The Idiot at Home

by John Kendrick Bangs

  XII

  SOME DOMESTIC INVENTIONS

  "'THERE'S NOT MUCH MONEY IN STOCKS'"]

  "I think I'll give up the business of broking and go into inventing,"said the Idiot one Sunday morning, as he and Mrs. Idiot and theirfriends sat down at breakfast. "There's not much money in stocks, butthe successful inventor of a patent clothes-pin makes a fortune."

  "I'd think twice about that before acting," observed Mr. Brief. "Theremay not be much money in stocks, but you can work eight hours a day, andget good pay in a broker's office, while the inventor has to wait uponinspiration."

  "True enough," said the Idiot; "but waiting on inspiration isn't a badbusiness in itself. You can play golf or read a rattling good novel, orgo to a yacht-race while you wait."

  "But where does the money come in?" asked Mr. Pedagog, his usualcaution coming to the fore.

  "Inspiration brings it with her," said the Idiot, "and by the barrel,too. What's the use of toiling eight hours a day for fifty weeks in ayear for three thousand dollars when by waiting on inspiration in apleasant way you make a million all of a sudden?"

  "Well," said Mr. Pedagog, indulgently, "if you have the inspirationlassoed, as you might say, your argument is all right; but if you aremerely going to sit down and wait for it to ring you up on thetelephone, and ask you when and where you wish your barrels of golddelivered, I think it will be your creditors, and not fortune, who willbe found knocking at your door. How are you going about this business,provided you do retire from Wall Street?"

  "Choose my field and work it," replied the Idiot. "For the present Ishould choose the home. That is the field I am most interested in justnow. I should study its necessities, and endeavor to meet whatever thesemight demand with an adequate supply. Any man who stays around home allday will find lots of room for the employment of his talents alonginventive lines."

  "You've tried it, have you?" asked Mr. Brief.

  "Certainly I have," said the Idiot, "though I haven't invented anythingyet. Why, only last week I stayed home on Monday--wash-day--and athousand things that might be invented suggested themselves to me."

  "As, for instance?" asked Mrs. Idiot, who was anxious to know of anypossible thing that could mitigate the horrors of wash-day.

  "'A NICE LITTLE BASKET-HAT ON HER HEAD TO HOLD THE PINSIN'"]

  "Well, it wouldn't help _you_ much, my dear," said the Idiot, "but thewash-lady would hail with unmixed delight a substitute for her mouth tohold clothes-pins in while she is hanging out the clothes. I watchedEllen in the yard for ten minutes that day, and it was pathetic. Thereshe was, standing on her tiptoes, hanging innumerable garments on theline, her mouth full of clothes-pins, and Jimpsonberry's hired manleaning over the fence trying to shout sweet nothings in her ear. If shehad had a nice little basket-hat on her head to hold the pins in shecould have answered back without stopping her work every other minuteto take them out of her mouth in order to retort to his honeyedsentiments."

  Mrs. Idiot laughed. "Ellen finds time enough to talk and do the washing,too," she said. "I sometimes think she does more talking than washing."

  "No doubt of it; she's only human, like the rest of us," said the Idiot."But she might save time to do something else for us if she could do thewashing and the talking at the same time. She may give up the washing,but she'll never give up the talking. Therefore, why not make thetalking easier?"

  "What you need most, I think," put in Mr. Brief, "is an instrument tokeep hired men from leaning over the fence and distracting the attentionof the laundress from her work. That would be a great boon."

  "Not unless idleness is a great boon," retorted the Idiot. "Half thehired men I know would be utterly out of employment if they couldn'tlean over a fence and talk to somebody. Leaning over a fence and talkingto somebody forms seventy-five per cent. of the hired man's daily labor.He seems to think that is what he is paid for. Still, any one whoobjects could very easily remedy the conversational detail in so far asit goes on over the fence."

  "By the use of barbed wire, I presume," suggested Mr. Pedagog.

  "By something far more subtle and delicately suggestive," rejoined theIdiot. "Hired men do not mind barbed-wire fences. They rather like themwhen they annoy other people. When they annoy themselves they know howto treat them. My own man Mike, for instance, minds them not at all.Indeed, he has taken my pruning-shears and clipped all the barbs off thesmall stretch of it we had at the rear end of our lot to keep him fromclimbing over for a short cut home."

  "With what result?" asked Mr. Brief.

  "'AN ELECTRIC NOTICE TO QUIT'"]

  "With the result that I had to buy a new pair of pruning-shears," saidthe Idiot. "My Anti-Over-the-Fence-Gabber," he continued, "would involvecertain complex details, but it would work. I should have an electricbattery connected with the upper cable of the fence, and an operatorstationed inside of the house, close to a key which would send somesix hundred or seven hundred volts through the cable whenever needed.Then if I felt that Jimpsonberry's man was interfering with mylaundress, as soon as he leaned over the fence I'd have the operatorsend him an electric notice to quit."

  "A message?" said Mr. Pedagog.

  "No, a plain shock. Two hundred volts as a starter, three hundred as areminder, and the full seven hundred if necessary to make the hintplainer."

  "That would be cruel," observed Mrs. Pedagog.

  "Not wholly," said the Idiot. "It would be an advantage to the manhimself in one way. Hired men have too little electricity in theirsystems, Mrs. Pedagog. If Jimpsonberry's man, for instance, would takeall the electricity I'd give him and apply it to his work,Jimpsonberry's unpulled dandelions would not be such a constant menaceto my lawn. I compel Mike to weed out my lawn every spring and autumn,but Jimpsonberry doesn't attend to his at all. He doesn't sleep on it,and so doesn't bother about it. Consequently, when his dandelions go toseed the seed is blown over into my grass, and every year I get anuninvited crop, which at a dollar a thousand would make me amillionaire."

  "Why don't you apply your inventive genius to the discovery of aseedless dandelion?" asked the Lawyer. "It seems to me that would be thebest solution of the dandelion problem."

  "Because Jimpsonberry wouldn't have 'em if I discovered 'em," said theIdiot. "I judge from the millions he raises every year that he issatisfied with dandelions as they are. He's got enough for himself, andnever makes any charge for those he gives to his neighbors."

  "I think a furnace-feeder would be a good thing, too," the Idiotcontinued, in a moment. "My furnace is a chronic sufferer fromindigestion because on some days it is gorged with coal and on otherswith ashes. Seems to me if I could get a month's time in which toconcentrate my attention upon a furnace-feeder, I could devise some kindof a contraption that would invoke the enthusiastic love of the suburbanresident in Arctic latitudes the world over."

  "I have often thought of that possibility myself," observed Mr. Pedagog,his eyes fondly resting upon a steaming plate of griddle-cakes thathad just been brought in. "But coal is a rebellious quantity. Afurnace-feeder would need to be delicately adjusted, and coal cannot behandled with delicacy. It requires a chute rather than a tube. It mustbe manipulated with the shovel, not the sugar-tongs."

  "Correct," said the Idiot. "Therefore, _you_ would experiment on a chuteor a shovel, abandoning all idea of refining the coal. I, on the otherhand, would experiment with the coal itself, Mr. Pedagog. Why notliquefy it, and let it drop automatically into the furnace through aself-acting spigot?"

  "Liquefy coal?" asked Mr. Pedagog.

  "Certainly," replied the Idiot. "We liquefy pretty nearly everythingelse. If liquid air, why not liquid coal? Everything we have in naturein these days apparently can be liquefied, and while I am not familiarwith the process, I see no reason why a ton of coal should not bereduced to such a shape that it can be bottled. Once bottled andprovided with an automatic dropper, it could easily be adjusted so as toflow in proper quantities into the furnace at proper intervals."

  "It would be ver
y expensive. Do you know what a pint of liquid aircosts?" demanded the Doctor.

  "No," said the Idiot. "I neither breathe nor drink it. The plain oldstuff is good enough for me, and cheap if you don't have to go to themountains or the sea-shore to get your supply."

  "Granting coal could be liquefied," the Doctor assented, "I venture tosay that a ton of it would cost as much as five hundred dollars."

  "I've no doubt it would," said the Idiot; "but I could afford a ton ofcoal at five hundred dollars if my scheme worked. A successful inventionwould make bread seem cheap at ten dollars a loaf. There's another thingI should put my mind on, and that is a method of cooking a cauliflowerso that everybody in the house, as well as the neighbors, should notknow that you are doing so," he continued. "I am particularly fond ofcauliflower, but it is undeniable that in the process of cooking itbecomes obtrusive, almost to the point of ostentation. I've spoken aboutit many times. Mike, the gardener, to whom I've spoken on the subject,thinks the cauliflower itself, if sprinkled with _eau de Cologne_ whilegrowing, would cease to be obnoxious in the cooking; but that is tooexpensive a process. It would take a dozen cases of _eau de Cologne_ tobring a single cauliflower to maturity. My son, Tommy, has stated thathe thinks it might be boiled in Florida-water instead of in the simplevariety that comes from the pipes. A good suggestion for a small boy,but also expensive. Hired men and small boys do not think of theexchequer of the principal in their plans. They don't have to. Theirallowance and wages are usually all velvet--an elegant vulgarism forsurplus--and for my own part I have constantly to veto their littleschemes for the betterment of my condition in order to have anycondition at all left. But as far as the arrangement of an odorlesscauliflower-cooker is concerned, it is as simple as A B C, barring oneor two complications."

  "I wish you'd hurry up and invent it," cried Mrs. Idiot, withenthusiasm. "What are the main features of this simple contrivance?"

  "I'd have a boiler, in the first place, in which to boil the animal,"said the Idiot. "When the water was ready I'd clap the creature into it,and before it had time to remonstrate I'd fasten a hermetically sealedcover over the top."

  "But when you took it off the results would still be overpowering," saidMr. Pedagog.

  "'FINDING OUT WHAT IS BEING COOKED FOR DINNER'"]

  "No, my dear sir," said the Idiot, "for the simple reason that I shouldaffix a cold-air box and a flue to the hermetically sealed boiler.Through the cold-air box fresh air would constantly flow into theboiler. Through the flue all the aromatic drawbacks of the cauliflowerwould be carried off through the chimney into the upper air. Anybody whowished to know whether we were going to have cauliflower for dinner ornot would have to climb up to the roof and sniff at the chimney-top tofind out."

  "It _is_ simple, isn't it, Mrs. Idiot?" Mrs. Pedagog said.

  "Very," replied Mrs. Idiot. "Indeed, it seems so extremely simple that Ishould like to know where the complications lie."

  "Where all the complications in cooking lie, my dear," said theIdiot, "in the cook. The chief complication would lie in getting a cookwho could, or if she could, would, use the thing intelligently."

  "I don't see," said Mr. Brief, dryly--"I don't see but that what youought to devote your time to, my dear Idiot, is the invention of anintelligent cook."

  "Humph!" laughed the Idiot. "I may be an idiot, Mr. Brief, but I'm notan ass. There are some things that man may reasonably hope toaccomplish--such as setting fire to the Hudson River, or growingbutternuts on the summit of Mont Blanc--but as for trying to invent anintelligent cook who would stay in the country for more than two weeksfor less than ten thousand dollars a year, that, sir, is beyond all theconceptions of the human mind."

  "Ain't Bridget intelligent, pa?" asked Tommy.

  Here was a complication, for Tommy liked to retail to Bridget the gossipof the day, and especially what "pa said."

  "H'm--ah--oh yes, indeed, she is, Tommy," the Idiot replied, with someembarrassment. "Very; she's been with us three months."

  "How much do you pay her, pa?" asked the boy.

  "Well," said the Idiot, "not more than fifteen hundred dollars a month.Just take another griddle-cake, my son, and remember that there are somethings little boys should not talk about."

  "Like tumpany's bald heads?" lisped Mollie, complacently, her eye fixedupon Mr. Pedagog's shining dome.

  "Precisely," observed Mr. Pedagog, appreciating the situation.

  And while everybody else laughed the Idiot looked upon his children witha sternly affectionate face.

  "My dear," said he to Mrs. Idiot, "I think it is time the babies gotready for Sunday-school."