"Yes," said the Idiot, in response to an inquiry from the Poet, who was passing 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 morass 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:

"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 noble 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 circumstances; 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 ennobled 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!
I am glad I am not like one of these,
But am myself —
A ton of coal – jetty in my blackness and luminous in my bituminosity.
Lying here in the cellar content and not bothering a bit.
Not needing income or clothes, and wearing no hat, and with no complexion to bother about.
Happy and serene about my duty,
Certain that I shall succeed when the time for action comes;
Knowing that I shall burn,
And in the burning glow like the polar star.
Cackling and crackling,
Hissing and smoking,
Full of heat,
A satisfaction to mankind,
And never worth less than $5.65, delivered!
Ah, me! What bliss to be a ton of coal!
I am content."

The Poet nodded his pleasure at the effort. "It is charmingly put," he said. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that the idea of contentment is the last one that I should ever have extracted from contemplation of a binful of anthracite, and yet when I consider how you put it I wonder it has not occurred to every one. You have the manner of the Whitman parodist down fine, too."

"Thank you," said the Idiot. "It is entirely natural to me. I think, too, that using the Whitman lack of form carries with it the notion of the coal sliding down the chute, don't you? Coal runs into the cellar in such an irresponsible, formless way, eh?"

"Precisely," smiled the Poet. "You have the right notion about that. The form of a poem should really be adapted to the substance. It should be descriptive, always. Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade' has in its rhythm nothing more or less than the clatter of the horses' hoofs as they and their riders dashed through the valley of death at Balaklava. And how vividly Southey's brook comes before the mind in its mad rush downward as one reads that wonderfully lyrical poem. Why don't you write a book of household poetry? You seem to me to be eminently well qualified to undertake it."

"I intend to," said the Idiot. "In fact, I've begun it already. Written five or six. Like to see 'em?"

"Indeed I should," said the Poet. "Anything you do interests me."

The Idiot went to his desk and took from it a few pages of manuscript.

"Here is a thing on pokers I did the other night. I called it 'The Song of the Poker Bold.'" And then he read these lines:

"Warder of the grate am I,
Ever standing near;
Poking, poking all day long,
Knowing naught of fear.

"Keeping coals up to their work,
Setting them aglow,
Minding not the scorching heat,
Rather like it so.

"Knocking ashes right and left,
Flirting with the tiles;
Bossing tongs and seeing that
The brazen kettle biles.

"And the little girls and boys
As they watch me pause,
Wishing that I'd talk and tell
'Bout old Santa Claus!

"Cracking jokes with crickets on
The merry hearth, elate;
Happy lot indeed is mine —
Warder of the grate!"

"Splendid!" cried the Poet, clapping his hands with enthusiasm. "Splendid! A good stiff pokeresque lyric, and your characterization of the poker as the 'Warder of the Grate' gives it a flavor of romance. You could almost imagine the implement going out into a mediæval world in search of knightly adventure – a sort of hearth-stone Quixote. Have you tackled the clothes-pin yet?"

"Yes," replied the Idiot. "Indeed, my first effort was a lyric on the clothes-pin. I started one night to do the contents of the kitchen-dresser drawer in French forms, but the first thing I took out was an egg-beater, and it wouldn't go, so I did the clothes-pin lyric. I call it

"FIDELITY

"Blow, ye winds,
I fear ye not;
Blast, ye simoon,
Sere and hot!

"Hurricane,
And cyclone, too,
Blow, I have no
Fear of you.

"Lacking beauty,
Lacking grace,
Lacking handsome
Form and face;

"Lacking soul
And intellect,
Still I stand up,
Proud, erect.

"For the Fates
Have given me
Wondrous great
Tenacity.

"And success,
Both fair and fine,
Comes to him
Who holds his line.

"Burrs can stick
And so can glue —
Mucilage,
Stratena, too;

"But there's nothing
Holds so fast
As the clothes-pin
To the last."

"And you gave up the egg-beater altogether?" asked the Poet, restraining a natural inclination to find flaws in the construction of the clothes-pin poem.

"Oh no," said the Idiot, "I knocked off a little quatrain on that. I called it 'The Speedy Egg-Beater,' and it goes like this:

"Great Maude S. can beat all steeds,
However speedy be their legs;
But I distance her with ease
When it comes to beating eggs."

"I really think that you would have done better to give up the egg-beater," said the Poet, grown critical. "I've no patience with one-rhymed quatrains. Now if you had written:

"Great Maude S. can beat all steeds,
However speedy be their legs;
But despite her doughty deeds;
I can beat her beating eggs,

"I should not have objected."

"I accept the amendment," replied the Idiot, meekly. "I realized the weakness of the thing myself, and thought of changing it into a couplet, where you only need one rhyme. How's this on a 'Carpet-Tack'?"

"However dull the day,
However dull the skies,
However dark the night may be,
My spirits ever rise.

"For though I'm but a carpet-tack,
Afar from moil and strife,
No one can ever truly say
That mine's a pointless life."

"That is very good," said the Poet. "I think almost any editor of any comic paper would be willing to pay you three dollars for that. It is as good as your poem on a ton of coal – simple in its expression and sweet in sentiment."

"I thought you'd think so," said the Idiot. "It struck me so. I've got one on a screw-driver, too, that is very much of the same order, and conveys a moral lesson to the reader who is always reaching out after the unattainable. It reads as follows:

"I cannot tool a tally-ho,
I cannot drive a nag;
I dare not hold the ribbons
On a hack or rumbling drag.

"I could not guide the reins upon
A simple billy-goat,
And I should hesitate to try
To drive a can-al boat.

"But I don't mind these things at all,
For I can drive a screw,
And I am happy, for that's just
What I was meant to do."

"The fourth line of the second verse is weak, but otherwise it's good," commented the Poet. "It's not a can-al boat; it's a can-al boat, and all the poetic license in the world wouldn't excuse your taking such a liberty with language."

"I appreciate that," said the Idiot. "But I don't see how I could get around it."

"There's only one way," said the Poet. "I think if you omitted that verse altogether you'd improve the poem."

"Then I should have to eliminate the billy-goat," said the Idiot. "That takes a great deal of humor out of it. I always laugh when I encounter a beast like that in poetry; he seems so helpless when incarcerated in a poem."

"That may be," observed the Poet. "But it is my belief that the goat, of all animals in the kingdom, was the last one designed to be used in poetry, anyhow. He is bad enough in prose, and in this case will butt your poem to oblivion if you insist on keeping him in it. Any more?"

"No," said the Idiot; "that's the last."

"Well, you've got a good start," said the Poet, rising to light his pipe, which had gone out. "And if I were you I'd go on and finish the book. 'The Idiot's Book of Household Poetry' would have a great sale. It has but one drawback that I can see. You harp on one string too much. Every one of your poems preaches contentment, satisfaction – nothing else."

"That," said the Idiot, "is not an objection, but a virtue; for what other lesson," he added, with a glance of pride at his surroundings, "what other lesson, my dear Poet, should a home try to teach, and what other sentiment can mean so much to mankind?"

"I don't know," said the Poet, with a little sigh. "I haven't ever had a home; I've always boarded."

Whereupon the Idiot rose up from his chair, and putting his arm about his friend's shoulder, said:

"How you do talk! Never had a home? Why, my dear fellow, what's this? It's yours as long as it's mine!"

VIII
SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE HIRED MAN

"Who is that sitting down on your tennis-court, Mr. Idiot?" asked Mr. Brief, the lawyer. "Or is it anybody? I've been trying for the last half-hour to make out whether it's a man or one of those iron figures with which some people decorate their lawns."

"That," replied the Idiot, calmly, "is my hired man. I pay him forty dollars a month to sit down there and let the grass grow under his feet. I heard you and Mr. Pedagog discussing the wonderful grassiness of my lawn after dinner last night, and I meant to have told you then that the credit thereof belongs entirely to the restful nature of that man's soul. He will stand for hours rooted to one spot and looking with apparent aimlessness out over the river. To most people this would seem to be prompted by a sheer indisposition to work, but this would do him a rank injustice, for his immovability is due entirely to his system. He is letting the grass grow beneath him, and the fact that our grass is so nourishing everywhere is due to his having stood for hours at various times over every square inch of territory to which I hold the title-deeds."

The Idiot gazed out of the window at his retainer with affectionate admiration.

"He certainly clings closely to his system," said the lawyer.

"He is a model," said the Idiot. "He has done more to make my life here easy than any one in my service. For instance, you know the hurly-burly of existence in town. I go to my office in the morning, and whether I have much work or little to do, I come home in the afternoon absolutely worn out. The constant hustling and bustling of others in the city wears upon my mind, and consequently upon my body. The rush and roar of cables and electric-cars; the activity of messengers running to and fro in the streets; the weary horses dragging great lumbering wagons up and down the crowded thoroughfares, all affect my nature and impair my energy; and then, the day's work done, I return here, where all is quiet and still, and the very contrast between that man, standing silently on his appointed spot, or leaning against the house, or lying off in sheer content under some tree, and the mad scramble for lucre in the city, invigorates my tired body until I feel that I could go out and mow three acres of grass before dinner; in fact, I generally do."

"I did not know that a restful nature was a requisite of a successful career as a hired man," said Mr. Pedagog.

"It is evident, then, that you have never had a hired man," rejoined the Idiot. "Nor can you ever have studied the species at close range. Ceaseless activity would be his ruin. If he did to-day all there is to do, he would be out of employment to-morrow, consequently he never does to-day's work to-day, and cultivates that leisurely attitude towards life upon which you have commented. Do you see that small beech-tree over there?" he added, pointing to a scrawny little sapling whose sole virtue appeared to be its rigid uprightness.

"Is that a beech-tree?" asked Mr. Brief. "I thought it was a garden stake."

"It is a beech-tree," said the Idiot. "I planted it myself last autumn, and while it has as yet borne no beeches, I think if we give it time, and it withstands the rigors of the climate, it will produce its fruit. But it was not of its possibilities as a beech-bearing tree that I intended to speak. I wanted to indicate to you by a material object the value of having a hired man who likes to lean against things. At the close of this last winter that tree, instead of being as erect as a grenadier, as it now is, was all askew. The strong westerly winds which are constantly blowing across that open stretch bent the thing until it seemed that the tree was bound to be deformed; but Mike overcame the difficulty. He would go out day after day and sit down beside it and lean against it for two and three hours at a time, with the result that the tendency to curve was overcome, and a tree that I feared was doomed to fail now bids fair to resemble a successful telegraph-pole in its uprightness. And, of course, the added warmth of his body pressing down upon the earth which covers its roots gave it an added impulse to grow."

"It is a wonderful system," smiled Mr. Brief. "I wonder it is not adopted everywhere."

"It is, pretty much," said the Idiot. "Most hired men do the same thing. I don't think Mike differs radically from others of his kind. Of course, there are exceptions. My neighbor Jimpsonberry, for instance, has a man who is so infernally unrestful that he makes everybody tired. He is up every morning mowing Jimpsonberry's lawn at five o'clock, waking up every sleepy soul within ear-shot with the incessant and disturbing clicking of his machine. Mike would never think of making such a nuisance of himself. Furthermore, Jimpsonberry's lawn is kept so close-cropped that the grass doesn't get any chance, and in the heat of midsummer turns to a dull brick-red."

After a pause, during which the company seemed to be deeply cogitating the philosophical bearing of the subject under discussion, the Idiot resumed:

"There is another aspect of this matter," he said, "which Jimpsonberry's man brings to my mind. You know as well as I do that heat is contagious. If you feel as cool as a cucumber, and then all of a sudden see somebody who is dripping with perspiration and looking for all the world like a human kettle simmering on a kitchen-range, you begin to simmer yourself. It is mere sympathy, of course, but you simmer just the same, get uncomfortable and hot in the collar, and are shortly as badly off as the other fellow. So it is with Jimpsonberry's man. Time and time again he has spoiled all my pleasure by making me realize by a glance at his red face and sweating arms how beastly hot it is, when before I had seen him I felt tolerably comfortable. Mike, on the other hand, is not so inconsiderate, and I am confident would let the grass grow a mile high before he would consent to interfere with my temperature by pushing the mower up and down the lawn on a humid day."

"Do you keep this interesting specimen of still life all through the year?" asked Mr. Brief, "or do you give him a much-needed vacation in winter? I should think he would be worn out with all this standing around, for nothing that I know of is more tiresome than doing nothing."

"No," said the Idiot. "Mike never seems to need a vacation. Sitting down and leaning against things and standing around don't seem to tire him in the least. It might tire you or me, but you see he's used to it. The only effect it has on him, as I view the matter, is that it wears out his clothes. It doesn't impair his lack of vigor at all. So by the simple act of occasionally renewing his wardrobe, which I do every time I discard a suit of my own, I revive his wasted vitality, and he does not require to be sent to Europe, or to take an extended tour in the White Mountains to recuperate. I keep him all through the winter, and his system is quite the same then as in summer, except that he does his sitting around and leaning indoors instead of in the open."

"I suppose he looks after the furnace and keeps the walks clear of snow in winter time?" suggested Mr. Pedagog, who was beginning to take an interest in this marvellously restful personage.

"Yes," said the Idiot; "and he attends to the windows as well. As a minder of the furnace he is invaluable. My house is as cool as a roof-garden all through the winter, and thanks to his unwillingness to over-exert himself shovelling coal into the furnace, I burn only about half as much as my neighbors, and my house is never overheated. This in itself is an indication of the virtue of Mike's method. One-half of the colds contracted by children nowadays are the result of overheated houses. Mike's method gives me a cool house at very moderate expense, owing to the great saving of coal, the children do not get colds because of overheating, and the expense of having a doctor every other day is averted. Then his snow-shovelling scheme goes back to the first principles of nature. Mike is not overawed by convention, and instead of following the steps of other men who shovel the snow entirely off, he shovels off a footpath to enable me to go to business, and then sits down and oversees the sun while it melts the balance. Sometimes, if the sun does not do the work promptly enough to suit him, he gets up little contests for the children. He divides up certain portions of the walk into equal parts, and starts the small boys on a race to see which one will get the portion assigned to him cleaned off first, the prize being something in the nature of an apple, which the cook orders from the market. I believe my son Thomas won ten apples last winter, although I am told that the Jimpsonberry boy, whose father's man is cross, and insists on doing all the work himself, is the champion snow-shoveller of the street."

"Yes, he is, pa," put in Tommy. "Mike owes him 'leven apples. I only won eight."

"Well, that is a very good record, Thomas," said the Idiot, "and I will see to it that next winter you have a brand-new snow-shovel with which to enter the contest."

"Mike lets us chop the kindling-wood, too," said Tommy, suddenly perceiving a chance to put in a good word for the genial Mike. "I think he's the nicest hired man as ever was."

"He'll stop anything he's doing to talk to me," ventured Mollie, not wishing to be backward in laying wreaths upon the brow of their friend.

"Yes, I have noticed that," said the Idiot. "Indeed, next to his extreme restfulness there is no quality that I know of in Mike that shines out so conspicuously as his intense love for children. He will neglect his own interests, as Mollie has suggested, to talk to the little ones, and I rather like him for it. No boy dares go near the Jimpsonberry man, who has exerted himself into a perpetual state of nervous exhaustion."

"Well, if he cleans your windows, that is something," observed Mrs. Pedagog, whose experience in keeping a boarding-house years before entitled her to speak as one having authority.

"Unless his system is the same in that work as in the other branches committed to his care," said Mr. Brief.

"It isn't quite," said the Idiot. "He really does exert himself in window-cleaning. I have frequently seen him spend a whole day on one window. His window-washing system is a very ingenious one, nevertheless."

"It is, indeed," said Mrs. Idiot, with a show of feeling.

"A new window-washing system?" grinned Mr. Pedagog.

"Yes," said the Idiot. "It is his own invention. He washes them on the outside in summer and on the inside in winter. The result is this opalescent glass which you see. You would hardly guess that these windows are of French plate. Still, we don't mind so much. I couldn't ask him to wash them on the outside in winter, it is so dreadfully cold, and in the summer, of course, they are always open, and no one, unless he were disagreeable enough to go snooping about after unpleasant details, would notice that they are not immaculate."

"And you pay this man forty dollars for this?" demanded Mr. Brief.

"Oh, for this and other things. I pay him two dollars a month for the work he does. I pay him ten dollars a month because he's good to the children. I pay him ten dollars more for his civility, which is unvarying – he always puts his hat on when he comes into the house, having noticed, perhaps, that only those who are my social equals are entitled to appear bareheaded in my presence."

"And the other eighteen?" persisted the lawyer, by nature a cross-examiner.

"Well, I don't grudge him that because – " a sort of a fond light lit up the Idiot's eyes as he gazed down upon Mike, still sitting on the tennis-court – "I don't grudge him that other eighteen dollars because it costs Mike twenty dollars a month to live; and he uses the rest of it to put his boy through college, so that when he grows up to be a man he will be something more than a hired man."

"Ah!" said Mr. Brief.

"Yes," said the Idiot; "I found that out from a third party some time ago, and I thought after all I'd keep him, for I know nobody else would have him, and then what would become of the boy in college?"