The Idiot at Home

by John Kendrick Bangs

  VI

  THE IDIOT'S GARDEN

  "I should think, my dear Idiot," Mr. Pedagog observed one summerevening, as his host stood upon the back piazza of "Castle Idiot," asthey had come to call the dwelling-place of their friend, "that with allthis space you have about you, you would devote some of it to a garden."

  "Why, I do," said the Idiot. "I've got a small patch down there behindthe tennis-court, fifty by one hundred feet, under cultivation. Thestuff we get is almost as good as the average canned goods, too. We hada stalk of asparagus the other night that was magnificent as far as itwent. It was edible for quite a sixteenth of an inch, or at least I wastold so. That portion of it had already been nibbled off by my sonThomas while it was resting in the pantry waiting to be served.However, the inedible end which arrived was quite sturdy, and might havestood between my family and starvation if the necessity had arisen."

  "One stalk of asparagus is a pretty poor crop, I should say," observedthe lawyer, with a laugh.

  "You might think so," said the Idiot. "But everything in the world iscomparative, after all. Ants build ant-hills which are several feetlower than the Alps, and yet they are monumental, considering that theywere made by ants. All things considered, Mrs. Idiot and I were proud ofour asparagus crop, and distinctly regretted that it did not survive tobe served in proper state at dinner. If I remember rightly, Thomas wasseverely reprimanded for his privateering act in biting off the greenend of it before I had a chance to see it."

  "'Twasn't specially good," said Tommy, loftily.

  "I am very glad it was not, my son," said the Idiot. "I should be verysorry to hear that you had derived the slightest sensation of pleasurefrom your piratical and utterly inexcusable act."

  "Do you usually serve so small a portion of the product of yourgarden?" asked Mr. Brief.

  "'WE SPRINKLED IT IN PERSON'"]

  "'HE DISCOVERED THE ONE PERFECT STALK'"]

  "Sometimes we don't serve anything at all from it," said the Idiot,"which you will observe is smaller yet. In this instance Mrs. Idiotintended a little surprise for me. We had struggled with thatasparagus-bed for some time. The madame had studied up asparagus in herbotany. I had looked it up in the cyclopedia and the Century dictionary.We had ordered it in various styles when we dined out at the New Yorkhotels, and we had frequently bought cans of it in order to familiarizeourselves more intimately with its general personal appearance. Then weconsulted people we thought would be likely to know how to obtain thebest results, and what they told us to do we did, but somehow it didn'twork. Our asparagus crop languished. We sprinkled it in person. We putall sorts of garden cosmetics on it to improve its complexion, but itseemed hopeless, and finally when I footed up the asparagus item in myaccount-book, and discovered that we had paid out enough money withoutresults of a satisfactory nature to have kept us in canned asparagus forfour years, we got discouraged, and resolved to give it up. It waswhile Michael, our gardener, was removing the evidences of our failurethat he discovered the one perfect stalk, and like the honest oldgardener that he is, he immediately brought it into the house andpresented it to my wife. She naturally rejoiced that our efforts had notbeen entirely vain, and in her usual spirit of self-sacrifice had thestalk cooked as a surprise for me. As I have told you, that smallcircumstance Thomas, over which we seem to have no control, got ahead ofus--"

  "You was surprised, wasn't you, pa?" demanded the boy.

  "Somewhat, my son," said the Idiot, "but not in the way your mother haddesigned, exactly."

  "Is asparagus the extent of your gardening?" queried Mrs. Pedagog.

  "Oh no, indeed!" replied Mrs. Idiot. "We've had peas and beets and beansand egg-plant and corn--almost everything, in fact, including potatoes."

  "Yes, ma'am," said the Idiot, "almost everything, including potatoes.Our pea crop was lovely. We had five podfuls for dinner on the Fourth ofJuly, and the children celebrated the day by podding them for thecook. They popped open almost as noisily as a torpedo. It was reallyvery enjoyable. Indeed, one of the results of that pea crop has been togive me an idea by which I may some day redeem my losses on theasparagus-bed. An explosive pea which should be edible, and yet wouldpop open with the noise of a small fire-cracker, would be a delight tothe children and serviceable for the table. I don't exactly know how tobring about the desired results, but it seems to me if I were to mix alittle saltpetre in the water with which we irrigate our pea-trees therequired snap would be obtained. Then on the Fourth of July thechildren, instead of burning their fingers and filling their parentswith nervous dread setting off fire-crackers, could sit out on the backpiazza and shell the peas for the cook--"

  "I'd rather shell Spangyards," said Mollie.

  "I am surprised at you, my child," said the Idiot. "A little girl likeyou should be an advocate of peace, not of war."

  "You can't eat Spaniards, either, can you, pa?" said Tommy, who, whilehe shared Mollie's views as to the comparative value for shellingpurposes of peas and Spaniards, was nevertheless quite interested in thedevelopment of a pea-pod that would open with a bang.

  "No, Tommy," said the Idiot, "you can't eat Spaniards, and they'd besure to disagree with you if you could."

  "That is a very interesting proposition of yours," said Mr. Brief, "butit has its dangers. A dynamite pea would prove very attractive so longas its explosive qualities were confined to the pod and its opening. Buthow are you going to keep the saltpetre out of the peas themselves?"

  "That is where the difficulty comes in," said the Idiot. "I franklydon't know how we could insulate the peas from the effects of thesaltpetre."

  "'IT WOULD BE DEUCEDLY AWKWARD ... IF THEY WOULD EXPLODEIN THE MOUTH OF THE PERSON WHO WAS EATING THEM'"]

  "It would be deucedly awkward," observed the Bibliomaniac, "if, as mightvery well happen, one or two of the peas should become so thoroughlyimpregnated with the stuff that they would explode in the mouth of theperson who was eating them, like bombs in miniature."

  "'SHE COULD SLAM THEM DOWN ON THE HEARTH-STONES LIKETORPEDOES'"]

  "True," said the Idiot. "The only safeguard against that would be tocompel the cook to test every pea before she cooked it. She couldslam them down on the hearth-stone like torpedoes, and every one thatdidn't go off could be cooked and served with safety. Still, there wouldbe danger even then. A careless cook might forever ruin the tooth of afavored guest. I guess I'd better give up the idea."

  "Oh, don't, pa!" cried Tommy, his interest in explosive vegetablesworked up to a high pitch. "I'll test 'em all for you, and if they workI don't see why you couldn't raise dynamite punkins!"

  "It would be a strong temptation, my son," said the Idiot, "which is allthe more reason why I should abandon the plan. A dynamite punkin, as youcall it, would wreck the whole neighborhood if one should set it offproperly. No, we will, after all, confine our attention to vegetables ofa more pacific nature. The others might prove more profitable at first,but when the novelty of them wore off, and one realized only theirdanger, a great deal of the pleasure one derives from eating freshvegetables would be utterly destroyed."

  Tommy looked out over the railing of the piazza, deep regret anddisappointment depicted in his brown little face; but if the glitter ofhis eyes meant anything it meant that the idea of putting vegetables ona war footing was not going to be allowed to drop into oblivion; and ifthe small youth progresses in inventive genius in a fair ratio to hispast achievements in that line, I have no doubt that if a Vesuvianpumpkin _can_ be produced at all, the day will dawn when Thomas ishailed as its inventor.

  "Is it true," asked Mr. Brief, "that home-raised peas are sweeter thanany other?"

  "We think so," said Mrs. Idiot.

  "We know so," amended the Idiot. "That Fourth-of-July night when we atethose five podfuls we discovered that fact. Five podfuls of peas are notenough to feed a family of four on, so we mixed them in with a few morethat we bought at the grocer's, and we could tell ours from the othersevery time, they were so much sweeter."

  The
Bibliomaniac laughed scornfully.

  "Pooh!" said he. "How did you know that they were yours that were sweet,and not the grocery-bought peas?"

  "How does a father know his own children?" said the Idiot. "If you'dlabored over those five pods as hard and assiduously as we did, nursingthem through their infant troubles, guarding them against locusts andpotato-bugs, carefully watching their development from infancy into thefull vigor of a mature peahood, I guess you'd know your own from thoseof others. It's instinct, my dear Bibliomaniac."

  "Tell about the strawberry, pa," said Tommy, who liked to hear hisfather talk, in which respect I fear he takes strongly after his parent.

  "Well," said the Idiot, "it's not much of a story. There was one. We hada strawberry patch twenty feet by ten. We had plenty of straw and plentyof patch, but the berries were timid about appearing. The results weresimilar to those in our asparagus venture. One berry was discoveredtrying to hide itself under half a bale of straw one morning, and whileI was looking for Mrs. Idiot, to ask her to come down to the garden andsee it grow, a miserable robin came along and bit its whole interiorout. I hope the bird enjoyed it, because on a bed-rock estimate thatberry cost twenty dollars. That is one of the things about gardeningthat make me especially weary. One doesn't mind spending forty-fourdollars on a stalk of asparagus that is eaten, even surreptitiously, bya member of one's own family; but to pay twenty dollars for a strawberryto be wasted on a fifteen-cent robin is, to say the least, irritating."

  "You forget, John," said Mrs. Idiot, with a somewhat mirthful look inher eyes, "that we got fifteen boxes out of the strawberry-patch later."

  "No, I don't," said the Idiot. "I was coming to that, and it involves aconfession. You were so blue about the loss of our one beautiful berrythat I entered into a conspiracy with Michael to make that patch yield.The fifteen boxes of berries that we took out subsequently were boughtat a New York fruit-store and judiciously scattered about the patchwhere you would find them. I had hoped you would never find it out, butwhen you spoke the other day of expending thirty-eight dollars on thatstrawberry-patch next year, I resolved then to undeceive you. This isthe first favorable opportunity I have had."

  Mrs. Idiot laughed heartily. "I knew it all along," she said. "Michaelcame to me with them and asked for instructions as to where to put them.Really, I--ah--I arranged them under the straw myself."

  "What an ass a hired man can be!" ejaculated the Idiot. "I shalldischarge Michael to-morrow."

  "I wish you would," said Mrs. Idiot. "Ever since the conspiracy he hasbeen entirely too independent."

  "Don't discharge Michael, papa," said Mollie. "He's awful nice. He'salways willin' to stop anything he's doing to play with Tommy and me."

  "You bet he is!" cried Tommy. "He's a dandy, Mike is. He never says aword when I sit under the sprinkler, and he told me the other day thathis grandfather would have been king of Ireland if Queen Victoria hadn'tcome in. He said the Queen was a lady, and his grandfather gave up hisseat to her because he was a gentleman and couldn't do anything else."

  "Very well," said the Idiot, suavely. "Then I won't discharge Michael.One feels a better American, a better Republican, if he has a royalpersonage in his employ. I always wondered where Michael got hisimperious manner; now I know. As a descendant of a long line of kings itcould not be otherwise. I will give him another chance. But let me giveyou all fair warning. If next summer Michael does not succeed inproducing from my garden four beets, ten pods of peas, threestring-beans, and less than ten thousand onions, he goes. I shall notpay a gardener forty dollars a month unless he can raise three dollars'worth of vegetables a year."

  "But really," said Mr. Pedagog, "haven't you raised anything in yourgarden?"

  "Oh yes," said the Idiot. "I've raised my water bill in the garden. Iused to pay twelve dollars a quarter for water, but now the bills cometo at least twenty-five dollars. Truly, a garden is not without profitto some one."