VI
The Idiot was unusually thoughtful--a fact which made the School-Masterand the Bibliomaniac unusually nervous. Their stock criticism of him wasthat he was thoughtless; and yet when he so far forgot his naturalpropensities as to meditate, they did not like it. It made them uneasy.They had a haunting fear that he was conspiring with himself againstthem, and no man, not even a callous school-master or a confirmedbibliomaniac, enjoys feeling that he is the object of a conspiracy. Thething to do, then, upon this occasion, seemed obviously to interrupt histrain of thought--to put obstructions upon his mental track, as it were,and ditch the express, which they feared was getting up steam at thatmoment to run them down.
"You don't seem quite yourself this morning, sir," said the Bibliomaniac.
"Don't I?" queried the Idiot. "And whom do I seem to be?"
"I mean that you seem to have something on your mind that worries you,"said the Bibliomaniac.
"No, I haven't anything on my mind," returned the Idiot. "I was thinkingabout you and Mr. Pedagog--which implies a thought not likely to use upmuch of my gray matter."
"Do you think your head holds any gray matter?" put in the Doctor.
"Rather verdant, I should say," said Mr. Pedagog.
"Green, gray, or pink," said the Idiot, "choose your color. It doesnot affect the fact that I was thinking about the Bibliomaniac and Mr.Pedagog. I have a great scheme in hand, which only requires capitaland the assistance of those two gentlemen to launch it on the sea ofprosperity. If any of you gentlemen want to get rich and die in comfortas the owner of your homes, now is your chance."
"In what particular line of business is your scheme?" asked Mr.Whitechoker. He had often felt that he would like to die in comfort,and to own a little house, even if it had a large mortgage on it.
"Journalism," said the Idiot. "There is a pile of money to be made outof journalism, particularly if you happen to strike a new idea. Ideascount."
"How far up do your ideas count--up to five?" questioned Mr. Pedagog,with a tinge of sarcasm in his tone.
"I don't know about that," returned the Idiot. "The idea I have holdof now, however, will count up into the millions if it can only be setgoing, and before each one of those millions will stand a big capital Swith two black lines drawn vertically through it--in other words, my ideaholds dollars, but to get the crop you've got to sow the seed. Plant athousand dollars in my idea, and next year you'll reap two thousand.Plant that, and next year you'll have four thousand, and so on. At thatrate millions come easy."
"I'll give you a dollar for the idea," said the Bibliomaniac.
"No, I don't want to sell. You'll do to help develop the scheme. You'llmake a first-rate tool, but you aren't the workman to manage the tool. Iwill go as far as to say, however, that without you and Mr. Pedagog, oryour equivalents in the animal kingdom, the idea isn't worth the fabuloussum you offer."
"You have quite aroused my interest," said Mr. Whitechoker. "Do youpropose to start a new paper?"
"You are a good guesser," replied the Idiot. "That is a part of thescheme--but it isn't the idea. I propose to start a new paper inaccordance with the plan which the idea contains."
"Is it to be a magazine, or a comic paper, or what?" asked theBibliomaniac.
"Neither. It's a daily."
"That's nonsense," said Mr. Pedagog, putting his spoon into thecondensed-milk can by mistake. "There isn't a single scheme in dailyjournalism that hasn't been tried--except printing an evening paper inthe morning."
"That's been tried," said the Idiot. "I know of an evening paper thesecond edition of which is published at mid-day. That's an old dodge, andthere's money in it, too--money that will never be got out of it. But Ireally have a grand scheme. So many of our dailies, you know, go in forevery horrid detail of daily events that people are beginning to tire ofthem. They contain practically the same things day after day. So manycolumns of murder, so many beautiful suicides, so much sport, a modicumof general intelligence, plenty of fires, no end of embezzlements,financial news, advertisements, and head-lines. Events, like history,repeat themselves, until people have grown weary of them. They wantsomething new. For instance, if you read in your morning paper thata man has shot another man, you know that the man who was shot was aninoffensive person who never injured a soul, stood high in the communityin which he lived, and leaves a widow with four children. On the otherhand, you know without reading the account that the murderer shot hisvictim in self-defence, and was apprehended by the detectives late lastnight; that his counsel forbid him to talk to the reporters, and that itis rumored that he comes of a good family living in New England.
"If a breach of trust is committed, you know that the defaulter was thelast man of whom such an act would be suspected, and, except in the onedetail of its location and sect, that he was prominent in some church.You can calculate to a cent how much has been stolen by a glance at theamount of space devoted to the account of the crime. Loaf of bread, twolines. Thousand dollars, ten lines. Hundred thousand dollars,half-column. Million dollars, a full column. Five million dollars,half the front page, wood-cut of the embezzler, and two editorials, oneleader and one paragraph.
"And so with everything. We are creatures of habit. The expected alwayshappens, and newspapers are dull because the events they chronicle aredull."
"Granting the truth of this," put in the School-Master, "what do youpropose to do?"
"Get up a newspaper that will devote its space to telling what hasn'thappened."
"That's been done," said the Bibliomaniac.
"To a much more limited extent than we think," returned the Idiot. "Ithas never been done consistently and truthfully."
"I fail to see how a newspaper can be made to prevaricate truthfully,"asserted Mr. Whitechoker. To tell the truth, he was greatly disappointedwith the idea, because he could not in the nature of things become one ofits beneficiaries.
"HE WAS NOT MURDERED"]
"I haven't suggested prevarication," said the Idiot. "Put on your frontpage, for instance, an item like this: 'George Bronson, colored, agedtwenty-nine, a resident of Thompson Street, was caught cheating at pokerlast night. He was not murdered.' There you tell what has not happened.There is a variety about it. It has the charm of the unexpected. Then youmight say: 'Curious incident on Wall Street yesterday. So-and-so, whowas caught on the bear side of the market with 10,000 shares of J. B. &S. K. W., paid off all his obligations in full, and retired from businesswith $1,000,000 clear.' Or we might say, 'Superintendent Smithers, of theSt. Goliath's Sunday-school, who is also cashier in the Forty-eighthNational Bank, has not absconded with $4,000,000.'"
"SUPERINTENDENT SMITHERS HAS NOT ABSCONDED"]
"Oh, that's a rich idea," put in the School-Master. "You'd earn$1,000,000 in libel suits the first year."
"No, you wouldn't, either," said the Idiot. "You don't libel a manwhen you say he hasn't murdered anybody. Quite the contrary, you callattention to his conspicuous virtue. You are in reality commending thosewho refrain from criminal practice, instead of delighting those who arefond of departing from the paths of Christianity by giving themnotoriety."
"But I fail to see in what respect Mr. Pedagog and I are essential toyour scheme," said the Bibliomaniac.
"I must confess to some curiosity on my own part on that point," addedthe School-Master.
"Why, it's perfectly clear," returned the Idiot, with a conciliatingsmile as he prepared to depart. "You both know so much that isn't so,that I rather rely on you to fill up."