human
To judge from your appearance, Mr. Poet, said the Idiot, after welcoming his friend,
gpt
I haven't, said the Poet, wearily,
human
I haven't averaged more than two hours of sleep daily since I went away.
gpt
I thought you told me you were going off into the country for a rest?
human
I did--and this is what comes of it, returned the Poet.
gpt
I went to visit my sister up in Saratoga County. She has seven children.
human
Aha! smiled the Idiot.
gpt
That's it, is it--well, I can sympathize with you. I've had experience with youngsters myself. I love 'em, but I like to take 'em on the instalment plan--very little at a time. I have a small cousin with a capacity for play and impudence that can't be equalled. His mother wrote me once and asked if I thought Hagenbeck, the wild-animal tamer, could be induced to take him in hand.
human
That's the kind, put in the Poet, his face lighting up a little upon discovering that there was some one at least at the board who could sympathize with him.
gpt
My sister's seven are all of the wild-animal variety. I'd rather fall in with seven tigers than put in another week with my beloved nephews and nieces.
human
Did they play Alp with you?
gpt
Alp? said the Poet.
human
No--not that I know of. They may have, however. I was hardly conscious of what they were doing the last two days of my stay there. They simply overpowered me, and I gave in and became a toy for the time.
gpt
It isn't much fun being a toy, said the Idiot.
human
I think I'd rather play Alp.
gpt
What on earth is Alp? asked Mr. Pedagog, his curiosity aroused.
human
I've heard enough absurd names for games in the last five years, but I must say, for pure idiocy and lack of suggestiveness, the name of Alp surpasses all.
gpt
That's as it should be, said the Idiot.
human
My small cousin invented Alp, and anything that boy does is apt to surpass all. He takes after me in some things. But Alp, while it may seem to lack suggestiveness as a name, is really just the name for the game. It's very simple. It is played by one Alp and as many chamois as desire to take a hand. As a rule the man plays the Alp and the children are the chamois. The man gets down on his hands and knees, puts his head on the floor, and has a white rug put on his back, the idea being that he is an Alp and the rug represents its snow-clad top.
gpt
And the chamois?
human
The chamois climbs the Alp and jumps about on the top of it, said the Idiot.
gpt
My experience, based upon two hours a day of it for ten consecutive days, is that it's fun for the chamois but rough on the Alp; and I got so after a while that I really preferred business to pleasure and gave up playing Alp to return to work before my vacation was half over.
human
How do you score in this game of Alp?
gpt
I never had the strength to inquire, said the Idiot.
human
But my impression is that the game is to see which has the greater endurance, the chamois or the Alp. The one that gets tired of playing first loses. I always lost. My small cousin is a storehouse of nervous energy. I believe he could play choo-choo cars with a real engine and last longer than the engine--which being the case, I couldn't hope to hold out against him.
gpt
My nephews didn't play Alp, said the Poet.
human
I believe Alp would have been a positive relief to me. They made me tell them stories and poems from morning until night, and all night too, for one of them shared his room with me, and the worst of it all was that they all had to be new stories and new poems, so I was kept composing from one week's end to the other.
gpt
Why weren't you firm with them and say you wouldn't, and let that end it?
human
Ha--ha! laughed the Idiot.
gpt
That's fine, isn't it, Mr. Poet? It's very evident, Mr. Pedagog, that you're not acquainted with children. Now, my small cousin can make the same appeal over and over again in a hundred and fifty different ways. You may have the courage to say no a hundred and forty-nine times, but I have yet to meet the man who could make his no good with a boy of real persistent spirit. I can't do it. I've tried, but I've had to give in sooner or later.
human
Same way with me, multiplied by seven, said the Poet, with difficulty repressing a yawn.
gpt
I tried the no business on the morning of the third day, and gave it up as a hopeless case before the clock struck twelve.
human
I'd teach 'em,
gpt
You'd have to learn 'em first, retorted the Idiot.
human
You can't do anything with children unless you understand them. You've got to remember several things when you have small boys to deal with. In the first place, they are a great deal more alert than you are. They are a great deal more energetic; they know what they want, and in getting it they haven't any dignity to restrain them, wherein they have a distinct advantage over you. Worst of all, down in your secret heart you want to laugh, even when they most affront you.
gpt
I don't,
human
And why? Because you don't know them, cannot sympathize with them, and look upon them as evils to be tolerated rather than little minds to be cultivated. Hard a time as I have had as an Alp, I'd feel as if a great hole had been punched in my life if anything should deprive me of my cousin Sammie. He knows it and I know it, and that is why we are chums, said the Idiot.
gpt
What I like about Sammie is that he believes in me, he added, a little wistfully.
human
I wouldn't mind doing that myself--if I could.
gpt
You might think differently if you suffered from seven Sammies the way the Poet does,
human
There couldn't be seven Sammies, said the Idiot.
gpt
Sammie is unique--to me. But I am not at all narrow in this matter. I can very well imagine how Sammie could be very disagreeable to some people. I shouldn't care much for Alp, I suppose, if when night came on Sammie didn't climb up on my lap and tell me he thought I was the greatest man that ever lived next to his mother and father. That's the thing, Mr. Pedagog, that makes Alp tolerable--it's the sugar sauce to the batter pudding. There's a good deal of plain batter in the pudding, but with the sauce generously mixed in you don't mind it so much. That boy would be willing to go to sleep on a railway track if I told him I'd stand between him and the express train. If I told him I could hammer down Gibraltar with putty he'd believe it, and bring me his putty-blower to help along in the great work. That's why I think a man's so much better off if he is a father. Somebody has fixed a standard for him which, while he may know he can't live up to it, he'll try to live up to, and by aiming high he won't be so apt to hit low as he otherwise might. As Sammie's father once said to me: 'By Jove, Idiot,' he said, 'if men could _only_ be what their children think them!'
human
Nevertheless they should be governed, curbed, brought up!
gpt
They should, indeed, said the Idiot.
human
And in such a fashion that when they are governed, curbed, and brought up they do not realize that they have been governed, curbed, and brought up. The man who plays the tyrant with his children isn't the man for me. Give me the man who, like my father, is his son's intimate, personal friend, his confidant, his chum. It may have worked badly in my case. I don't think it has--in any event, if I were ever the father of a boy I'd try to make him feel that I was not a despot in whose hands he was powerless, but a mainstay to fall back on when things seemed to be going wrong--fountain-head of good advice, a sympathizer--in short, a chum.
gpt
You certainly draw a pleasant picture,
human
Thank you, said the Idiot.
gpt
It's not original with me. My father drew it. But despite my personal regard for Sammie, I do think something ought to be done to alleviate the sufferings of the parent. Take the mother of a boy like Sammie, for instance. She has him all day and generally all night. Sammie's father goes to business at eight o'clock and returns at six, thinking he has worked hard, and wonders why it is that Sammie's mother looks so confoundedly tired. It makes him slightly irritable. She has been at home taking things easy all day. He has been in town working like a dog. What right has she to be tired? He doesn't realize that she has had to entertain Sammie at those hours of the day when Sammie is in his best form. She has found him trying to turn somersaults at the top of the back stairs; she has patiently borne his musical efforts on the piano, upon which he practises daily for a few minutes, generally with a hammer or a stick, or something else equally well calculated to beautify the keys; she has had to interfere in Sammie's well-meant efforts to instruct his small brother in the art of being an Indian who can whoop and scalp all in the same breath, thereby incurring for the moment Sammie's undying hatred; she has heard Sammie using language which an inconsiderate hired man has not scrupled to use in Sammie's presence; she has, with terror in her soul, watched him at play with a knife which some friend of the family who admires Sammie had given him, and has again incurred his enmity by finally, to avoid nervous prostration, taken that treasure from him. In short, she has passed a day of real tragedy. Sammie is farce to me, comedy to his father, and tragedy to his mother. Cannot something be done for her? Is there no way by means of which Sammie can be entertained during the day, for entertained he must be, that does not utterly destroy the nervous system of his mother? Can't some inventive genius who has studied the small boy, who knows the little ins and outs of his nature, and who, above all, sympathizes with those ins and outs, put his mind on the life of the woman of domestic inclination, and do something to make her life less of a burden and more of a joy?
human
You are the man to do it, said the Bibliomaniac.
gpt
An inventive genius such as you are ought to be able to solve the problem.
human
Perhaps he ought to be, said the Idiot;
gpt
How To Be Tranquil Though A Mother.
human
Well, Mr. Idiot, said Mr. Pedagog, as the guests gathered about the table,
gpt
Frankly, Mr. Pedagog, I have failed, said the Idiot, sadly.
human
Failed egregiously. I cannot find that of all the many schemes I have evolved for the benefit of the human race any single one has been adopted by those who would be benefited. Wherefore, with the exception of Dreamaline, which I have not yet developed to my satisfaction, I shall do no more inventing. What is the use? Even you, gentlemen, here have tacitly declined to accept my plan for the elimination of irritation on Waffle Days, a plan at once simple, picturesque, and efficacious. With such discouragement at home, what hope have I for better fortune abroad?
gpt
It is dreadful to be an unappreciated genius! said the Bibliomaniac, gruffly.
human
It's better to be a plain lunatic. A plain lunatic is at least free from the consciousness of failure.
gpt
Nevertheless, I'd rather be myself than any one else at this board, rejoined the Idiot.
human
Unappreciated though I be, I am at least happy. Consciousness of failure need not necessarily destroy one's happiness. If I do the best I can with the tools I have I needn't weep because I fail, and with his consciousness of failure the unappreciated genius always has the consolation of knowing that it is not he but the world that is wrong. If I am a philanthropist and offer a thousand dollars to a charity, and the charity declines to accept it because I happen to have made it out of my interest in 'A Widows' and Orphans' Speculation Company, Large Losses a Surety,' it is the charity that loses, not I. So with my plans. Social expansion is not taken up by society--who dies, I or society? Capitalists decline to consider my proposition for a General Poetry Trust and Supply Company. Who loses a fine chance, I or the capitalists? I may be a little discouraged for the time being, but what of that? Invention isn't the only occupation in the world for me. I can give up Philanthropy and take up Misanthropy in a moment if I want to--and with Dreamaline I can rule the world.
gpt
Ah--just what is this Dreamaline?
human
That, sir, is the question which I am now trying to answer for myself, returned the Idiot.
gpt
If I could answer it, as I have said, I could rule the world--everybody could rule the world; that is to say, his own world. It is based on an old idea which has been found by some to be practicable, but it has never been developed to the point which I hope to attain.
human
Wake me up when he gets to the point, will you, kindly?
gpt
If you sleep until then you'll never wake, said the Bibliomaniac.
human
To my mind the Idiot never comes to a point.
gpt
You are a little too mysterious for me, observed Mr. Whitechoker.
human
I know no more about Dreamaline now than I did when you began.
gpt
Which is my case exactly, said the Idiot.
human
It is a vague, shadowy something as yet. It is only a germ lost in my cerebral wrinkles, but I hope by a persistent smoothing out of those wrinkles with what I might call the flat-iron of thought, I may yet lay hold of the microbe, and with it electrify the world. Once Dreamaline is discovered all other discoveries become as nothing; all other inventions for the amelioration of the condition of the civilized will be unnecessary, and even Progressive Waffles will cease to fascinate.
gpt
Perhaps, said the Bibliomaniac,
human
The Doctor might, said the Idiot.
gpt
My genial friend who occasionally imbibes might--even the Poet, with his taste for Welsh rarebits, might--but from you and Mr. Pedagog and Mr. Whitechoker I fear I should receive little assistance. Indeed, I am not sure but that Mr. Whitechoker might disapprove of the plan altogether.
human
Any plan which makes life happier and better is sure to meet with my approval,
gpt
With that encouragement, then, said the Idiot,
human
I will endeavor to lay before you my crowning invention. Dreamaline, as its name may suggest, should be a patent medicine, by taking which man should become oblivious to care.
gpt
What's the matter with champagne for that?