human
How is your Muse these days, Mr. Idiot?
gpt
Flourishing, said the Idiot.
human
Just flourishing--and no more.
gpt
I should think you'd be pleased if she is flourishing,
human
I'd rather she'd stop flourishing and do a little writing, said the Idiot.
gpt
She's a queer Muse, that one of mine. She has all the airs and graces of an ordinary type-writer with an unconquerable aversion to work.
human
You look upon your Muse as you would upon your type-writer, eh?
gpt
Yes, said the Idiot.
human
That's all my Muse is, and she isn't even a capable type-writer. The general run of type-writers make sense of what you write, but my Muse won't. You may not believe it, but out of ten inspirations I had last week not one of them is fit for publication anywhere but in a magazine or a puzzle column. I don't know what is the matter with her, but when I sit down to dictate a comic sonnet she turns it into a serious jingle, and _vice versa_. We can't seem to get our moods to fit. When I want to be serious she's flippant, and when I become flippant she's serious.
gpt
She must be very serious most of the time,
human
She is, said the Idiot, innocently.
gpt
But that's only because I'm flippant most of the time. I'm going to give her warning. If she doesn't brace up and take more interest in her work I'm going to get another Muse, that's all. I can't afford to have my income cut down fifty per cent. just because she happens to be fickle.
human
Maybe she is flirting with somebody else, suggested the Poet.
gpt
My Muse does that occasionally.
human
I doubt it, said the Idiot.
gpt
I haven't observed any other poet encroaching upon my particular province. Even you, good as you are, can't do it. But in any event I'm going to have a change. The day has gone by when a one-muse poet achieves greatness. I'm going to employ a half-dozen and try to corner the poetry market. Queer that in all these years that men have been writing poetry no one has thought of that. People get up grain corners, corners in railway stock, monopolies in gas and oil and everything else, about, but as yet no poet has cornered the market in his business.
human
That's easily accounted for, said the Bibliomaniac.
gpt
The poet controls only his own work, and if he has any sense he doesn't want to monopolize that.
human
That isn't my scheme at all, said the Idiot.
gpt
You have a monopoly of your own work always if you choose to avail yourself of it, and, as you say, a man would be crazy to do so. What I'd like to see established is a sort of Poetic Clearing-house Association. Supposing, for instance, that I opened an office in Wall Street--a Bank for Poets, in which all writers of verse could deposit their rhymes as they write them, and draw against them just as they do in ordinary banks with their money. It would be fine. Take a man like Swinburne, for instance, or our friend here. Our poet could take a sonnet he had written, endorse it, and put it in the bank. He'd be credited with one sonnet, and wouldn't have to bother his head about it afterwards. He could draw against it. If the Clearing-house company could dispose of it to a magazine his draft would be honored in cash to its full value, less discount charges, which would include postage and commissions to the company.
human
And suppose the company failed to dispose of it?
gpt
They'd do just as ordinary banks do with checks--stamp it 'Not Good,' said the Idiot.
human
That, however, wouldn't happen very often if the concern had an intelligent receiving-teller to detect counterfeits. If the receiving-teller were a man fit for the position and a poet brought in a quatrain with five lines in it, he could detect it at once and hand it back. So with comic poems. I might go there with a poem I thought was comic, and proceed to deposit it with the usual deposit slip. The teller would look at it a second, scrutinize the humor carefully, and then if it was not what I thought it, would stamp it 'Not Comic' or 'Counterfeit.' It is perfectly simple.
gpt
Very simple, said Mr. Pedagog.
human
Though I should have used a synonym of simple to describe it. It's idiotic.
gpt
That's what people said of Columbus's idea that he could discover America, said the Idiot.
human
Everything that doesn't have dollars slathered all over it in plain view is idiotic.
gpt
The word slathered is new to me, said the School-master;
human
The word slathered may be new to you, said the Idiot,
gpt
I must confess, said the Poet,
human
I don't say that it is a gold-mine, said the Idiot.
gpt
I doubt if I had every cent that is paid for poetry in a year by everybody to everybody that my income would reach one hundredth part of what I'd receive as a successful manufacturer of soap; but there would be more money in poetry than there is if by some pooling of our issues we could corner the market. Suppose every writer of a quatrain in America should send his whole product to us. We could say to the magazines, 'Gentlemen, quatrains are not quatraining as hard as they were. If you need a four-line bit of gloom and rhyme to finish off your thirty-second page, our price is twenty-five dollars instead of seventy-five cents, as of yore.' So with all other kinds of verse. We'd simply name our figure, force the editors to accept it, and unload. We might get caught on the last thirty or forty thousand, but our profits on the others would enable us to more than meet the losses.
human
And would you pay the author the twenty-five dollars?
gpt
Not if we were sane, replied the Idiot.
human
We'd pay the author two dollars and fifty cents, which is one dollar and seventy-five cents more than he gets now. _He_ couldn't complain.
gpt
And those that you couldn't sell?
human
We'd simply mark 'Not Good' and return to the author. That's what happens to him now, so no objection could be raised to that. But there's still another side to this matter, said the Idiot.
gpt
Publishers would be quite as anxious to help it along as the poets. Dealing through us, they would be spared the necessity of interviewing poets, which I am informed is always painful because of the necessity which publishers labor under to give the poet to understand that they are in the business for profit, not for pleasure or mere love of sinking money in a magazine. So the publishers would keep a standing account of hard cash in our bank. Say a magazine used one hundred dollars' worth of verse in a month. The publisher at the beginning of the year would deposit twelve hundred dollars with us, and throughout the year would draw out sonnets, ballads, or pastels-in-metre just as he needed them. The checks would read something like this: 'The Poets' Clearing-house Association of the City of New York will pay to John Bluepencil, Editor, or Order, Ten Sonnets. (Signed) Blank Brothers & Co.' Or perhaps we'd receive a notice from a Southern publisher to this effect: 'Have drawn on you at sight for eight quatrains and a triolet.' Now, when you consider how many publishers there are who would always keep a cash balance in the treasury, you begin to get some notion as to how we could meet our running expenses and pay our quarterly dividends to our stockholders anyhow; and as for future dividends, I believe our loan department would net us a sufficient amount to make the stock gilt-edged.
human
You would have a loan department, eh?
gpt
That would be popular, said the Poet;
human
All of your objections are based on misconceptions, said the Idiot.
gpt
The loan department would not lend money. It would lend poems for a consideration to those who are short and who need them to fulfil their obligations.
human
Who on earth would want to borrow a poem, I'd like to know?
gpt
Lovers, chiefly, said the Idiot.
human
Never having been a poet yourself, sir, you have no notion how far the mere faculty of being able to dash off a sonnet to a lady's eyebrow helps a man along in ultimately becoming the possessor of that eyebrow, together with the rest of the lady. _I_ have seen women won, sir, by a rondeau. In fact, I have myself completely routed countless unpoetic rivals by exploding in their ranks burning quatrains to the fair objects of our affections. With woman the man who can write a hymn of thanksgiving that he is permitted to gaze into her cerulean orbs has a great advantage over the wight who has to tell her she has dandy blue eyes in commonplace prose. The commonplace-prose wight knows it, too, and he'd pay ten per cent. of his salary during courtship if he could devise a plan by means of which he could pass himself off as a poet. To meet this demand, our loan department would be established. An unimaginative lover could come in and describe the woman he adored; the loan clerk would fish out a sonnet to fit the girl, and the lover could borrow it for ten days, just as brokers borrow stock. Armed with this he could go up to Harlem, or wherever else the maiden lived, and carry consternation into the hearts of his rivals by spouting the sonnet as nonchalantly as though he had just thought of it. So it would go on. For the following call he could borrow a ballad singing the glories of her raven locks, likening them to the beautiful night, or, if the locks were red instead of black, to the aurora borealis.
gpt
You'd have trouble finding a rhyme to borealis,
human
Tutt! said the Idiot.
gpt
What's the matter with 'Glory, Alice,' 'Listen to my story, Alice,' 'I'm going to war so gory, Alice,' 'I fear you are a Tory, Alice' (this for a Revolutionary poem), or 'Come rowing in my dory, Alice'? There's no end to 'em.
human
If you'll write a rhyming dictionary I'll buy a copy,
gpt
That will come later, said the Idiot.
human
Once get our clearing-house established, we can branch out into a general Poetry Trust and Supply Company that will make millions. We'll make so much money, by Jove! he added, slapping the table enthusiastically,
gpt
You certainly do draw a roseate picture,
human
I do indeed, said the Idiot,
gpt
Well, I hope it goes, said the Poet.
human
I'll make a deposit the first day of three hundred and sixty-seven ballads, four hundred and twenty-three couplets, eighty-nine rondeaus, and one epic about ten yards in length, all of which I have in my desk at this moment.
gpt
Very well, said the Idiot, rising,
human
With that encouragement from you I feel warranted in ordering the 'Not Good' stamp at least.
gpt
If I were beginning life all over again, said the Idiot,
human
I'd be an electrician. It seems to me that of all modern pursuits, barring architecture perhaps, electricity is the most fascinating.
gpt
There's probably more money in it than there is in Idiocy, too, I fancy,
human
Well, I should think so, assented the Idiot.
gpt
Idiocy is merely an intellectual diversion. Electricity is a practical science. Idiocy cannot be said to be anything more than a luxury, while electricity has become a necessity. I do not even claim that any real lasting benefit can come to the world through Idiocy, but in electricity are possibilities, not yet realized, for which the world will be distinctly better and happier.
human
It is kind of you to speak so highly of electricity, said the Doctor.
gpt
The science may now advance, knowing that you approve.
human
Approve? cried the Idiot.
gpt
Approve is not the word, sir. I enthuse--and why should I not, feeling, as I do, that in the electrical current lies the germ of the Elixir of Life! I thoroughly believe that a bottle of liquefied electricity would make us all young.
human
Then don't take it! said the School-master.
gpt
You have suffered from an aggravated case of youngness for as long a time as I have known you. Pray do nothing to intensify your youth.
human
I fear I shall be forced to deny myself that pleasure, Mr. Pedagog, returned the Idiot, mildly,
gpt
An immortal Idiot! Think of it!
human
I didn't expect much sympathy from you, Dr. Capsule, said the Idiot.
gpt
The man with car-horses to sell does not dote upon the trolley-car.
human
The application of the allegory is not entirely apparent,
gpt
No? said the Idiot.
human
I am surprised. I thought you intellectuals absorbed ideas more quickly. To deal in plain terms, since it appears to be necessary, a plan which involves the indefinite extension of mortal life and the elimination of bodily ills is not likely to receive the hearty endorsement of the medical profession. If a man could come home on a stormy night and offset the deleterious effects of wet feet by swallowing an electric pill, one containing two volts, like a two-grain quinine pill, for instance, with greater certainty than one feels in taking quinine, your profession would have to put up the shutters and go into some such business as writing articles on 'Measles as It Used to Be,' or 'Disorders of the Ante-Electrical Period.' The fine part of it all is that we should not have to rely for our medicines upon the state of the arsenic market, or the quinine supply, or the squill product of the year. Electric sparks can be made without number whether the sun shines or not. The failure of the Peruvian Bark Crop, or the destruction by an early frost of the Castor Oil Wells, would cease to be a hideous possibility to delicate natures. They could all fail for all mankind need fear, for electricity can be generated when and wherever one has need of it. If your electric pills were used up, and the chemist too far away from your house for you to get the supply replenished at the moment, you could put on your slippers and by walking up and down your carpeted floor for ten or fifteen minutes generate enough electricity to see you through. Of course you'd have to have a pair of dynamic-storage-reservoir slippers to catch the sparks as they flew, but I fancy they'd be less costly in the long run than the medicines we have to-day.
gpt
Why have wet feet at all if electricity is to be so all-powerful? suggested Mr. Whitechoker.
human
Why not devise an electrical foot-protector and ward off all possibility of damp, cold feet?
gpt
You couldn't do that with men and women constituted as they are, said the Idiot.
human
Your foot-protector would no doubt be a good thing, but so are rubber overshoes. Nothing will ever be patented to compel a man to keep his feet dry, and he won't do it except under compulsion, but once having his feet wet he will seek the remedy. It's the Elixir of Life that I bank on most, however. I don't believe there is one among us, excepting Mrs. Pedagog, to whom twenty-five was not the most delightful period of existence. To Mrs. Pedagog, as to all women, eighteen is the limit. But men at twenty-five and women at eighteen know so much, enjoy so much, regard themselves so highly! There is nothing _blas嶱 about them then. Disillusion--which I think ought to be called dissolution--comes later. At thirty a man discovers that the things he knew at twenty-five aren't so; and as for a woman at twenty-five, if so be she is unmarried, her life is empty, and if so be she is married, she has cares in the shape of children and a husband, who as a theory was a poet, but who as a reality is a mere business machine who is oftentimes no fonder of staying at home than he was before he was married and went out to see her every night.
gpt
What a wise little pessimist he is!
human
Very. But I fail to comprehend why he branches off into Pessimism when Electricity was his text,
gpt
Because he's the Id--