Part 5
"There's only one other way that I can see to bring the desired condition about, and that is to permit physicians to operate under the same system of ethics as that to be found in the plumbing business. If a plumber is allowed, as he is allowed in the present state of public morality, to repair a leak in such a fashion to-day that new business immediately and automatically develops requiring his attention to-morrow, I see no reason why doctors should not be permitted to do the same thing. Called in to repair a mump, let him leave a measle behind. The measle cured, a few chicken-pox left carelessly about where they will do the most good will insure his speedy return; and so on. Every physician could in this way take care of himself, and by a skilful manipulation of the germs within his reach should have no difficulty not only in holding but in increasing his legitimate business as well."
"Ugh!" shuddered Mrs. Pedagog. "You almost make me afraid to let the Doctor stay in this house a day longer."
"Don't be afraid, Madame," said the Doctor amiably. "After all, I'm a doctor, you know, and not a plumber."
"I'll guarantee his absolute harmlessness, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "We're perfectly safe here. It is no temptation to a doctor to sow the germs of disorder among people like ourselves who have reduced getting free medical advice to a system."
"Well," said Mr. Brief, the lawyer, "your plan is all right for the doctors, but why the Dickens don't somebody suggest something for us lawyers once in awhile? There were seventy thousand new lawyers turned out yesterday, and you haven't even peeped."
"No," said the Idiot, "it isn't necessary. You lawyers are well provided for. With one National Congress, and forty-eight separate State Legislatures working twenty-four hours a day, turning out fifty-seven new varieties of law every fifteen minutes, all so phrased that no human mind can translate them into simple English, there's enough trouble constantly on hand to keep twenty million lawyers busy for thirty million years, telling us not what we can't do, but what few things there are left under the canopy that a man of religious inclinations can do without danger of arrest!"
VII
THE U. S. TELEPHONIC AID SOCIETY
"Well, Mr. Idiot," said the Doctor, as the Idiot with sundry comments on the top-loftical condition of the thermometer fanned his fevered brow with a tablespoon, "I suppose in view of the hot weather you will be taking 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 any vacant 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 far as 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, I wasn'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 to me to be traces of the alkali of irony mixed in with the tincture of derision in that question of yours. When you ask a Wall Street man who declines to carry speculation accounts these days if he isn't going to take a vacation shortly, it is like asking a resident of the Desert of Sahara 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 one darned vacation after another. The only business I have done in three months was to lend one of our customers a nickel, taking a subway ticket 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 a VA-cation, but a VO-cation."
"Oh, well, a man of your fertility of invention ought not to have any trouble about that," said Mr. Brief. "You should be able without killing yourself to think up some new kind of trade that will keep you busy until the snow-shoveling season begins anyhow."
"Yes," said the Idiot. "Ordinary by the exercise of some ingenuity and the use of these two brazen cheeks with which nature has endowed me, I can always manage to pull something resembling a living out of a reluctant earth. If a man slips up on being a Captain of Industry he can lecture on a sight-seeing coach, or if that fails him under present conditions in this old town, by a little economy he can live on his tips."
"And at the worst," said the Bibliomaniac, "you always have Mrs. Pedagog to fall back on."
"Yes," said the Idiot. "The state of my bill at this very moment shows that I have credit enough with Mrs. Pedagog to start three national banks and a trust company. But, fortunately for me, I don't have to do either. I have found my opportunity lying before me in the daily newspapers, and I am about to start a new enterprise which is not only going to pull a large and elegant series of chestnuts out of the fire for me but for all my subscribers as well. If I can find a good lawyer somewhere to draw up the papers of incorporation for my United States Telephonic Aid Society, I'll start in business this very morning at the nearest 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 too subtle 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 to call the Goat. If I want a good lawyer, Brudder Bones, what IS the matter 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 I want one who does know."
"But what's this new society going to do?" interrupted the Poet. "I am particularly interested in any sort of a scheme that is going to make you 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. Telephonic Aid Society is designed to carry First Aid to the Professionally Injured. You have doubtless read recently in the newspapers how Damon, a retired financier, desirous of helping his old friend Pythias, an equally retired attorney, back into his quondam practice--please excuse that word quondam, Mrs. Pedagog; it isn't half as profane as it sounds--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 as the only man this side of the planet Mars who could stave off the ruthless destruction of their interests by an uncontrolled body of lawmakers."
"Yes," said Mr. Brief. "I read all that, and it was almost as unreal as a page out of the Arabian Nights."
"Wasn't it!" said the Idiot. "And yet how simple! Well, that's my scheme in a nutshell, only I am going to do the thing as a pure matter of business, and not merely to show the purity of my affection for any Pythian dependent.
"To show just how the plan will work under my supervision let us take your case first, Mr. Poet. Here you are this morning with your board bill already passed to its third reading, with Mrs. Pedagog tacking amendments on to the end of it with every passing day. Unfortunately for you in your emergent hour, the editors either view your manuscripts with suspicion or, what is more likely, refuse to look at them at all. They care nothing for your aspirations or your inspirations.
"Your immediate prospect holds nothing in sight save the weary parcel postman, with his bent form, delivering daily at your door eleven-pound packages of unappreciated sonnets. You do not dare think on the morrow, what ye shall eat, and wherewithal shall ye be clothed, because no man liveth who can purchase the necessities of life with rejection slips--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 the national debt."
"Precisely," said the Idiot. "And it is just here, my dear friend, that the U. S. Telephonic Aid Society rushes to your assistance. Your case is brought to the society's attention, and I, as President, Secretary, Treasurer, and General Manager of the institution, look into the matter at once.
"I find your work meritorious. No editor has ever rejected it because it lacked literary merit. He even goes so far as to print a statement of that 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 to cover your head is essential to your health, and under the existing laws of society you simply must wear clothes when you appear in public, and it becomes the Society's worthy job to aid you in getting all these things.
"So we close a contract providing that for ten dollars down and fifteen per cent. of the gross future receipts, I, or the Society, agree to secure the publication of your sonnets, rondeaux, limericks, and triolets 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 see how you're going to turn the trick."
"On the regular 'Damon and Pythias' principle, as set forth in the newspapers," said the Idiot. "Immediately the contract between us is signed, I rush to the nearest pay station and ring up the editor of the Hyperion Magazine, and when I get him on the line we converse as follows:
"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 not 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. "Or perhaps it would be better to send a messenger boy for it. The more impersonal we make this business the better."
"I see," said the Poet dejectedly. "But even at that, Mr. Idiot, when the Hyperion man doesn't get the Ambassadorship, won't he sue me to recover?"
"Oh, well," said the Idiot wearily, "you've got to assume some of the burdens of the business yourself. We can't do it all, you know. But suppose they do sue you? You never heard of a magazine recovering anything from a poet, did you? You'd get a heap of free advertising out of such a lawsuit, and if you were canny enough to put out a book of your verses while the newspapers were full of it, they'd go off like hot cakes, and you could retire with a cool million."
"And where do I come in?" asked the Doctor. "Don't I get any of these plums of prosperity your Telephonic Aid Society is to place within the reach of all?"
"On payment of the fee of ten dollars, and signing the regular contract," said the Idiot. "I'll do my best for you. In your case I should impersonate our good old friend Andrew Rockernegie. Acting in that capacity I would ring up Mr. John D. Reddymun, and you'd hear something 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 would do if you were offered ten thousand dollars to cut a man's leg off I can't teach you, but I have one piece of advice to give you. When you get the order don't go around there with a case full of teaspoons and soup-ladles, when all you need is a good sharp carving knife to land you in the lap of luxury!"
"And do you men think for one single moment," cried the Landlady, "that all 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 bills getting 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, we will. 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 a letter just received from his friend and turned his attention to the waffles. "He's spending the good old Summer time in a sanitarium, just because he thinks he's got nervous prostration, and the Lord knows when he'll be back in harness again."
"Who's Binks?" asked the Lawyer. "You talk as if the name of Binks were a household word."
"Well, it is, in a way," said the Idiot. "Binks is one of those tired business men that we hear so much of these days. The kind they write comic operas and popular novels for, with all the thought taken out so that he may not have to burden his mind with anything worth thinking about. He's one of these billionaire slaves who's lost his thumb cutting off coupons and employs seventeen clerks with rubber stamps to sign his checks for him. He's succumbed to the strain of it all at last, and now the gobelins have got him. Do you approve of these sanitariums, Doctor?"
"I most certainly do," said the Doctor. "Sanitariums are the greatest blessings of modern life, and, for my part, I'd like to see a law passed requiring everybody to spend a month in one of them every year of his life, where he could be under constant scientific supervision. It would add ten years to the lives of every one of us."
"Well, I hope you are right, but I don't know," said the Idiot dubiously. "Seems to me there's too much coddling going on at those places, and mighty few people get well on coddling. I've given the matter some thought, and I've known a lot of men who had nothing but a pain in their toe who got so much sympathy over it that they became hopeless invalids inside of a year. There's more truth than humor in that joke about the little Irish boy who was asked how his mother was and 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 there are a great many people in this world who really do enjoy bad health who wouldn't if it weren't for the perquisites."
"Perquisites?" frowned the Bibliomaniac. "Great Heavens, Mr. Idiot, you don't mean to insinuate that there is graft in ill health, just as there is 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 a chronic disorder, or merely a temporary epidemic," grinned Mr. Brief.
"Idiocy is pretty contagious," smiled the Idiot, in reply, "but in this case I wish to be taken as a patient. Let us say, for instance, that I am off in the country at a popular hotel, and all of a sudden some fine morning I come down with a headache--"
"That's a debatable hypothesis," said the Lawyer. "Is it possible for the Idiot to have a headache, Doctor?"
"I have known similar cases," said the Doctor. "I knew an old soldier once who lost his leg at Gettysburg, and years afterward could still feel 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 in that anatomical void where my head would be if, like Mr. Brief, I always suffered from one. I am not sick enough to stay in bed, but just badly enough off to be able to loll around the hotel piazzas all morning and look forlorn.
"Everybody in the place, of course, is immediately sympathetic. All are sorry 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 commiseration is manifested by my fellow guests, especially by the ladies.
"They turn me at once into a suffering hero. As I lie listlessly in my steamer-chair they pass me by on tip-toe, or pause and inquire into the progress of my aches and show a great deal more interest in my condition than they do in bridge or votes for women. One fetching young creation in polka-dotted dimity, aged twenty-three, offers to stay home from a picnic and read Robert W. Chambers aloud to me. Another goes to her room and brings me down a little jar of mint jelly, which she feeds to me on the end of a macaroon or a lady finger, while still a third, a pretty little widow of twenty-seven summers, now and then leaves her embroidery to 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 to continue, this goes on all morning, and then when afternoon comes they hang a nice little hammock for me, filled with dainty sofa cushions, out under the trees, and as they gently swing me to and fro a charming creature from Wellesley or Vassar sits alongside of me and fans my fevered brow, driving away dull care, flies, and mosquitoes until twilight, when, after feeding me on more macaroons, washed down with copious libations of sparkling lemonade, a bevy of elfin maids sit around in a circle and sing 'My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean', while the aforesaid little widow comes now and then to brush my scalp-lock back from my brow with the aforesaid pink paddy."
"Oh, well, what of it?" interrupted the Doctor. "I've known many a stronger man than you made a fool of--"
"What of it?" demanded the Idiot. "What of it? There's a lot of it. Do you suppose for one minute that I am going to get well under those circumstances?"
"I wouldn't," said the Lawyer.
"Not on your faith in the Materia Medica!" cried the Idiot. "That headache would become immortal. As undying as a poet's fame. Life would become for me one blissful eternity of cerebellian suffering under those conditions. Rather that lose my job as the cynosure of all that lovely solicitude I'd hire a bellboy to come to my room in the morning with a croquet mallet and hammer my head until it split, if I couldn't get one in any more legitimate fashion.
"The quiet joy of lying off there with all those ministering angels about me, secretly enjoying the discomfiture of all the other men about the place--they nursing their wrath; their sisters, cousins, aunts, rich grandmothers, and best girls nursing me--get well? me? never, Doctor!