John Kendrick Bangs

“ The man who sticks to the cowpath may be able to drink milk, but he never wears diamonds."
"All that you say is very true, but it is not based on any fundamental principle. It is so because it happens to be so," returned the School-master. "If it were man's habit to have the streets laid out on the old cowpath principle in his cities he would be quite as energetic, quite as prosperous, as he is now."
"No fundamental principle involved? There is the fundamental principle of all business success involved," said the Idiot, warming up to his subject. ”

“ In the Idiot's eye there was a cold glitter of expectancy—a glitter that boded ill for the man who should challenge him to controversial combat—and there seemed also to be, judging from sundry winks passed over the table and kicks passed under it, an understanding to which he and the genial gentleman who occasionally imbibed were parties. ”

“ The idea of a man trying to display Wagner [Pg 40] [Pg 41] with two hands and one foot is irritating to a musician with a trained eye."
"I wish the Doctor would come down," said Mrs. Smithers, anxiously.
"Yes," put in the School-master; "there seems to be madness in our midst."
"Well, what can you expect of a Cuban, anyhow?" queried the Idiot. "The Cuban, like the Spaniard or the Italian or the African, hasn't the vigor which is necessary for the proper comprehension and rendering of Wagner's music. He is by nature slow and indolent. ”

“ I've lived in the country, sir, and I assure you it is not what it is written up to be. Country life is misery, melancholy, and malaria."
"You must have struck a profitable section, Doctor," returned the Idiot, taking possession of three steaming buckwheat cakes to the dismay of Mr. Whitechoker, who was about to reach out for them himself. "And I should have supposed that your good business sense would have restrained you from leaving."
"Then the countryman is poor—always poor," continued the Doctor, ignoring the Idiot's sarcastic comments. ”

“ Whitechoker," said the Idiot, taking his place at the table, and holding his plate up to the light, apparently to see whether or not it was immaculate, whereat the landlady sniffed contemptuously—"do you believe that the love of money is the root of all evil?"
"HOLDING HIS PLATE UP TO THE LIGHT"
"I have always been of that impression," returned Mr. Whitechoker, pleasantly. "In fact, I am sure of it," he added. "There is no evil thing in this world, sir, that cannot be traced back to a point where greed is found to be its main-spring and the source of its strength." ”

“ Insanity was one of his weak points.
"It's a beastly habit," said the School-master, much relieved at this turn of the conversation.
"Well, perhaps you are right," returned the Idiot. "People do, as a rule, prefer to talk of things they know something about, and I don't blame you, Doctor, for wanting to keep out of a medical discussion. I only asked my last question because the behavior of the Bibliomaniac and Mr. Whitechoker and the School-master for some time past has worried me, and I didn't know but what you might work up a nice little practice among us. ”

“ VII
"Our streets appear to be as far from perfect as ever," said the Bibliomaniac with a sigh, as he looked out through the window at the great pools of water that gathered in the basins made by the sinking of the Belgian blocks. "We'd better go back to the cowpaths of our fathers."
"There is a great deal in what you say," observed the School-master. "The cowpath has all the solidity of mother earth, and none of the distracting noises we get from the pavements that obtain to-day. It is porous and absorbs the moisture. ”

“ So it happened upon this bright Sunday morning that as the boarders sat them down to partake of the usual "restful breakfast," as the Idiot termed it, the Bibliomaniac observed:
"I have just finished reading Robert Elsmere."
"Have you, indeed?" returned the School-master, with apparent interest. "I trust you profited by it?"
"On the contrary," observed the Bibliomaniac. "My views are much unsettled by it."
"I prefer the breast of the chicken, Mrs. Smithers," observed the Idiot, sending his plate back to the presiding genius of the table. ”

“ THE SCHOOL-MASTER AS A COOLER
"Do you think he gets as much as that?" put in the School-master, viciously. "Five dollars a week is rather high pay for one of his—"
"Very high indeed," agreed the Idiot. "I wish I got that much. I might be able to hire a two-legged encyclopædia to tell me everything, and have over $4.75 a week left to spend on opera, dress, and the poor but honest board Mrs. Smithers provides, if my salary was up to the $5 mark; but the trouble is men do not make the fabulous fortunes nowadays with the ease with which you, Mr. Pedagog, made yours. ”

“ Where do we find the busy bees who make the honey that enables posterity to get into Society and do nothing? Do we pick up our millions on the cowpath? I guess not. Do we erect our most princely business houses [Pg 67] along the roads laid out by our bovine sister? I think not. Does the man who goes from the towpath to the White House take the short cut? ”

“ Pedagog. "I have often thought that a nice little school could be started here to advantage, though I must confess that I had different ideas on the subject of the instructors. You, my dear Idiot, would be a great deal more useful as a Professor Emeritus."
"Hm!" said the Idiot. "It sounds mighty [Pg 129] well—I've no doubt I should like it. What is a Professor Emeritus, Mr. Pedagog?"
"He is a professor who is paid a salary for doing nothing." ”

“ People are not willing to pay for what they can get for nothing."
"I am glad to hear from your lips so complete an admission," said the School-master, "that education is downing ignorance."
"I am glad to know of your gladness," returned the Idiot. "I didn't quite say that education was downing ignorance. I plead guilty to the charge of holding the belief that unskilled omniscience interferes very materially with skilled sciolism in skilled sciolism's efforts to make a living." ”

“ Pedagog's theory that we should have Sunday breakfasts every day is not tenable, for the reason that with a perpetual day of rest agriculture would die out, food products would be killed off [Pg 63] by unpulled weeds; in fact, we should go back to that really unfortunate period when women were without dress-makers, and man's chief object in life was to christen animals as he met them, and to abstain from apples, wisdom, and full dress."
"The Idiot is right," said the Bibliomaniac. "It would not be a very good thing for the world if every day were Sunday. Wash-day is a necessity of life. ”

“ The Belgian pavement is leaky, and lets it run into our cellars. We might do far worse than to go back—"
"Excuse me for having an opinion," said the Idiot, "but the man of enterprise can't afford to indulge in the luxury of the somnolent cowpath. It is too quiet. It conduces to sleep, which is a luxury business [Pg 66] men cannot afford to indulge in too freely. Man must be up and doing. The prosperity of a great city is to my mind directly due to its noise and clatter, which effectually put a stop to napping, and keep men at all times wide awake." ”

“ Whitechoker here a year's board that there isn't a man in his congregation who can sleep a half-hour—much less twenty years—with Broadway within hearing distance.
"I tell you, Mr. Pedagog," he continued, "it is the man from the cowpath who gets buncoed. It's the man from the cowpath who can't make a living even out of what he calls his 'New York Store.' It is the man from the cowpath who rejoices because he can sell ten dollars' worth of sheep's-wool for five dollars, and is happy when he goes to meeting dressed up in a four-dollar suit of clothes that has cost him twenty." ”

“ The things one gets to eat in the country, the air one breathes, the utter freedom from restraint, the thousand and more things one enjoys in the suburbs that are not attainable here—it is these that make my heart yearn for the open. ”

“ You are what you are because you are, because if you were not, you would not be what you are."
"Your logic is delightful," said the School-master, scornfully.
"I strive to please," replied the Idiot. "But I do agree with the Bibliomaniac that our streets are far from perfection," he added. "In my opinion they should be laid in strata. On the ground-floor should be the sewers and telegraph pipes; above [Pg 70] this should be the water-mains, then a layer for trucks, then a broad stratum for carriages, above which should be a promenade for pedestrians. ”

“ It's my place to make the old folks happy if I can; and if thinking me nineteen different kinds of a genius is going to fill my mother's heart with happiness, I'm going to let her think it. What's the use of destroying other people's idols even if we do know them to be hollow mockeries? ”

“ But to return to our subject: you two gentlemen appear to have had unhappy experiences in country life—quite different from those of a friend of mine who owns a farm. He doesn't have to run for trains; he is independent of plumbers, because the only pipes in his house are for smoking purposes. The farm produces corn enough to keep his family supplied all the year round and to sell a balance at a profit. Oats and wheat are harvested to an extent which keeps the cattle and declares dividends besides. He never suffers from the cold or heat. ”

“ As my friend the Idiot has frequently remarked, you have the peculiarity of a great many men in your profession, who think because they never happened to see or do or hear things as other people do, they may not be seen, done, or heard at all. I saw the concert I attended last night. Our musical club has rooms next to a hospital, and we have to give silent concerts for fear of disturbing [Pg 46] the patients; but we are all musicians of sufficient education to understand by a glance of the eye what you would fail to comprehend with fourteen ears and a microphone. ”

“ Pedagog will take a more active part in the management of our home."
"I don't envy him that," said the Idiot. "We shall be severe critics, and it will be hard work for him to manage affairs better than you did, Mrs. Smithers."
"Mary, get me a larger cup for the Idiot's coffee," said Mrs. Smithers.
"Let's all retire from business," suggested the Idiot, after the other guests had expressed their satisfaction with the turn affairs had taken. "Let's retire from business, and change the Smithers Home for Boarders into an Educational Institution."
"For what purpose?" queried the Bibliomaniac. ”

“ They are dumb on the subject of the ecstasy one feels when pushing a twenty-pound lawn-mower up and down a weed patch at the end of a wearisome hot summer's day. They are silent—"
"'A HIND-QUARTER OF LAMB GAMBOLLING ABOUT ITS NATIVE HEATH'"
"Don't get excited, Mr. Pedagog, please," interrupted the Idiot. "I am not contemplating leaving you and Mrs. Smithers, but I do pine for a little garden of my own, where I could raise an occasional can of tomatoes. I dream sometimes of getting milk fresh from the pump, instead of twenty-four hours after it has been drawn, as we do here. ”

“ The landlady here laughed quite heartily, and handed the School-master an extra strong cup of coffee.
"There is a great deal in what you say," said the Idiot, without a tremor. "There are very few scientific phenomena that cannot be demonstrated in one way or another by my poor self. It is the exception always that proves the rule, and in my case you find a consistent converse exemplification of all three branches of absent-mindedness."
"He talks well," said the Bibliomaniac, sotto voce, to the Minister. ”

“ What man is he that would complain of having to bale out his cellar every week, if, on the other hand, that cellar gains thereby a fertility that keeps its floor sheeny, soft, and green—an interior tennis-court—from spring to spring, causing the gladsome click of the lawn-mower to be heard within its walls all through the still watches of [Pg 85] the winter day? I tell you, sir, it is the life to lead, that of our rural brother. I do not believe that in this whole vast city there is a cellar like that—an in-door garden-patch, as it were."
"No," returned the Doctor ”

“ Here the Idiot appropriated the roll of his neighbor.
"That depends largely upon the case," replied the Doctor, nervously. "Some are born absent-minded, some achieve absent-mindedness, and some have absent-mindedness thrust upon them."
"'READING WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY'"
"As illustrations of which we might take, for instance, I suppose," said the Idiot, "the born idiot, the borrower, and the man who [Pg 19] is knocked silly by the pole of a truck on Broadway." ”

“ Our prosperity would increase, for we should not be always excavating to get at our pipes; our surface cars with a clear track would gain for us rapid transit, our truck-drivers would not be subjected to the temptations of stopping by the way-side to overturn a coupé, or to run down a pedestrian; our fine equipages would in con [Pg 71] sequence need fewer repairs; and as for the pedestrians, the beggars, if relegated to themselves, would be forced out of business as would also the street-peddlers. ”

“ Whitechoker, kindly, fearing that the Doctor's manifest indignation might get the better of him.
"That," returned the Idiot, "is an assertion, Mr. Whitechoker, that is both true and untrue. There are times when a physician is an ornament to a boarding-house; times when he is not. For instance, on [Pg 23] Wednesday morning if it had not been for the surgical skill of our friend here, our good landlady could never have managed properly to distribute the late autumn chicken we found upon the menu. ”

“ It's the extent to which the eyes are opened that counts, and as for your statement that the fact that prosperity and noisy streets go hand in hand is true only because it happens to be so, that is an argument which may be applied to any truth in existence. ”

“ Smithers.
"No, he isn't. He's a broker," said the [Pg 89] Idiot, "and a very successful one. I see him on the street every day."
"Does he employ a man to run the farm?" asked the Clergyman.
"No," returned the Idiot, "he has too much sense and too few dollars to do any such foolish thing as that."
"It must be one of those self-winding stock farms," put in the School-master, scornfully. "But I don't see how he can be a successful broker and make money off his farm at the same time. Your statements do not agree, either. You said he never had to run for trains." ”