The Inventions of the Idiot Page 6

  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 itin his pocket, "and I, as you remember, suggested that it might betterbe called Social Expansion."

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

  "Well, I did suggest the change of name, whether your memory isretentive or not, and I have been thinking the matter over a good dealsince, 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 tolet it get away from you."

  "No danger of that," said the Idiot, with a smile. "I have it securelylocked 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 Irishmaid feels when she goes to her bedroom in one of those Harlemflat-houses."

  "You men are losing a great opportunity," said the Idiot, with ascornful glance at the three professional gentlemen. "The idea of yourfollowing the professions of pedagogy, medicine, and literature, whenthe three of you combined could make a fortune as an incarnate comicpaper. I don't see why you don't make a combination like those Germanbands 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'dtake, particularly in front of barber-shops."

  "It would be hard on the comic papers," said the Poet, who was getting alittle unpopular with his fellow-boarders because of his tendency,recently developed, to take the Idiot's part in the breakfast-tablediscussions. "They might be so successful that the barber-shops, insteadof taking the comic papers for their customers to read, would employ oneor 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 tosave his dignity by taking the bull by the horns. "We might do thejokes 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'sphysicians, or as if he had stepped out of Dickens's pages, or somethinglike 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 thetable. "It couldn't have been Mr. Whitechoker, and I know it wasn't thePoet or my Genial Friend who occasionally imbibes. Mr. Pedagog deniesit; I didn't say it; Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't say it. That leaves only twoof us--the Bibliomaniac and the Doctor himself. I don't think the Doctorwould make a personal remark of that kind, and--well, there is but oneconclusion. Mr. Bibliomaniac, I am surprised."

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

  "Far from it," returned the Idiot, meekly. "Very far from it. It isfate, sir, that has done that--the circumstantial evidence against youis strong; but then, mercifully enough, circumstantial evidence is notpermitted to hang a man."

  "Now see here, Mr. Idiot," said the Bibliomaniac, firmly andimpressively, "I want you to distinctly understand that I am not goingto 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 chargeagainst you. I only asked who could have said that the Doctor lookedlike a creation of Cruikshank. I couldn't have said it, because I don'tthink it. Mr. Pedagog denies it. In fact, every one here has a clearcase of innocence excepting yourself, and I don't believe _you_ saidit, 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 veryuncomfortable. However, as I was saying, I think I have got hold of anidea involving a truly philanthropic and by no means selfish scheme ofSocial Expansion."

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

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

  "If you swim in water as well as you do in verbiage," said theBibliomaniac, "you must be able to go three or four strokes withoutsinking."

  "Oh, as for that, I can swim like a duck," said the Idiot. "You can'tsink 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!" saidthe Idiot, turning to the Poet. "If I were you I'd make a poem on that.Something like this, for instance:

  "I am so very, very light That gravitation curbs not me. I rise up through the atmosphere Till all the world I plainly see.

  "I dance about among the clouds, An airy, happy, human kite. The breezes toss me here and there, To my exceeding great delight.

  "And when I would return to sup, To breakfast, or perchance to dine, I haul myself once more to earth By tugging on a piece of twine."

  Mr. Pedagog grinned broadly at this.

  "You aren't entirely without your good points," he said. "If we everaccept your comic-paper idea we'll have to rely on you for the nonsensepoetry."

  "Thank you," said the Idiot. "I'll help. If I had a man like you to giveme the suggestions I could make a fortune out of poetry. The onlytrouble is I have to quarrel with you before I can get you to give me asuggestion, and I despise bickering."

  "So do I," returned Mr. Pedagog. "Let's give up bickering and turn ourattention to--er--Social Extension, is it?"

  "Yes--or Social Expansion," said the Idiot. "Some years ago the worldwas startled to hear that in the city of New York there were not morethan four hundred people who were entitled to social position, and, as Iunderstand it, as time has progressed the number has still furtherdiminished. Last year the number was only one hundred and fifty, and, asI read the social news of to-day, not more than twenty-five people arenow beyond all question in the swim. At dinners, balls, functions of allsorts, you read the names of these same twenty-five over and over againas having been present. Apparently no others attended--or, if they did,they were not so indisputably entitled to be present that their namescould be printed in the published accounts. Now all of this shows thatsociety is dying out, and that if things keep on as they are now goingit will not be many years before we shall become a people withoutsociety, a nation of plebeians."

  "Your statement so far is lucid and logical," said Mr. Pedagog, who didnot admire society--so called--and who did not object to the goring ofan ox in which he was not personally interested.

  "Well, why is this social contraction going on?" asked the Idiot."Clearly because Social Expansion is not an accepted fact. If it were,society would grow. Why does it not grow? Why are its ranks notaugmented? There is raw material enough. You would like to get into theswim; so would I. But we don't know how. We read books of etiquette,but they are far from being complete. I think I make no mistake when Isay they are utterly valueless. They tell us no more than the funnyjournal tells us when it says:

  "'Never eat pease with a spoon; Never eat pie with a knife; Never put salt on a prune; Never throw crumbs at your wife.'"

  They tell most of us
what we all knew before. They tell us not to wearour hats in the house; they tell us all the obvious things, but thesubtleties of how to get into society they do not tell us. The comicpapers give us some idea of how to behave in society. We know fromreading the funny papers that a really swell young man always leansagainst a mantel-piece when he is calling; that the swell girl sits on acomfortable divan with her feet on a tiger-skin rug, and they conversein epigram. Sometimes the epigram is positively rude; when it is notrude it is so dull that no one wonders that the tiger's head on the rugrepresents the tiger as yawning. But, while this is instructive, itteaches us how to behave on special occasions only. You or I might callupon a young woman who did not sit on a divan, who had no tiger-skin rugto put her feet on, and whose parlor had a mantel-piece against which wecould not lean comfortably. What are we to do then? As far as they go,the funny papers are excellent, but they don't go far enough. They giveus attractive pictures of fashionable dinners, but it is always of thedinner after the game course. Some of us would like to know how societybehaves while the soup is being served. We know that after the gamecourse society girls reach across the table and clink wine-glasses withyoung men, but we do not know what they do before they get to the clinkstage. Nowhere is this information given. Etiquette books are silent onthe subject, and though I have sought everywhere for information, I donot know to this day how many salted almonds one may consume at dinnerwithout embarrassing one's hostess. Now, if I can't find out, themillion can't find out. Wherefore, instead of shutting themselvesselfishly up and, by so doing, forcing society finally into dissolution,why cannot some of these people who know what is what giveobject-lessons to the million; educate them in _savoir-faire_?

  "Last summer there was a play put on at one of our theatres in whichthere was a scene at a race-track. At one side was a tally-ho coach. Forthe first week the coach was an utterly valueless accessory, because thepeople on it were the ordinary supers in the employ of the theatre. Theydid not know how to behave on a coach, and nobody was interested. Themanagement were suddenly seized with a bright idea. They invited severalswell young men who knew how things were done on coaches to come and dothese things on their coach. The young men came and imparted a realismto the scene that made that coach the centre of attraction. People whowent to that play departed educated in coach etiquette. Now there liesmy scheme in a nutshell. If these twenty-five, the Old Guard of society,which dines but never surrenders, will give once a week a socialfunction in some place like Madison Square Garden, to which the millionmay go merely as spectators, not as participators, is there any doubtthat they would fail to be instructed? The Garden will seat eight or tenthousand people. Suppose, for an instance, that a dozen of your bestexponents of what is what were to give a dinner in the middle of thearena, with ten thousand people looking on. Do you mean to say that ofall that vast audience no one would learn thereby how to behave at adinner?"

  "It is a great scheme," said the Doctor.

  "It is!" said the Idiot, "and I venture to say that a course of, say,twelve social functions given in that way would prove so popular thatthe Garden would turn away every night twice as many people as it couldaccommodate."

  "It would be instructive, no doubt," said the Bibliomaniac; "but howwould it expand society? Would you have examinations?"

  "Most assuredly," said the Idiot. "At the end of the season I shouldhave a rigid examination of all who chose to apply. I would make themdine in the presence of a committee of expert diners, I would have thempass a searching examination in the Art of Wearing a Dress Suit, in theScience of Entering a Drawing-room, in the Art of Behavior at AfternoonTeas, and all the men who applied should also be compelled to pass aphysical examination as an assurance that they were equal to the task ofgetting an ice for a young lady at a ball."

  "Society would get to be too inclusive and would cease to be exclusive,"suggested Mr. Whitechoker.

  "I think not," said the Idiot. "I should not give a man or a woman thedegree of B.S. unless he or she had passed an examination of one hundredper cent."

  "B.S.?" queried Mr. Pedagog.

  "Yes," returned the Idiot. "Bachelor of Society--a degree which, onceearned, should entitle one to recognition as a member of the upper tenanywhere in Christendom."

  "It is superb!" cried Mr. Pedagog, enthusiastically.

  "Yes," said the Idiot. "At ten cents a function it would beat UniversityExtension out of sight, and, further, it would preserve society. If welose society we lose caste, and, worse than all, our funny men wouldhave to go out of business, for there would be no fads or Willieboysleft to ridicule."