The Idiot at Home Part 7

"That is a very interesting proposition of yours," said Mr. Brief, "but it has its dangers. A dynamite pea would prove very attractive so long as its explosive qualities were confined to the pod and its opening. But how are you going to keep the saltpetre out of the peas themselves?"

"That is where the difficulty comes in," said the Idiot. "I frankly don't know how we could insulate the peas from the effects of the saltpetre."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'IT WOULD BE DEUCEDLY AWKWARD ... IF THEY WOULD EXPLODE IN THE MOUTH OF THE PERSON WHO WAS EATING THEM'"]

"It would be deucedly awkward," observed the Bibliomaniac, "if, as might very well happen, one or two of the peas should become so thoroughly impregnated with the stuff that they would explode in the mouth of the person who was eating them, like bombs in miniature."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'SHE COULD SLAM THEM DOWN ON THE HEARTH-STONES LIKE TORPEDOES'"]

"True," said the Idiot. "The only safeguard against that would be to compel the cook to test every pea before she cooked it. She could slam them down on the hearth-stone like torpedoes, and every one that didn't go off could be cooked and served with safety. Still, there would be danger even then. A careless cook might forever ruin the tooth of a favored guest. I guess I'd better give up the idea."

"Oh, don't, pa!" cried Tommy, his interest in explosive vegetables worked up to a high pitch. "I'll test 'em all for you, and if they work I don't see why you couldn't raise dynamite punkins!"

"It would be a strong temptation, my son," said the Idiot, "which is all the more reason why I should abandon the plan. A dynamite punkin, as you call it, would wreck the whole neighborhood if one should set it off properly. No, we will, after all, confine our attention to vegetables of a more pacific nature. The others might prove more profitable at first, but when the novelty of them wore off, and one realized only their danger, a great deal of the pleasure one derives from eating fresh vegetables would be utterly destroyed."

Tommy looked out over the railing of the piazza, deep regret and disappointment depicted in his brown little face; but if the glitter of his eyes meant anything it meant that the idea of putting vegetables on a war footing was not going to be allowed to drop into oblivion; and if the small youth progresses in inventive genius in a fair ratio to his past achievements in that line, I have no doubt that if a Vesuvian pumpkin _can_ be produced at all, the day will dawn when Thomas is hailed as its inventor.

"Is it true," asked Mr. Brief, "that home-raised peas are sweeter than any other?"

"We think so," said Mrs. Idiot.

"We know so," amended the Idiot. "That Fourth-of-July night when we ate those five podfuls we discovered that fact. Five podfuls of peas are not enough to feed a family of four on, so we mixed them in with a few more that we bought at the grocer's, and we could tell ours from the others every time, they were so much sweeter."

The Bibliomaniac laughed scornfully.

"Pooh!" said he. "How did you know that they were yours that were sweet, and not the grocery-bought peas?"

"How does a father know his own children?" said the Idiot. "If you'd labored over those five pods as hard and a.s.siduously as we did, nursing them through their infant troubles, guarding them against locusts and potato-bugs, carefully watching their development from infancy into the full vigor of a mature peahood, I guess you'd know your own from those of others. It's instinct, my dear Bibliomaniac."

"Tell about the strawberry, pa," said Tommy, who liked to hear his father talk, in which respect I fear he takes strongly after his parent.

"Well," said the Idiot, "it's not much of a story. There was one. We had a strawberry patch twenty feet by ten. We had plenty of straw and plenty of patch, but the berries were timid about appearing. The results were similar to those in our asparagus venture. One berry was discovered trying to hide itself under half a bale of straw one morning, and while I was looking for Mrs. Idiot, to ask her to come down to the garden and see it grow, a miserable robin came along and bit its whole interior out. I hope the bird enjoyed it, because on a bed-rock estimate that berry cost twenty dollars. That is one of the things about gardening that make me especially weary. One doesn't mind spending forty-four dollars on a stalk of asparagus that is eaten, even surrept.i.tiously, by a member of one's own family; but to pay twenty dollars for a strawberry to be wasted on a fifteen-cent robin is, to say the least, irritating."

"You forget, John," said Mrs. Idiot, with a somewhat mirthful look in her eyes, "that we got fifteen boxes out of the strawberry-patch later."

"No, I don't," said the Idiot. "I was coming to that, and it involves a confession. You were so blue about the loss of our one beautiful berry that I entered into a conspiracy with Michael to make that patch yield.

The fifteen boxes of berries that we took out subsequently were bought at a New York fruit-store and judiciously scattered about the patch where you would find them. I had hoped you would never find it out, but when you spoke the other day of expending thirty-eight dollars on that strawberry-patch next year, I resolved then to undeceive you. This is the first favorable opportunity I have had."

Mrs. Idiot laughed heartily. "I knew it all along," she said. "Michael came to me with them and asked for instructions as to where to put them.

Really, I--ah--I arranged them under the straw myself."

"What an a.s.s a hired man can be!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Idiot. "I shall discharge Michael to-morrow."

"I wish you would," said Mrs. Idiot. "Ever since the conspiracy he has been entirely too independent."

"Don't discharge Michael, papa," said Mollie. "He's awful nice. He's always willin' to stop anything he's doing to play with Tommy and me."

"You bet he is!" cried Tommy. "He's a dandy, Mike is. He never says a word when I sit under the sprinkler, and he told me the other day that his grandfather would have been king of Ireland if Queen Victoria hadn't come in. He said the Queen was a lady, and his grandfather gave up his seat to her because he was a gentleman and couldn't do anything else."

"Very well," said the Idiot, suavely. "Then I won't discharge Michael.

One feels a better American, a better Republican, if he has a royal personage in his employ. I always wondered where Michael got his imperious manner; now I know. As a descendant of a long line of kings it could not be otherwise. I will give him another chance. But let me give you all fair warning. If next summer Michael does not succeed in producing from my garden four beets, ten pods of peas, three string-beans, and less than ten thousand onions, he goes. I shall not pay a gardener forty dollars a month unless he can raise three dollars'

worth of vegetables a year."

"But really," said Mr. Pedagog, "haven't you raised anything in your garden?"

"Oh yes," said the Idiot. "I've raised my water bill in the garden. I used to pay twelve dollars a quarter for water, but now the bills come to at least twenty-five dollars. Truly, a garden is not without profit to some one."

VII

HOUSEHOLD POETRY

"Yes," said the Idiot, in response to an inquiry from the Poet, who was pa.s.sing a Sunday with him at Castle Idiot, "I have found that there is a great deal of poetry in the apparently uninspiring little things of a household. There is to me as much poetry in a poker as there is in a snow-clad Alp, if you only have an eye to find it; and I am sure that to thousands of housewives the whole land over a sonnet to a clothes-pin, written by one who knows the clothes-pin's nature intimately, would be far more appealing than a similar number of lines trying to prove that we are all miserable phantoms flitting across a mora.s.s of woe."

The Poet pulled away thoughtfully at his pipe. He was a broad-minded poet, and while he had never owned a poker of his own, he was ready to admit its possibilities; but he could not follow his friend closely enough to admit that it contained as much that was inspiring as did Mont Blanc, for instance, a bright particular Alp of which he was very fond.

The Idiot continued:

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'THE JOYS AND WOES OF THE TOILERS WHO MINED IT'"]

"A ton of coal contains far more warmth than a woman's eyebrow; sends the mind of a thoughtful person chasing backward to the time when it lay snugly hid in the fair breast of nature; to the joys and woes of the toilers who mined it; through a variety of complexities of life, every one of them fraught with n.o.ble thoughts. Yet who ever wrote dainty verses to a ton of coal, and who hasn't at one time or another in his life written about the eyebrows of some woman?"

The Poet laughed this time. "A triolet to a ton of coal would be a glorious thing now, wouldn't it?" he observed.

"No," said the Idiot. "A triolet could never be a glorious thing under any circ.u.mstances; but to the extent that a ton of coal contains a certain amount of grandeur in the service it renders to mankind, I think the form would be enn.o.bled somewhat by the substance. Let's try it and see."

"You do it," said the Poet; "I really don't think I could do the subject justice."

The Idiot got out a pencil and a pad of paper and began.

"I don't think I'll make it a triolet," he said, after biting the end of his pencil for a few moments. "A whole ton is a good deal to cram into a triolet. I'll just make it a plain poem of the go-as-you-please variety instead, eh?"

"In the manner of Whitman, perhaps?" suggested the Poet, dryly.

"Just so," said the Idiot. "In the manner of Whitman; in fact, I think the manner of Whitman is the only manner for the poetic description of a ton of coal."

He began to scribble on the pad.

"I'm going to call this 'Content,'" he said in a few moments.

"Contentment strikes me as the main lesson a ton of coal teaches."

He scribbled on, and in four or five minutes he put down his pencil and read the following lines:

"I'm glad I'm not as men are-- Always worrying about something, and often about nothing; About what was and what wasn't; Fretting about what may be and what might have been; Wondering whether when they are called upon to do their duty They'll be able to do it, And generally deciding they won't, To their own discomfort.

And if so be they're women, Cogitating from morn till night, From night till morn, Wherewithal shall they be clothed, And if their hats are on straight!

Yea!