The Idiot at Home

by John Kendrick Bangs

  VIII

  SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE HIRED MAN

  "Who is that sitting down on your tennis-court, Mr. Idiot?" asked Mr.Brief, the lawyer. "Or is it anybody? I've been trying for the lasthalf-hour to make out whether it's a man or one of those iron figureswith which some people decorate their lawns."

  "That," replied the Idiot, calmly, "is my hired man. I pay him fortydollars a month to sit down there and let the grass grow under his feet.I heard you and Mr. Pedagog discussing the wonderful grassiness of mylawn after dinner last night, and I meant to have told you then that thecredit thereof belongs entirely to the restful nature of that man'ssoul. He will stand for hours rooted to one spot and looking withapparent aimlessness out over the river. To most people this would seemto be prompted by a sheer indisposition to work, but this would do him arank injustice, for his immovability is due entirely to his system. Heis letting the grass grow beneath him, and the fact that our grass is sonourishing everywhere is due to his having stood for hours at varioustimes over every square inch of territory to which I hold thetitle-deeds."

  The Idiot gazed out of the window at his retainer with affectionateadmiration.

  "He certainly clings closely to his system," said the lawyer.

  "'I FEEL THAT I COULD GO OUT AND MOW THREE ACRES OFGRASS'"]

  "He is a model," said the Idiot. "He has done more to make my life hereeasy than any one in my service. For instance, you know the hurly-burlyof existence in town. I go to my office in the morning, and whether Ihave much work or little to do, I come home in the afternoon absolutelyworn out. The constant hustling and bustling of others in the city wearsupon my mind, and consequently upon my body. The rush and roar of cablesand electric-cars; the activity of messengers running to and fro in thestreets; the weary horses dragging great lumbering wagons up and downthe crowded thoroughfares, all affect my nature and impair my energy;and then, the day's work done, I return here, where all is quiet andstill, and the very contrast between that man, standing silently on hisappointed spot, or leaning against the house, or lying off in sheercontent under some tree, and the mad scramble for lucre in the city,invigorates my tired body until I feel that I could go out and mow threeacres of grass before dinner; in fact, I generally do."

  "I did not know that a restful nature was a requisite of a successfulcareer as a hired man," said Mr. Pedagog.

  "It is evident, then, that you have never had a hired man," rejoined theIdiot. "Nor can you ever have studied the species at close range.Ceaseless activity would be his ruin. If he did to-day all there is todo, he would be out of employment to-morrow, consequently he never doesto-day's work to-day, and cultivates that leisurely attitude towardslife upon which you have commented. Do you see that small beech-treeover there?" he added, pointing to a scrawny little sapling whose solevirtue appeared to be its rigid uprightness.

  "Is that a beech-tree?" asked Mr. Brief. "I thought it was a gardenstake."

  "'He WOULD GO OUT DAY AFTER DAY AND SIT DOWN BESIDE IT'"]

  "It is a beech-tree," said the Idiot. "I planted it myself last autumn,and while it has as yet borne no beeches, I think if we give it time,and it withstands the rigors of the climate, it will produce its fruit.But it was not of its possibilities as a beech-bearing tree that Iintended to speak. I wanted to indicate to you by a material object thevalue of having a hired man who likes to lean against things. At theclose of this last winter that tree, instead of being as erect as agrenadier, as it now is, was all askew. The strong westerly winds whichare constantly blowing across that open stretch bent the thing until itseemed that the tree was bound to be deformed; but Mike overcame thedifficulty. He would go out day after day and sit down beside it andlean against it for two and three hours at a time, with the result thatthe tendency to curve was overcome, and a tree that I feared was doomedto fail now bids fair to resemble a successful telegraph-pole in itsuprightness. And, of course, the added warmth of his body pressing downupon the earth which covers its roots gave it an added impulse togrow."

  "It is a wonderful system," smiled Mr. Brief. "I wonder it is notadopted everywhere."

  "It is, pretty much," said the Idiot. "Most hired men do the same thing.I don't think Mike differs radically from others of his kind. Of course,there are exceptions. My neighbor Jimpsonberry, for instance, has a manwho is so infernally unrestful that he makes everybody tired. He is upevery morning mowing Jimpsonberry's lawn at five o'clock, waking upevery sleepy soul within ear-shot with the incessant and disturbingclicking of his machine. Mike would never think of making such anuisance of himself. Furthermore, Jimpsonberry's lawn is kept soclose-cropped that the grass doesn't get any chance, and in the heat ofmidsummer turns to a dull brick-red."

  After a pause, during which the company seemed to be deeply cogitatingthe philosophical bearing of the subject under discussion, the Idiotresumed:

  "There is another aspect of this matter," he said, "which Jimpsonberry'sman brings to my mind. You know as well as I do that heat iscontagious. If you feel as cool as a cucumber, and then all of a suddensee somebody who is dripping with perspiration and looking for all theworld like a human kettle simmering on a kitchen-range, you begin tosimmer yourself. It is mere sympathy, of course, but you simmer just thesame, get uncomfortable and hot in the collar, and are shortly as badlyoff as the other fellow. So it is with Jimpsonberry's man. Time and timeagain he has spoiled all my pleasure by making me realize by a glance athis red face and sweating arms how beastly hot it is, when before I hadseen him I felt tolerably comfortable. Mike, on the other hand, is notso inconsiderate, and I am confident would let the grass grow a milehigh before he would consent to interfere with my temperature by pushingthe mower up and down the lawn on a humid day."

  "Do you keep this interesting specimen of still life all through theyear?" asked Mr. Brief, "or do you give him a much-needed vacation inwinter? I should think he would be worn out with all this standingaround, for nothing that I know of is more tiresome than doingnothing."

  "No," said the Idiot. "Mike never seems to need a vacation. Sitting downand leaning against things and standing around don't seem to tire him inthe least. It might tire you or me, but you see he's used to it. Theonly effect it has on him, as I view the matter, is that it wears outhis clothes. It doesn't impair his lack of vigor at all. So by thesimple act of occasionally renewing his wardrobe, which I do every timeI discard a suit of my own, I revive his wasted vitality, and he doesnot require to be sent to Europe, or to take an extended tour in theWhite Mountains to recuperate. I keep him all through the winter, andhis system is quite the same then as in summer, except that he does hissitting around and leaning indoors instead of in the open."

  "I suppose he looks after the furnace and keeps the walks clear of snowin winter time?" suggested Mr. Pedagog, who was beginning to take aninterest in this marvellously restful personage.

  "'HE SHOVELS OFF A FOOT-PATH'"]

  "Yes," said the Idiot; "and he attends to the windows as well. As aminder of the furnace he is invaluable. My house is as cool as aroof-garden all through the winter, and thanks to his unwillingness toover-exert himself shovelling coal into the furnace, I burn only abouthalf as much as my neighbors, and my house is never overheated. This initself is an indication of the virtue of Mike's method. One-half of thecolds contracted by children nowadays are the result of overheatedhouses. Mike's method gives me a cool house at very moderate expense,owing to the great saving of coal, the children do not get colds becauseof overheating, and the expense of having a doctor every other day isaverted. Then his snow-shovelling scheme goes back to the firstprinciples of nature. Mike is not overawed by convention, and instead offollowing the steps of other men who shovel the snow entirely off, heshovels off a footpath to enable me to go to business, and then sitsdown and oversees the sun while it melts the balance. Sometimes, if thesun does not do the work promptly enough to suit him, he gets up littlecontests for the children. He divides up certain portions of the walkinto equal parts, and starts the small boys on a ra
ce to see which onewill get the portion assigned to him cleaned off first, the prize beingsomething in the nature of an apple, which the cook orders from themarket. I believe my son Thomas won ten apples last winter, although Iam told that the Jimpsonberry boy, whose father's man is cross, andinsists on doing all the work himself, is the champion snow-shoveller ofthe street."

  "Yes, he is, pa," put in Tommy. "Mike owes him 'leven apples. I only woneight."

  "Well, that is a very good record, Thomas," said the Idiot, "and I willsee to it that next winter you have a brand-new snow-shovel with whichto enter the contest."

  "Mike lets us chop the kindling-wood, too," said Tommy, suddenlyperceiving a chance to put in a good word for the genial Mike. "I thinkhe's the nicest hired man as ever was."

  "He'll stop anything he's doing to talk to me," ventured Mollie, notwishing to be backward in laying wreaths upon the brow of their friend.

  "Yes, I have noticed that," said the Idiot. "Indeed, next to his extremerestfulness there is no quality that I know of in Mike that shines outso conspicuously as his intense love for children. He will neglect hisown interests, as Mollie has suggested, to talk to the little ones, andI rather like him for it. No boy dares go near the Jimpsonberry man, whohas exerted himself into a perpetual state of nervous exhaustion."

  "Well, if he cleans your windows, that is something," observed Mrs.Pedagog, whose experience in keeping a boarding-house years beforeentitled her to speak as one having authority.

  "Unless his system is the same in that work as in the other branchescommitted to his care," said Mr. Brief.

  "'SPEND A WHOLE DAY ON ONE WINDOW'"]

  "It isn't quite," said the Idiot. "He really does exert himself inwindow-cleaning. I have frequently seen him spend a whole day on onewindow. His window-washing system is a very ingenious one,nevertheless."

  "It is, indeed," said Mrs. Idiot, with a show of feeling.

  "A new window-washing system?" grinned Mr. Pedagog.

  "Yes," said the Idiot. "It is his own invention. He washes them on theoutside in summer and on the inside in winter. The result is thisopalescent glass which you see. You would hardly guess that thesewindows are of French plate. Still, we don't mind so much. I couldn'task him to wash them on the outside in winter, it is so dreadfully cold,and in the summer, of course, they are always open, and no one, unlesshe were disagreeable enough to go snooping about after unpleasantdetails, would notice that they are not immaculate."

  "And you pay this man forty dollars for this?" demanded Mr. Brief.

  "Oh, for this and other things. I pay him two dollars a month for thework he does. I pay him ten dollars a month because he's good to thechildren. I pay him ten dollars more for his civility, which isunvarying--he always puts his hat on when he comes into the house,having noticed, perhaps, that only those who are my social equals areentitled to appear bareheaded in my presence."

  "And the other eighteen?" persisted the lawyer, by nature across-examiner.

  "Well, I don't grudge him that because--" a sort of a fond light lit upthe Idiot's eyes as he gazed down upon Mike, still sitting on thetennis-court--"I don't grudge him that other eighteen dollars because itcosts Mike twenty dollars a month to live; and he uses the rest of it toput his boy through college, so that when he grows up to be a man hewill be something more than a hired man."

  "Ah!" said Mr. Brief.

  "Yes," said the Idiot; "I found that out from a third party some timeago, and I thought after all I'd keep him, for I know nobody else wouldhave him, and then what would become of the boy in college?"