VII
THE U. S. TELEPHONIC AID SOCIETY
"Well, Mr. Idiot," said the Doctor, as the Idiot with sundry comments onthe top-loftical condition of the thermometer fanned his fevered browwith a tablespoon, "I suppose in view of the hot weather you will betaking a vacation very shortly."
"Not only very shortly, but excessively shortly," returned the Idiot."Its shortliness will be of so brief a nature that nobody'll notice anyvacant chairs around where I am accustomed to sit. But let me tell you,Dr. Squills, it is too hot for sarcasm, so withhold your barbs as faras I am concerned, and believe me always very truly yours, Nicholas J.Doodlepate."
"Sarcasm?" said the Doctor in a surprised tone. "Why, my dear fellow, Iwasn't sarcastic, was I? I am sure I didn't mean to be."
"To the listener's ear it seemed so," said the Idiot. "There seemed tome to be traces of the alkali of irony mixed in with the tincture ofderision in that question of yours. When you ask a Wall Street man whodeclines to carry speculation accounts these days if he isn't going totake a vacation shortly, it is like asking a resident of the Desert ofSahara why he doesn't sprinkle a little sand around his place.
"Life on Wall Street for my kind, my good sir, of late has been just onedarned vacation after another. The only business I have done in threemonths was to lend one of our customers a nickel, taking a subwayticket and a baseball rain check as collateral security."
The Idiot shook his head ruefully and heaved a heart-rending sigh.
"What we cautious Wall Street fellows need," said he, "is not aVA-cation, but a VO-cation."
"Oh, well, a man of your fertility of invention ought not to have anytrouble about that," said Mr. Brief. "You should be able without killingyourself to think up some new kind of trade that will keep you busyuntil the snow-shoveling season begins anyhow."
"Yes," said the Idiot. "Ordinary by the exercise of some ingenuity andthe use of these two brazen cheeks with which nature has endowed me, Ican always manage to pull something resembling a living out of areluctant earth. If a man slips up on being a Captain of Industry he canlecture on a sight-seeing coach, or if that fails him under presentconditions in this old town, by a little economy he can live on histips."
"And at the worst," said the Bibliomaniac, "you always have Mrs. Pedagogto fall back on."
"Yes," said the Idiot. "The state of my bill at this very moment showsthat I have credit enough with Mrs. Pedagog to start three nationalbanks and a trust company. But, fortunately for me, I don't have to doeither. I have found my opportunity lying before me in the dailynewspapers, and I am about to start a new enterprise which is not onlygoing to pull a large and elegant series of chestnuts out of the firefor me but for all my subscribers as well. If I can find a good lawyersomewhere to draw up the papers of incorporation for my United StatesTelephonic Aid Society, I'll start in business this very morning at thenearest pay station."
"If you want a good lawyer, what's the matter with me?" asked Mr. Brief.
"I never was any good at riddles," said the Idiot, "and that one is toosubtle for me. If I want a good lawyer, what is the matter with you? Ha!Hum! Well, I give it up, but I'm willing to be what the ancients used tocall the Goat. If I want a good lawyer, Brudder Bones, what IS thematter with you? I ask the question--what's the answer?"
"I don't know," grinned the Lawyer.
"Well, I guess that's it," said the Idiot. "If I want a good lawyer Iwant one who does know."
"But what's this new society going to do?" interrupted the Poet. "I amparticularly interested in any sort of a scheme that is going to makeyou rich without forgetting me. If there's any pipe-line to prosperity,hurry up and let me know before it is too late."
"Why, it is simplicity itself," said the Idiot. "The U. S. TelephonicAid Society is designed to carry First Aid to the ProfessionallyInjured. You have doubtless read recently in the newspapers how Damon, aretired financier, desirous of helping his old friend Pythias, anequally retired attorney, back into his quondam practice--please excusethat word quondam, Mrs. Pedagog; it isn't half as profane as itsounds--went to the telephone and impersonating J. Mulligatawny Solon,Member of Congress from the Chillicothe District, rang up Midas,Croesus, and Dives, the eminent bankers, and recommended Pythias asthe only man this side of the planet Mars who could stave off theruthless destruction of their interests by an uncontrolled body oflawmakers."
"Yes," said Mr. Brief. "I read all that, and it was almost as unreal asa page out of the Arabian Nights."
"Wasn't it!" said the Idiot. "And yet how simple! Well, that's my schemein a nutshell, only I am going to do the thing as a pure matter ofbusiness, and not merely to show the purity of my affection for anyPythian dependent.
"To show just how the plan will work under my supervision let us takeyour case first, Mr. Poet. Here you are this morning with your boardbill already passed to its third reading, with Mrs. Pedagog tackingamendments on to the end of it with every passing day. Unfortunately foryou in your emergent hour, the editors either view your manuscripts withsuspicion or, what is more likely, refuse to look at them at all. Theycare nothing for your aspirations or your inspirations.
"Your immediate prospect holds nothing in sight save the weary parcelpostman, with his bent form, delivering daily at your door eleven-poundpackages of unappreciated sonnets. You do not dare think on the morrow,what ye shall eat, and wherewithal shall ye be clothed, because no manliveth who can purchase the necessities of life with rejectionslips--those checks on the Banks of Ambition, payable in the editors'regrets."
"By George," blurted the Poet feelingly, "you're dead right about that,old man. If editors' regrets were legal tender, I could pay off thenational debt."
"Precisely," said the Idiot. "And it is just here, my dear friend, thatthe U. S. Telephonic Aid Society rushes to your assistance. Your case isbrought to the society's attention, and I, as President, Secretary,Treasurer, and General Manager of the institution, look into the matterat once.
"I find your work meritorious. No editor has ever rejected it because itlacked literary merit. He even goes so far as to print a statement ofthat fact upon the slip he sends back with it on its homeward journey.Like most other poets you need a little food once in awhile. A roof tocover your head is essential to your health, and under the existing lawsof society you simply must wear clothes when you appear in public, andit becomes the Society's worthy job to aid you in getting all thesethings.
"So we close a contract providing that for ten dollars down and fifteenper cent. of the gross future receipts, I, or the Society, agree tosecure the publication of your sonnets, rondeaux, limericks, andtriolets in the Hyperion Magazine."
"That would be bully if you could only pull it off," said the Poet,falling naturally into the terminology of Milton. "But I don't just seehow you're going to turn the trick."
"On the regular 'Damon and Pythias' principle, as set forth in thenewspapers," said the Idiot. "Immediately the contract between us issigned, I rush to the nearest pay station and ring up the editor of theHyperion Magazine, and when I get him on the line we converse asfollows:
"Me--Is this the editor of the Hyperion Magazine?
"Editor--Ubetcha. Who are you?
"Me--I'm President Wilson, down at the White House.
"Editor--Glad to hear from you, Mr. President. Got any more of that new Freedom stuff on hand? We are thinking of running a Department of Humor in the Hyperion, and with a little editing I think we could use a couple of carloads of it.
"Me--Why, yes, Mr. Bluepencil. I think I have a bale or two of remnants in cold storage down at Trenton. But really that isn't what I am after this morning. I wanted to say to you officially, but confidentially, of course, that my Ambassador to Great Britain has just cabled his resignation to the State Department. What with a little breakfast he gave last week to the President of France and his tips at his own presentation to the King, he has already spent four years' salary, and he does no
t feel that he can afford to stay over there much after the first of September.
"Editor--I'm on. I getcha.
"Me--Now, of course, I've got to fill his place right away, and it struck me that you were just the man for the job. In the first place you are tolerably familiar with the language they speak in and about the Court of St. James's. I am told by mutual friends that you eat peas with a fork, can use a knife without cutting your lip, and have an intuitive apprehension of the subtle distinctions between a finger-bowl and a sauterne glass. It has also been brought to my attention that your advertising pages have for years been consistent advocates, in season and out, of the use of grape juice as a refreshing beverage for nervous Ambassadors.
"Editor--That's right, Mr. President.
"Me--Well, of course, all of this makes you unquestionably _persona grata_ to us, and I think it should make you a novel and interesting feature of diplomatic life along Piccadilly.
"Editor--It sounds good to me, Mr. President.
"Me--Now to come to the difficulties in our way--and that is what I have rung you up to talk about. There seems to be but one serious objection to your appointment, Mr. Bluepencil. At a Cabinet meeting called yesterday to discuss the matter, Mr. McAdoo expressed the fear that if you go away for four years the quality of the poetry in the Hyperion Magazine will fall off. In this contention, Mr. McAdoo was supported by the Secretary of Agriculture, whose name escapes me at this moment, with the Postmaster General and the Secretary of War on the fence. Mr. Daniels was not present, having gone West to launch a battleship at Omaha. But in any event there is where the matter rests at this moment.
"For my own part, however, after giving the matter prayerful consideration, I think I can see a way out. The whole Cabinet is very much interested in the poems of Willie Wimpleton Spondy, the boy Watson. McAdoo is constantly quoting from him. The Postmaster General has even gone so far as to advocate the extension of the franking privilege to him, and as for myself, I have made it a practice for the last five years to begin every day by reciting one of his limericks before my assembled family.
"Editor--I never heard of the boob.
"Me--Well, you hear of him now, and the whole thing comes down to this: Mr. Spondy will call at your office with a couple of bales of his stuff at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and you might have something besides a pink rejection slip dripping with regrets ready for him. I don't know what his rates are, but his stuff runs about ninety pounds to the bale, and what that comes to at fifty per you can figure out for yourself.
"Editor--How does Champ Clark stand on this thing?
"Me--He and Tommie Marshall are with us to the last tintinnabulation of the gong.
"Editor--Then I am to understand just what, Mr. President?
"Me--That you don't go to England on our account until we are absolutely assured beyond peradvanture that there will be no deterioration in the quality of Hyperion poetry during your absence.
"Editor--All right. Send the guy around this afternoon. He can send the bale by slow freight. We always pay in advance anyhow."
The Idiot paused to take breath.
"Then what?" asked the Poet dubiously.
"You go around and get what's coming to you," said the Idiot. "Orperhaps it would be better to send a messenger boy for it. The moreimpersonal we make this business the better."
"I see," said the Poet dejectedly. "But even at that, Mr. Idiot, whenthe Hyperion man doesn't get the Ambassadorship, won't he sue me torecover?"
"Oh, well," said the Idiot wearily, "you've got to assume some of theburdens of the business yourself. We can't do it all, you know. Butsuppose they do sue you? You never heard of a magazine recoveringanything from a poet, did you? You'd get a heap of free advertising outof such a lawsuit, and if you were canny enough to put out a book ofyour verses while the newspapers were full of it, they'd go off like hotcakes, and you could retire with a cool million."
"And where do I come in?" asked the Doctor. "Don't I get any of theseplums of prosperity your Telephonic Aid Society is to place within thereach of all?"
"On payment of the fee of ten dollars, and signing the regularcontract," said the Idiot. "I'll do my best for you. In your case Ishould impersonate our good old friend Andrew Rockernegie. Acting inthat capacity I would ring up Mr. John D. Reddymun, and you'd hearsomething like this:
"Me--Hello, Reddy--is this you?
"Reddymun--Yes. Who's this?
"Me--This is Uncle Andy. How's the leg this morning?
"Reddymun--Oh, so so.
"Me--Everybody pulling it, I suppose?
"Reddymun--About the same as usual. It's curious, Andrew, how many people are attached to my limb, and how few are attached to me.
"Me--Yes, it's a cold and cruel world, John. But I'm through. I've found the way out. They'll never pull my leg again.
"Reddymun--By George, old man, I wish I could say as much.
"Me--Well, you can if you'll only do what I did.
"Reddymun--What's that?
"Me--Had it cut off.
"Reddymun--No!
"Me--Yep!
"Reddymun--When?
"Me--Just now.
"Reddymun--Hurt?
"Me--Never knew what was happening.
"Reddymun--Who did it?
"Me--Old Doctor Squills. He charged me ten thousand dollars for the job, but I figure it out that it has saved me six hundred and thirty three million dollars.
"Reddymun--Send him around, will you?
"Me--Ubetcha!"
"And then?" said the Doctor.
"And then?" echoed the Idiot. "Well, if you don't know what you woulddo if you were offered ten thousand dollars to cut a man's leg off Ican't teach you, but I have one piece of advice to give you. When youget the order don't go around there with a case full of teaspoons andsoup-ladles, when all you need is a good sharp carving knife to land youin the lap of luxury!"
"And do you men think for one single moment," cried the Landlady, "thatall this would be honest business?"
"Well, in the very nature of the case it would be a trifle 'phoney',"said the Idiot, "but what can a man do these days, with his billsgetting bigger and bigger every day?"
"I'd leave 'em unpaid first!" sniffed the Landlady contemptuously.
"Oh, very well," smiled the Idiot. "With your permission, ma'am, wewill. You don't know what a load you have taken off my mind."
VIII
FOR TIRED BUSINESS MEN
"Poor old Binks!" said the Idiot sympathetically, as he put down aletter just received from his friend and turned his attention to thewaffles. "He's spending the good old Summer time in a sanitarium, justbecause he thinks he's got nervous prostration, and the Lord knows whenhe'll be back in harness again."
"Who's Binks?" asked the Lawyer. "You talk as if the name of Binks werea household word."
"Well, it is, in a way," said the Idiot. "Binks is one of those tiredbusiness men that we hear so much of these days. The kind they writecomic operas and popular novels for, with all the thought taken out sothat he may not have to burden his mind with anything worth thinkingabout. He's one of these billionaire slaves who's lost his thumb cuttingoff coupons and employs seventeen clerks with rubber stamps to sign hischecks for him. He's succumbed to the strain of it all at last, and nowthe gobelins have got him. Do you approve of these sanitariums, Doctor?"
"I most certainly do," said the Doctor. "Sanitariums are the greatestblessings of modern life, and, for my part, I'd like to see a law passedrequiring everybody to spend a month in one of them every year of hislife, where he could be under constant scientific supervision. It wouldadd ten years to the lives of ever
y one of us."
"Well, I hope you are right, but I don't know," said the Idiotdubiously. "Seems to me there's too much coddling going on at thoseplaces, and mighty few people get well on coddling. I've given thematter some thought, and I've known a lot of men who had nothing but apain in their toe who got so much sympathy over it that they becamehopeless invalids inside of a year. There's more truth than humor inthat joke about the little Irish boy who was asked how his mother wasand replied that she was enjoying poor health this year."
"O, that's all tommyrot," said the Doctor. "Perfect nonsense--"
"I hope so," said the Idiot, "but after all nobody can deny that thereare a great many people in this world who really do enjoy bad health whowouldn't if it weren't for the perquisites."
"Perquisites?" frowned the Bibliomaniac. "Great Heavens, Mr. Idiot, youdon't mean to insinuate that there is graft in ill health, just as thereis in everything else, do you?"
"I sure do," replied the Idiot. "Take me, for instance--"
"I for one must decline to take you until I know whether you are achronic disorder, or merely a temporary epidemic," grinned Mr. Brief.
"Idiocy is pretty contagious," smiled the Idiot, in reply, "but in thiscase I wish to be taken as a patient. Let us say, for instance, that Iam off in the country at a popular hotel, and all of a sudden some finemorning I come down with a headache--"
"That's a debatable hypothesis," said the Lawyer. "Is it possible forthe Idiot to have a headache, Doctor?"
"I have known similar cases," said the Doctor. "I knew an old soldieronce who lost his leg at Gettysburg, and years afterward could stillfeel the twinges of rheumatism in one of his lost toes."
"Thanks for the vindication, Doctor," said the Idiot. "Nevertheless,just to please our learned brother here, I will modify the hypothesis.
"Let us suppose that I am off in the country at a popular summer hotel,and all of a sudden some fine morning I come down with a violent pain inthat anatomical void where my head would be if, like Mr. Brief, I alwayssuffered from one. I am not sick enough to stay in bed, but just badlyenough off to be able to loll around the hotel piazzas all morning andlook forlorn.
"Everybody in the place, of course, is immediately sympathetic. All aresorry for me, and it is such an unusual thing for one of my volatile,not to say fluffy, nature to suffer that a vast amount of commiserationis manifested by my fellow guests, especially by the ladies.
"They turn me at once into a suffering hero. As I lie listlessly in mysteamer-chair they pass me by on tip-toe, or pause and inquire into theprogress of my aches and show a great deal more interest in my conditionthan they do in bridge or votes for women. One fetching young creationin polka-dotted dimity, aged twenty-three, offers to stay home from apicnic and read Robert W. Chambers aloud to me. Another goes to her roomand brings me down a little jar of mint jelly, which she feeds to me onthe end of a macaroon or a lady finger, while still a third, a prettylittle widow of twenty-seven summers, now and then leaves her embroideryto put a cool little hand on my forehead to see if I have any fever--"
"A most alluring picture," said the Doctor.
"It almost makes my head ache to think of it!" said the Idiot. "But tocontinue, this goes on all morning, and then when afternoon comes theyhang a nice little hammock for me, filled with dainty sofa cushions, outunder the trees, and as they gently swing me to and fro a charmingcreature from Wellesley or Vassar sits alongside of me and fans myfevered brow, driving away dull care, flies, and mosquitoes untiltwilight, when, after feeding me on more macaroons, washed down withcopious libations of sparkling lemonade, a bevy of elfin maids sitaround in a circle and sing 'My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean', while theaforesaid little widow comes now and then to brush my scalp-lock backfrom my brow with the aforesaid pink paddy."
"Oh, well, what of it?" interrupted the Doctor. "I've known many astronger man than you made a fool of--"
"What of it?" demanded the Idiot. "What of it? There's a lot of it. Doyou suppose for one minute that I am going to get well under thosecircumstances?"
"I wouldn't," said the Lawyer.
"Not on your faith in the Materia Medica!" cried the Idiot. "Thatheadache would become immortal. As undying as a poet's fame. Life wouldbecome for me one blissful eternity of cerebellian suffering under thoseconditions. Rather that lose my job as the cynosure of all that lovelysolicitude I'd hire a bellboy to come to my room in the morning with acroquet mallet and hammer my head until it split, if I couldn't get onein any more legitimate fashion.
"The quiet joy of lying off there with all those ministering angelsabout me, secretly enjoying the discomfiture of all the other men aboutthe place--they nursing their wrath; their sisters, cousins, aunts,rich grandmothers, and best girls nursing me--get well? me? never,Doctor!
"But if, on the other hand, nobody came near me all day long save ahorse marine of a landlady armed with a bottle of squills, with therequest that I go to bed until I felt better, why then I'd be a well manin just seven and a half minutes, dancing the tango, and challenging allthe rheumaticky old beaux about the place to a hundred yards' dash forthe fifteenth turkey trot with the little widow at the Saturday nighthop."
"Yes, I admit that there is such a thing as too much coddling," said theDoctor. "There are people who are inclined to hug their troubles, andfor whom too much sympathy is a positive deterrent in the process ofrecuperation, but after all, my dear fellow, until we find somethingbetter the sanitarium must serve its purpose, and a great many peopleare unquestionably helped along by its beneficent operations."
"I haven't a doubt of that," said the Idiot, "and here's to them! Longmay they wave! I quaff this pony of maple syrup to the health of thesanitariums of the land--but just the same, for the tired business man,and his name is not only Smith, but Legion, there should be some otherkind of an institution where this coddling process is frowned upon."
"Why not devote that massive brain of yours to the working out of theidea?" suggested the Bibliomaniac. "The great trouble with you, Mr.Idiot, is that you are prolific in thinking out things that ought to bedone, but there you stop. How to do them you never tell us. Why don'tyou give us a constructive notion once in awhile?"
"Thank you, Mr. Bib," said the Idiot, with a grateful smile. "I've beenfishing for that particular nibble for the past eighteen minutes, and Iwas beginning to fear the shad were shy this morning. You have saved theday, Sir. Speaking of Mr. Bib's idea that we ought to have something totake the place of the sanitarium for the tired business man, Doctor, howdo you think an irritarium would pay?"
"A what?" cried the Doctor, holding his waffle like Mohammed's coffin,suspended in midair.
"An irritarium," repeated the Idiot. "An institution of aggravation,where, instead of being coddled into permanent invalidism, we should beconstantly irritated, provoked, exacerbated, or, as my old friendColonel Thesaurus says in his Essay on Excitation, exasperated into acantankerously contentious pugnacity!"
"And for what purpose, pray?" demanded the Bibliomaniac.
"As an anti-coddling resource for the restoration of our pristinepowers," said the Idiot. "Just take our old friend, the tired businessman, for example. He has been working forty-eight hours a day all winterlong, and with the coming of spring he is first cousin to the frazzle,and in the matter of spine twin brother to the jellyfish. His middlename is Flabby, and his nerve has succumbed to the superior numbers ofnerves.
"He is headed straight for the Down-and-Out Club. His lip quivers whenhe talks, and his hand is the center of a seismic disturbance that turnshis autograph into a cross between a dress pattern and a futuristconception of a straight line in the cold gray dawn of the morningafter. He has prolonged fits of weeping, and when it comes to making uphis mind on any definite course of action he vacillates between twopossibilities until it is too late, and then decides wrong.
"Now, under present conditions they railroad this poor wreck off to asanitarium, where the very atmosphere that he breathes is the dreadthing that has haunted his
sleepless hours all winter long--that ofretirement. He is made to believe that he is a vurry, vurry sick man,and the only real pleasure that is left to him is bragging about hissymptoms to some other unfortunate incarcerated with him; and after eachperiod of boastful exposure of these symptoms in the exchange providedfor the swapping of these things in the sanitariums of the day, he goesback to his room more than ever convinced that his case is hopeless;and, confronted by the bogey of everlasting ill health, he lets go ofhimself altogether and a long, long, tedious period of rehabilitationbegins which may or may not get him into shape again in time for thefall season."
"It's the only way," said the Doctor. "Don't fight your doctor. Just letgo of yourself, and let him do the rest."
"Well, I'd like to see my system tried for a while," said the Idiot."I'll guarantee that any tired business man who will go to my irritariumwill get his spine and his spunk, his nerve and his dander, back in ajiffy.
"The first morning, after giving him a first-class breakfast that fillshis weary soul with peace, I'd turn him loose in a picture gallery onthe walls of which are hung soft, dreamy reproductions of pastoralscenes calculated to lull his soul into an unsuspecting sense of calm,and while he is looking placidly at these lovely things I'd have a huskyattendant wearing sneakers creep quietly up behind him and give him sucha kick as should for a moment make him feel that the earth itself hadblown up. It wouldn't be a pleasant, sympathetic little love tapcalculated to make him feel that he never even wanted to get well, but aviolent, exacerbating assault; utterly uncalled for and unexpected; abit of sheer, brutal provocation.
"Do you suppose for an instant that the party of the second part wouldthrow himself down forthwith upon a convenient divan and give way to afit of weeping? Not he, my dear Doctor. The tire of that tired businessman would blow out with a report like a crash of distant thunder. Allthe latent business manhood in him would be aroused into instant action.Nerves would fly, and nerve would return. Spinelessness and uncertaintywould give way to spunk, and a promptitude of truculent reprisal worthyof the palmiest days of his commercial pre-eminence would ensue. Wornand weary as he was when he entered the irritarium, he would be sooutraged by the rank discourtesy and utter injustice of that kick thathe would beat up that attendant as if he were a world's championbattling with a bowlful of cold consomme for a ten-thousand-dollarpurse."
"Tush!" said the Doctor. "What do you suppose the attendant would bedoing all this time? You seem to think your tired business man wouldfind beating him up as easy as mashing potatoes with a pile driver."
"It would be part of my system," said the Idiot, "that the attendantshould allow himself to be thrashed, so that the tired business man,irritated into a show of spirit and deceived into thinking that he wasstill some fighter, would leave the place next day, his courage renewedand his confidence in himself completely restored. Instead ofinoculating him with Nut chops and hot water for a weary period of sixmonths, I'd pin the red badge of courage on him at the very start; andI miss my guess if he wouldn't go back to business the next morning asfit as a fiddle, and spend most of his time for the next two yearstelling everybody who would listen how he walloped the life out of oneof the huskiest attendants he could find in a month of Sundays."
"And you really think such brutal methods would work, do you?" asked theBibliomaniac.
"I have eight dollars that are willing to state it is a fact to anytwo-dollar certificate ever printed by Uncle Sam," returned the Idiot."Why, Mr. Bib, I had a very dear friend once who was paralyzed. Socompletely paralyzed was he that he couldn't move without help, and,what was worse, couldn't even talk.
"He went to a sanitarium, and for seven long and weary months he wasdipped in a warm bath every morning by two attendants, an Irishman anda Dutchman. One held him by the shoulders and the other by the ankles,and day after day for nearly a year they dipped, and dipped, and dippedhim. He showed no signs of improvement whatsoever until one bitterlycold winter's morning, the two attendants, having been off on a spreethe night before, forgot to turn on the hot-water faucet and dipped himinto a tub of ice water!
"The effect was electrical. The patient was so mad that he impulsivelybroke the dam of silence that had afflicted him for so long and letloose a flow of language on those attendants that made the wrath to comeseem like the twittering of a bird; and before they had recovered fromtheir astonishment he had leaped from the tub, pinked the Irishman onthe eye with a cake of soap, and, after chasing the Dutchman downstairsinto the parlor, spanked him into a state of coma with a long-handledbath brush he had picked up off the floor."
"And I suppose he is giving lessons in the tango to-day!" interjectedthe Lawyer, with a laugh.
"Nothing so mild," said the Idiot. "The last time I saw him he wasstarting off with old man Weston on his walk to Chicago. He told me hewas going as far as Albany with Weston."
"Well," said the Doctor, "it might work, but I doubt it. I should haveto see the scheme in operation before I recommended it to any of mypatients."
"All right," said the Idiot. "Send 'em along, Doctor. Mr. Bib and I cantake care of them right here."
"Leave me out," snapped the Bibliomaniac. "I don't care to be a partnerin any of your idiotic nonsense."
"No, Mr. Bib," smiled the Idiot, genially. "I wasn't going to use youas a partner, but as a shining example of the effectiveness of mytheory. I've been irritating you constantly for the past twenty years,and you are still able to eat your thirty-seven and a half flapjacksdaily without turning a hair, and that's some testimonial."
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