The Inventions of the Idiot. Bangs John Kendrick
and bonnets and things for the same cooks, instead of for the cannibals, it would keep them good-natured."
"Splendid scheme!" said the Doctor. "So practical. Your brain must weigh half an ounce."
"I've never had it weighed," said the Idiot, "but, I fancy, it's a good one. It's the only one I have, anyhow, and it's done me good service, and shows no signs of softening. But, returning to the cooks, good-nature is as essential to the making of a good cook as are apples to the making of a dumpling. You can't associate the word dumpling with ill-nature, and just as the poet throws himself into his work, and as he is of a cheerful or a mournful disposition, so does his work appear cheerful or mournful, so do the productions of a cook take on the attributes of their maker. A dyspeptic cook will prepare food in a manner so indigestible that it were ruin to partake of it. A light-hearted cook will make light bread; a pessimistic cook will serve flour bricks in lieu thereof."
"I think possibly you are right when you say that," said the Doctor. "I have myself observed that the people who sing at their work do the best work."
"But the worst singing," growled the School-master.
"That may be true," put in the Idiot; "but you cannot expect a cook on sixteen dollars a month to be a prima-donna. Now, if Mr. Whitechoker will undertake to start a sewing-circle in his church for people who don't care to wear clothing, but to sow the seeds of concord and good cookery throughout the kitchens of this land, I am prepared to prophesy that at the end of the year there will be more happiness and less depression in this part of the world; and once eliminate dyspepsia from our midst, and get civilization and happiness controvertible terms, then you will find your foreign missionary funds waxing so fat that instead of the amateur garments for the heathen you now send them, you will be able to open an account at Worth's and Poole's for every barbarian in creation. The scheme for the sewing on of suspender-buttons and the miscellaneous mending that needs to be done for lone-lorn savages like myself might be left in abeyance until the culinary scheme has been established. Bachelors constitute a class, a small class only, of humanity, but the regeneration of cooks is a universal need."
"I think your scheme is certainly a picturesque one and novel," said Mr. Whitechoker. "There seems to be a good deal in it. Don't you think so, Mr. Pedagog?"
"Yes – I do," said Mr. Pedagog, wearily. "A great deal – of language."
And amid the laugh at his expense which followed, the Idiot, joining in, departed.
II
A Suggestion for the Cable-cars
"Heigh-ho!" sighed the Idiot, rubbing his eyes sleepily. "This is a weary world."
"What? This from you?" smiled the Poet. "I never expected to hear that plaint from a man of your cheerful disposition."
"Humph!" said the Idiot, with difficulty repressing a yawn. "Humph! and I may add, likewise, tut! What do you take me for – an insulated sun-beam? I can't help it if shadows camp across my horizon occasionally. I wouldn't give a cent for the man who never had his moments of misery. It takes night to enable us to appreciate daytime. Misery is a foil necessary to the full appreciation of joy. I'm glad I am sort of down in the mouth to-day. I'll be all right to-morrow, and I'll enjoy to-morrow all the more for to-day's megrim. But for the present, I repeat, this is a weary world."
"Oh, I don't think so," observed the School-master. "The world doesn't seem to me to betray any signs of weariness. It got to work at the usual hour this morning, and, as far as I can judge, has been revolving at the usual rate of speed ever since."
"The Idiot's mistake is a common one," put in the Doctor. "I find it frequently in my practice."
"That's a confession," retorted the Idiot. "Do you find out these mistakes in your practice before or after the death of the patient?"
"That mistake," continued the Doctor, paying apparently little heed to the Idiot's remark – "that mistake lies in the Idiot's assumption that he is himself the world. He regards himself as the earth, as all of life, and, because he happens to be weary, the world is a weary one."
"It isn't a fatal disease, is it?" queried the Idiot, anxiously. "I am not likely to become so impressed with that idea, for instance, that I shall have to be put in a padded cell and manacled so that I may not turn perpetual handsprings under the hallucination that, being the world, it is my duty to revolve?"
"No," replied the Doctor, with a laugh. "No, indeed. That is not at all likely to happen, but I think it would be a good idea if you were to carry the hallucination out far enough to put a cake of ice on your head, assuming that to be the north pole, and cool off that brain of yours."
"That is a good idea," returned the Idiot; "and if Mary will bring me the ice that was used to cool the coffee this morning, I shall be pleased to try the experiment. Meanwhile, this is a weary world."
"Then why under the canopy don't you leave it and go to some other world?" snapped Mr. Pedagog. "You are under no obligation to remain here. With a river on either side of the city, and a New York Juggernaut Company, Unlimited, running trolley-cars up and down two of our more prominent highways, suicide is within the reach of all. Of course, we should be sorry to lose you, in a way, but I have known men to recover from even greater afflictions than that."
"Thank you for the suggestion," replied the Idiot, transferring four large, porous buckwheat-cakes to his plate. "Thank you very much, but I have a pleasanter and more lingering method of suicide right here. Death by buckwheat-cakes is like being pierced by a Toledo blade. You do not realize the terrors of your situation until you cease to be susceptible to them. Furthermore, I do not believe in suicide. It is, in my judgment, the worst crime a man can commit, and I cannot but admire the remarkable discernment evinced by the Fates in making of it its own inevitable capital punishment. A man may commit murder and escape death, but in the commission of suicide he is sure of execution. Just as Virtue is its own reward, so is Suicide its own amercement."
"Been reading the dictionary again?" asked the Poet.
"No, not exactly," said the Idiot, with a smile, "but – it's a kind of joke on me, I suppose – I have just been stuck, to use a polite term, on a book called Roget's Thesaurus, and, if I want to get hold of a new word that will increase my seeming importance to the community, I turn to it. That's where I got 'amercement.' I don't hold that its use in this especial case is beyond cavil – that's another Thesaurian term – but I don't suppose any one here would notice that fact. It goes here, and I shall not use it elsewhere."
"I am interested to know how you ever came to be the owner of a Thesaurus," said the School-master, with a grim smile at the idea of the Idiot having such a book in his possession. "Except on the score of affinities. You are both very wordy."
"Meaning pleonastic, I presume," retorted the Idiot.
"I beg your pardon?" said the School-master.
"Never mind," said the Idiot. "I won't press the analogy, but I will say that those who are themselves periphrastic should avoid criticising others for being ambaginous."
"I think you mean ambiguous," said the School-master, elevating his eyebrows in triumph.
"I thought you'd think that," retorted the Idiot. "That's why I used the word 'ambaginous.' I'll lend you my dictionary to freshen up your phraseology. Meanwhile, I'll tell you how I happened to get a Thesaurus. I thought it was an animal, and when I saw that a New York bookseller had a lot of them marked down from two dollars to one, I sent and got one. I thought it was strange for a bookseller to be selling rare animals, but that was his business, not mine; and as I was anxious to see what kind of a creature a Thesaurus was, I invested. When I found out it was a book and not a tame relic of the antediluvian animal kingdom, I thought I wouldn't say anything about it, but you people here are so inquisitive you've learned my secret."
"And wasn't it an animal?" asked Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog.
"My dear – my dear!" ejaculated Mr. Pedagog. "Pray – ah – I beg of you, do not enter into this discussion."
"No, Mrs. Pedagog," observed the Idiot, "it was not. It was nothing more than a book, which, when once you have read it, you would not be without, since it gives your vocabulary