse, an
expert on the accordion, can bring him back to health again with three
bars of 'Under the Bamboo Tree' after each meal. Instead of dosing the
kids with cod-liver oil when they need a tonic, they will be set to work
at a mechanical piano and braced up on 'Narcissus.' 'There'll Be a Hot
Time in the Old Town To-night' will become an effective remedy for a
sudden chill. People suffering from sleeplessness can dose themselves
back to normal conditions with Wagner the way I did. Tchaikowsky, to be
well shaken before taken, will be an effective remedy for a torpid
liver, and the man or woman who suffers from lassitude will doubtless
find in the lively airs of our two-step composers an efficient tonic to
bring their vitality up to a high standard of activity. Nothing in it?
Why, Doctor, there's more in it that's in sight to-day that is promising
and suggestive of great things in the future than there was of the
principle of gravitation in the rude act of that historic pippin that
left the parent tree and swatted Sir Isaac Newton on the nose."
"And the drug stores will be driven out of business, I presume," said
the Doctor.
"No," said the Idiot. "They will substitute music for drugs, that is
all. Every man who can afford it will have his own medical phonograph,
or music-box, and the drug stores will sell cylinders and records for
them instead of quinine, carbonate of soda, squills, paregoric, and
other nasty-tasting things they have now. This alone will serve to
popularize sickness, and, instead of being driven out of business, their
trade will pick up."
"And the doctor, and the doctor's gig, and all the appurtenances of his
profession--what becomes of them?" demanded the Doctor.
"We'll have to have the doctor just the same to prescribe for us, only
he will have to be a musician, but the gig--I'm afraid that will have to
go," said the Idiot.
"And why, pray?" asked the Doctor. "Because there are no more drugs,
must the physician walk?"
"Not at all," said the Idiot. "But he'd be better equipped if he drove
about in a piano-organ or, if he preferred, an auto on a
steam-calliope."
XIV
HE DEFENDS CAMPAIGN METHODS
"Good-morning, gentlemen," said the Idiot, cheerily, as he entered the
breakfast-room. "This is a fine Sunday morning in spite of the gloom
into which the approaching death of the campaign should plunge us all."
"You think that, do you?" observed the Bibliomaniac. "Well, I don't
agree with you. I for one am sick and tired of politics, and it will be
a great relief to me when it is all over."
"Dear me, what a blase old customer you are, Mr. Bib," returned the
Idiot. "Do you mean to say that a Presidential campaign does not keep
your nerve-centres in a constant state of pleasurable titillation? Why,
to me it is what a bag full of nuts must be to a squirrel. I fairly
gloat over these quadrennial political campaigns of ours. They are to me
among the most exhilarating institutions of modern life. They satisfy
all one's zest for warfare without the distressing shedding of blood
which attends real war, and regarded from the standpoint of humor, I
know of nothing that, to the eye of an ordinarily keen observer, is more
provocative of good, honest, wholesome mirth."
"I don't see it," said Mr. Bib. "To my mind, the average political
campaign is just a vulgar scrap in which men who ought to know better
descend to all sorts of despicable trickery merely to gain the
emoluments of office. This quest for the flesh-pots of politics, so far
from being diverting, is, to my notion, one of the most deplorable
exhibitions of human weakness that modern civilization, so called, has
produced. A couple of men are put up for the most dignified office known
to the world--both are gentlemen by birth and education, men of honor,
men who, you would think, would scorn baseness as they hate poison--and
then what happens? For three weary months the followers of each attack
the character and intelligence of the other until, if you really
believed what was said of either, neither in your estimation would have
a shred of reputation left. Is that either diverting or elevating or
educational or, indeed, anything but deplorable?"
"It's perfectly fine," said the Idiot, "to think that we have men in the
country whose characters are such that they can stand four months of
such a test. That's what I find elevating in it. When a man who is
nominated for the Presidency in June or July can emerge in November
unscathed in spite of the minute scrutiny to which himself and his
record and the record of his sisters and his cousins and his aunts have
been subjected, it's time for the American rooster to get upon his hind
legs and give three cheers for himself and the people to whom he
belongs. Even old Diogenes, who spent his life looking for an honest
man, would have to admit every four years that he could spot him
instantly by merely coming to this country and taking his choice from
among the several candidates."
"You must admit, however," said the Bibliomaniac, "that a man with an
honorable name must find it unpleasant to have such outrageous stories
told of him."