The Inventions of the Idiot

by John Kendrick Bangs

  X

  Some Electrical Suggestions

  "If I were beginning life all over again," said the Idiot, "I'd be anelectrician. It seems to me that of all modern pursuits, barringarchitecture perhaps, electricity is the most fascinating."

  "There's probably more money in it than there is in Idiocy, too, Ifancy," said the Bibliomaniac, dryly.

  "Well, I should think so," assented the Idiot. "Idiocy is merely anintellectual diversion. Electricity is a practical science. Idiocycannot be said to be anything more than a luxury, while electricity hasbecome a necessity. I do not even claim that any real lasting benefitcan come to the world through Idiocy, but in electricity arepossibilities, not yet realized, for which the world will be distinctlybetter and happier."

  "It is kind of you to speak so highly of electricity," said the Doctor."The science may now advance, knowing that you approve."

  "Approve?" cried the Idiot. "Approve is not the word, sir. Ienthuse--and why should I not, feeling, as I do, that in the electricalcurrent lies the germ of the Elixir of Life! I thoroughly believe that abottle of liquefied electricity would make us all young."

  "Then don't take it!" said the School-master. "You have suffered from anaggravated case of youngness for as long a time as I have known you.Pray do nothing to intensify your youth."

  "I fear I shall be forced to deny myself that pleasure, Mr. Pedagog,"returned the Idiot, mildly, "for the unhappy reason that as yet theformula for the Electrical Elixir has not been discovered; that it willbe discovered before I die I hope and pray, because, unlike the man inthe hymn, I would live always. I'd like to be an immortal."

  "An immortal Idiot! Think of it!" said the Doctor.

  "I didn't expect much sympathy from you, Dr. Capsule," said the Idiot."The man with car-horses to sell does not dote upon the trolley-car."

  "The application of the allegory is not entirely apparent," said theDoctor.

  "No?" said the Idiot. "I am surprised. I thought you intellectualsabsorbed ideas more quickly. To deal in plain terms, since it appears tobe necessary, a plan which involves the indefinite extension of mortallife and the elimination of bodily ills is not likely to receive thehearty endorsement of the medical profession. If a man could come homeon a stormy night and offset the deleterious effects of wet feet byswallowing an electric pill, one containing two volts, like a two-grainquinine pill, for instance, with greater certainty than one feels intaking quinine, your profession would have to put up the shutters and gointo some such business as writing articles on 'Measles as It Used toBe,' or 'Disorders of the Ante-Electrical Period.' The fine part of itall is that we should not have to rely for our medicines upon the stateof the arsenic market, or the quinine supply, or the squill product ofthe year. Electric sparks can be made without number whether the sunshines or not. The failure of the Peruvian Bark Crop, or the destructionby an early frost of the Castor Oil Wells, would cease to be a hideouspossibility to delicate natures. They could all fail for all mankindneed fear, for electricity can be generated when and wherever one hasneed of it. If your electric pills were used up, and the chemist too faraway from your house for you to get the supply replenished at themoment, you could put on your slippers and by walking up and down yourcarpeted floor for ten or fifteen minutes generate enough electricity tosee you through. Of course you'd have to have a pair ofdynamic-storage-reservoir slippers to catch the sparks as they flew, butI fancy they'd be less costly in the long run than the medicines we haveto-day."

  "Why have wet feet at all if electricity is to be so all-powerful?"suggested Mr. Whitechoker. "Why not devise an electrical foot-protectorand ward off all possibility of damp, cold feet?"

  "You couldn't do that with men and women constituted as they are," saidthe Idiot. "Your foot-protector would no doubt be a good thing, but soare rubber overshoes. Nothing will ever be patented to compel a man tokeep his feet dry, and he won't do it except under compulsion, but oncehaving his feet wet he will seek the remedy. It's the Elixir of Lifethat I bank on most, however. I don't believe there is one among us,excepting Mrs. Pedagog, to whom twenty-five was not the most delightfulperiod of existence. To Mrs. Pedagog, as to all women, eighteen isthe limit. But men at twenty-five and women at eighteen know so much,enjoy so much, regard themselves so highly! There is nothing _blase_about them then. Disillusion--which I think ought to be calleddissolution--comes later. At thirty a man discovers that the things heknew at twenty-five aren't so; and as for a woman at twenty-five, if sobe she is unmarried, her life is empty, and if so be she is married, shehas cares in the shape of children and a husband, who as a theory was apoet, but who as a reality is a mere business machine who is oftentimesno fonder of staying at home than he was before he was married and wentout to see her every night."

  "What a wise little pessimist he is!" said Mr. Pedagog to the Doctor.

  "Very. But I fail to comprehend why he branches off into Pessimism whenElectricity was his text," said the Doctor.

  "Because he's the Id--" began the Bibliomaniac, but the Idiotinterrupted him.

  "Don't jump fences, gentlemen, before you know whether they are made ofbarbed wire or not. I'm coming to the points you are bringing up, and ifyou are not careful they may puncture you," he said. "I am not in anysense a pessimist. Quite the contrary. I am an optimist. I'm not oldenough or cross-grained enough as yet to be a pessimist, and it'sbecause I don't want to be a pessimist that I want this Elixir ofElectricity to hurry up and have itself patented. If men when theyreached the age of twenty-five, and women at eighteen, would begin totake this they might live to be a thousand and yet retain all the spiritand feelings of twenty-five and eighteen. That's the connection, Dr.Capsule. If I could be twenty-five all my life I'd be as happy as abird--and if I were the Poet here I'd immortalize that idea in verse--

  "A man's the biggest thing alive When he has got to twenty-five; And as for woman, she's a queen Whose summers number just eighteen."

  "That's a good idea," returned the Poet. "I'll make a note of that, andif I sell it I'll give you a commission."

  "No, don't do that," said the Idiot, slyly. "I shall be satisfied to seeyour name in print."

  The Poet having accepted this sally in the spirit in which it wasintended, the Idiot resumed:

  "But of course the Elixir and the Electrical Pills are as yet all in theair. We haven't even taken a step in that direction. Mr. Edison andother wizards have been too much occupied with electric lights andtelephones and phonographs and transatlantic notions to pay anyattention to schemes to prolong life and keep us, despite our years,perpetually young."

  "I fancy they are likely to continue to do so," said the Doctor."Whatever motive you may attribute to me for pooh-poohing your notions,I do so. No sane person wants to live forever, and if it were possiblethat all men might live forever, you'd soon find the world so crowdedthat the slighter actors in the human comedy would be shoved off thestage. There are enough people in the world now, without man's addingall future generations to their number and making death animpossibility."

  "That's all nonsense," said the Idiot. "My Elixir wouldn't make death animpossibility. Any man who thought he'd had enough at the end of athousand years could stop taking the Elixir and shuffle off the mortalcoil. As a matter of fact, not more than ten per cent. of the people inthe world would have any faith in the Elixir at all. I know peopleto-day who do not take advantage of the many patent remedies that arewithin their reach, preferring the mustard-plaster and catnip-tea oftheir forefathers. There's where human nature works again. I believethat if I were myself the discoverer of the formula for my mixture, andfor an advertisement secured a letter from a man saying, 'I was dying ofold age, having reached the advanced period of ninety-seven; I took twobottles of your Electrical Elixir and am now celebrating mytwenty-fifth birthday again,' ninety-nine per cent. of the people whoread it would laugh and think it had strayed out of the funny column.People lack confidence in their fellow-men--that's all; but if they weretwenty-five and eighteen that would all be c
hanged. We are very trustfulat twenty-five and eighteen, which is one of the things I like aboutthose respective ages. When I was twenty-five I believed in everybody,including myself. Now--well, I'm older. But enough of schemes, which Imust admit are somewhat visionary--as the telephone would have seemedone hundred years ago. Let us come down to realities in electricity. Ican't see why more is not made of the phonograph for the benefit of thepublic. Take a man like Chauncey M. De Choate. He goes here and he goesthere to make speeches, when I've no doubt he'd much prefer to stay athome cutting coupons off his bonds. Why can't the phonograph voice do_his_ duty? Instead of making the same speech over and over again, whycan't some electrician so improve the phonograph that De Choate can saywhat he has to say through a funnel, have it impressed on a cylinder,duplicated and reduplicated and scattered broadcast over the world? IfMr. Edison could impart what poets call stentorian tones to thephonograph, he'd be doing a great and noble work. Again, for smallerthings, like a dance, Why can't the phonograph be made useful at a ball?I attended one the other night, and when I wanted to dance the two-stepthe band played the polka; if I wished the polka it played a waltz. Somemen can only dance the two-step--they don't know the waltz, the polka,or the schottische. Now why can't the phonograph come to the rescue? Inalmost any hotel in New York you can drop a nickel in a slot and hearSousa's band on the phonograph. Why not extend the principle and have aphonograph for men who can dance nothing but the two-step, charged with'The Washington Post March,' and supplied with four tubes with receiversto put in the ears of the listeners? Make it small enough for a man tocarry in his pocket; then at a ball he could go up to a young lady, askher to dance, put two of the receivers in her ears, two in his, and tripthe light fantastic toe utterly independently of what other people weredancing. It's possible. Mr. Edison could do it in five minutes, andevery one would be satisfied. It might be rather droll to see two peopledancing the two-step while eight others were fastened on to a lanciersphonograph, and a dozen or more other couples were dancing respectivelythe waltz, schottische, and Virginia reel, but we'd soon get used tothat, and no man need become a wall-flower because he couldn't dance thedance that happened to be on. Furthermore, you'd be able to do away withthe musicians, who always cast a pall over dances because of theirsuperiority to the rest of the world in general and the dancers inparticular."

  "How about your couple that prefer to sit out the dance on the stairs?"said the Poet, who, in common with the Idiot, knew several things aboutdances that Messrs. Pedagog and Whitechoker did not.

  "It would be particularly attractive to them," said the Idiot. "Theycould sit on the stairs and wax sentimental over any dreamy air the manhappened to have in his vest-pocket. He could arrange all thatbeforehand--find out what song she thought divinest, and go loadedaccordingly. And as for the things that usually happen on stairs atdances, as well as in conservatories at balls, with the aid of aphonograph a man could propose to a girl in the presence of a thousandpeople, and nobody but the maiden herself would be the wiser. I tellyou, gentlemen," the Idiot added, enthusiastically, as he rose todepart, "if the phonograph people only knew their power they'd do greatthings. The patent vest-pocket phonograph for music at balls andproposals for bashful men alone would make their fortunes if they onlycould see it. I almost wish I were an electrician and not an Idiot."

  With which he left the room, and Mr. Pedagog whispered to Mrs. Pedagogthat while he considered the Idiot very much of an idiot, there was nodenying that at times he did get hold of ideas that were not wholly bad.

  "That's true," said the good landlady. "I think if you had proposed tome through a phonograph I should not have had to guess at what you meantand lead you on to express yourself more clearly. I didn't want to sayyes until I was fully convinced that you meant what you didn't seem ableto say."