The Idiot

The Idiot, by John Kendrick
Bangs

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Title: The Idiot
Author: John Kendrick Bangs

Release Date: July 20, 2006 [eBook #18881]
Language: English
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THE IDIOT
by
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
Author of "Coffee and Repartee" "The Water Ghost, and Others"
"Three Weeks in Politics" Etc.
Illustrated

New York Harper & Brothers Publishers 1895 Copyright, 1895, by
Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved.

TO WILLIAM K. OTIS

ILLUSTRATIONS
"CERTAINLY. I ASKED FOR ANOTHER CUP"
"THE NUISANCE OF HAVING TO PAY"
"SHE COULD NOT POSSIBLY GET ABOARD AGAIN"
"DEMANDS TICKETS FOR TWO"
"THEY ARE GIVEN TO REHEARSING AT ALL HOURS"

"'HA! HA! I HAVE HIM NOW!'"
"HAS YOUR FRIEND COMPLETED HIS ARTICLE ON OLD
JOKES?"
THEY DEPARTED
"YOU FISH ALL DAY, AND HAVE NO LUCK"
HE COULD BE HEARD THROWING THINGS ABOUT
"HE WAS NOT MURDERED"
"SUPERINTENDENT SMITHERS HAS NOT ABSCONDED"
THE INSPIRED BOARDER PAID HIS BILL
"I KNOW YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE IT ISN'T THERE"
"YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HEARD IN SAN FRANCISCO"
THE PROPHETOGRAPH
"I GRASPED IT IN MY TWO HANDS"
"PIANO-PLAYING ISN'T ALWAYS MUSIC"
"THE MOON ITSELF WILL BE USED"
"DECLINES TO BE RIDDEN"
"THE BIBLIOMANIAC WOULD BE RAISING BULBS"
"DIDN'T KNOW ENOUGH TO CHOOSE HIS OWN FACE"
"JANITORS HAVE TO BE SEEN TO"
"MY ELOQUENCE FLOATED UP THE AIR-SHAFT"

THE IDIOT

I
For some weeks after the happy event which transformed the popular
Mrs. Smithers into the charming Mrs. John Pedagog all went well at
that lady's select home for single gentlemen. It was only proper that
during the honey-moon, at least, of the happy couple hostilities
between the Idiot and his fellow-boarders should cease. It was
expecting too much of mankind, however, to look for a continued
armistice, and the morning arrived when Nature once more reasserted
herself, and trouble began. Just what it was that prompted the remark
no one knows, but it happened that the Idiot did say that he thought that,
after all, life on a canal-boat had its advantages. Mr. Pedagog, who had
come into the dining-room in a slightly irritable frame of mind, induced
perhaps by Mrs. Pedagog's insistence that as he was now part proprietor
of the house he should be a little more prompt in making his
contributions towards its maintenance, chose to take the remark as
implying a reflection upon the way things were managed in the
household.
"Humph!" he said. "I had hoped that your habit of airing your idiotic
views had been put aside for once and for all."
"Very absurd hope, my dear sir," observed the Idiot. "Views that are
not aired become musty. Why shouldn't I give them an atmospheric
opportunity once in a while?"
"Because they are the sort of views to which suffocation is the most
appropriate end," snapped the School-Master. "Any man who asserts,
as you have asserted, that life on a canal-boat has its advantages, ought
to go further, and prove his sincerity by living on one."
"I can't afford it," said the Idiot, meekly. "It isn't cheap by any manner
of means. In the first place, you can't live happily on a canal-boat
unless you can afford to keep horses. In fact, canal-boat life is a

combination of the most expensive luxuries, since it combines yachting
and driving with domesticity. Nevertheless, if you will put your mind
on it, you will find that with a canal-boat for your home you can do a
great many things that you can't do with a house."
"I decline to put my mind on a canal-boat," said Mr. Pedagog, sharply,
passing his coffee back to Mrs. Pedagog for another lump of sugar,
thereby contributing to that good lady's discomfiture, since before their
marriage the mere fact that the coffee had been poured by her fair hand
had given it all the sweetness it needed; or at least that was what the
School-Master had said, and more than once at that.
"You are under no obligation to do so," the Idiot returned. "Though if I
had a mind like yours I'd put it on a canal-boat and have it towed away
somewhere out of sight. These other gentlemen, however, I think, will
agree with me when I say that