"I've just been reading a book," began the Idiot.
"I thought you looked rather pale," said the School-master.
"Yes," returned the Idiot, cheerfully, "it made me feel pale. It was
about the pleasures of country life; and when I contrasted rural
blessedness as it was there depicted with urban life as we live it, I
felt as if my youth were being thrown away. I still feel as if I were
wasting my sweetness on the desert air."
"Why don't you move?" queried the Bibliomaniac, suggestively.
"If I were purely selfish I should do so at once, but I am, like my good
friend Mr. Whitechoker, a slave to duty. I deem it my duty to stay here
to keep the School-master fully informed in the various branches of
knowledge which are day by day opened up, many of which seem to be so
far beyond the reach of one of his conservative habits; to assist Mr.
Whitechoker in his crusades against vice at this table and elsewhere; to
give the Bibliomaniac the benefit of my advice in regard to those
precious little tomes he no longer buys--to make life worth the living
for all of you, to say nothing of enabling Mrs. Smithers to keep up the
extraordinarily high standard of this house by means of the hard-earned
stipend I pay to her every Monday morning."
"Every Monday?" queried the School-master.
"Every Monday," returned the Idiot. "That is, of course, every Monday
that I pay. The things one gets to eat in the country, the air one
breathes, the utter freedom from restraint, the thousand and more things
one enjoys in the suburbs that are not attainable here--it is these that
make my heart yearn for the open."
[Illustration: "'A LITTLE GARDEN OF MY OWN, WHERE I COULD RAISE AN
OCCASIONAL CAN OF TOMATOES'"]
"Well, it's all rot," said the School-master, impatiently. "Country life
is ideal only in books. Books do not tell of running for trains through
blinding snowstorms; writers do not expatiate on the delights of
waking on cold winter nights and finding your piano and parlor furniture
afloat because of bursted pipes, with the plumber, like Sheridan at
Winchester, twenty miles away. They are dumb on the subject of the
ecstasy one feels when pushing a twenty-pound lawn-mower up and down a
weed patch at the end of a wearisome hot summer's day. They are
silent--"
"Don't get excited, Mr. Pedagog, please," interrupted the Idiot. "I am
not contemplating leaving you and Mrs. Smithers, but I do pine for a
little garden of my own, where I could raise an occasional can of
tomatoes. I dream sometimes of getting milk fresh from the pump, instead
of twenty-four hours after it has been drawn, as we do here. In my
musings it seems to me to be almost idyllic to have known a spring
chicken in his infancy; to have watched a hind-quarter of lamb
gambolling about its native heath before its muscles became adamant, and
before chopped-up celery tops steeped in vinegar were poured upon it in
the hope of hypnotizing boarders into the belief that spring lamb and
mint-sauce lay before them. What care I how hard it is to rise every
morning before six in winter to thaw out the boiler, so long as the
night coming finds me seated in the genial glow of the gas log! What man
is he that would complain of having to bale out his cellar every week,
if, on the other hand, that cellar gains thereby a fertility that keeps
its floor sheeny, soft, and green--an interior tennis-court--from spring
to spring, causing the gladsome click of the lawn-mower to be heard
within its walls all through the still watches of the winter day? I
tell you, sir, it is the life to lead, that of our rural brother. I do
not believe that in this whole vast city there is a cellar like that--an
in-door garden-patch, as it were."
[Illustration: "'A HIND-QUARTER OF LAMB GAMBOLLING
ABOUT ITS NATIVE HEATH'"]
"No," returned the Doctor; "and it is a good thing there isn't. There is
enough sickness in the world without bringing any of your _rus_ ideas
_in urbe_. I've lived in the country, sir, and I assure you it is not
what it is written up to be. Country life is misery, melancholy, and
malaria."
"You must have struck a profitable section, Doctor," returned the Idiot,
taking possession of three steaming buckwheat cakes to the dismay of Mr.
Whitechoker, who was about to reach out for them himself. "And I should
have supposed that your good business sense would have restrained you
from leaving."
"Then the countryman is poor--always poor," continued the Doctor,
ignoring the Idiot's sarcastic comments.
"Ah! that accounts for it," observed the Idiot. "I see why you did not
stay; for what shall it profit a man to save a patient if practice, like
virtue, is to be its own reward?"
"Your suggestion, sir," retorted the Doctor, "betrays an unhealthy frame
of mind."
"That's all right, Doctor," returned the Idiot; "but please do not
diagnose the case any further. I can't afford an expert opinion as to my
mental condition. But to return to our subject: you two gentlemen appear
to have had unhappy experiences in country life--quite different from
those of a friend of mine who owns a farm. He doesn't have to run for
trains; he is independent of plumbers, because the only pipes in his
house are for smoking purposes. The farm produces corn enough to keep
his family supplied all the year round and to sell a balance at a
profit. Oats and wheat are harvested to an extent which keeps the cattle
and declares dividends besides. He never suffers from the cold or heat.
He is never afraid of losing his house or barns by fire, because the
whole fire department of the neighboring village is, to a man, in love
with the house-keeper's daughter, and is always on hand in force. The
chickens are the envy and pride of the county, and there are so many of
them that they have to take turns in going to roost. The pigs are the
most intelligent of their kind, and are so happy they never grunt. In
fact, everything is lovely and cheap, the only thing that hangs high
being the goose."
[Illustration: "'THE GLADSOME CLICK OF THE LAWN-MOWER'"]
"Quite an ideal, no doubt," put in the School-master, scornfully. "I
suppose his is one of those model farms with steam-pipes under the walks
to melt the snow in winter, and of course there is a vein of coal
growing right up into his furnace ready to be lit."
"Yes," observed the Bibliomaniac; "and no doubt the chickens lay eggs in
every style--poached, fried, scrambled, and boiled. The weeds in the
garden grow so fast, I suppose, that they pull themselves up by the
roots; and if there is anything left undone at the end of the day I
presume tramps in dress suits, and courtly in manner, spring out of the
ground and finish up for him."
"I'll bet he's not on good terms with his neighbors if he has everything
you speak of in such perfection. These farmers get frightfully jealous
of each other," asserted the Doctor, with a positiveness that seemed to
be born of experience.
"He never quarrelled with one of them in his life," returned the Idiot.
"He doesn't know them well enough to quarrel with them; in fact, I doubt
if he ever sees them at all. He's very exclusive."
"Of course he is a born farmer to get everything the way he has it,"
suggested Mrs. Smithers.
"No, he isn't. He's a broker," said the Idiot, "and a very successful
one. I see him on the street every day."
"Does he employ a man to run the farm?" asked the Clergyman.
"No," returned the Idiot, "he has too much sense and too few dollars to
do any such foolish thing as that."
"It must be one of those self-winding stock farms," put in the
School-master, scornfully. "But I don't see how he can be a successful
broker and make money off his farm at the same time. Your statements do
not agree, either. You said he never had to run for trains."
"Well, he never has," returned the Idiot, calmly. "He never goes near
his farm. He doesn't have to. It's leased to the husband of the
house-keeper whose daughter has a crush on the fire department. He takes
his pay in produce, and gets more than if he took it in cash on the
basis of the New York vegetable market."
"Then you have got us into an argument about country life that ends--"
began the School-master, indignantly.
"That ends where it leaves off," retorted the Idiot, departing with a
smile on his lips.
"He's an Idiot from Idaho," asserted the Bibliomaniac.
"Yes; but I'm afraid idiocy is a little contagious," observed the
Doctor, with a grin and sidelong glance at the School-master.
X
"Good-morning, gentlemen," said the Idiot, as he seated himself at the
breakfast-table and glanced over his mail.
"Good-morning yourself," returned the Poet. "You have an unusually large
number of letters this morning. All checks, I hope?"
"Yes," replied the Idiot. "All checks of one kind or another. Mostly
checks on ambition--otherwise, rejections from my friends the editors."
"You don't mean to say that you write for the papers?" put in the
School-master, with an incredulous smile.
"I try to," returned the Idiot, meekly. "If the papers don't take 'em, I
find them useful in curing my genial friend who imbibes of insomnia."
"What do you write--advertisements?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
"No. Advertisement writing is an art to which I dare not aspire. It's
too great a tax on the brain," replied the Idiot.
"Tax on what?" asked the Doctor. He was going to squelch the Idiot.
"The brain," returned the latter, not ready to be squelched. "It's a
little thing people use to think with, Doctor. I'd advise you to get
one." Then he added, "I write poems and foreign letters mostly."
"I did not know that you had ever been abroad," said the clergyman.
[Illustration: "'YOU DON'T MEAN TO SAY THAT YOU WRITE FOR THE
PAPERS?'"]
"I never have," returned the Idiot.
"Then how, may I ask," said Mr. Whitechoker, severely, "how can you
write foreign letters?"
"With my stub pen, of course," replied the Idiot. "How did you
suppose--with an oyster-knife?"
The clergyman sighed.
"I should like to hear some of your poems," said the Poet.
"Very well," returned the Idiot. "Here's one that has just returned from
the _Bengal Monthly_. It's about a writer who died some years ago.
Shakespeare's his name. You've heard of Shakespeare, haven't you, Mr.
Pedagog?" he added.
Then, as there was no answer, he read the verse, which was as follows: