The Inventions of the Idiot

by John Kendrick Bangs

  IV

  The Incorporation of the Idiot

  "How is business these days, Mr. Idiot?" asked the Poet, as the oneaddressed laid down the morning paper with a careworn expression on hisface. "Good, I hope?"

  "Fair, only," replied the Idiot. "My honored employer was quite blueabout things yesterday, and if I hadn't staved him off I think he'd haveproposed swapping places with me. He has said quite often of late that Ihad the best of it, because all I had to earn was my salary, whereas hehad to earn my salary and his own living besides. I offered to give himten per cent. of my salary for ten per cent. of his living, but he saidhe guessed he wouldn't, adding that I seemed to be as great an Idiot asever."

  "I fancy he was right there," said Mr. Pedagog. "I should really like toknow how a man of your peculiar mental construction can be of theslightest practical value to a banker. I ask the question in allkindness, too, meaning to cast no reflections whatever upon either youor your employer. You are a roaring success in your own line, which isall any one could ask of you."

  "There's hominy for you, as the darky said to the hotel guest," returnedthe Idiot. "Any person who says that discord exists at this tabledoesn't know what he is talking about. Even the oil and the vinegar mixin the caster--that is, I judge they do from the oleaginous appearanceof the vinegar. But I am very useful to my employer, Mr. Pedagog. Hesays frequently that he wouldn't know what not to do if it were not forme."

  "Aren't you losing control of your tongue?" queried the Bibliomaniac,looking at the Idiot in wonderment. "Don't you mean that he says hewouldn'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. Imeant exactly what I said. Mr. Barlow told me, in so many words, that ifit were not for me he wouldn't know what _not_ to do. He calls me hisBack Action Patent Reversible Counsellor. If he is puzzled over anintricate point he sends for me and says: 'Such and such a thing beingthe case, Mr. Idiot, what would you do? Don't think about it, but tellme on impulse. Your thoughtless opinions are worth more to me than I cantell you.' So I tell him on impulse just what I should do, whereupon hedoes 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 fictitiousIdiot for the world. The world calls you men of pretence conceited,whereas, by pretending to be something that you are not, you give to theworld what I should call convincing evidence that you are not at allconceited, but rather somewhat ashamed of what you know yourselves tobe. Now, I rather believe in conceit--real honest pride in yourself asyou know yourself to be. I am an Idiot, and it is my ambition to be aperfect Idiot. If I had been born a jackass, I should have endeavored tobe 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 thesubject."

  "Pride goeth before a fall," said Mr. Whitechoker, seeing a chance towork in a moral reflection.

  "Exactly," said the Idiot. "Wherefore I admire pride. It is adanger-signal that enables man to avoid the fall. If Adam had had anypride he'd never have fallen--but speaking about my controlling mytongue, it is not entirely out of the range of possibilities that Ishall lose control of myself."

  "I expected that, sooner or later," said the Doctor. "Is it to beBloomingdale or a private mad-house you are going to?"

  "Neither," replied the Idiot, calmly. "I shall stay here. For, as thepoet 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 notthink you are a success in quotation. Hamlet spoke those linesdifferently."

  "Shakespeare's Hamlet did. My little personal Shakespeare makes hisHamlet an entirely different, less stilted sort of person," said theIdiot.

  "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 potatoin his mouth. "Very sorry. I wouldn't give a cent for another man'sideals. I want my own ideals, and I have my own ideal of Shakespeare. Infancy, Shakespeare and I have roamed over the fields of Warwickshiretogether, and I've had more fun imagining the kind of things he and Iwould have said to each other than I ever got out of his publishedplays, 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 themcommentors or devastators. The result is the same. New editions ofShakespeare are issued every year, and people buy them to see not whatShakespeare has written, but what new quip some opinionated devastatorhas tried to fasten on his memory. In a hundred years from now the worksof Shakespeare will differ as much from what they are to-day as to-day'sversions differ from what they were when Shakespeare wrote them. It'smighty discouraging to one like myself who would like to write works."

  "You are convicted out of your own mouth," said the Bibliomaniac. "Amoment since you wasted your pity on me because I didn't mutilateShakespeare so as to make him my own, and now you attack thecommentators for doing precisely the same thing. They're as muchentitled to their opinions as you are to yours."

  "Did you ever learn to draw parallels when you were in school?" askedthe Idiot.

  "I did, and I think I've made a perfect parallel in this case. Youattack people in one breath for what you commiserate me for not doing inanother," said the Bibliomaniac.

  "Not exactly," said the Idiot. "I don't object to the commentators forcommentating, but I do object to their putting out their versions ofShakespeare as Shakespeare. I might as well have my edition published.It certainly would be popular, especially where, in 'Julius Caesar,' Iintroduce five Cassiuses and have them all fall on their swordstogether with military precision, like a 'Florodora' sextette, forinstance."

  "Well, I hope you'll never print such an atrocity as that," cried theBibliomaniac, hotly. "If there's one thing in literature without excuseand utterly contemptible it is the comic version, the parody of amasterpiece."

  "You need have no fear on that score," returned the Idiot. "I haven'ttime to rewrite Shakespeare, and, since I try never to stop short ofabsolute 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 MightHave Been, Had His Plays Been Written By An Idiot.'"

  "I have no doubt that you could do great work with 'Hamlet,'" observedthe 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 thedevastators."

  "I shall never cease to regret," said Mr. Pedagog, after a moment'sthought, "that you are so timid. I should very much like to see 'TheWorks of the Idiot.' I admit that my desire is more or less a morbidone. It is quite on a plane with the feeling that prompts me to wish tosee that unfortunate man on the Bowery who exhibits his forehead, whichis sixteen inches high, beginning with his eyebrows, for a dime. Thestrange, the bizarre in nature, has always interested me. The moreunnatural the nature, the more I gloat upon it. From that point of viewI do most earnestly hope that when you are inspired with a work you willlet me at least see it."

  "Very well," answered the Idiot. "I shall put your name down as asubscriber to the _Idiot Monthly Magazine_, which some of my friendscontemplate publishing. That is what I mean when I say I may shortlylose control of myself. These friends of mine profess to have been soimpressed by my dicta that they have asked me if I would allow myself tobe incorporated into a stock company, the object of which should be totra
nsform my personality into printed pages. Hardly a day goes by but Idevote a portion of my time to a poem in which the thought isconspicuous either by its absence or its presence. My schemes for theamelioration of the condition of the civilized are notorious among thosewho know me; my views on current topics are eagerly sought for; mybusiness instinct, as I have already told you, is invaluable to myemployer, and my fiction is unsurpassed in its fictitiousness. What moreis needed for a magazine? You have the poetry, the philanthropy, theman of to-day, the fictitiousness, and the business instinct necessaryfor the successful modern magazine all concentrated in one person. Whynot publish that person, say my friends, and I, feeling as I do that noman has a right to the selfish enjoyment of the great gifts nature hasbestowed upon him, of course can only agree. I am to be incorporatedwith a capital stock of five hundred thousand dollars. One hundredthousand dollars' worth of myself I am to be permitted to retain; therest my friends will subscribe for at fifty cents on the dollar. If anyof you want shares in the enterprise I have no doubt you can beaccommodated."

  "I'm obliged to you for the opportunity," said the Doctor. "But I haveto be very careful about things I take stock in, and in general Iregard 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 anystock 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 theBibliomaniac, "while thanking you just the same for the chance."

  "You can put me down for one share, to be paid for in poetry," said thePoet, 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, "shallbe most happy to take five shares to be paid for in advice andhigh-balls. Moreover, if your company needs good-will to establish itsenterprise, you may count upon me for unlimited credit."

  "Oh, as for that," said the Idiot, "I have plenty of good-will. EvenMr. Pedagog supplies me with more of it than I deserve, though by nomeans with all that I desire."

  "That good-will is yours as an individual, Mr. Idiot," returned theSchool-master. "As a corporation, however, I cannot permit you to tradeupon me even for that. Your value is, in my eyes, entirely toofluctuating."

  "And it is in the fluctuating stock that the great fortunes are made,Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "As an individual I appreciate yourgood-will. As a corporation I am soulless, without emotions, and socherish no disappointments over your refusal. I think if the scheme goesthrough it will be successful, and I fully expect to see the day whenIdiot Preferred will be selling as high, if not higher, than Steel, andleaving utterly behind any other industrial that ever was known, copperor rope."

  "If, like the railways, you could issue betterment bonds you might dovery well," said the Doctor. "I think ten million dollars spent inbettering 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 GermanEmperor, and issue a five-million-dollar mortgage on the result, and youmight find people who'd take those bonds at seventy-five."

  "You might if they were a dollar bond printed on cartridge-paper," saidMr. Pedagog. "Then purchasers could paper their walls with them."

  "Rail on," said the Idiot. "I can stand it. When I begin payingquarterly dividends at a ten-per-cent. rate you'll wish you had comein."

  "I don't know about that," said Mr. Pedagog. "It would entirelydepend."

  "On what?" queried the Idiot, unwarily.

  "On whether that ten per cent. was declared upon your own estimate ofyour 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 goingin it, and that's an end to it."

  "Well, I'll go in it if you change your scheme," said the Doctor. "Ifinstead of an Idiot Publishing Company you will try to float yourself asa Consolidated Gas Company you may count on me to take a controllinginterest."

  "I will submit the proposition to my friends," said the Idiot, calmly."It would be something to turn out an honest gas company, which Ishould, of course, try to be, but I am afraid the public will not acceptit. There is little demand for laughing-gas, and, besides, they wouldfear to intrust you with a controlling interest for fear that you mightblow the product out and the bills up--coining millions by mereinflation. They've heard of you, Doctor, and they know that is the sortof thing you'd be likely to do."