Part 3

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

"Very well," answered the Idiot. "I shall put your name down as a subscriber to the _Idiot Monthly Magazine_, which some of my friends contemplate publishing. That is what I mean when I say I may shortly lose control of myself. These friends of mine profess to have been so impressed by my dicta that they have asked me if I would allow myself to be incorporated into a stock company, the object of which should be to transform my personality into printed pages. Hardly a day goes by but I devote a portion of my time to a poem in which the thought is conspicuous either by its absence or its presence. My schemes for the amelioration of the condition of the civilized are notorious among those who know me; my views on current topics are eagerly sought for; my business instinct, as I have already told you, is invaluable to my employer, and my fiction is unsurpassed in its fictitiousness. What more is needed for a magazine? You have the poetry, the philanthropy, the man of to-day, the fictitiousness, and the business instinct necessary for the successful modern magazine all concentrated in one person. Why not publish that person, say my friends, and I, feeling as I do that no man has a right to the selfish enjoyment of the great gifts nature has bestowed upon him, of course can only agree. I am to be incorporated with a capital stock of five hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand dollars' worth of myself I am to be permitted to retain; the rest my friends will subscribe for at fifty cents on the dollar. If any of you want shares in the enterprise I have no doubt you can be accommodated."

"I'm obliged to you for the opportunity," said the Doctor. "But I have to be very careful about things I take stock in, and in general I regard 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 any stock 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 the Bibliomaniac, "while thanking you just the same for the chance."

"You can put me down for one share, to be paid for in poetry," said the Poet, 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, "shall be most happy to take five shares to be paid for in advice and high-balls. Moreover, if your company needs good-will to establish its enterprise, you may count upon me for unlimited credit."

"Oh, as for that," said the Idiot, "I have plenty of good-will. Even Mr. Pedagog supplies me with more of it than I deserve, though by no means with all that I desire."

"That good-will is yours as an individual, Mr. Idiot," returned the School-master. "As a corporation, however, I cannot permit you to trade upon me even for that. Your value is, in my eyes, entirely too fluctuating."

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

"If, like the railways, you could issue betterment bonds you might do very well," said the Doctor. "I think ten million dollars spent in bettering 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 German Emperor, and issue a five-million-dollar mortgage on the result, and you might find people who'd take those bonds at seventy-five."

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

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

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

"On what?" queried the Idiot, unwarily.

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

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

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

V

University Extension

"I was surprised and gratified last evening, Mr. Idiot," observed the School-master as breakfast was served, "to see you at the University Extension Lecture. I did not know that you admitted the necessity of further instruction in any matter pertaining to human knowledge."

"I don't know that I do admit the necessity," returned the Idiot. "Sometimes when I take an inventory of the contents of my mind it seems to me that about everything I need is there."

"There you go again!" said the Bibliomaniac. "Why do you persist in your refusal to allow any one to get a favorable impression concerning you? Mr. Pedagog unbends sufficiently to tell you that you have at last done something which he can commend, and you greet him with an Idiotism which is practically a rebuff."

"Very well said," observed the School-master, with an acquiescent nod. "I came to this table this morning encouraged to believe that this young man was beginning to see the error of his ways, and I must confess to a great enough interest in him to say that I was pleased at that encouragement. I saw him at a lecture on literature at the Lyceum Hall last evening, and he appeared to be interested, and yet this morning he seems to show that he is utterly incorrigible. May I ask, sir, why you attended that lecture if, as you say, your mind is already sufficiently well furnished?"

"Certainly you may ask that question," replied the Idiot. "I went to that lecture to have my impressions confirmed, that is all. I have certain well-defined notions concerning University Extension, and I wished to see if they were correct. I found that they were."

"The lecture was not upon University Extension, but upon Romanticism, and it was a most able discourse," retorted Mr. Pedagog.

"Very likely," said the Idiot. "I did not hear it. I did not want to hear it. I have my own ideas concerning Romanticism, which do not need confirmation or correction. I have already confirmed and corrected them. I went to see the audience and not to hear Professor Peterkin exploding theories."

"It is a pity the chair you occupied was wasted upon you," snapped Mr. Pedagog.

"I agree with you," said the Idiot. "I could have got a much better view of the audience if I had been permitted to sit on the stage, but Professor Peterkin needed all that for his gestures. However, I saw enough from where I sat to confirm my impression that University Extension is not so much of a public benefit as a social fad. There was hardly a soul in the audience who could not have got all that Professor Peterkin had to tell him out of his books; there was hardly a soul in the audience who could not have afforded to pay one dollar at least for the seat he occupied; there was not a soul in the audience who had paid more than ten cents for his seat or her seat, and those for whose benefit the lecture was presumably given, the ten-cent people, were crowded out. The lectures themselves are not instructive--Professor Peterkin's particularly--except in so far as it is instructive to hear what Professor Peterkin thinks on this or that subject, and his desire to be original forces him to cook up views which no one else ever held, with the result that what he says is most interesting and proper to be presented to the attention of a discriminating audience, but not proper to be presented to an audience that is supposed to come there to receive instruction."

"You have just said that you did not listen to the lecture. How do you know that what you say is true?" put in the Bibliomaniac.

"I know Professor Peterkin," said the Idiot.

"Does he know you?" sneered Mr. Pedagog.

"I don't think he would remember me if you should speak my name in his presence," observed the Idiot, calmly. "But that is easily accounted for. The Professor never remembers anybody but himself."

"Well, I admit," said Mr. Pedagog, "that the Professor's lectures were rather advanced for the comprehension of a person like the Idiot, nevertheless it was an enjoyable occasion, and I doubt if the fulminations of our friend here will avail against University Extension."

"You speak a sad truth," said the Idiot. "Social fads are impervious to fulmination, as Solomon might have said had he thought of it. As long as a thing is a social fad it will thrive, and, on the whole, perhaps it ought to thrive. Anything which gives society something to think about has its value, and the mere fact that it makes society _think_ is proof of that value."

"We seem to be in a philosophic frame of mind this morning," said Mr. Whitechoker.

"We are," returned the Idiot. "That's one thing about University Extension. It makes us philosophic. It has made a stoic of my dear old daddy."

"Oh yes!" cried Mr. Pedagog. "You _have_ a father, haven't you? I had forgotten that."

"Wherein," said the Idiot, "we differ. _I_ haven't forgotten that I have one, and, by-the-way, it is from him that I first heard of University Extension. He lives in a small manufacturing town not many miles from here, and is distinguished in the town because, without being stingy, he lives within his means. He has a way of paying his grocer's bills which makes of him a marked man. He hasn't much more money than he needs, but when the University Extension movement reached the town he was interested. The prime movers in the enterprise went to him and asked him if he wouldn't help it along, dilating upon the benefits which would accrue to those whose education stopped short with graduation from the high-schools. It was most plausible. The notion that for ten cents a lecture the working masses could learn something about art, history, and letters, could gather in something about the sciences, and all that, appealed to him, and while he could afford it much more ill than the smart people, the four hundred of the town, he chipped in. He paid fifty dollars and was made an honorary manager. He was proud enough of it, too, and he wrote a long, enthusiastic letter to me about it. It was a great thing, and he hoped the State, which had been appealed to to help the movement along, would take a hand in it. 'If we educate the masses to understand and to appreciate the artistic, the beautiful,' he wrote, 'we need have little fear for the future. Ignorance is the greatest foe we have to contend against in our national development, and it is the only thing that can overthrow a nation such as ours is.' And then what happened? Professor Peterkin came along and delivered ten or a dozen lectures. The masses went once or twice and found the platform occupied by a man who talked to them about Romanticism and Realism; who told them that Dickens was trash; who exalted Tolstoi and Ibsen; but who never let them into the secret of what Romanticism was, and who kept them equally in the dark as to the significance of Realism. They also found the best seats in the lecture-hall occupied by the smart set in full evening-dress, who talked almost as much and as loudly as did Professor Peterkin. The masses did not even learn manners at Professor Peterkin's first and second lectures, and the third and fourth found them conspicuous by their absence. All they learned was that they were ignorant, and that other people were better than they, and what my father learned was that he had subscribed fifty dollars to promote a series of social functions for the diversion of the four hundred and the aggrandizement of Professor Peterkin. He started in for what might be called Romanticism, and he got a Realism that he did not like in less time than it takes to tell of it, and to-day in that town University Extension is such a fad that when, some weeks ago, the swell club of that place talked of appointing Thursday evening as its club night, it was found to be impossible, for the reason that it might interfere with the attendance upon the University Extension lectures. That, Mr. Pedagog, is a matter of history and can be proven, and last night's audience confirmed the impression which I had formed from what my father had told me. Professor Peterkin's lectures are interesting to you, a school-master, but they are pure Greek to me, who would like to know more about letters. I would gather more instruction from your table-talk in an hour than I could from Professor Peterkin's whole course."

"You flatter me," said Mr. Pedagog.

"No," returned the Idiot. "If you knew how little the ignorant gain from Peterkin you would not necessarily call it flattery if one should say he learned more from your conversation over a griddle-cake."

"You misconceive the whole situation, I think, nevertheless," said Mr. Whitechoker. "As I understand it, supplementary lectures, and examinations based on them, are held after the lectures, when the practical instruction is given with great thoroughness."

"I'm glad you spoke of that," said the Idiot. "I had forgotten that part of it. Professor Peterkin received pay for his lectures, which dealt in theories only; plain Mr. Barton, who delivered the supplementary lectures, got nothing. Professor Peterkin taught nothing, but he represented University Extension. Plain Mr. Barton did the work and represented nothing. Both reached society. Neither reached the masses. In my native town plain Mr. Barton's supplementary lectures, which were simply an effort to unravel the Peterkin complications, were attended by the same people in smaller crowds--people of social standing who were curious enough to devote an hour a week to an endeavor to find out the meaning of what Professor Peterkin had told them at the function the week before. The students examined were mostly ladies, and I happen to know that in a large proportion they were ladies whose husbands could have afforded to pay Professor Peterkin his salary ten times over as a private tutor."

"As I look at it," said Mr. Pedagog, gravely, "it does not make much difference to whom your instruction is given, so long as it instructs. What if these lectures do interest those who are comparatively well off? Your society woman may be as much in need of an extended education as your factory girl. The University Extension idea is to convey knowledge to people who would not otherwise get it. It simply sets out to improve minds. If the social mind needs improvement, why not improve it? Why condemn a system because it does not discriminate in the minds selected for improvement?"

"I don't condemn a system which sets out to improve minds irrespective of conditions," replied the Idiot. "But I should most assuredly condemn a man, or a set of men, who induced me to subscribe to a bread fund for the poor and who afterwards expended that money on cream-cakes for the Czar of Russia. The fact that the Czar of Russia wanted the cream-cakes and was willing to accept them would not affect my feelings in the matter, though I have no doubt the people in charge of the fund would find themselves far more conspicuous for having departed from the original idea. Some of them might be knighted for it if the Czar happened to be passionately fond of cream-cakes."

"Then, having attacked this system, what would you have? Would you have University Extension stop?" asked the Bibliomaniac.

"Not at all," returned the Idiot. "Anything which can educate society is a good thing, but I should change the name of it from University Extension to Social Expansion, and I should compel those whose minds were broadened by it to pay the bills."

"But as yet you have failed to hit the nail on the head," persisted the Bibliomaniac. "The masses can attend these lectures if they wish to, and on your own statement they don't. You don't seem to consider that point, or, if you do, you don't meet it."

"I don't think it necessary to meet it," said the Idiot. "Though I will say that if you were one of the masses--a girl, say, with one dress, threadbare, poor, and ill-fitting, and possessed of a natural bit of pride--you would find little pleasure in attending a lecture your previous education does not permit of your comprehending, and sitting through an evening with a lot of finely dressed, smart folk, with their backs turned towards you. The plebeians have _some_ pride, my dear Bibliomaniac, and they are decidedly averse to mixing with the swells. They would like to be educated, but they don't care to be snubbed for the privilege of being mystified by a man like Professor Peterkin, even for so small a sum as ten cents an evening."

VI

Social Expansion

"We were talking about University Extension the other day, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot, as the School-master folded up the newspaper and put it in his pocket, "and I, as you remember, suggested that it might better be called Social Expansion."

"Did you?" said Mr. Pedagog, coldly. "I don't remember much about it. I rarely make a note of anything you may say."

"Well, I did suggest the change of name, whether your memory is retentive or not, and I have been thinking the matter over a good deal since, and I think I've got hold of an idea," returned the Idiot.

"In that case," said the Bibliomaniac, "we would better lock the door. If you have really got hold of an idea you should be very careful not to let it get away from you."

"No danger of that," said the Idiot, with a smile. "I have it securely locked up here," tapping his forehead.

"It must be lonesome," said Mr. Pedagog.

"And rather uncomfortable--if it is a real idea," observed the Doctor. "An idea in the Idiot's mind must feel somewhat as a tall, stout Irish maid feels when she goes to her bedroom in one of those Harlem flat-houses."

"You men are losing a great opportunity," said the Idiot, with a scornful glance at the three professional gentlemen. "The idea of your following the professions of pedagogy, medicine, and literature, when the three of you combined could make a fortune as an incarnate comic paper. I don't see why you don't make a combination like those German bands that play on the street corners, and go about from door to door, and crack your jokes just as they crack their music. I am sure you'd take, particularly in front of barber-shops."

"It would be hard on the comic papers," said the Poet, who was getting a little unpopular with his fellow-boarders because of his tendency, recently developed, to take the Idiot's part in the breakfast-table discussions. "They might be so successful that the barber-shops, instead of taking the comic papers for their customers to read, would employ one or more of them to sit in the middle of the room and crack jokes aloud."

"We couldn't rival the comic papers though," said the Doctor, wishing to save his dignity by taking the bull by the horns. "We might do the jokes well enough, but the comic papers are chiefly pictorial."

"You'd be pictorial enough," said the Idiot. "Wasn't it you, Mr. Pedagog, that said the Doctor here looked like one of Cruikshank's physicians, or as if he had stepped out of Dickens's pages, or something like it?"

"I never said anything of the sort!" cried the School-master, wrathfully; "and you know I didn't."

"Who was it said that?" asked the Idiot, innocently, looking about the table. "It couldn't have been Mr. Whitechoker, and I know it wasn't the Poet or my Genial Friend who occasionally imbibes. Mr. Pedagog denies it; I didn't say it; Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't say it. That leaves only two of us--the Bibliomaniac and the Doctor himself. I don't think the Doctor would make a personal remark of that kind, and--well, there is but one conclusion. Mr. Bibliomaniac, I am surprised."

"What?" roared the Bibliomaniac, glaring at the Idiot. "Do you mean to fasten the impertinence on me?"

"Far from it," returned the Idiot, meekly. "Very far from it. It is fate, sir, that has done that--the circumstantial evidence against you is strong; but then, mercifully enough, circumstantial evidence is not permitted to hang a man."

"Now see here, Mr. Idiot," said the Bibliomaniac, firmly and impressively, "I want you to distinctly understand that I am not going to have you put words into my mouth that I never uttered. I--"

"Pray, don't attack me," said the Idiot. "I haven't made any charge against you. I only asked who could have said that the Doctor looked like a creation of Cruikshank. I couldn't have said it, because I don't think it. Mr. Pedagog denies it. In fact, every one here has a clear case of innocence excepting yourself, and I don't believe _you_ said it, only the chain of circumstance--"

"Oh, hang your chain of circumstance!" interrupted the Bibliomaniac.

"It is hung," said the Idiot, "and it appears to make you very uncomfortable. However, as I was saying, I think I have got hold of an idea involving a truly philanthropic and by no means selfish scheme of Social Expansion."

"Heigho!" sighed Mr. Pedagog. "I sometimes think that if I had not the honor to be the husband of our landlady I'd move away from here. Your views, sir, are undermining my constitution."

"You only think so, Mr. Pedagog," replied the Idiot. "You are simply going through a process of intellectual reconstruction at my hands. You feel exactly as a man feels who has been shut up in the dark for years and suddenly finds himself in a flood of sunlight. I am doing with you as an individual what I would have society do for mankind at large--in other words, while I am working for individual expansion upon the raw material I find here, I would have society buckle down to the enlargement of itself by the improvement of those outside of itself."

"If you swim in water as well as you do in verbiage," said the Bibliomaniac, "you must be able to go three or four strokes without sinking."

"Oh, as for that, I can swim like a duck," said the Idiot. "You can't sink me."

"I fancied not," observed Mr. Pedagog, with a smile at his own joke. "You are so light I wonder, indeed, that you don't rise up into space, anyhow."

"What a delightful condition of affairs that suggestion opens up!" said the Idiot, turning to the Poet. "If I were you I'd make a poem on that. Something like this, for instance: