The Inventions of the i***t

Chapter 6

"We were talking about University Extension the other day, Mr. Pedagog," said the i***t, as the School-master folded up the newspaper and put it in his pocket, "and I, as you remember, suggested that it might better be called Social Expansion."

"Did you?" said Mr. Pedagog, coldly. "I don't remember much about it. I rarely make a note of anything you may say."

"Well, I did suggest the change of name, whether your memory is retentive or not, and I have been thinking the matter over a good deal since, and I think I've got hold of an idea," returned the i***t.

"In that case," said the Bibliomaniac, "we would better lock the door. If you have really got hold of an idea you should be very careful not to let it get away from you."

"No danger of that," said the i***t, with a smile. "I have it securely locked up here," tapping his forehead.

"It must be lonesome," said Mr. Pedagog.

"And rather uncomfortable-if it is a real idea," observed the Doctor. "An idea in the i***t's mind must feel somewhat as a tall, stout Irish maid feels when she goes to her bedroom in one of those Harlem flat-houses."

"You men are losing a great opportunity," said the i***t, with a scornful glance at the three professional gentlemen. "The idea of your following the professions of pedagogy, medicine, and literature, when the three of you combined could make a fortune as an incarnate comic paper. I don't see why you don't make a combination like those German bands that play on the street corners, and go about from door to door, and crack your jokes just as they crack their music. I am sure you'd take, particularly in front of barber-shops."

"It would be hard on the comic papers," said the Poet, who was getting a little unpopular with his fellow-boarders because of his tendency, recently developed, to take the i***t's part in the breakfast-table discussions. "They might be so successful that the barber-shops, instead of taking the comic papers for their customers to read, would employ one or more of them to sit in the middle of the room and crack jokes aloud."

"We couldn't rival the comic papers though," said the Doctor, wishing to save his dignity by taking the bull by the horns. "We might do the jokes well enough, but the comic papers are chiefly pictorial."

"You'd be pictorial enough," said the i***t. "Wasn't it you, Mr. Pedagog, that said the Doctor here looked like one of Cruikshank's physicians, or as if he had stepped out of Dickens's pages, or something like it?"

"I never said anything of the sort!" cried the School-master, wrathfully; "and you know I didn't."

"Who was it said that?" asked the i***t, innocently, looking about the table. "It couldn't have been Mr. Whitechoker, and I know it wasn't the Poet or my Genial Friend who occasionally imbibes. Mr. Pedagog denies it; I didn't say it; Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't say it. That leaves only two of us-the Bibliomaniac and the Doctor himself. I don't think the Doctor would make a personal remark of that kind, and-well, there is but one conclusion. Mr. Bibliomaniac, I am surprised."

"What?" roared the Bibliomaniac, glaring at the i***t. "Do you mean to fasten the impertinence on me?"

"Far from it," returned the i***t, meekly. "Very far from it. It is fate, sir, that has done that-the circumstantial evidence against you is strong; but then, mercifully enough, circumstantial evidence is not permitted to hang a man."

"Now see here, Mr. i***t," said the Bibliomaniac, firmly and impressively, "I want you to distinctly understand that I am not going to have you put words into my mouth that I never uttered. I-"

"Pray, don't attack me," said the i***t. "I haven't made any charge against you. I only asked who could have said that the Doctor looked like a creation of Cruikshank. I couldn't have said it, because I don't think it. Mr. Pedagog denies it. In fact, every one here has a clear case of innocence excepting yourself, and I don't believe you said it, only the chain of circumstance-"

"Oh, hang your chain of circumstance!" interrupted the Bibliomaniac.

"It is hung," said the i***t, "and it appears to make you very uncomfortable. However, as I was saying, I think I have got hold of an idea involving a truly philanthropic and by no means selfish scheme of Social Expansion."

"Heigho!" sighed Mr. Pedagog. "I sometimes think that if I had not the honor to be the husband of our landlady I'd move away from here. Your views, sir, are undermining my constitution."

"You only think so, Mr. Pedagog," replied the i***t. "You are simply going through a process of intellectual reconstruction at my hands. You feel exactly as a man feels who has been shut up in the dark for years and suddenly finds himself in a flood of sunlight. I am doing with you as an individual what I would have society do for mankind at large-in other words, while I am working for individual expansion upon the raw material I find here, I would have society buckle down to the enlargement of itself by the improvement of those outside of itself."

"If you swim in water as well as you do in verbiage," said the Bibliomaniac, "you must be able to go three or four strokes without sinking."

"Oh, as for that, I can swim like a duck," said the i***t. "You can't sink me."

"I fancied not," observed Mr. Pedagog, with a smile at his own joke. "You are so light I wonder, indeed, that you don't rise up into space, anyhow."

"What a delightful condition of affairs that suggestion opens up!" said the i***t, turning to the Poet. "If I were you I'd make a poem on that. Something like this, for instance: