Kitabı oku: «The Inventions of the Idiot», sayfa 2
III
The Transatlantic Trolley Company
"If I were a millionaire," began the Idiot one Sunday morning, as he and his friends took their accustomed seats at the breakfast-table, "I would devote a tenth of my income to the poor, a tenth to children's fresh-air funds, and the balance to the education through travel of a dear and intimate friend of mine."
"That would be a generous distribution of your wealth," said Mr. Whitechoker, graciously. "But upon what would you live yourself?"
"I should stipulate in the bargain with my dear and intimate friend that we should be inseparable; that wherever he should go I should go, and that, of the funds devoted to his education through travel, one-half should be paid to me as my commission for letting him into a good thing."
"You certainly have good business sense," put in the Bibliomaniac. "I wish I had had when I was collecting rare editions."
"Collecting rare books and a good business sense seldom go together, I fancy," said the Idiot. "I began collecting books once, but I gave it up and took to collecting coins. I chose my coin and devoted my time to getting in that variety alone, and it has paid me."
"I don't exactly gather your meaning," said Mr. Whitechoker. "You chose your coin?"
"Precisely. I said, 'Here! Most coin collectors spend their time looking for one or two rare coins, for which, when they are found, they pay fabulous prices. The result is oftentimes penury. I, on the other hand, will look for coins of a common sort which do not command fabulous prices.' So I chose United States five-dollar gold pieces, irrespective of dates, for my collection, and the result is moderate affluence. I have between sixty and a hundred of them at my savings-bank, and when I have found it necessary to realize on them I have not experienced the slightest difficulty in forcing them back into circulation at cost."
"You are a wise Idiot," said the Bibliomaniac, settling back in his chair in a disgusted, tired sort of way. He had expected some sympathy from the Idiot as a fellow-collector, even though their aims were different. It is always difficult for a man whose ten-thousand-dollar library has brought six hundred dollars in the auction-room to find, even in the ranks of collectors, one who understands his woes and helps him bear the burden thereof by expressions of confidence in his sanity.
"Then you believe in travel, do you?" asked the Doctor.
"I believe there is nothing broadens the mind so much," returned the Idiot.
"But do you believe it will develop a mind where there isn't one?" asked the School-master, unpleasantly. "Or, to put it more favorably, don't you think there would be danger in taking the germ of a mind in a small head and broadening it until it runs the risk of finding itself confined to cramped quarters?"
"That is a question for a physician to answer," said the Idiot. "But, if I were you, I wouldn't travel if I thought there was any such danger."
"Tu quoque," retorted the School-master, "is not true repartee."
"I shall have to take your word for that," returned the Idiot, "since I have not a Latin dictionary with me, and all the Latin I know is to be found in the quotations in the back of my dictionary, like 'Status quo ante,' 'In vino veritas,' and 'Et tu, Brute.' However, as I said before, I'd like to travel, and I would if it were not that the sea and I are not on very good terms with each other. It makes me ill to cross the East River on the bridge, I'm so susceptible to sea-sickness."
"You'd get over that in a very few days," said the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally imbibed. "I have crossed the ocean a dozen times, and I'm never sea-sick after the third day out."
"Ah, but those three days!" said the Idiot. "They must resemble the three days of grace on a note that you know you couldn't pay if you had three years of grace. I couldn't stand them, I am afraid. Why, only last summer I took a drive off in the country, and the motion of the wagon going over the thank-ye-marms in the road made me so sea-sick before I'd gone a mile that I wanted to lie down and die. I think I should have done so if the horse hadn't run away and forced me to ride back home whether I wanted to or not."
"You ought to fight that," said the Doctor. "By-and-by, if you give way to a weakness of that sort, the creases in your morning newspaper will affect you similarly as you read it. If you ever have a birthday, let us know, and we'll help you to overcome the tendency by buying you a baby-jumper for you to swing around in every morning until you get used to the motion."
"It would be more to the purpose," replied the Idiot, "if you as a physician would invent a preventive of sea-sickness. I'd buy a bottle and go abroad at once on my coin collection if you would guarantee it to kill or to cure instantaneously."
"There is such a nostrum," said the Doctor.
"There is, indeed," put in the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally imbibes. "I've tried it."
"And were you sea-sick?" asked the Doctor.
"I never knew," replied the Genial Old Gentleman. "It made me so ill that I never thought to inquire what was the matter with me. But one thing is certain, I'll take my sea-voyages straight after this."
"I'd like to go by rail," said the Idiot, after a moment's thought.
"That is a desire quite characteristic of you," said the School-master. "It is so probable that you could. Why not say that you'd like to cross the Atlantic on a tight-rope?"
"Because I have no such ambition," replied the Idiot. "Though it might be fun if the tight-rope were a trolley-wire, and one could sit comfortably in a spacious cab while speeding over the water. I should think that would be exhilarating enough. Just imagine how fine it would be on a stormy day to sit looking out of your cab-window far above the surface of the raging and impotent sea, skipping along at electric speed, and daring the waves to do their worst – that would be bliss."
"And so practical," growled the Bibliomaniac.
"Bliss rarely is practical," said the Idiot. "Bliss is a sort of mugwump blessing – too full of the ideal and too barren in practicability."
"Well," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I don't know why we should say that trolley-cars between New York and London never can be. If we had told our grandfathers a hundred years ago that a cable for the transmission of news could be laid under the sea, they would have laughed us to scorn."
"That's true," said the School-master. "But we know more than our grandfathers did."
"Well, rather," interrupted the Idiot. "My great-grandfather, who died in 1799, had never even heard of Andrew Jackson, and if you had asked him what he thought of Darwin, he'd have thought you were guying him."
"Respect for age, sir," retorted Mr. Pedagog, "restrains me from characterizing your great-grandfather, if, as you intimate, he knew less than you do. However, apart from the comparative lack of knowledge in the Idiot's family, Mr. Whitechoker, you must remember that with the advance of the centuries we have ourselves developed a certain amount of brains – enough, at least, to understand that there is a limit even to the possibilities of electricity. Now, when you say that just because an Atlantic cable would have been regarded as an object of derision in the eighteenth century, we should not deride one who suggests the possibility of a marine trolley-road between London and New York in the twentieth century, it appears to me that you are talking – er – talking – I don't like to say nonsense to one of your cloth, but – "
"Through his hat is the idiom you are trying to recall, I think, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "Mr. Whitechoker is talking through his hat is what you mean to say?"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Idiot," said the School-master; "but when I find that I need your assistance in framing my conversation, I shall – er – I shall give up talking. I mean to say that I do not think Mr. Whitechoker can justify his conclusions, and talks without having given the subject concerning which he has spoken due reflection. The cable runs along the solid foundation of the bed of the sea. It is a simple matter, comparatively, but a trolley-wire stretched across the ocean by the simplest rules of gravitation could not be made to stay up."
"No doubt you are correct," said Mr. Whitechoker, meekly. "I did not mean that I expected ever to see a trolley-road across the sea, but I did mean to say that man has made such wonderful advances in the past hundred years that we cannot really state the limit of his possibilities. It is manifest that no one to-day can devise a plan by means of which such a wire could be carried, but – "
"I fear you gentlemen would starve as inventors," said the Idiot. "What's the matter with balloons?"
"Balloons for what?" retorted Mr. Pedagog.
"For holding up the trolley-wires," replied the Idiot. "It is perfectly feasible. Fasten the ends of your wire in London and New York, and from coast to coast station two lines of sufficient strength to keep the wire raised as far above the level of the sea as you require. That's simple enough."
"And what, pray, in this frenzy of the elements, this raging storm of which you have spoken," said Mr. Pedagog, impatiently – "what would then keep your balloons from blowing away?"
"The trolley-wire, of course," said the Idiot. Mr. Pedagog lapsed into a hopelessly wrathful silence for a moment, and then he said:
"Well, I sincerely hope your plan is adopted, and that the promoters will make you superintendent, with an office in the mid-ocean balloon."
"Thanks for your good wishes, Mr. Pedagog," the Idiot answered. "If they are realized I shall remember them, and show my gratitude to you by using my influence to have you put in charge of the gas service. Meantime, however, it seems to me that our ocean steamships could be developed along logical lines so that the trip from New York to Liverpool could be made in a very much shorter period of time than is now required."
"We are getting back to the common-sense again," said the Bibliomaniac. "That is a proposition to which I agree. Ten years ago eight days was considered a good trip. With the development of the twin-screw steamer the time has been reduced to approximately six days."
"Or a saving, really, of two days because of the extra screw," said the Idiot.
"Precisely," observed the Bibliomaniac.
"So that, provided there are extra screws enough, there isn't any reason why the trip should not be made in two or three hours."
"Ah – what was that?" said the Bibliomaniac. "I don't exactly follow you."
"One extra screw, you say, has saved two days?"
"Yes."
"Then two extra screws would save four days, three would save six days, and five extra screws would send the boat over in approximately no time," said the Idiot. "So, if it takes a man two hours to succumb to sea-sickness, a boat going over in less than that time would eliminate sea-sickness; more people would go; boats could run every hour, and Mr. Whitechoker could have a European trip every week without deserting his congregation."
"Inestimable boon!" cried Mr. Whitechoker, with a laugh.
"Wouldn't it be!" said the Idiot. "Unless I change my mind, I think I shall stay in this country until this style of greyhound is perfected. Then, gentlemen, I shall tear myself away from you, and seek knowledge in foreign pastures."
"Well, I am sure," said Mr. Pedagog – "I am sure that we all hope you will change your mind."
"Then you want me to go abroad?" said the Idiot.
"No," said Mr. Pedagog. "No – not so much that as that we feel if you were to change your mind the change could not fail to be for the better. A mind like yours ought to be changed."
"Well, I don't know," said the Idiot. "I suppose it would be a good thing if I broke it up into smaller denominations, but I've had it so long that I have become attached to it; but there is one thing about it, there is plenty of it, so that in case any of you gentlemen find your own insufficient I shall be only too happy to give you a piece of it without charge. Meanwhile, if Mrs. Pedagog will kindly let me have my bill for last week, I'll be obliged."
"It won't be ready until to-morrow, Mr. Idiot," said the landlady, in surprise.
"I'm sorry," said the Idiot, rising. "My scribbling-paper has run out. I wanted to put in this morning writing a poem on the back of it."
"A poem? What about?" said Mr. Pedagog, with an irritating chuckle.
"It was to be a triolet on Omniscience," said the Idiot. "And, strange to say, sir, you were to be the hero, if by any possibility I could squeeze you into a French form."
IV
The Incorporation of the Idiot
"How is business these days, Mr. Idiot?" asked the Poet, as the one addressed laid down the morning paper with a careworn expression on his face. "Good, I hope?"
"Fair, only," replied the Idiot. "My honored employer was quite blue about things yesterday, and if I hadn't staved him off I think he'd have proposed swapping places with me. He has said quite often of late that I had the best of it, because all I had to earn was my salary, whereas he had to earn my salary and his own living besides. I offered to give him ten per cent. of my salary for ten per cent. of his living, but he said he guessed he wouldn't, adding that I seemed to be as great an Idiot as ever."
"I fancy he was right there," said Mr. Pedagog. "I should really like to know how a man of your peculiar mental construction can be of the slightest practical value to a banker. I ask the question in all kindness, too, meaning to cast no reflections whatever upon either you or your employer. You are a roaring success in your own line, which is all any one could ask of you."
"There's hominy for you, as the darky said to the hotel guest," returned the Idiot. "Any person who says that discord exists at this table doesn't know what he is talking about. Even the oil and the vinegar mix in the caster – that is, I judge they do from the oleaginous appearance of the vinegar. But I am very useful to my employer, Mr. Pedagog. He says frequently that he wouldn't know what not to do if it were not for me."
"Aren't you losing control of your tongue?" queried the Bibliomaniac, looking at the Idiot in wonderment. "Don't you mean that he says he wouldn't know what to do if it were not for you?"
"No, I don't," said the Idiot. "I never lose control of my tongue. I meant exactly what I said. Mr. Barlow told me, in so many words, that if it were not for me he wouldn't know what not to do. He calls me his Back Action Patent Reversible Counsellor. If he is puzzled over an intricate point he sends for me and says: 'Such and such a thing being the case, Mr. Idiot, what would you do? Don't think about it, but tell me on impulse. Your thoughtless opinions are worth more to me than I can tell you.' So I tell him on impulse just what I should do, whereupon he does the other thing, and comes out ahead in nine cases out of ten."
"And you confess it, eh?" said the Doctor, with a curve on his lip.
"I certainly do," said the Idiot. "The world must take me for what I am. I'm not going to be one thing for myself, and build up a fictitious Idiot for the world. The world calls you men of pretence conceited, whereas, by pretending to be something that you are not, you give to the world what I should call convincing evidence that you are not at all conceited, but rather somewhat ashamed of what you know yourselves to be. Now, I rather believe in conceit – real honest pride in yourself as you know yourself to be. I am an Idiot, and it is my ambition to be a perfect Idiot. If I had been born a jackass, I should have endeavored to be a perfect jackass."
"You'd have found it easy," said Mr. Pedagog, dryly.
"Would I?" said the Idiot. "I'll have to take your word for it, sir, for I have never been a jackass, and so cannot form an opinion on the subject."
"Pride goeth before a fall," said Mr. Whitechoker, seeing a chance to work in a moral reflection.
"Exactly," said the Idiot. "Wherefore I admire pride. It is a danger-signal that enables man to avoid the fall. If Adam had had any pride he'd never have fallen – but speaking about my controlling my tongue, it is not entirely out of the range of possibilities that I shall lose control of myself."
"I expected that, sooner or later," said the Doctor. "Is it to be Bloomingdale or a private mad-house you are going to?"
"Neither," replied the Idiot, calmly. "I shall stay here. For, as the poet says,
"''Tis best to bear the ills we hov
Nor fly to those we know not of.'"
"Ho!" jeered the Poet. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that I do not think you are a success in quotation. Hamlet spoke those lines differently."
"Shakespeare's Hamlet did. My little personal Shakespeare makes his Hamlet an entirely different, less stilted sort of person," said the Idiot.
"You have a personal Shakespeare, have you?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
"Of course I have," the Idiot answered. "Haven't you?"
"I have not," said the Bibliomaniac, shortly.
"Well, I'm sorry for you then," sighed the Idiot, putting a fried potato in his mouth. "Very sorry. I wouldn't give a cent for another man's ideals. I want my own ideals, and I have my own ideal of Shakespeare. In fancy, Shakespeare and I have roamed over the fields of Warwickshire together, and I've had more fun imagining the kind of things he and I would have said to each other than I ever got out of his published plays, few of which have escaped the ungentle hands of the devastators."
"You mean commentators, I imagine," said Mr. Pedagog.
"I do," said the Idiot. "It's all the same, whether you call them commentors or devastators. The result is the same. New editions of Shakespeare are issued every year, and people buy them to see not what Shakespeare has written, but what new quip some opinionated devastator has tried to fasten on his memory. In a hundred years from now the works of Shakespeare will differ as much from what they are to-day as to-day's versions differ from what they were when Shakespeare wrote them. It's mighty discouraging to one like myself who would like to write works."
"You are convicted out of your own mouth," said the Bibliomaniac. "A moment since you wasted your pity on me because I didn't mutilate Shakespeare so as to make him my own, and now you attack the commentators for doing precisely the same thing. They're as much entitled to their opinions as you are to yours."
"Did you ever learn to draw parallels when you were in school?" asked the Idiot.
"I did, and I think I've made a perfect parallel in this case. You attack people in one breath for what you commiserate me for not doing in another," said the Bibliomaniac.
"Not exactly," said the Idiot. "I don't object to the commentators for commentating, but I do object to their putting out their versions of Shakespeare as Shakespeare. I might as well have my edition published. It certainly would be popular, especially where, in 'Julius Cæsar,' I introduce five Cassiuses and have them all fall on their swords together with military precision, like a 'Florodora' sextette, for instance."
"Well, I hope you'll never print such an atrocity as that," cried the Bibliomaniac, hotly. "If there's one thing in literature without excuse and utterly contemptible it is the comic version, the parody of a masterpiece."
"You need have no fear on that score," returned the Idiot. "I haven't time to rewrite Shakespeare, and, since I try never to stop short of absolute completeness, I shall not embark on the enterprise. If I do, however, I shall not do as the commentators do, and put on my title-page 'Shakespeare. Edited by Willie Wilkins,' but 'Shakespeare As He Might Have Been, Had His Plays Been Written By An Idiot.'"
"I have no doubt that you could do great work with 'Hamlet,'" observed the Poet.
"I think so myself," said the Idiot. "But I shall never write 'Hamlet.' I don't want to have my fair fame exposed to the merciless hands of the devastators."
"I shall never cease to regret," said Mr. Pedagog, after a moment's thought, "that you are so timid. I should very much like to see 'The Works of the Idiot.' I admit that my desire is more or less a morbid one. It is quite on a plane with the feeling that prompts me to wish to see that unfortunate man on the Bowery who exhibits his forehead, which is sixteen inches high, beginning with his eyebrows, for a dime. The strange, the bizarre in nature, has always interested me. The more unnatural the nature, the more I gloat upon it. From that point of view I do most earnestly hope that when you are inspired with a work you will let me at least see it."
"Very well," answered the Idiot. "I shall put your name down as a subscriber to the Idiot Monthly Magazine, which some of my friends contemplate publishing. That is what I mean when I say I may shortly lose control of myself. These friends of mine profess to have been so impressed by my dicta that they have asked me if I would allow myself to be incorporated into a stock company, the object of which should be to transform my personality into printed pages. Hardly a day goes by but I devote a portion of my time to a poem in which the thought is conspicuous either by its absence or its presence. My schemes for the amelioration of the condition of the civilized are notorious among those who know me; my views on current topics are eagerly sought for; my business instinct, as I have already told you, is invaluable to my employer, and my fiction is unsurpassed in its fictitiousness. What more is needed for a magazine? You have the poetry, the philanthropy, the man of to-day, the fictitiousness, and the business instinct necessary for the successful modern magazine all concentrated in one person. Why not publish that person, say my friends, and I, feeling as I do that no man has a right to the selfish enjoyment of the great gifts nature has bestowed upon him, of course can only agree. I am to be incorporated with a capital stock of five hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand dollars' worth of myself I am to be permitted to retain; the rest my friends will subscribe for at fifty cents on the dollar. If any of you want shares in the enterprise I have no doubt you can be accommodated."
"I'm obliged to you for the opportunity," said the Doctor. "But I have to be very careful about things I take stock in, and in general I regard you as a thing in which I should prefer not to take stock."
"And I," observed Mr. Pedagog – "I have never up to this time taken any stock in you, and I make it a rule to be guided in life by precedent. Therefore I must be counted out."
"I'll wait until you are listed at the Stock Exchange," put in the Bibliomaniac, "while thanking you just the same for the chance."
"You can put me down for one share, to be paid for in poetry," said the Poet, with a wink at the Idiot.
"You'll never make good," said the Idiot, slyly.
"And I," said the Genial Old Gentleman who occasionally imbibes, "shall be most happy to take five shares to be paid for in advice and high-balls. Moreover, if your company needs good-will to establish its enterprise, you may count upon me for unlimited credit."
"Oh, as for that," said the Idiot, "I have plenty of good-will. Even Mr. Pedagog supplies me with more of it than I deserve, though by no means with all that I desire."
"That good-will is yours as an individual, Mr. Idiot," returned the School-master. "As a corporation, however, I cannot permit you to trade upon me even for that. Your value is, in my eyes, entirely too fluctuating."
"And it is in the fluctuating stock that the great fortunes are made, 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."
