Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "As an individual I appreciate your
good-will. As a corporation I am soulless, without emotions, and so
cherish no disappointments over your refusal. I think if the scheme goes
through it will be successful, and I fully expect to see the day when
Idiot Preferred will be selling as high, if not higher, than Steel, and
leaving utterly behind any other industrial that ever was known, copper
or rope."
"If, like the railways, you could issue betterment bonds you might do
very well," said the Doctor. "I think ten million dollars spent in
bettering you might bring you up to par."
"Or a consolidated first-mortgage bond," remarked the Bibliomaniac.
"Consolidate the Idiot with a man like Chamberlain or the German
Emperor, and issue a five-million-dollar mortgage on the result, and you
might find people who'd take those bonds at seventy-five."
"You might if they were a dollar bond printed on cartridge-paper," said
Mr. Pedagog. "Then purchasers could paper their walls with them."
"Rail on," said the Idiot. "I can stand it. When I begin paying
quarterly dividends at a ten-per-cent. rate you'll wish you had come
in."
"I don't know about that," said Mr. Pedagog. "It would entirely
depend."
"On what?" queried the Idiot, unwarily.
"On whether that ten per cent. was declared upon your own estimate of
your value or upon ours. On yours it would be fabulous; on ours--oh,
well, what is the use of saying anything more about it. We are not going
in it, and that's an end to it."
"Well, I'll go in it if you change your scheme," said the Doctor. "If
instead of an Idiot Publishing Company you will try to float yourself as
a Consolidated Gas Company you may count on me to take a controlling
interest."
"I will submit the proposition to my friends," said the Idiot, calmly.
"It would be something to turn out an honest gas company, which I
should, of course, try to be, but I am afraid the public will not accept
it. There is little demand for laughing-gas, and, besides, they would
fear to intrust you with a controlling interest for fear that you might
blow the product out and the bills up--coining millions by mere
inflation. They've heard of you, Doctor, and they know that is the sort
of thing you'd be likely to do."
V
University Extension
"I was surprised and gratified last evening, Mr. Idiot," observed the
School-master as breakfast was served, "to see you at the University
Extension Lecture. I did not know that you admitted the necessity of
further instruction in any matter pertaining to human knowledge."
"I don't know that I do admit the necessity," returned the Idiot.
"Sometimes when I take an inventory of the contents of my mind it seems
to me that about everything I need is there."
"There you go again!" said the Bibliomaniac. "Why do you persist in your
refusal to allow any one to get a favorable impression concerning you?
Mr. Pedagog unbends sufficiently to tell you that you have at last done
something which he can commend, and you greet him with an Idiotism which
is practically a rebuff."
"Very well said," observed the School-master, with an acquiescent nod.
"I came to this table this morning encouraged to believe that this young
man was beginning to see the error of his ways, and I must confess to a
great enough interest in him to say that I was pleased at that
encouragement. I saw him at a lecture on literature at the Lyceum Hall
last evening, and he appeared to be interested, and yet this morning he
seems to show that he is utterly incorrigible. May I ask, sir, why you
attended that lecture if, as you say, your mind is already sufficiently
well furnished?"
"Certainly you may ask that question," replied the Idiot. "I went to
that lecture to have my impressions confirmed, that is all. I have
certain well-defined notions concerning University Extension, and I
wished to see if they were correct. I found that they were."
"The lecture was not upon University Extension, but upon Romanticism,
and it was a most able discourse," retorted Mr. Pedagog.
"Very likely," said the Idiot. "I did not hear it. I did not want to
hear it. I have my own ideas concerning Romanticism, which do not need
confirmation or correction. I have already confirmed and corrected them.
I went to see the audience and not to hear Professor Peterkin exploding
theories."
"It is a pity the chair you occupied was wasted upon you," snapped Mr.
Pedagog.
"I agree with you," said the Idiot. "I could have got a much better view
of the audience if I had been permitted to sit on the stage, but
Professor Peterkin needed all that for his gestures. However, I saw
enough from where I sat to confirm my impression that University
Extension is not so much of a public benefit as a social fad. There was
hardly a soul in the audience who could not have got all that Professor
Peterkin had to tell him out of his books; there was hardly a soul in
the audience who could not have afforded to pay one dollar at least for
the seat he occupied; there was not a soul in the audience who had paid
more than ten cents for his seat or her seat, and those for whose
benefit the lecture was presumably given, the ten-cent people, were
crowded out. The lectures themselves are not instructive--Professor
Peterkin's particularly--except in so far as it is instructive to hear
what Professor Peterkin thinks on this or that subject, and his desire
to be original forces him to cook up views which no one else ever held,
with the result that what he says is most interesting and proper to be
presented to the attention of a discriminating audience, but not proper
to be presented to an audience that is supposed to come there to receive
instruction."
"You have just said that you did not listen to the lecture. How do you
know that what you say is true?" put in the Bibliomaniac.
"I know Professor Peterkin," said the Idiot.
"Does he know you?" sneered Mr. Pedagog.
"I don't think he would remember me if you should speak my name in his
presence," observed the Idiot, calmly. "But that is easily accounted
for. The Professor never remembers anybody but himself."
"Well, I admit," said Mr. Pedagog, "that the Professor's lectures were
rather advanced for the comprehension of a person like the Idiot,
nevertheless it was an enjoyable occasion, and I doubt if the
fulminations of our friend here will avail against University
Extension."
"You speak a sad truth," said the Idiot. "Social fads are impervious to
fulmination, as Solomon might have said had he thought of it. As long as
a thing is a social fad it will thrive, and, on the whole, perhaps it
ought to thrive. Anything which gives society something to think about
has its value, and the mere fact that it makes society _think_ is proof
of that value."
"We seem to be in a philosophic frame of mind this morning," said Mr.
Whitechoker.
"We are," returned the Idiot. "That's one thing about University
Extension. It makes us philosophic. It has made a stoic of my dear old
daddy."
"Oh yes!" cried Mr. Pedagog. "You _have_ a father, haven't you? I had
forgotten that."
"Wherein," said the Idiot, "we differ. _I_ haven't forgotten that I have
one, and, by-the-way, it is from him that I first heard of University
Extension. He lives in a small manufacturing town not many miles from
here, and is distinguished in the town because, without being stingy, he
lives within his means. He has a way of paying his grocer's bills which
makes of him a marked man. He hasn't much more money than he needs, but
when the University Extension movement reached the town he was
interested. The prime movers in the enterprise went to him and asked him
if he wouldn't help it along, dilating upon the benefits which would
accrue to those whose education stopped short with graduation from the
high-schools. It was most plausible. The notion that for ten cents a
lecture the working masses could learn something about art, history,
and letters, could gather in something about the sciences, and all that,
appealed to him, and while he could afford it much more ill than the
smart people, the four hundred of the town, he chipped in. He paid fifty
dollars and was made an honorary manager. He was proud enough of it,
too, and he wrote a long, enthusiastic letter to me about it. It was a
great thing, and he hoped the State, which had been appealed to to help
the movement along, would take a hand in it. 'If we educate the masses
to understand and to appreciate the artistic, the beautiful,' he wrote,
'we need have little fear for the future. Ignorance is the greatest foe
we have to contend against in our national development, and it is the
only thing that can overthrow a nation such as ours is.' And then what
happened? Professor Peterkin came along and delivered ten or a dozen
lectures. The masses went once or twice and found the platform occupied
by a man who talked to them about Romanticism and Realism; who told them
that Dickens was trash; who exalted Tolstoi and Ibsen; but who never let
them into the secret of what Romanticism was, and who kept them equally
in the dark as to the significance of Realism. They also found the best
seats in the lecture-hall occupied by the smart set in full
evening-dress, who talked almost as much and as loudly as did Professor
Peterkin. The masses did not even learn manners at Professor Peterkin's
first and second lectures, and the third and fourth found them
conspicuous by their absence. All they learned was that they were
ignorant, and that other people were better than they, and what my
father learned was that he had subscribed fifty dollars to promote a
series of social functions for the diversion of the four hundred and the
aggrandizement of Professor Peterkin. He started in for what might be
called Romanticism, and he got a Realism that he did not like in less
time than it takes to tell of it, and to-day in that town University
Extension is such a fad that when, some weeks ago, the swell club of
that place talked of appointing Thursday evening as its club night, it
was found to be impossible, for the reason that it might interfere with
the attendance upon the University Extension lectures. That, Mr.
Pedagog, is a matter of history and can be proven, and last night's
audience confirmed the impression which I had formed from what my father
had told me. Professor Peterkin's lectures are interesting to you, a
school-master, but they are pure Greek to me, who would like to know
more about letters. I would gather more instruction from your table-talk
in an hour than I could from Professor Peterkin's whole course."
"You flatter me," said Mr. Pedagog.
"No," returned the Idiot. "If you knew how little the ignorant gain from
Peterkin you would not necessarily call it flattery if one should say he
learned more from your conversation over a griddle-cake."
"You misconceive the whole situation, I think, nevertheless," said Mr.
Whitechoker. "As I understand it, supplementary lectures, and
examinations based on them, are held after the lectures, when the
practical instruction is given with great thoroughness."
"I'm glad you spoke of that," said the Idiot. "I had forgotten that part
of it. Professor Peterkin received pay for his lectures, which dealt in
theories only; plain Mr. Barton, who delivered the supplementary
lectures, got nothing. Professor Peterkin taught nothing, but he
represented University Extension. Plain Mr. Barton did the work and
represented nothing. Both reached society. Neither reached the masses.
In my native town plain Mr. Barton's supplementary lectures, which were
simply an effort to unravel the Peterkin complications, were attended by
the same people in smaller crowds--people of social standing who were
curious enough to devote an hour a week to an endeavor to find out the
meaning of what Professor Peterkin had told them at the function the
week before. The students examined were mostly ladies, and I happen to
know that in a large proportion they were ladies whose husbands could
have afforded to pay Professor Peterkin his salary ten times over as a
private tutor."
"As I look at it," said Mr. Pedagog, gravely, "it does not make much
difference to whom your instruction is given, so long as it instructs.
What if these lectures do interest those who are comparatively well
off? Your society woman may be as much in need of an extended education
as your factory girl. The University Extension idea is to convey
knowledge to people who would not otherwise get it. It simply sets out
to improve minds. If the social mind needs improvement, why not improve
it? Why condemn a system because it does not discriminate in the minds
selected for improvement?"
"I don't condemn a system which sets out to improve minds irrespective
of conditions," replied the Idiot. "But I should most assuredly condemn
a man, or a set of men, who induced me to subscribe to a bread fund for
the poor and who afterwards expended that money on cream-cakes for the
Czar of Russia. The fact that the Czar of Russia wanted the cream-cakes
and was willing to accept them would not affect my feelings in the
matter, though I have no doubt the people in charge of the fund would
find themselves far more conspicuous for having departed from the
original idea. Some of them might be knighted for it if the Czar
happened to be passionately fond of cream-cakes."
"Then, having attacked this system, what would you have? Would you have
University Extension stop?" asked the Bibliomaniac.
"Not at all," returned the Idiot. "Anything which can educate society is
a good thing, but I should change the name of it from University
Extension to Social Expansion, and I should compel those whose minds
were broadened by it to pay the bills."
"But as yet you have failed to hit the nail on the head," persisted the
Bibliomaniac. "The masses can attend these lectures if they wish to, and
on your own statement they don't. You don't seem to consider that point,
or, if you do, you don't meet it."
"I don't think it necessary to meet it," said the Idiot. "Though I will
say that if you were one of the masses--a girl, say, with one dress,
threadbare, poor, and ill-fitting, and possessed of a natural bit of
pride--you would find little pleasure in attending a lecture your
previous education does not permit of your comprehending, and sitting
through an evening with a lot of finely dressed, smart folk, with their
backs turned towards you. The plebeians have _some_ pride, my dear
Bibliomaniac, and they are decidedly averse to mixing with the swells.
They would like to be educated, but they don't care to be snubbed for
the privilege of being mystified by a man like Professor Peterkin, even
for so small a sum as ten cents an evening."
VI
Social Expansion
"We were talking about University Extension the other day, Mr. Pedagog,"
said the Idiot, as the School-master folded up the newspaper and put it
in his pocket, "and I, as you remember, suggested that it might better
be called Social Expansion."
"Did you?" said Mr. Pedagog, coldly. "I don't remember much about it. I
rarely make a note of anything you may say."
"Well, I did suggest the change of name, whether your memory is
retentive or not, and I have been thinking the matter over a good deal
since, and I think I've got hold of an idea," returned the Idiot.
"In that case," said the Bibliomaniac, "we would better lock the door.
If you have really got hold of an idea you should be very careful not to
let it get away from you."
"No danger of that," said the Idiot, with a smile. "I have it securely
locked up here," tapping his forehead.
"It must be lonesome," said Mr. Pedagog.
"And rather uncomfortable--if it is a real idea," observed the Doctor.
"An idea in the Idiot's mind must feel somewhat as a tall, stout Irish
maid feels when she goes to her bedroom in one of those Harlem
flat-houses."
"You men are losing a great opportunity," said the Idiot, with a
scornful glance at the three professional gentlemen. "The idea of your
following the professions of pedagogy, medicine, and literature, when
the three of you combined could make a fortune as an incarnate comic
paper. I don't see why you don't make a combination like those German
bands that play on the street corners, and go about from door to door,
and crack your jokes just as they crack their music. I am sure you'd
take, particularly in front of barber-shops."
"It would be hard on the comic papers," said the Poet, who was getting a
little unpopular with his fellow-boarders because of his tendency,
recently developed, to take the Idiot's part in the breakfast-table
discussions. "They might be so successful that the barber-shops, instead
of taking the comic papers for their customers to read, would employ one
or more of them to sit in the middle of the room and crack jokes aloud."
"We couldn't rival the comic papers though," said the Doctor, wishing to
save his dignity by taking the bull by the horns. "We might do the
jokes well enough, but the comic papers are chiefly pictorial."
"You'd be pictorial enough," said the Idiot. "Wasn't it you, Mr.
Pedagog, that said the Doctor here looked like one of Cruikshank's
physicians, or as if he had stepped out of Dickens's pages, or something
like it?"
"I never said anything of the sort!" cried the School-master,
wrathfully; "and you know I didn't."
"Who was it said that?" asked the Idiot, innocently, looking about the
table. "It couldn't have been Mr. Whitechoker, and I know it wasn't the
Poet or my Genial Friend who occasionally imbibes. Mr. Pedagog denies
it; I didn't say it; Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't say it. That leaves only two
of us--the Bibliomaniac and the Doctor himself. I don't think the Doctor
would make a personal remark of that kind, and--well, there is but one
conclusion. Mr. Bibliomaniac, I am surprised."
"What?" roared the Bibliomaniac, glaring at the Idiot. "Do you mean to
fasten the impertinence on me?"
"Far from it," returned the Idiot, meekly. "Very far from it. It is
fate, sir, that has done that--the circumstantial evidence against you
is strong; but then, mercifully enough, circumstantial evidence is not
permitted to hang a man."
"Now see here, Mr. Idiot," said the Bibliomaniac, firmly and
impressively, "I want you to distinctly understand that I am not going
to have you put words into my mouth that I never uttered. I--"
"Pray, don't attack me," said the Idiot. "I haven't made any charge
against you. I only asked who could have said that the Doctor looked
like a creation of Cruikshank. I couldn't have said it, because I don't
think it. Mr. Pedagog denies it. In fact, every one here has a clear
case of innocence excepting yourself, and I don't believe _you_ said
it, only the chain of circumstance--"
"Oh, hang your chain of circumstance!" interrupted the Bibliomaniac.
"It is hung," said the Idiot, "and it appears to make you very
uncomfortable. However, as I was saying, I think I have got hold of an
idea involving a truly philanthropic and by no means selfish scheme of
Social Expansion."
"Heigho!" sighed Mr. Pedagog. "I sometimes think that if I had not the
honor to be the husband of our landlady I'd move away from here. Your
views, sir, are undermining my constitution."
"You only think so, Mr. Pedagog," replied the Idiot. "You are simply
going through a process of intellectual reconstruction at my hands. You
feel exactly as a man feels who has been shut up in the dark for years
and suddenly finds himself in a flood of sunlight. I am doing with you
as an individual what I would have society do for mankind at large--in
other words, while I am working for individual expansion upon the raw
material I find here, I would have society buckle down to the
enlargement of itself by the improvement of those outside of itself."
"If you swim in water as well as you do in verbiage," said the
Bibliomaniac, "you must be able to go three or four strokes without
sinking."
"Oh, as for that, I can swim like a duck," said the Idiot. "You can't
sink me."
"I fancied not," observed Mr. Pedagog, with a smile at his own joke.
"You are so light I wonder, indeed, that you don't rise up into space,
anyhow."
"What a delightful condition of affairs that suggestion opens up!" said
the Idiot, turning to the Poet. "If I were you I'd make a poem on that.
Something like this, for instance:
"I am so very, very light
That gravitation curbs not me.
I rise up through the atmosphere
Till all the world I plainly see.
"I dance about among the clouds,
An airy, happy, human kite.
The breezes toss me here and there,
To my exceeding great delight.
"And when I would return to sup,
To breakfast, or perchance to dine,
I haul myself once more to earth
By tugging on a piece of twine."
Mr. Pedagog grinned broadly at this.
"You aren't entirely without your good points," he said. "If we ever
accept your comic-paper idea we'll have to rely on you for the nonsense
poetry."
"Thank you," said the Idiot. "I'll help. If I had a man like you to give
me the suggestions I could make a fortune out of poetry. The only
trouble is I have to quarrel with you before I can get you to give me a
suggestion, and I despise bickering."
"So do I," returned Mr. Pedagog. "Let's give up bickering and turn our
attention to--er--Social Extension, is it?"
"Yes--or Social Expansion," said the Idiot. "Some years ago the world
was startled to hear that in the city of New York there were not more
than four hundred people who were entitled to social position, and, as I
understand it, as time has progressed the number has still further
diminished. Last year the number was only one hundred and fifty, and, as
I read the social news of to-day, not more than twenty-five people are
now beyond all question in the swim. At dinners, balls, functions of all
sorts, you read the names of these same twenty-five over and over again
as having been present. Apparently no others attended--or, if they did,
they were not so indisputably entitled to be present that their names
could be printed in the published accounts. Now all of this shows that
society is dying out, and that if things keep on as they are now going
it will not be many years before we shall become a people without
society, a nation of plebeians."
"Your statement so far is lucid and logical," said Mr. Pedagog, who did
not admire society--so called--and who did not object to the goring of
an ox in which he was not personally interested.
"Well, why is this social contraction going on?" asked the Idiot.
"Clearly because Social Expansion is not an accepted fact. If it were,
society would grow. Why does it not grow? Why are its ranks not
augmented? There is raw material enough. You would like to get into the
swim; so would I. But we don't know how. We read books of etiquette,
but they are far from being complete. I think I make no mistake when I
say they are utterly valueless. They tell us no more than the funny
journal tells us when it says:
"'Never eat pease with a spoon;
Never eat pie with a knife;
Never put salt on a prune;
Never throw crumbs at your wife.'"