The Idiot at Home Read online

  XIV

  SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE MOTH

  "Do you know anything about the habits of moths?" repeated the Idiot.

  "Moths?" echoed the Poet, eying the Idiot closely, the transition fromlive wires to moths proving rather too sudden for his comprehension."No, I don't know anything about moths except that I have heard thatthey are an unmitigated nuisance."

  "They are worse than a nuisance," said the Idiot. "They are a devouringelement, and they are worse than fire. If your house catches fire youcan summon an engine and have it put out, and what damage it does youcan collect for if you are careful enough to keep your possessionsinsured; but with the moth it is different. There isn't any mothdepartment in town that you can ring up, nor is there amoth-extinguisher that you can keep close at hand to fight them with.Furthermore, there is no moth-insurance company here or elsewhere toprotect the man who suffers damage at their teeth, that I know of.

  "He is a mean, sneaking, underhanded element, the moth is. Fire has adecent sense of the proprieties. Moths have none at all. When fireattacks you it smokes, and crackles, and hisses, and roars, and lets youknow in clarion tones that it has come. The moth steals upon you in thedead of night, and chews up your best trousers, gorges himself upon yourwife's furs, tickles his palate with your swellest flannel golf-shirt,munches away upon your handsomest rug, punches holes in your bestsofa-cushions with his tusks, and then silently folds his tent andsteals away without so much as a thank-you for his meal. For unmitigatedmeanness commend me to the moth!"

  "You seem to speak with feeling," said the Poet, with a smile. "Have yousuffered?"

  "'AN UNPAID GROCER'S BILL BECOMES AN ABSOLUTE PLEASURE'"]

  "Suffered?" cried the Idiot. "Suffered is not the word. They havetortured me. Alongside of the moth and his nefarious work even abook-agent pales into insignificance, and an unpaid grocer's billbecomes an absolute pleasure. You can meet a book-agent on his ownground, for you know his limitations. I have done so myself. Onlyyesterday one of them called upon me to sell me a Cyclopedia of Cookery,and before he got away I had actually sold him a copy of your poems."

  "Ah," said the Poet, shaking his head. "You sold my gift, did you?"

  "Not a bit of it," laughed the Idiot. "When your book came out I boughta copy, and two days later you sent me another with an inscription,which I treasure affectionately. I sold him the one I bought."

  "You are a beautiful Idiot," said the Poet, slapping his kneeenthusiastically.

  "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 andsublimity are gifts. No amount of cultivation can produce genius when itdoes not exist. When I see a beautiful woman it is not she that Iadmire. 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 equalto it. I may be able to think thoughts, but thoughts are of no more useto me than a piano is to a man who can't read music. But we are becomingdiscursive. We were talking about moths, not thoughts. You said that Imust have suffered, and I said that I had been tortured, and I have. Myevening clothes have been ruined by them; my best shirts have been eatenby them; my silk hat, in which I have taken much pride, has four baldspots on its side because of their insatiable appetite, and as far as Ican find out, I have no redress. You can't sue a moth for damages, youknow, with any degree of satisfaction."

  "Why should you expect to sue a moth for damages any more than to have amosquito indicted for assault?" suggested the Poet.

  "Oh, as for that," said the Idiot, "you can treat the mosquito withoutmuch difficulty. He merits capital punishment, and if you are yourselfalert you can squash him at the moment of his crime. But the moth isdifferent. You are absolutely helpless in the face of him. He worksin secret."

  "I am told that there are such things as camphor-balls," observed thePoet.

  "There are," said the Idiot. "And I truly think the moth enjoys them asmuch as a young girl enjoys a military ball. Whenever we give acamphor-ball the moths attend, and as far as I can find out dance allthrough it. They seem to enjoy functions of that nature. Furthermore, Ihave yet to meet the man who likes to go about in a suit of clothes thatsmells like a drug-store. I don't. I hate the odor of camphor, and if Ihave my choice of going to a dinner in a perforated dress-suit or in onethat 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 youand I belong should have to knuckle under to an inferior lot of insectssuch as the moth represents."

  "'THE LION, THE ELEPHANT, THE TIGER, ALL HAVE THEIR WORKTO DO'"]

  "I suppose there is something about it that we cannot understand," saidthe Poet, dreamily. "All created things have their uses. The lion, theelephant, the tiger, the boa-constrictor, all have their work to do inlife. Even the mosquito has his mission, whatever it may be. You mustadmit this. Why not, therefore, admit that the moth serves a purpose inthe great scheme of life?"

  "My dear Poet," said the Idiot, "far be it from me to deny the truth ofwhat you say. There is hardly a living creature that I have everencountered in all my life that has not had some truly utilitarianquality in its make-up. The lion is a splendid creature, and with thebear and the fox and the rhinoceros and the tapir he serves a purpose.They at least teach boys geography, and teach it interestingly. The boywho 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 circuswhere those animals are shown than he ever learned from books. I canquite see likewise the utilitarian value of the mosquito. He keeps thesea-shore from being overcrowded, and he prevents some people fromsleeping too much. He is an accomplished vocalist, and from my own pointof view is superior to a Wagner opera, since Wagner opera puts me tosleep, while the magnificent discords of the mosquito keep me awake. Butthe moth is beyond me. What his contribution to the public welfaremay 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 eatold clothes, but he is such a very disgusting glutton that he does notdiscriminate between old and new, and I have no use for him. If in hissearch for a meal he would choose the garments of three years ago, whichI ought not to wear because they are so old-fashioned as to make meconspicuous when I do wear them, it would be all right. But the moth isno such discriminating person. He is not a lover of old vintages. Whenhe calls in a number of his brother moths to dine at his expense he doesnot treat them to an overcoat of '89, or to a dress-suit of '93, or to asilk hat laid down in '95. He wants the latest thing, and as far as Ican find out he gets it. I have just been compelled to lay in a newstock of under and over clothes because the ones I had have been servedupon his table."

  "The moth must live," observed the Poet.

  "'THEY EAT UP MY NEW CLOTHES'"]

  "'WASTED MY ENERGY UPON THE UNRESPONSIVE AIR'"]

  "I'm perfectly willing he should if he'll only discriminate," retortedthe Idiot. "We have enough old clothes in this house, my dear Poet, togive a banquet of seventeen courses to six hundred moths every night forthe next six months. If they would content themselves with that I shouldbe satisfied. But they won't. They eat up my new clothes; they destroymy new hats; they munch away upon my most treasured golf-vests. That iswhy I asked you if you knew anything about moths. I am anxious to reformthem. As you have said, I have gone into inventing, and my inventionsare wholly designed to meet long-felt wants in all households. The manwho invents a scheme to circumvent or properly to satisfy the appetiteof the moth will find his name indissolubly linked with fame. I havethought, and thought, and thought about it. The moth must either bedomesticated or extinguished. I have tried to extinguish him, butwithout avail. When he has flown forth I have endeavored to punch him inthe head, and I have wasted my energy upon the unresponsive air. Did youever 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 orin 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 thearena at the horse show without turning a hair. I read about EmersonMcJones, of Boston, putting up his face against the administration on aquestion of national import. I have read of the prowess of Alexander, ofCaesar, of D'Artagnan, of Bonaparte, and of Teddy Roosevelt, but thereisn't a man among 'em who can fight the moth. You can bombard him with agatling-gun loaded to the muzzle with camphor-balls, and he still waveshis 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 inyour parlor hangings. You can turn the hose on him, and he soarsbuoyantly away out of reach. You can't kill him, because you can't catchhim. You can't drive him away, and until we go back to the dress of theknights of old and wear nickel-plated steel clothing, and live in roomsof solid masonry, we can't starve him out. There is, therefore, only onething to do, and that is to domesticate him. If you in the course ofyour investigations into nature have ever discovered any trait in themoth that science can lay hold upon, something through which we canappeal to his better nature, if he has such a thing, you will beconferring a great boon upon the whole domestic world. What I want tofind out is if he possesses some particularly well-defined taste; ifthere is any one kind of texture or fabric that he likes better thananother. If there is such a thing I'll have a brand-new suit made ofthat same material especially for him, furnish a nice comfortable, warmspot 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 openbook 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 youhave at last tackled a problem that will prove too much for you. How toget at the point you desire is, I fear, impossible of discovery," hesaid.

  "It would seem so," replied the Idiot. "But I shall not despair. If theordinary cook of commerce can be made humanly intelligent I do not seeany reason why we should abandon so comparatively simple a propositionas the domesticization of the moth."

  Tommy and Mollie had been listening with great interest, and as theIdiot finished Mollie observed that she thought the best way to do wasto ask the moth what he liked most, but Tommy had a less conciliatoryplan.

  "Best thing's to get rid of 'em altogether, pa," he said. "Mollie andI'll squash 'em for you for fi' cents apiece."

  Which struck the Poet as the most practical idea that had been advancedduring the discussion.