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

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: