our hats in the house; they tell us all the obvious things, but the
subtleties of how to get into society they do not tell us. The comic
papers give us some idea of how to behave in society. We know from
reading the funny papers that a really swell young man always leans
against a mantel-piece when he is calling; that the swell girl sits on a
comfortable divan with her feet on a tiger-skin rug, and they converse
in epigram. Sometimes the epigram is positively rude; when it is not
rude it is so dull that no one wonders that the tiger's head on the rug
represents the tiger as yawning. But, while this is instructive, it
teaches us how to behave on special occasions only. You or I might call
upon a young woman who did not sit on a divan, who had no tiger-skin rug
to put her feet on, and whose parlor had a mantel-piece against which we
could not lean comfortably. What are we to do then? As far as they go,
the funny papers are excellent, but they don't go far enough. They give
us attractive pictures of fashionable dinners, but it is always of the
dinner after the game course. Some of us would like to know how society
behaves while the soup is being served. We know that after the game
course society girls reach across the table and clink wine-glasses with
young men, but we do not know what they do before they get to the clink
stage. Nowhere is this information given. Etiquette books are silent on
the subject, and though I have sought everywhere for information, I do
not know to this day how many salted almonds one may consume at dinner
without embarrassing one's hostess. Now, if I can't find out, the
million can't find out. Wherefore, instead of shutting themselves
selfishly up and, by so doing, forcing society finally into dissolution,
why cannot some of these people who know what is what give
object-lessons to the million; educate them in _savoir-faire_?
"Last summer there was a play put on at one of our theatres in which
there was a scene at a race-track. At one side was a tally-ho coach. For
the first week the coach was an utterly valueless accessory, because the
people on it were the ordinary supers in the employ of the theatre. They
did not know how to behave on a coach, and nobody was interested. The
management were suddenly seized with a bright idea. They invited several
swell young men who knew how things were done on coaches to come and do
these things on their coach. The young men came and imparted a realism
to the scene that made that coach the centre of attraction. People who
went to that play departed educated in coach etiquette. Now there lies
my scheme in a nutshell. If these twenty-five, the Old Guard of society,
which dines but never surrenders, will give once a week a social
function in some place like Madison Square Garden, to which the million
may go merely as spectators, not as participators, is there any doubt
that they would fail to be instructed? The Garden will seat eight or ten
thousand people. Suppose, for an instance, that a dozen of your best
exponents of what is what were to give a dinner in the middle of the
arena, with ten thousand people looking on. Do you mean to say that of
all that vast audience no one would learn thereby how to behave at a
dinner?"
"It is a great scheme," said the Doctor.
"It is!" said the Idiot, "and I venture to say that a course of, say,
twelve social functions given in that way would prove so popular that
the Garden would turn away every night twice as many people as it could
accommodate."
"It would be instructive, no doubt," said the Bibliomaniac; "but how
would it expand society? Would you have examinations?"
"Most assuredly," said the Idiot. "At the end of the season I should
have a rigid examination of all who chose to apply. I would make them
dine in the presence of a committee of expert diners, I would have them
pass a searching examination in the Art of Wearing a Dress Suit, in the
Science of Entering a Drawing-room, in the Art of Behavior at Afternoon
Teas, and all the men who applied should also be compelled to pass a
physical examination as an assurance that they were equal to the task of
getting an ice for a young lady at a ball."
"Society would get to be too inclusive and would cease to be exclusive,"
suggested Mr. Whitechoker.
"I think not," said the Idiot. "I should not give a man or a woman the
degree of B.S. unless he or she had passed an examination of one hundred
per cent."
"B.S.?" queried Mr. Pedagog.
"Yes," returned the Idiot. "Bachelor of Society--a degree which, once
earned, should entitle one to recognition as a member of the upper ten
anywhere in Christendom."
"It is superb!" cried Mr. Pedagog, enthusiastically.
"Yes," said the Idiot. "At ten cents a function it would beat University
Extension out of sight, and, further, it would preserve society. If we
lose society we lose caste, and, worse than all, our funny men would
have to go out of business, for there would be no fads or Willieboys
left to ridicule."
VII
A Beggar's Hand-book
"Mr. Idiot," said the Poet one morning, as the waffles were served, "you
are an inventive genius. Why don't you invent an easy way to make a
fortune? The trouble with most methods of making money is that they
involve too much labor."
"I have thought of that," said the Idiot. "And yet the great fortunes
have been made in a way which involved very little labor, comparatively
speaking. You, for instance, probably work harder over a yard of poetry
that brings you in ten dollars than any of our great railroad magnates
have over a mile of railroad which has brought them in a million."
"Which simply proves that it is ideas that count rather than labor,"
said the Poet.
"Not exactly," said the Idiot. "If you put a hundred ideas into a
quatrain you will get less money for it than you would for a two-volume
epic in which you have possibly only half an idea. It isn't idea so much
as nerve that counts. The man who builds railroads doesn't advance any
particular idea, but he shows lots of nerve, and it is nerve that makes
wealth. I believe that if you literary men would show more nerve force
and spare the public the infliction of what you call your ideas, you
would make more money."
"How would you show nerve in writing?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
"If I knew I'd write and make my fortune," said the Idiot.
"Unfortunately, I don't know how one can show nerve in writing, unless
it be in taking hold of some particularly popular idiosyncrasy of
mankind and treating it so contemptuously that every one would want to
mob you. If you could get the public mad enough at you to want to mob
you they'd read everything you'd write, simply to nourish their wrath,
and you'd soon be cutting coupons for a living, and could then afford to
take up more ideas--coupon-cutters can afford theories. For my own part,
one reason why I do not myself take up literature for a profession is
that I have neither the nerve nor the coupons. I'd probably run along in
the rut like a majority of the writers of to-day, and wouldn't have the
grit to strike out in a new line of my own. Men say, and perhaps very
properly, this is the thing that has succeeded in the past. I'll do
this. Something else that appears alluring enough in the abstract has
never been done, and for that reason I won't do it. There have been
clever men before me, men clever enough to think of this something that
I fondly imagine is original, and they haven't done it. Doubtless they
refrained from doing it for good and sufficient reasons, and I am not
going to be fool enough to set my judgment up against theirs. In other
words, I lack the nerve to go ahead and write as I feel. I prefer to
study past successes, with the result that I am moderately successful
only. It's the same way in every line of business. Precedent guides in
all things, but where occasionally you find a man courageous enough to
cast precedent to the winds, one of two things happens. Either fortune
or ruin follows. Hence, the thing to do if you want to make a fortune is
to eliminate the possibility of ruin as far as may be. You cannot ruin a
man who has nothing. He is down on bed-rock, anyhow; so for a receipt
for fortune I should say, start a pauper, show your nerve, and you'll
make a pile, or you won't make a pile. If you make it you are fortunate.
If you fail to make it you are no more unfortunate than you were before
you started."
"For plausibility, Mr. Idiot," said Mr. Pedagog, "you are to me a
perfect wonder. I do not think that any one can deny, with confidence
born of certainty, the truth of your premises, and it must be admitted
that your conclusions are based properly upon those premises, and yet
your conclusions are almost invariably utterly absurd, if not absolutely
grotesque. Here is a man who says, to make a fortune become a beggar!"
"Precisely," said the Idiot. "There is nothing like having a clean slate
to work on. If you are not a beggar you have something, and having
something promotes caution and tends to destroy nerve. As a beggar you
have everything to gain and nothing to lose, so you can plunge. You can
swim better in deep water than in the shallow."
"Well," said the Doctor, "enlighten us on this point. You may not know
how to show nerve as a writer--in fact, you confess that you don't. How
would you show nerve as a beggar? Would you strive to enforce your
demands and degenerate into a common highwayman, or would you simply go
in for big profits, and ask passers-by for ten dollars instead of ten
cents?"
"He'd probably take a bag of dynamite into a millionaire's office and
threaten to blow him to pieces if he didn't give him a house and lot,"
sneered the Bibliomaniac.
"Not at all," said the Idiot. "That's cowardice, not nerve. If I went
into a millionaire's office and demanded a million--or a house and lot
even--armed with a bag full of newspapers, pretending it held dynamite,
it might be more like nerve; but my beggar would do nothing contrary to
the law. He'd simply be nervy, that's all--cheeky, perhaps you'd call
it. For instance, I believe that if I were to hire in the elevated cars
one of those advertising spaces above the windows, and were to place in
that space a placard saying that I was by nature too lazy to work, too
fond of life to starve, too poor to live, and too honest to steal, and
would be placed in affluence if every man and woman who saw that sign
would send me ten cents a week in two-cent postage-stamps for five weeks
running, I should receive enough money to enable me to live at the most
expensive hotel in town during that period. By living at that hotel and
paying my bills regularly I could get credit enough to set myself up in
business, and with credit there is practically no limit to the
possibilities of fortune. It is simply honest nerve that counts. The
beggar who asks you on the street for five cents to keep his family from
starving is rebuffed. You don't believe his story, and you know that
five cents wouldn't keep a family from starving very long. But the
fellow who accosts you frankly for a dime because he is thirsty, and
hasn't had a drink for two hours, in nine cases out of ten properly
selected ones will get a quarter for his nerve."
"You ought to write a _Manual for Beggars_," said the Bibliomaniac. "I
have no doubt that the Idiot Publishing Company would publish it."
"Yes," said Mr. Pedagog. "A sort of beggar's _Don't_, for instance. It
would be a benefit to all men, as well as a boon to the beggars. That
mendicancy is a profession to-day there is no denying, and anything
which could make of it a polite calling would be of inestimable value."
"I have had it in mind for some time," said the Idiot, blandly. "I
intended to call it _Mendicancy Made Easy_, or _the Beggar's Don't: With
Two Chapters on Etiquette for Tramps_."
"The chief trouble with such a book I should think," said the Poet,
"would be that your beggars and tramps could not afford to buy it."
"That wouldn't interfere with its circulation," returned the Idiot.
"It's a poor tramp who can't steal. Every suburban resident in creation
would buy a copy of the book out of sheer curiosity. I'd get my
royalties from them; the tramps could get the books by helping
themselves to the suburbanites' copies as they do to chickens,
fire-wood, and pies put out to cool. As for the beggars, I'd have it put
into their hands by the people they beg from. When a man comes up to a
wayfarer, for instance, and says, 'Excuse me, sir, but could you spare
a nickel to a hungry man?' I'd have the wayfarer say, 'Excuse _me_, sir,
but unfortunately I have left my nickels in my other vest; but here is a
copy of the Idiot's _Mendicancy Made Easy, or the Beggar's Don't_.'"
"And you think the beggar would read it, do you?" asked the
Bibliomaniac.
"I don't know whether he would or not. He'd probably either read it or
pawn it," the Idiot answered. "In either event he would be better off,
and I would have got my ten per cent. royalty on the book. After the
_Beggars' Manual_ I should continue my good work if I found the class
for whom it was written had benefited by my first effort. I should
compile as my contribution to the literature of mendicancy for the
following season what I should call _The Beggar's Elite Directory_. This
would enlarge my sphere a trifle. It would contain as complete lists as
could be obtained of persons who give to street beggars, with their
addresses, so that the beggars, instead of infesting the streets at
night might go to the houses of these people and collect their incomes
in a more business-like and less undignified fashion. Added to this
would be two lists, one for tramps, stating what families in the suburbs
kept dogs, what families gave, whether what they gave was digestible or
not, rounding up with a list of those who do not give, and who have
telephone connection with the police station. This would enable them to
avoid dogs and rebuffs, would save the tramp the time he expends on
futile efforts to find work he doesn't want, and as for the people who
have to keep the dogs to ward off the tramps, they, too, would be
benefited, because the tramps would begin to avoid them, and in a short
while they would be able to dispense with the dogs. The other list
would be for organ-grinders, who are, after all, only beggars of a
different type. This list would comprise the names of persons who are
musical and who would rather pay a quarter than listen to a hand-organ.
By a judicious arrangement with these people, carried on by
correspondence, the organ-grinder would be able to collect a large
revenue without venturing out, except occasionally to play before the
house of a delinquent subscriber in order to remind him that he had let
his contract expire. So, by slow degrees, we should find beggars doing
their work privately and not publicly, tramps circulating only among
those whose sympathies they have aroused, and organ-grinding only a
memory."
"The last, I think, would not come about," said Mr. Pedagog. "For there
are people who like the music of hand-organs."
"True--I'm one of 'em. I'd hire a hansom to follow a piano-organ about
the city if I could afford it, but as a rule the hand-organ lovers are
of the one-cent class," returned the Idiot. "The quarter class are
people who would rather not hear the hand-organ, and it is to them that
a grinder of business capacity would naturally address himself. It is
far pleasanter to stay at home and be paid large money for doing nothing
than to undertake a weary march through the city to receive small sums
for doing something. That's human nature, Mr. Pedagog."
"I presume it is," said Mr. Pedagog; "but I don't think your scheme is.
Human nature works, but your plan wouldn't."
"Well, of course," said the Idiot, "you never can tell about ideals. The
fact that an ideal is ideal is the chief argument against its amounting
to much. But I am confident that if my _Beggar's Don't_ and _Elite
Directory_ fail, my other book will go."
"You appear to have the writing of a library in mind," sneered the
Bibliomaniac.
"I have," said the Idiot. "If I write all the books I have in mind, the
public library will be a small affair beside mine."
"And your other book is to be what?" queried Mr. Whitechoker.
"_Plausible Tales for Beggars to Tell_," said the Idiot. "If the beggar
could only tell an interesting story he'd be surer of an ear in which to
whisper it. The usual beggar's tale is commonplace. There's no art in
it. There are no complications of absorbing interest. There is not a
soul in creation, I venture to say, but would be willing to have a
beggar stop right in the middle of his story. The tales I'd write for
them would be so interesting that the attention of the wayfarer would be
arrested at once. His mind would be riveted on the situation at once,
and, instead of hurrying along and trying to leave the beggar behind, he
would stop, button-hole him, and ask him to sit down on a convenient
doorstep and continue. If a beggar could have such a story to tell as
would enable him in the midst of one of its most exciting episodes to
whisper hoarsely into the ear of the man whose nickel he was seeking,
'The rest of this interesting story I will tell you in Central Park at
nine o'clock to-morrow night,' in such a manner as would impel the
listener to meet him in the Park the following evening, his fortune
would be made. Such a book I hope some day to write."
"I have no doubt," said Mr. Whitechoker, "that it will be an
entertaining addition to fiction."
"Nor have I," said the Idiot. "It will make the writers of to-day green
with envy, and, as for the beggars, if it is not generally known that
it is I and not they who are responsible for the work, the beggars will
shortly find themselves in demand as writers of fiction for the
magazines."
"And you?" suggested the Poet.
"I shall be content. Mere gratitude will force the beggars to send me
the magazine orders, and _I'll_ write their articles and be glad of the
opportunity, giving them ten per cent. of the profits. I know a man who
makes fifty dollars a year at magazine work, and one of my ambitions is
to rival the Banker-Poets and Dry Goods Essayists by achieving fame as
the Boarding-house Dickens."
VIII
Progressive Waffles
"I am afraid," said Mr. Pedagog, in a loud whisper to the Bibliomaniac,
"that the Idiot isn't feeling well this morning. He has eaten three
fish-cakes and a waffle without opening his mouth."
The Idiot looked up, and, gazing wearily at Mr. Pedagog for a moment,
shrugged his shoulders and ejaculated, "Tutt!"
"He's off," said the Bibliomaniac. "Whenever he says 'Tutt!' you can
make up your mind that his vocabulary is about to be loosed."
"If my vocabulary were as warped as some other vocabularies I might
mention," said the Idiot, helping himself to another waffle modelled
after the six of hearts, "I'd keep it in a cage. A man who observes that
I have eaten three fish-cakes and a waffle without opening my mouth
hasn't a very good command of language. He simply states as a fact what
is in reality an impossibility, granting that I eat with my mouth, which
I am told I do."
"You know what I mean," retorted Mr. Pedagog, impatiently. "I am so much
in your society that I have acquired the very bad habit of speaking in
the vernacular. When I say you haven't opened your mouth I do not refer
to the opening you make for the receipt of waffles and fish-cakes, but
for those massive openings which you require for your exuberant
loquacity. In other words, I mean that you haven't spoken a word for at
least three minutes, which is naturally an indication to us that you
aren't feeling well. You and talk are synonymous as far as we are
concerned."
"I _have_ been known to speak--that is true," said the Idiot. "That I am
not feeling very well this morning is also true. I have a headache."
"A what ache?" asked the Doctor, scornfully.
"A very bad headache," returned the Idiot, looking about him for a third
waffle.
"How singular!" said the Bibliomaniac. "Reminds me of a story I heard of
a man who had lost his foot. He'd had his foot shot off at Gettysburg,
and yet for years after he could feel the pangs of rheumatism in that
foot from which he had previously suffered."
"Pardon me for repeating," observed the Idiot. "But, as I have already
said, and as I expect often to have to say again, Tutt! I can't blame
you for thinking that I have no head, however. I find so little use for
one here that in most instances I do not obtrude it upon you."
"I haven't noticed any lack of head in the Idiot," put in the
School-master. "As a rule, I can agree to almost anything my friend the
Bibliomaniac says, but in this case I cannot accept his views. You have
a head. I have always said you had a head--in fact, that is what I
complain about chiefly, it is such a big head."
"Thank you," said the Idiot, ignoring the shaft. "I shall never forget
your kindness in coming to my aid, though I can't say that I think I
needed it. Even with a racking headache sustained by these delicious
waffles, I believe I can handle the Doctor and my bookish friend without
assistance. I am what the mathematicians would call an arithmetical
absurdity--I am the one that is equal to the two they represent. At
present, however, I prefer to let them talk on. I am too much absorbed
in thought and waffles to bandy words."
"If I had a headache," said Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog, without, it must be
said, in any way desiring to stem the waffle tide which was slowly but
surely eating into the profits of the week--"if I had a headache I
should not eat so many waffles, Mr. Idiot."
"I suppose I ought not to," replied the Idiot, "but I can't help it,
ma'am. Waffles are my weakness. Some men take to drink, some to gaming;
I seek forgetfulness of woe in waffles. Mr. Whitechoker, will you kindly
pass me that steaming ten of diamonds that is wasting its warmth upon
the desert air before you?"
Mr. Whitechoker, with a sigh which indicated that he had had his eye on
the ten of diamonds himself, did as he was requested.
"Many thanks," said the Idiot, transferring the waffle to his plate.
"Let me see--that is how many?"
"Five," said Mr. Pedagog.
"Eight," said the Bibliomaniac.
"Dear me!" ejaculated the Idiot. "Why can't you agree? I never eat less
than twelve waffles, and now that you have failed to keep tab I shall
have to begin all over again. Mary, bring me one dozen fresh waffles in
squads of four. This is an ideal breakfast, Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog."
"I am glad you are pleased," said the landlady, graciously. "My one aim
is to satisfy."
"You are a better shot than most women," said the Idiot. "I wonder why
it is," he added, "that waffles are so generally modelled after
playing-cards, and also why, having been modelled after playing-cards,
there is not a full pack?"
"Fifty-two waffles," said Mr. Whitechoker, "would be too many."
"Fifty-three, including the joker," said Mr. Pedagog.
"What do _you_ know about cards, John?" asked Mrs. Pedagog, severely.
The Idiot laughed.
"Did you ever hear that pretty little song of Gilbert and Sullivan's,
Mr. Poet, 'Things are seldom what they seem'?" he asked.
"Why shouldn't I know about playing-cards?" said Mr. Pedagog, acridly.
"Mr. Whitechoker seems to be aware that a pack holds fifty-two cards--if
he, why not I?"
"I--ah--I of course have to acquaint myself with many vicious things
with which I have very little sympathy," observed Mr. Whitechoker,
blandly. "I regard cards as an abomination."
"So do I," said Mr. Pedagog--"so do I. But even then I know a full
house--I should say a full pack from a--er--a--er--"
"Bob-tail flush," suggested the Idiot.
"Sir," said Mr. Pedagog, "I am not well up in poker terms."
"Then you ought to play," said the Idiot. "The man who doesn't know the
game has usually great luck. But I am sorry, Mrs. Pedagog, that you are
so strongly opposed to cards, for I was going to make a suggestion which
I think would promote harmony in our little circle on waffle days. If
you regard cards as wholly immoral, of course the suggestion is without
value, since it involves two complete packs of cards--one cardboard pack
and one waffle pack."
"I don't object to cards as cards, Mr. Idiot," said the landlady. "It is
the games people play with cards that I object to. They bring a great
deal of unnecessary misery into the world, and for that reason I think
it is better to avoid them altogether."
"That is quite true," said the Idiot. "They do bring about much
unhappiness. I know a young woman who became a victim of insomnia once
because in a series of ten games of old maid she got the odd card seven
times. Of course it wasn't entirely the cards' fault. Superstition had
something to do with it. In fact, I sometimes think the fault lies with
the people who play, and not with the cards. I owe much to the game of
whist. It taught me to control my tongue. I should have been a regular
talk-fiend if it hadn't been for whist."
Mr. Pedagog looked unutterable things at the Idiot.
"Are you laboring under the delusion that you have any control over your
tongue?" he asked, savagely.
"Most certainly," said the Idiot.
"Well, I'll have to make a note of that," said Mr. Pedagog. "I have a
friend who is making a collection of hallucinations."
"If you'll give me his address," said the Idiot, "I'll send him
thousands. For five dollars a dozen I'll invent hallucinations for him
that people ought to have but haven't."
"No," returned the School-master. "In his behalf, however, I thank you.
He collects only real hallucinations, and he finds there are plenty of
them without retaining a professional lunatic to supply him."
"Very well," said the Idiot, returning to his waffles. "If at any time
he finds the supply running short, I shall be glad to renew my offer."
"You haven't unfolded your Harmony Promoting Scheme for Waffle Days,"
suggested the Poet. "It has aroused my interest."