The Genial i***t

Chapter 8

WELL, Mr. i***t," said Mrs. Pedagog, genially, as the i***t entered the breakfast-room, "what can I do for you this fine spring morning? Will you have tea or coffee?"

"I think I'd like a cup of boiled iron, with two lumps of quinine and a spoonful of condensed nerve-milk in it," replied the i***t, wearily. "Somehow or other I have managed to mislay my spine this morning. Ethereal mildness has taken the place of my backbone."

"Those tired feelings, eh?" said Mr. Brief.

"Yeppy," replied the i***t. "Regular thing with me. Every year along about the middle of April I have to fasten a poker on my back with straps, in order to stand up straight; and as for my knees-well, I never know where they are in the merry, merry spring-time. I'm quite sure that if I didn't wear brass caps on them my legs would bend backward. I wonder if this neighborhood is malarious."

"Not in the slightest degree," observed the Doctor. "This is the healthiest neighborhood in town. The trouble with you is that you have a swampy mind, and it is the miasmatic oozings of your intellect that reduce you to the condition of physical flabbiness of which you complain. You might swallow the United States Steel Trust, and it wouldn't help you a bit, and ten thousand bottles of nerve-milk, or any other tonic known to science, would be powerless to reach the seat of your disorder. What you need to stiffen you up is a pair of those armored trousers the Crusaders used to wear in the days of chivalry, to bolster up your legs, and a strait-jacket to keep your back up."

"Thank you, kindly," said the i***t. "If you'll give me a prescription, which I can have made up at your tailor's, I'll have it filled, unless you'll add to my ever-increasing obligation to you by lending me your own strait-jacket. I promise to keep it straight and to return it the moment you feel one of your fits coming on."

The Doctor's response was merely a scornful gesture, and the i***t went on:

"It's always seemed a very queer thing to me that this season of the year should be so popular with everybody," he said. "To me it's the mushiest of times. Mushy bones; mushy poetry; mush for breakfast, fried, stewed, and boiled. The roads are mushy; lovers thaw out and get mushier than ever.