Chapter 12

HE MAKES A SUGGESTION TO THE POET

GOOD-MORNING, Homer, my boy,” said the Idiot, genially, as the Poet entered the breakfast-room. “All hail to thee. Thou art the bright particular bird of plumage I most hoped to see this rare and beauteous summer morning. No sweet-singing robin-redbreast or soft-honking canvasback for yours truly this A.M., when a living, breathing, palpitating son of the Muses lurks near at hand. I fain would make thee a proposition, Shakespeare dear!”

“Back pedal there! Avaunt with your flowery speech, oh Idiot!” cried the Doctor. “Else will I call an ambulance.”

“No ambulance for mine,” chortled the Idiot.

“Nay, Sweet Gas-bags,” quoth the Doctor. “But for once I fear me we may be scorched by this Pelée of words that thou spoutest forth.”

“What’s the proposition, Mr. Idiot?” asked the Poet. “I’m always open to anything of the kind, as the Subway said when an automobile fell into it.’”

“I thirst for laurels,” said the Idiot, “and I propose that you and I collaborate on a book of poems for early publication. With your name on the title-page and my poems in the book I think we can make a go of it.”

“What’s the lay?” asked the Poet, amused, but wary. “Sonnets, or French forms, or just plain snatches of song?”

“Any old thing as long as it runs smoothly,” replied the Idiot. “Only the poems must fit the title of the book, which is to be Now.”

“Now?” said the Poet.

“Now!” repeated the Idiot. “I find in reading over the verse of the day that the ‘Now’ poem always finds a ready market. Therefore, there must be money in it, and where the money goes there the laurels are. You know what Browning Robinson, the Laureate of Wall Street, wrote in his ‘Message to Posterity’:

“‘Oh, when you come to crown my brow,
Bring me no bay nor sorrel;
Give me no parsley wreath, but just
The legal long green laurel.’”

“I never heard that poem before,” laughed the Poet, “though the sentiment in these commercial days is not unfamiliar.”

“True,” said the Idiot. “Alfred Austin Biggs, of Texas, voiced the same idea when he said:

“‘Crown me not with spinach,
Wreathe me not with hay;
Place no salad on my head
When you bring the bay.
Give me not the water-cresses
To adorn my flowing tresses,
But at e’en
Crown my pockets good and strong
With the green—
The green that’s long.’”

“Do you remember that?” asked the Idiot.

“Only faintly,” said the Poet. “I think you read it to me once before, just after you—er—ah—rather just after Alfred Austin Biggs, of Texas—wrote it.”

The Idiot laughed. “I see you’re on,” he said. “Anyhow, it’s good sentiment, whether I wrote it or Biggs. Fact is, in my judgment, what the poet of to-day ought to do is to collect the long green from the present and the laurel from posterity. That’s a fair division. But what do you say to my proposition?”

“Well, it’s certainly—er—cheeky enough,” said the Poet. “Do I understand it?—you want me to father your poems. To tell the truth, until I hear some of them, I can’t promise to be more than an uncle to them.”

“That’s all right,” said the Idiot. “You ought to be cautious, as a matter of protection to your own name. I’ve got some of the goods right here. Here’s a little thing called ‘Summer-tide!’ It shows the whole ‘Now’ principle in a nutshell. Listen to this:

“Now the festive frog is croaking in the mere,
And the canvasback is honking in the bay,
And the summer-girl is smiling full of cheer
On the willieboys that chance along her way.
“Now the skeeter sings his carols to the dawn,
And bewails the early closing of the bar
That prevents the little nips he seeks each morn
On the sea-shore where the fatling boarders are.
“Now the landlord of the pastoral hotel
Spends his mornings, nights, and eke his afternoons,
Scheming plans to get more milk from out the well,
And a hundred novel ways of cooking prunes.
“Now the pumpkin goes a pumpking through the fields,
And the merry visaged cows are chewing cud;
And the profits that the plumber’s business yields
Come a-tumbling to the earth with deadly thud.
“And from all of this we learn the lesson sweet,
The soft message of Dame Nature, grand and clear,
That the winter-time is gone with storm and sleet,
And the soft and jolly summer-tide is here.

How’s that? Pretty fair?”

“Well, I might consent to be a cousin to a poem of that kind. I’ve read worse and written some that are quite as bad. But you know, Mr. Idiot, even so great a masterpiece as that won’t make a book,” said the Poet.

“Of course it won’t,” retorted the Idiot. “That’s only for the summer. Here’s another one on winter. Just listen:

“Now the man who deals in mittens and in tabs
Is a-smiling broadly—aye, from ear to ear—
As he reaches out his hand and fondly grabs
All the shining, golden shekels falling near.
“Now the snow lies on the hill-side and the roof,
And the birdling to the sunny southland flies;
While the frowning summer landlord stands aloof,
And to solemncholy meditation hies.
“Now the tinkling of the sleigh-bells tinge the air,
And the coal-man is as happy as can be;
While the hulking, sulking, grizzly seeks his lair,
And the ice-man’s soul is filled with misery.
“Clad in frost are all the distant mountain-peaks,
And the furnace is as hungry as a boy;
While the plumber, as he gloats upon the leaks,
Is the model that the painter takes for ‘Joy.’
“And from all of this we learn the lesson sweet—
The glad message of Dame Nature, grand and clear:
That the summer-time has gone with all its heat,
And the crisp and frosty winter days are here.

You see, Mr. Poet, that out of that one idea alone—that cataloguing of the things of the four seasons—you can get four poems that are really worth reading,” said the Idiot. “We could call that section ‘The Seasons,’ and make it the first part of the book. In the second part we could do the same thing, only in greater detail, for each one of the months. Just as a sample, take the month of February. We could run something like this in on February:

“Now o’er the pavement comes a hush
As pattering feet wade deep in slush
That every Feb.
Doth flow and ebb.”

“I see,” said the Poet. “It wouldn’t take long to fill up a book with stuff like that.”

“To make the appeal stronger, let me take the month of July, which is now on,” resumed the Idiot. “You may find it even more convincing:

“Now the fly—
The rhubarb-pie—
The lightning in the sky—
Thermometers so spry—
That leap up high—
The roads all dry,
The hoboes nigh,
The town a-fry,
The mad ki-yi
A-snarling by,
The crickets cry—
All tell us that it is July.

Eh?”

“I don’t believe anybody would believe I wrote it, that’s all,” said the Poet, shaking his head dubiously. “They’d find out, sooner or later, that you did it, just as they discovered that Will Carleton wrote ‘Paradise Lost,’ and Dick Davis was the real author of Shakespeare. Why don’t you publish the thing over your own name?”

“Too modest,” said the Idiot. “What do you think of this:

“Now the festive candidate
Goes a-sporting through the State,
And he kisses babes from Quogue to Kalamazoo;
For he really wants to win
Without spending any tin,
And he thinks he has a chance to kiss it through.”

“That’s fair, only I don’t think you’ll find many candidates doing that sort of thing nowadays,” said the Poet. “Most public men I know of would rather spend their money than kiss the babies. That style of campaigning has gone out.”

“It has in the cities,” said the Idiot. “But back in the country it is still done, and the candidate who turns his back on the infant might as well give up the race. I know, because a cousin of mine ran for supervisor once, and he was licked out of his boots because he tried to do his kissing by proxy—said he’d give the kisses in a bunch to a committee of young ladies, who could distribute them for him. Result was everybody was down on him—even the young ladies.”

“I guess he was a cousin of yours, all right,” laughed the Doctor; “that scheme bears the Idiot brand.”

“Here’s one on the opening of the opera season,” said the Idiot:

“Now the fiddlers tune their fiddles
To the lovely taradiddles
Of old Wagner, Mozart, Bizet, and the rest.
Now the trombone is a-tooting
Out its scaley shute-the-chuteing
And the oboe is hoboing with a zest.
“Now the dressmakers are working—
Not a single minute shirking—
Making gowns with frills and fal-lals mighty queer,
For the Autumn days are flying,
And there’s really no denying
That the season of the opera is near.”

Mr. Brief took a hand in the discussion at this moment.

“Then you can have a blanket verse,” he said, scribbling with his pencil on a piece of paper in front of him. “Something like this:

“And as Time goes on a-stalking,
And the Idiot still is talking
In his usual blatant manner, loud and free,
With his silly jokes and rhyme,
It is—well it’s any time
From Creation to the jumping-off place that you’ll find at the far end of Eterni-tie.”

“That settles it,” said the Idiot, rising. “I withdraw my proposition. Let’s call it off, Mr. Poet.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Mr. Brief. “Isn’t my verse good?”

“Yes,” said the Idiot. “Just as good as mine, and that being the case it isn’t worth doing. When lawyers can write as good poetry as real poets, it doesn’t pay to be a real poet. I’m going in for something else. I guess I’ll apply for a job as a motorman, and make a name for myself there.”

“Can a motorman make a name for himself?” asked the Doctor.

“Oh yes,” said the Idiot. “Easily. By being civil. A civil motorman would be unique.”

“But he wouldn’t make a fortune,” suggested the Poet.

“Yes he would, too,” said the Idiot. “If he could prove he really was civil, the vaudeville people would pay him a thousand dollars a week and tour the country with him. He’d draw mobs.”

With which the Idiot left the dining-room.

“I think his poems would sell,” smiled Mrs. Pedagog.

“Yes,” said Mr. Pedagog. “Chopped up fine and properly advertised, they might make a very successful new kind of breakfast food—provided the paper on which they were written was not too indigestible.”