"You are a beautiful Idiot," said the Poet, slapping his knee enthusiastically.
"I don"t lay claim so much to beauty as to sublimity," said the Idiot, lighting a cigar. "And even that is not to my credit. Beauty and sublimity are gifts. No amount of cultivation can produce genius when it does not exist. When I see a beautiful woman it is not she that I admire. I admire the gracious Hand that made her."
"Give me that idea, old man!" cried the Poet.
"It is yours from this on," said the Idiot, with a sigh. "I am not equal to it. I may be able to think thoughts, but thoughts are of no more use to me than a piano is to a man who can"t read music. But we are becoming discursive. We were talking about moths, not thoughts. You said that I must have suffered, and I said that I had been tortured, and I have. My evening clothes have been ruined by them; my best shirts have been eaten by them; my silk hat, in which I have taken much pride, has four bald spots on its side because of their insatiable appet.i.te, and as far as I can find out, I have no redress. You can"t sue a moth for damages, you know, with any degree of satisfaction."
"Why should you expect to sue a moth for damages any more than to have a mosquito indicted for a.s.sault?" suggested the Poet.
"Oh, as for that," said the Idiot, "you can treat the mosquito without much difficulty. He merits capital punishment, and if you are yourself alert you can squash him at the moment of his crime. But the moth is different. You are absolutely helpless in the face of him. He works in secret."
"I am told that there are such things as camphor-b.a.l.l.s," observed the Poet.
"There are," said the Idiot. "And I truly think the moth enjoys them as much as a young girl enjoys a military ball. Whenever we give a camphor-ball the moths attend, and as far as I can find out dance all through it. They seem to enjoy functions of that nature. Furthermore, I have yet to meet the man who likes to go about in a suit of clothes that smells like a drug-store. I don"t. I hate the odor of camphor, and if I have my choice of going to a dinner in a perforated dress-suit or in one that is redolent of the camphor-ball, I prefer the one with holes in it.
What I can"t understand is why a race as proud as the one to which you and I belong should have to knuckle under to an inferior lot of insects such as the moth represents."
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""THE LION, THE ELEPHANT, THE TIGER, ALL HAVE THEIR WORK TO DO""]
"I suppose there is something about it that we cannot understand," said the Poet, dreamily. "All created things have their uses. The lion, the elephant, the tiger, the boa-constrictor, all have their work to do in life. Even the mosquito has his mission, whatever it may be. You must admit this. Why not, therefore, admit that the moth serves a purpose in the great scheme of life?"
"My dear Poet," said the Idiot, "far be it from me to deny the truth of what you say. There is hardly a living creature that I have ever encountered in all my life that has not had some truly utilitarian quality in its make-up. The lion is a splendid creature, and with the bear and the fox and the rhinoceros and the tapir he serves a purpose.
They at least teach boys geography, and teach it interestingly. The boy who knows where the tapir hath its lair knows more geography than I do.
My son Tommy has learned more of geography from a visit to the circus where those animals are shown than he ever learned from books. I can quite see likewise the utilitarian value of the mosquito. He keeps the sea-sh.o.r.e from being overcrowded, and he prevents some people from sleeping too much. He is an accomplished vocalist, and from my own point of view is superior to a Wagner opera, since Wagner opera puts me to sleep, while the magnificent discords of the mosquito keep me awake. But the moth is beyond me. What his contribution to the public welfare may be I cannot reason out, although I have tried."
"And you find nothing in his favor?" asked the Poet.
"Much," replied the Idiot, "but he has no system. His mission is to eat old clothes, but he is such a very disgusting glutton that he does not discriminate between old and new, and I have no use for him. If in his search for a meal he would choose the garments of three years ago, which I ought not to wear because they are so old-fashioned as to make me conspicuous when I do wear them, it would be all right. But the moth is no such discriminating person. He is not a lover of old vintages. When he calls in a number of his brother moths to dine at his expense he does not treat them to an overcoat of "89, or to a dress-suit of "93, or to a silk hat laid down in "95. He wants the latest thing, and as far as I can find out he gets it. I have just been compelled to lay in a new stock of under and over clothes because the ones I had have been served upon his table."
"The moth must live," observed the Poet.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""THEY EAT UP MY NEW CLOTHES""]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""WASTED MY ENERGY UPON THE UNRESPONSIVE AIR""]
"I"m perfectly willing he should if he"ll only discriminate," retorted the Idiot. "We have enough old clothes in this house, my dear Poet, to give a banquet of seventeen courses to six hundred moths every night for the next six months. If they would content themselves with that I should be satisfied. But they won"t. They eat up my new clothes; they destroy my new hats; they munch away upon my most treasured golf-vests. That is why I asked you if you knew anything about moths. I am anxious to reform them. As you have said, I have gone into inventing, and my inventions are wholly designed to meet long-felt wants in all households. The man who invents a scheme to circ.u.mvent or properly to satisfy the appet.i.te of the moth will find his name indissolubly linked with fame. I have thought, and thought, and thought about it. The moth must either be domesticated or extinguished. I have tried to extinguish him, but without avail. When he has flown forth I have endeavored to punch him in the head, and I have wasted my energy upon the unresponsive air. Did you ever undertake to punch a moth in the head?"
"Never," said the Poet. "I am not a fighter."
"My dear boy," rejoined the Idiot, "I don"t know a hero in real life or in fiction who could meet a moth on his own ground. I read about Mr.
Willie B. Travers, of New York, who can drive four horses about the arena at the horse show without turning a hair. I read about Emerson McJones, of Boston, putting up his face against the administration on a question of national import. I have read of the prowess of Alexander, of Caesar, of D"Artagnan, of Bonaparte, and of Teddy Roosevelt, but there isn"t a man among "em who can fight the moth. You can bombard him with a gatling-gun loaded to the muzzle with camphor-b.a.l.l.s, and he still waves his banner defiantly in your face. You may lunge at him with a rapier, and he jumps lightly aside, and to express his contempt bites a hole in your parlor hangings. You can turn the hose on him, and he soars buoyantly away out of reach. You can"t kill him, because you can"t catch him. You can"t drive him away, and until we go back to the dress of the knights of old and wear nickel-plated steel clothing, and live in rooms of solid masonry, we can"t starve him out. There is, therefore, only one thing to do, and that is to domesticate him. If you in the course of your investigations into nature have ever discovered any trait in the moth that science can lay hold upon, something through which we can appeal to his better nature, if he has such a thing, you will be conferring a great boon upon the whole domestic world. What I want to find out is if he possesses some particularly well-defined taste; if there is any one kind of texture or fabric that he likes better than another. If there is such a thing I"ll have a brand-new suit made of that same material especially for him, furnish a nice comfortable, warm spot in the attic as a dining-room, and let him feed there forevermore, when and how he pleases. The manners and customs of moths are an open book to most of us. His tastes are as mysterious as the ocean"s depths."
The Poet shook his head dubiously. "I am afraid, my dear Idiot, that you have at last tackled a problem that will prove too much for you. How to get at the point you desire is, I fear, impossible of discovery," he said.
"It would seem so," replied the Idiot. "But I shall not despair. If the ordinary cook of commerce can be made humanly intelligent I do not see any reason why we should abandon so comparatively simple a proposition as the domesticization of the moth."
Tommy and Mollie had been listening with great interest, and as the Idiot finished Mollie observed that she thought the best way to do was to ask the moth what he liked most, but Tommy had a less conciliatory plan.
"Best thing"s to get rid of "em altogether, pa," he said. "Mollie and I"ll squash "em for you for fi" cents apiece."
Which struck the Poet as the most practical idea that had been advanced during the discussion.
XV
SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE BURGLAR
"Are you ever bothered much by burglars off here in the country?" asked Mr. Pedagog one spring afternoon, as he and the Idiot and the youngsters strolled about the Idiot"s small farm.
"No," said the Idiot. "They"ve only visited me twice."
"Only twice, eh?" observed the Schoolmaster. "Well, I should think that was often enough, considering that you haven"t lived here more than a year and a half."
"It was," said the Idiot. "I didn"t say I wanted them to come again, did I?"
"Of course not," returned Mr. Pedagog. "But you said "only twice," as if two visits of that nature were less than might have been expected."
"Well, aren"t they?" asked the Idiot. "Just make a little calculation.
I"ve lived on this place precisely five hundred and ninety-four days, and, of course, an equal number of nights. It seems to me that in breaking into my house only twice when they might have come every night shows a degree of restraint upon our Suburban Burglary Company that is worthy of the highest commendation. You, of course, refer to professional burglars, don"t you?"
Mr. Pedagog laughed. "Are there any amateur burglars?"
"Are there!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Idiot. "Well, rather. There is the Gasman, and man who inspects the water-meter, and the Iceman, and the Plumber.
If you refer to that cla.s.s, why, I have them with me always."
"Which of the two cla.s.ses do you prefer?" asked Mr. Pedagog, with a chuckle.
"Well, I"m not quite sure as to that," returned the Idiot. "I"ve often wondered myself whether I preferred the straight-out honest pirate, who does his work surrept.i.tiously by night, and who doesn"t pretend to be anything but a pirate, or the sleek, insinuating chap, who comes into our house by day, and runs up a bill against you which in his heart of hearts he knows is not a proper one. There are burglars and burglars in this world, Mr. Pedagog, and the one who lands in the penitentiary is not always a bigger rascal than the fellow who holds the respect of the community and sets himself up as a prominent citizen. Highwaymen may be divided into cla.s.ses, some of them respectable, others not. There was d.i.c.k Turpin, who ran honest risks to obtain a living; there are men in Wall Street who work greater ruin, and are held in higher esteem. There is the footpad who takes your watch, and p.a.w.ns it to buy bread for his starving family, and there is the very charming young person who sits behind a table at a church fair, and charges you seven dollars for a fifty-cent sofa-cushion. So it goes. Socially I prefer the esteemed citizen who makes me pay twenty-eight dollars for ten dollars" worth of gas; but when it comes down to a strict business basis I must say I have lost less money through the operations of the professional thief than through those of the amateur highwayman. Take a recent case in my own experience, for instance. Only last week I sent anonymously a small clock which cost me twenty dollars to a guild fair here in town, and Mrs. Idiot bought it for a birthday present for me for forty dollars. In other words, I have a twenty-dollar clock on my hands that has cost me sixty dollars."
"But you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have contributed to the good work of the guild," suggested Mr. Pedagog.
"That is true enough," said the Idiot; "but the guild is only forty dollars to the good. They"d have been better off if I had given them fifty dollars in cash, and I"d have saved ten."
"But you have the clock," insisted Mr. Pedagog.
"I certainly have," replied the Idiot; "and if time is money I shall soon be rich, for that clock makes time to beat the band. If it keeps on as it has started and we stand by it, we shall soon be about a month ahead of the sun. It gains a week every forty-eight hours. If that clock were truthful, I should be a centenarian at forty."
"But you"re not sorry you gave it?" said Mr. Pedagog, deprecatingly.
"Not at all," said the Idiot. "My only regret is that Mrs. I. bought it.
But," he added, hastily, "she needn"t know that."
"I won"t say a word," said Mr. Pedagog.
"I won"t, neither, pa," said Tommy, with a degree of complacency which showed that the temptation to tell was great.