The Inventions of the Idiot, John Kendrick Bangs [tools of titans ebook txt] 📗

in the air. We haven't even taken a step in that direction. Mr. Edison and other wizards have been too much occupied with electric lights and telephones and phonographs and transatlantic notions to pay any attention to schemes to prolong life and keep us, despite our years, perpetually young."

"I fancy they are likely to continue to do so," said the Doctor. "Whatever motive you may attribute to me for pooh-poohing your notions, I do so. No sane person wants to live forever, and if it were possible that all men might live forever, you'd soon find the world so crowded that the slighter actors in the human comedy would be shoved off the stage. There are enough people in the world now, without man's adding all future generations to their number and making death an impossibility."

"That's all nonsense," said the Idiot. "My Elixir wouldn't make death an impossibility. Any man who thought he'd had enough at the end of a thousand years could stop taking the Elixir and shuffle off the mortal coil. As a matter of fact, not more than ten per cent. of the people in the world would have any faith in the Elixir at all. I know people to-day who do not take advantage of the many patent remedies that are within their reach, preferring the mustard-plaster and catnip-tea of their forefathers. There's where human nature works again. I believe that if I were myself the discoverer of the formula for my mixture, and for an advertisement secured a letter from a man saying, 'I was dying of old age, having reached the advanced period of ninety-seven; I took two bottles of your Electrical Elixir and am now celebrating my twenty-fifth birthday again,' ninety-nine per cent. of the people who read it would laugh and think it had strayed out of the funny column. People lack confidence in their fellow-men—that's all; but if they were twenty-five and eighteen that would all be changed. We are very trustful at twenty-five and eighteen, which is one of the things I like about those respective ages. When I was twenty-five I believed in everybody, including myself. Now—well, I'm older. But enough of schemes, which I must admit are somewhat visionary—as the telephone would have seemed one hundred years ago. Let us come down to realities in electricity. I can't see why more is not made of the phonograph for the benefit of the public. Take a man like Chauncey M. De Choate. He goes here and he goes there to make speeches, when I've no doubt he'd much prefer to stay at home cutting coupons off his bonds. Why can't the phonograph voice do his duty? Instead of making the same speech over and over again, why can't some electrician so improve the phonograph that De Choate can say what he has to say through a funnel, have it impressed on a cylinder, duplicated and reduplicated and scattered broadcast over the world? If Mr. Edison could impart what poets call stentorian tones to the phonograph, he'd be doing a great and noble work. Again, for smaller things, like a dance, Why can't the phonograph be made useful at a ball? I attended one the other night, and when I wanted to dance the two-step the band played the polka; if I wished the polka it played a waltz. Some men can only dance the two-step—they don't know the waltz, the polka, or the schottische. Now why can't the phonograph come to the rescue? In almost any hotel in New York you can drop a nickel in a slot and hear Sousa's band on the phonograph. Why not extend the principle and have a phonograph for men who can dance nothing but the two-step, charged with 'The Washington Post March,' and supplied with four tubes with receivers to put in the ears of the listeners? Make it small enough for a man to carry in his pocket; then at a ball he could go up to a young lady, ask her to dance, put two of the receivers in her ears, two in his, and trip the light fantastic toe utterly independently of what other people were dancing. It's possible. Mr. Edison could do it in five minutes, and every one would be satisfied. It might be rather droll to see two people dancing the two-step while eight others were fastened on to a lanciers phonograph, and a dozen or more other couples were dancing respectively the waltz, schottische, and Virginia reel, but we'd soon get used to that, and no man need become a wall-flower because he couldn't dance the dance that happened to be on. Furthermore, you'd be able to do away with the musicians, who always cast a pall over dances because of their superiority to the rest of the world in general and the dancers in particular."

"How about your couple that prefer to sit out the dance on the stairs?" said the Poet, who, in common with the Idiot, knew several things about dances that Messrs. Pedagog and Whitechoker did not.

"It would be particularly attractive to them," said the Idiot. "They could sit on the stairs and wax sentimental over any dreamy air the man happened to have in his vest-pocket. He could arrange all that beforehand—find out what song she thought divinest, and go loaded accordingly. And as for the things that usually happen on stairs at dances, as well as in conservatories at balls, with the aid of a phonograph a man could propose to a girl in the presence of a thousand people, and nobody but the maiden herself would be the wiser. I tell you, gentlemen," the Idiot added, enthusiastically, as he rose to depart, "if the phonograph people only knew their power they'd do great things. The patent vest-pocket phonograph for music at balls and proposals for bashful men alone would make their fortunes if they only could see it. I almost wish I were an electrician and not an Idiot."

With which he left the room, and Mr. Pedagog whispered to Mrs. Pedagog that while he considered the Idiot very much of an idiot, there was no denying that at times he did get hold of ideas that were not wholly bad.

"That's true," said the good landlady. "I think if you had proposed to me through a phonograph I should not have had to guess at what you meant and lead you on to express yourself more clearly. I didn't want to say yes until I was fully convinced that you meant what you didn't seem able to say."

XI
Concerning Children

The Poet had been away for a week, and on his return to his accustomed post at the breakfast-table seemed but a shadow of his former self. His eyes were heavy and his long locks appeared straggly enough for a man of far more extended reputation as a singer of melodious verse.

"To judge from your appearance, Mr. Poet," said the Idiot, after welcoming his friend, "you've had a lively vacation. You certainly do not look as if you had devoted much of it to sleep."

"I haven't," said the Poet, wearily, "I haven't averaged more than two hours of sleep daily since I went away."

"I thought you told me you were going off into the country for a rest?" observed the Idiot.

"I did—and this is what comes of it," returned the Poet. "I went to visit my sister up in Saratoga County. She has seven children."

"Aha!" smiled the Idiot. "That's it, is it—well, I can sympathize with you. I've had experience with youngsters myself. I love 'em, but I like to take 'em on the instalment plan—very little at a time. I have a small cousin with a capacity for play and impudence that can't be equalled. His mother wrote me once and asked if I thought Hagenbeck, the wild-animal tamer, could be induced to take him in hand."

"That's the kind," put in the Poet, his face lighting up a little upon discovering that there was some one at least at the board who could sympathize with him. "My sister's seven are all of the wild-animal variety. I'd rather fall in with seven tigers than put in another week with my beloved nephews and nieces."

"Did they play Alp with you?" the Idiot asked, with a grin.

"Alp?" said the Poet. "No—not that I know of. They may have, however. I was hardly conscious of what they were doing the last two days of my stay there. They simply overpowered me, and I gave in and became a toy for the time."

"It isn't much fun being a toy," said the Idiot. "I think I'd rather play Alp."

"What on earth is Alp?" asked Mr. Pedagog, his curiosity aroused. "I've heard enough absurd names for games in the last five years, but I must say, for pure idiocy and lack of suggestiveness, the name of Alp surpasses all."

"That's as it should be," said the Idiot. "My small cousin invented Alp, and anything that boy does is apt to surpass all. He takes after me in some things. But Alp, while it may seem to lack suggestiveness as a name, is really just the name for the game. It's very simple. It is played by one Alp and as many chamois as desire to take a hand. As a rule the man plays the Alp and the children are the chamois. The man gets down on his hands and knees, puts his head on the floor, and has a white rug put on his back, the idea being that he is an Alp and the rug represents its snow-clad top."

"And the chamois?" asked Mr. Whitechoker.

"The chamois climbs the Alp and jumps about on the top of it," said the Idiot. "My experience, based upon two hours a day of it for ten consecutive days, is that it's fun for the chamois but rough on the Alp; and I got so after a while that I really preferred business to pleasure and gave up playing Alp to return to work before my vacation was half over."

"How do you score in this game of Alp?" said Mr. Pedagog, smiling broadly as he thought of there being an embryo idiot somewhere who could discomfit the one fate had thrown across his path.

"I never had the strength to inquire," said the Idiot. "But my impression is that the game is to see which has the greater endurance, the chamois or the Alp. The one that gets tired of playing first loses. I always lost. My small cousin is a storehouse of nervous energy. I believe he could play choo-choo cars with a real engine and last longer than the engine—which being the case, I couldn't hope to hold out against him."

"My nephews didn't play Alp," said the Poet. "I believe Alp would have been a positive relief to me. They made me tell them stories and poems from morning until night, and all night too, for one of them shared his room with me, and the worst of it all was that they all had to be new stories and new poems, so I was kept composing from one week's end to the other."

"Why weren't you firm with them and say you wouldn't, and let that end it?" said Mr. Pedagog.

"Ha—ha!" laughed the Idiot. "That's fine, isn't it, Mr. Poet? It's very evident, Mr. Pedagog, that you're not acquainted with children. Now, my small cousin can make the same appeal over and over again in a hundred and fifty different ways. You may have the courage to say no a hundred and forty-nine times, but I have yet to meet the man who could make his no good with a boy of real persistent spirit. I can't do it. I've tried, but I've had to give in sooner or later."

"Same way with me, multiplied by seven," said the Poet, with difficulty repressing a yawn. "I tried the no business on the morning of the third day, and gave it up as a hopeless case before the clock struck twelve."

"I'd teach 'em," said Mr. Pedagog.

"You'd have to learn 'em first," retorted the Idiot. "You can't do anything with children unless you understand them. You've got to remember several things when you have small boys to deal with. In the first place, they are a great deal more alert than you are. They are a great deal more energetic; they know what they want, and in getting it they haven't any dignity to restrain them, wherein they have a distinct advantage over you. Worst of all, down in your secret heart you want to laugh, even when they most affront you."

"I don't," said Mr. Pedagog, shortly.

"And why? Because you don't know them, cannot sympathize with them, and look upon them as evils to be tolerated rather than little minds to be cultivated. Hard a time as I have had as an