The Inventions of the i***t

Chapter 10

"If I were beginning life all over again," said the i***t, "I'd be an electrician. It seems to me that of all modern pursuits, barring architecture perhaps, electricity is the most fascinating."

"There's probably more money in it than there is in Idiocy, too, I fancy," said the Bibliomaniac, dryly.

"Well, I should think so," assented the i***t. "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."

"It is kind of you to speak so highly of electricity," said the Doctor. "The science may now advance, knowing that you approve."

"Approve?" cried the i***t. "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."

"Then don't take it!" said the School-master. "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."

"I fear I shall be forced to deny myself that pleasure, Mr. Pedagog," returned the i***t, mildly, "for the unhappy reason that as yet the formula for the Electrical Elixir has not been discovered; that it will be discovered before I die I hope and pray, because, unlike the man in the hymn, I would live always. I'd like to be an immortal."

"An immortal i***t! Think of it!" said the Doctor.

"I didn't expect much sympathy from you, Dr. Capsule," said the i***t. "The man with car-horses to sell does not dote upon the trolley-car."

"The application of the allegory is not entirely apparent," said the Doctor.

"No?" said the i***t. "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."

"Why have wet feet at all if electricity is to be so all-powerful?" suggested Mr. Whitechoker. "Why not devise an electrical foot-protector and ward off all possibility of damp, cold feet?"

"You couldn't do that with men and women constituted as they are," said the i***t. "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 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."

"What a wise little pessimist he is!" said Mr. Pedagog to the Doctor.

"Very. But I fail to comprehend why he branches off into Pessimism when Electricity was his text," said the Doctor.

"Because he's the Id-" began the Bibliomaniac, but the i***t interrupted him.

"Don't jump fences, gentlemen, before you know whether they are made of barbed wire or not. I'm coming to the points you are bringing up, and if you are not careful they may puncture you," he said. "I am not in any sense a pessimist. Quite the contrary. I am an optimist. I'm not old enough or cross-grained enough as yet to be a pessimist, and it's because I don't want to be a pessimist that I want this Elixir of Electricity to hurry up and have itself patented. If men when they reached the age of twenty-five, and women at eighteen, would begin to take this they might live to be a thousand and yet retain all the spirit and feelings of twenty-five and eighteen. That's the connection, Dr. Capsule. If I could be twenty-five all my life I'd be as happy as a bird-and if I were the Poet here I'd immortalize that idea in verse-