The Idiot at Home Part 6

"I shall never believe, my dear John," said Mrs. Pedagog, "that in your day boys ever placed giant crackers under their uncles' chairs."

"We never did, my love," Mr. Pedagog responded, quickly.

"Why, of course not," laughed the Idiot. "They couldn't, you know. They hadn't been invented. What was your trouble with Uncle Jed, Mr.

Pedagog?"

"Oh, our difference of opinion was rather of an ethical import," replied Mr. Pedagog, genially. "My Uncle Jed was a preacher, and he used to speak entirely from notes which he would make out the night before and place in the pocket of his black coat. All I did was to take the notes of his next day's sermon out of his pocket one Sat.u.r.day evening, and put in their stead a--ah--a recipe for what we called Washington pie--and a very good pie it was."

"John!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Pedagog.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'STARTED TO PREACH WITH THE RECIPE FOR A WASHINGTON PIE'"]

"I _did_, my dear," confessed the Schoolmaster, "and really I have never regretted it, although my particular uncle gave me a distressingly acrid and dreary lecture on my certain future when he found out what had happened. Yet what did happen, though mischievously intended, resulted in great good, for when the dear old gentleman stood up in the pulpit and started to preach the next morning, with the recipe for a Washington pie as the only available note at hand, he pulled himself together and preached off-hand the finest sermon of his life, and he discovered then the secret of his after-success. He became known ultimately as one of the most brilliant preachers of his time, and from that moment never went into the pulpit with any fact.i.tious aids to his memory."

"You mean cribs, don't you?" asked the Idiot.

"That is what college-boys call them, I believe," said Mr. Pedagog. "I will say further that a year before he died _my_ Uncle Jed told me that it was my mischievous act that had given him the hint which became the keynote of his eloquence," he added, complacently. "I shall always remember him affectionately."

"Of course," said the Idiot. "No doubt we all remember our Uncle Jeds affectionately. I certainly do. He was my mother's brother, and he meant well. I never really blamed him for not knowing how to sympathize with a boyish prank, because there has never been a school of instructions for uncles. Unclehood is about the hardest hood man has to wear, and as I have observed uncles and their habits, they either spoil or repel the small chaps and chappesses who happen to be made their nephews and nieces by an accident of birth. Uncles are either intensely genial or intensely irritable, and as far as I am concerned it is my belief that our colleges should include in their curriculum a chair of 'Uncleism.'

Unclehood is a relationship that man has to accept. It is thrust upon him. He can't help himself. To be a father or a mother is a matter of volition. But even in a free country like our own, if a man has a brother or a sister he is liable to find himself an uncle at any time whether he wishes to be one or not. Then when it happens he's got to reason out a course of procedure without any basis in previous experience."

"Why don't you write a book on 'Hints to Uncles,' or 'The Complete Aunt,'" suggested Mr. Brief. "I have no doubt it would make good reading."

"Thanks for the idea," said the Idiot. "I think I'll do it. Not in the hope of profit, but for the benefit of the race."

"What has all this to do with attics?" asked Mrs. Idiot.

"The natural resting-place of the bad uncle," explained the Idiot.

"Still, I maintain that it is every man's duty to keep an attic for the useless things, as Mrs. Pedagog calls them, which some day, when he least expects it, will carry his mind back to other days. The word itself, attic, carries the mind back to the splendors of Athens and other things that are out of date. When I was ill I found sincerest pleasure in rummaging. You can't rummage in a library if your library is properly looked after. You can't rummage in a bedroom in a well-kept house. You all know what parlors are--designed largely for the reception of people who come out to call upon you in their best Sunday clothes, and who would never think of calling upon you intimately, as a friend might, in his knickerbockers. You can't rummage there. The only place where one may rummage with any degree of success is in the attic, and my experience has been such that I believe my recent illness has contributed to my health. My mind has been carried back to conditions that used to be. Conditions which existed then and which were inferior to conditions which now prevail make me satisfied with the present.

Where old-time conditions were better than the existing one I have naturally discovered how to improve. Rummaging, therefore, is improving to the mind and contributes to one's contentment."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'A LITTLE BUNDLE OF MY OWN LETTERS'"]

"Then there are good economical reasons for the maintenance of an attic," the Idiot continued. "I found enough old boyhood collections of various things there to keep Tommy and Mollie happy for years without my having to pay out a penny for birthday presents--old stamps, old coins, old picture papers, and, I a.s.sure you, a lot of old newspapers, too, with better and more readable news in them than is now to be found in any of our modern bilious journals. Then the bundles of letters that came out of that place--my mother's letters to me, written while I was away at school; my father's letters in the old days at your house, Mrs.

Pedagog, which did much to keep me straight then and re-reading of which doesn't hurt now; and, best of all," he added, with an affectionate glance at Mrs. Idiot, "a little bundle of my own letters to a certain person tied up with a blue ribbon, and full of pressed roses and autumn leaves and promises--"

"In the attic?" asked Mr. Brief, with a dry smile. "Is that where Mrs.

Idiot keeps your promises?"

Mrs. Idiot blushed. "I have a cedar chest full of treasures up there,"

she said. "I thought it was locked."

"Well, anyhow, I found them," said the Idiot, cheerfully; "and while they were not especially good reading, they were good reminders of other days. It wouldn't be a bad idea if every married man were to read over the letters of his days of courtship once a year. I think it would bring back more forcibly than anything else the conditions of the contract which he was inviting the young partner of his joys to sign. If an attic never held anything but bundles of one's old love-letters it would demonstrate its right to become an inst.i.tution."

"Very true," said the lawyer; "but," he added, prompted by that cautious spirit which goes always with the professional giver of advice, "suppose that side by side with that little bundle of pressed flowers and autumn leaves and promises one should chance to find another little bundle of pressed flowers and autumn leaves and promises--the promises written by some other hand than the hand that is rummaging in the cedar chest? What then? Would that prove a pleasing find?"

"Oh, as for that," the Idiot remarked, "when I advocate the maintenance of an attic as one of the first duties of mankind, I mean its intelligent maintenance. The thing which makes of the British Museum, the National Attic of Great Britain, a positive educational force is its intelligent direction. It is the storehouse of the useless possessions of the British Empire which have an inspiring quality. There is nothing in it which makes a Briton think less of himself or which in any way unpleasantly disturbs his equanimity. So with the attic of the humble citizen. It must be intelligently directed if it is to become an inst.i.tution, and should not be made the repository of useless things which ought to be destroyed, among which I cla.s.s that other possible bundle to which you refer."

And inasmuch as the whole party agreed to the validity of this proposition, the subject was dropped, and the Idiot and his guests wandered on to other things.

VI

THE IDIOT'S GARDEN

"I should think, my dear Idiot," Mr. Pedagog observed one summer evening, as his host stood upon the back piazza of "Castle Idiot," as they had come to call the dwelling-place of their friend, "that with all this s.p.a.ce you have about you, you would devote some of it to a garden."

"Why, I do," said the Idiot. "I've got a small patch down there behind the tennis-court, fifty by one hundred feet, under cultivation. The stuff we get is almost as good as the average canned goods, too. We had a stalk of asparagus the other night that was magnificent as far as it went. It was edible for quite a sixteenth of an inch, or at least I was told so. That portion of it had already been nibbled off by my son Thomas while it was resting in the pantry waiting to be served.

However, the inedible end which arrived was quite st.u.r.dy, and might have stood between my family and starvation if the necessity had arisen."

"One stalk of asparagus is a pretty poor crop, I should say," observed the lawyer, with a laugh.

"You might think so," said the Idiot. "But everything in the world is comparative, after all. Ants build ant-hills which are several feet lower than the Alps, and yet they are monumental, considering that they were made by ants. All things considered, Mrs. Idiot and I were proud of our asparagus crop, and distinctly regretted that it did not survive to be served in proper state at dinner. If I remember rightly, Thomas was severely reprimanded for his privateering act in biting off the green end of it before I had a chance to see it."

"'Twasn't specially good," said Tommy, loftily.

"I am very glad it was not, my son," said the Idiot. "I should be very sorry to hear that you had derived the slightest sensation of pleasure from your piratical and utterly inexcusable act."

"Do you usually serve so small a portion of the product of your garden?" asked Mr. Brief.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'WE SPRINKLED IT IN PERSON'"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'HE DISCOVERED THE ONE PERFECT STALK'"]

"Sometimes we don't serve anything at all from it," said the Idiot, "which you will observe is smaller yet. In this instance Mrs. Idiot intended a little surprise for me. We had struggled with that asparagus-bed for some time. The madame had studied up asparagus in her botany. I had looked it up in the cyclopedia and the Century dictionary.

We had ordered it in various styles when we dined out at the New York hotels, and we had frequently bought cans of it in order to familiarize ourselves more intimately with its general personal appearance. Then we consulted people we thought would be likely to know how to obtain the best results, and what they told us to do we did, but somehow it didn't work. Our asparagus crop languished. We sprinkled it in person. We put all sorts of garden cosmetics on it to improve its complexion, but it seemed hopeless, and finally when I footed up the asparagus item in my account-book, and discovered that we had paid out enough money without results of a satisfactory nature to have kept us in canned asparagus for four years, we got discouraged, and resolved to give it up. It was while Michael, our gardener, was removing the evidences of our failure that he discovered the one perfect stalk, and like the honest old gardener that he is, he immediately brought it into the house and presented it to my wife. She naturally rejoiced that our efforts had not been entirely vain, and in her usual spirit of self-sacrifice had the stalk cooked as a surprise for me. As I have told you, that small circ.u.mstance Thomas, over which we seem to have no control, got ahead of us--"

"You was surprised, wasn't you, pa?" demanded the boy.

"Somewhat, my son," said the Idiot, "but not in the way your mother had designed, exactly."

"Is asparagus the extent of your gardening?" queried Mrs. Pedagog.

"Oh no, indeed!" replied Mrs. Idiot. "We've had peas and beets and beans and egg-plant and corn--almost everything, in fact, including potatoes."

"Yes, ma'am," said the Idiot, "almost everything, including potatoes.

Our pea crop was lovely. We had five podfuls for dinner on the Fourth of July, and the children celebrated the day by podding them for the cook. They popped open almost as noisily as a torpedo. It was really very enjoyable. Indeed, one of the results of that pea crop has been to give me an idea by which I may some day redeem my losses on the asparagus-bed. An explosive pea which should be edible, and yet would pop open with the noise of a small fire-cracker, would be a delight to the children and serviceable for the table. I don't exactly know how to bring about the desired results, but it seems to me if I were to mix a little saltpetre in the water with which we irrigate our pea-trees the required snap would be obtained. Then on the Fourth of July the children, instead of burning their fingers and filling their parents with nervous dread setting off fire-crackers, could sit out on the back piazza and sh.e.l.l the peas for the cook--"

"I'd rather sh.e.l.l Spangyards," said Mollie.

"I am surprised at you, my child," said the Idiot. "A little girl like you should be an advocate of peace, not of war."

"You can't eat Spaniards, either, can you, pa?" said Tommy, who, while he shared Mollie's views as to the comparative value for sh.e.l.ling purposes of peas and Spaniards, was nevertheless quite interested in the development of a pea-pod that would open with a bang.

"No, Tommy," said the Idiot, "you can't eat Spaniards, and they'd be sure to disagree with you if you could."