Half-Hours with the Idiot Part 6

"Oh, well," said the Idiot wearily, "you've got to a.s.sume some of the burdens of the business yourself. We can't do it all, you know. But suppose they do sue you? You never heard of a magazine recovering anything from a poet, did you? You'd get a heap of free advertising out of such a lawsuit, and if you were canny enough to put out a book of your verses while the newspapers were full of it, they'd go off like hot cakes, and you could retire with a cool million."

"And where do I come in?" asked the Doctor. "Don't I get any of these plums of prosperity your Telephonic Aid Society is to place within the reach of all?"

"On payment of the fee of ten dollars, and signing the regular contract," said the Idiot. "I'll do my best for you. In your case I should impersonate our good old friend Andrew Rockernegie. Acting in that capacity I would ring up Mr. John D. Reddymun, and you'd hear something like this:

"Me--h.e.l.lo, Reddy--is this you?

"Reddymun--Yes. Who's this?

"Me--This is Uncle Andy. How's the leg this morning?

"Reddymun--Oh, so so.

"Me--Everybody pulling it, I suppose?

"Reddymun--About the same as usual. It's curious, Andrew, how many people are attached to my limb, and how few are attached to me.

"Me--Yes, it's a cold and cruel world, John. But I'm through. I've found the way out. They'll never pull my leg again.

"Reddymun--By George, old man, I wish I could say as much.

"Me--Well, you can if you'll only do what I did.

"Reddymun--What's that?

"Me--Had it cut off.

"Reddymun--No!

"Me--Yep!

"Reddymun--When?

"Me--Just now.

"Reddymun--Hurt?

"Me--Never knew what was happening.

"Reddymun--Who did it?

"Me--Old Doctor Squills. He charged me ten thousand dollars for the job, but I figure it out that it has saved me six hundred and thirty three million dollars.

"Reddymun--Send him around, will you?

"Me--Ubetcha!"

"And then?" said the Doctor.

"And then?" echoed the Idiot. "Well, if you don't know what you would do if you were offered ten thousand dollars to cut a man's leg off I can't teach you, but I have one piece of advice to give you. When you get the order don't go around there with a case full of teaspoons and soup-ladles, when all you need is a good sharp carving knife to land you in the lap of luxury!"

"And do you men think for one single moment," cried the Landlady, "that all this would be honest business?"

"Well, in the very nature of the case it would be a trifle 'phoney',"

said the Idiot, "but what can a man do these days, with his bills getting bigger and bigger every day?"

"I'd leave 'em unpaid first!" sniffed the Landlady contemptuously.

"Oh, very well," smiled the Idiot. "With your permission, ma'am, we will. You don't know what a load you have taken off my mind."

VIII

FOR TIRED BUSINESS MEN

"Poor old Binks!" said the Idiot sympathetically, as he put down a letter just received from his friend and turned his attention to the waffles. "He's spending the good old Summer time in a sanitarium, just because he thinks he's got nervous prostration, and the Lord knows when he'll be back in harness again."

"Who's Binks?" asked the Lawyer. "You talk as if the name of Binks were a household word."

"Well, it is, in a way," said the Idiot. "Binks is one of those tired business men that we hear so much of these days. The kind they write comic operas and popular novels for, with all the thought taken out so that he may not have to burden his mind with anything worth thinking about. He's one of these billionaire slaves who's lost his thumb cutting off coupons and employs seventeen clerks with rubber stamps to sign his checks for him. He's succ.u.mbed to the strain of it all at last, and now the gobelins have got him. Do you approve of these sanitariums, Doctor?"

"I most certainly do," said the Doctor. "Sanitariums are the greatest blessings of modern life, and, for my part, I'd like to see a law pa.s.sed requiring everybody to spend a month in one of them every year of his life, where he could be under constant scientific supervision. It would add ten years to the lives of every one of us."

"Well, I hope you are right, but I don't know," said the Idiot dubiously. "Seems to me there's too much coddling going on at those places, and mighty few people get well on coddling. I've given the matter some thought, and I've known a lot of men who had nothing but a pain in their toe who got so much sympathy over it that they became hopeless invalids inside of a year. There's more truth than humor in that joke about the little Irish boy who was asked how his mother was and replied that she was enjoying poor health this year."

"O, that's all tommyrot," said the Doctor. "Perfect nonsense--"

"I hope so," said the Idiot, "but after all n.o.body can deny that there are a great many people in this world who really do enjoy bad health who wouldn't if it weren't for the perquisites."

"Perquisites?" frowned the Bibliomaniac. "Great Heavens, Mr. Idiot, you don't mean to insinuate that there is graft in ill health, just as there is in everything else, do you?"

"I sure do," replied the Idiot. "Take me, for instance--"

"I for one must decline to take you until I know whether you are a chronic disorder, or merely a temporary epidemic," grinned Mr. Brief.

"Idiocy is pretty contagious," smiled the Idiot, in reply, "but in this case I wish to be taken as a patient. Let us say, for instance, that I am off in the country at a popular hotel, and all of a sudden some fine morning I come down with a headache--"

"That's a debatable hypothesis," said the Lawyer. "Is it possible for the Idiot to have a headache, Doctor?"

"I have known similar cases," said the Doctor. "I knew an old soldier once who lost his leg at Gettysburg, and years afterward could still feel the twinges of rheumatism in one of his lost toes."

"Thanks for the vindication, Doctor," said the Idiot. "Nevertheless, just to please our learned brother here, I will modify the hypothesis.

"Let us suppose that I am off in the country at a popular summer hotel, and all of a sudden some fine morning I come down with a violent pain in that anatomical void where my head would be if, like Mr. Brief, I always suffered from one. I am not sick enough to stay in bed, but just badly enough off to be able to loll around the hotel piazzas all morning and look forlorn.