The Idiot at Home Part 14

"I'm much obliged to you for holding off, Idiot," he said. "I don't know where I'd have been to-day if you'd got in ahead of me. Mrs. Pedagog has always had a soft spot in her heart for you."

"I've got the other spot," said the Idiot, "and a pair of aces are hard to beat in pairs; but I think I voice Mrs. Pedagog's sentiments in the matter, Mr. Pedagog, when I say that she and I would always have been glad to see you every other New-Year's day if I had been the fortunate winner of her hand."

"And Mr. Pedagog and I would have been glad to see you and Mrs. Pedagog in the sandwich years," said Mrs. Idiot to her husband; and then, turning to the Schoolmaster, added, "Wouldn't we, Mr. Pedagog?"

"No, madame," returned Mr. Pedagog, courteously. "You might have been, but I would not. If I had married you I could never have seen any one else with pleasure. I should have kept my eyes solely for you."

"John!" cried Mrs. Pedagog, arching her eyebrows.

"Pleasantry, my dear--mere pleasantry," returned the Schoolmaster, tapping his fingers together and smiling sweetly upon Mrs. Idiot.

"You didn't finish, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "You were telling us how you used to enjoy New-Year's calling before it went out."

"Yes," replied Mrs. Pedagog. "It was charming. I used positively to look forward to its coming with delight. We women, Mr. Idiot, found the old custom very delightful."

"But the men, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, "did you ever think of them?"

"What else did we think of? What else is there for a woman to think about?" replied Mrs. Pedagog.

"Jane!" cried Mr. Pedagog.

"_Pleasantry, my dear--mere pleasantry_," returned Mrs. Pedagog, frigidly. And Mr. Pedagog lit a cigar. It is not always pleasant to be quoted.

"Still," said the Idiot, "you thought of men only as creatures of the moment--"

"Entirely," said Mrs. Pedagog.

"And not as creatures of the week following," said the Idiot.

"What has that to do with it?" asked Mrs. Pedagog.

"Much--from the man's stand-point," returned the Idiot. "His digestion was butchered to make a woman's holiday. Take myself as an example. I used to make New-Year's calls; and to get through with my list by midnight, I had to start in at nine o'clock in the morning."

"Nine o'clock is not so early," said Mr. Whitechoker.

"It's early for cake and pickled oysters," said the Idiot. "And for chicken salad and wedding-cake, and for lemonade and punch, and for lobster and egg-nog, and for ice-cream and _pate-de-foie-gras_."

"H'm!" said Mr. Pedagog, reflectively. "That's true."

"Quite so," observed Mr. Whitechoker, brushing off his vest, upon which the ashes of his cigar had rested. "Especially for the punch."

"There was no punch in my house," said Mrs. Pedagog. "Indeed, I always served a very simple luncheon. We did have chicken salad, of course, but the chicken was good and the salad was crisp--"

"I'd swear to it," said the Idiot.

"And we had egg-nog, but there was more egg than nog in it--"

"Again I'd swear to it," said the Idiot, smacking his lips.

"And as for the lobsters, n.o.body ever complained--"

"He'd have been a lobster himself who would," said the Idiot. "But that does not prove that no one ever suffered."

"And as for the pickled oysters, no one ever suffered from them that I knew of," continued the good lady. "They are harmless eaten in moderation."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I FELT AS IF I HAD SWALLOWED AS OVERSHOE'"]

"Exactly right," cried the Idiot. "No gentleman would ever complain of pickled oysters, even if they were made of inferior rubber, eaten in moderation. Yet I recall in my own experience a pickled oyster of most impressive quality. He was not a pickled oyster of the moment. He was the Admiral Dewey of pickled oysters. In appearance he resembled every other pickled oyster I ever met, but--well, he kept me in a state of worry for a month. Just eating him alone was eating pickled oysters in immoderation. I felt as if I had swallowed an overshoe. He was a charming pickled oyster, Mrs. Pedagog, and he was devoted to me, but he involved me in complications alongside of which the Philippine question is child's play. If a New-Year's caller could have confined his attentions to the ladies he met no harm would have come to him, but he couldn't, you know. The day was one continuous round of effort and indigestibles. What a man got at your house and had to eat merely to show his appreciation of your hospitality was all right and wholesome.

Your lobster and egg-nog could do him no harm, but he couldn't stop with yours; he had to continue, and consume lobsters and egg-nog everywhere else and all day long. The day resolved itself into a magnificent gorge alongside of which that of Niagara seems like a wagon-rut. It finally came down to the point where either man or the custom had to die, and man being selfish, the custom went. Did you ever consider exactly how much indigestible food an amiable, well-meaning person had to consume in a round of, say, three dozen calls, Mrs. Pedagog?"

Mr. Brief nodded his approval. "Now you've struck it," he said. "I've been there, Idiot."

"I must confess," said Mrs. Pedagog, "that I never looked into that question."

"Well, I'll tell you," the Idiot resumed. "The last time I made New-Year's calls I figured it out for the doctor the next morning, and as I recall the statistics, in the course of that day I ate one hundred and twenty-nine pickled oysters, thirteen plates of chicken salad, seven plates of lobster salad, five plates of mulled sardines, twenty-three plates of ice-cream, four hundred and sixty-three macaroons, eighty-seven sandwiches ranging from lettuce and ham to chicken and potted goose-liver, enough angel-cake to feed all the angels there are and two more, sixteen Welsh rarebits that were being made just as I happened in, and crystallized ginger and salted almonds and marrons to the extent of about eighteen pounds."

"Mercy!" cried Mrs. Pedagog.

"Say, pa, where was I then?" asked Tommy, his eyes glittering with delight.

"You were eating green cheese on the moon, Tommy," said the Idiot.

"Wisht I'd been with you," said Tommy. "Must o' been better than bein' a pie."

"And all of these things," continued the Idiot, with a wink at his son, "I washed down with six gallons of lemonade, nineteen cups of coffee, eighteen cups of tea, and a taste of claret punch."

"And how about the egg-nog?" asked the Bibliomaniac, slyly.

"I judge there were about six crates of eggs in it," said the Idiot. "I never had the nerve to estimate the nog-end of it."

"What did the doctor say when you told him all that?" asked Mrs.

Pedagog.

The Idiot chuckled. "What did he say?" he cried. "Why, I should think you could guess. He blamed it all on the Welsh rarebits, but he thought he could get me into shape again in time for the next New Year. I've never been the same man since."

"Well, the way I look at it," said Mrs. Pedagog, "is that it is a great pity that women must be deprived of a function that gives them pleasure because the men make pigs of themselves."

"But you don't understand, Mrs. Pedagog," the Idiot persisted. "I grant you that the man who eats all that makes a pig of himself, but he has no choice. He can't help himself. When a charming hostess insists, he'd be a greater pig if he refused to partake of her hospitality. The custom involved an inevitable sacrifice of man's digestion upon the altar of woman. That's all there was about it. If it could have been arranged so that a man could take a hamper about with him and stow all the cakes and salads and other good things away in that, and eat them later as he happened to need or want them, instead of in his own inner self, the good old custom might have been preserved, but that is impossible in these conventional days."

"You needn't have eaten it all," put in Mrs. Idiot. "You could have pretended to eat it and put it down somewhere."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I FOUND EIGHT SANDWICHES AND A PINT OF SALTED ALMONDS'"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'THEY WERE FOUND SOME DAYS LATER WHEN THE ROOM WAS PUT IN ORDER'"]

"I know that, my dear. I didn't even on that occasion eat it all--I only ate what I told you. I found eight sandwiches and a pint of salted almonds in my coat-tail pocket the next morning, which I managed surrept.i.tiously to hide away while my hostesses were getting me something else, and in one place, while n.o.body was watching me, I hid a half-dozen pickled oysters under a sofa, where I suppose they were found some days later when the room was put in order."

As the Idiot spoke the clock struck twelve, and the guests all rose up.