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XI
THE GENTLE ART OF BOOSTING

THE Idiot was very late at breakfast – so extremely late, in fact, that some apprehension was expressed by his fellow-boarders as to the state of his health.

“I hope he isn’t ill,” said Mr. Whitechoker. “He is usually so prompt at his meals that I fear something is the matter with him.”

“He’s all right,” said the Doctor, whose room adjoins that of the Idiot in Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog’s Select Home for Single Gentlemen. “He’ll be down in a minute. He’s suffering from an overdose of vacation – rested too hard.”

Just then the subject of the conversation appeared in the doorway, pale and haggard, but with an eye that boded ill for the larder.

“Quick!” he cried, as he entered. “Lead me to a square meal. Mary, please give me four bowls of mush, ten medium soft-boiled eggs, a barrel of saute potatoes, and eighteen dollars’ worth of corned-beef hash. I’ll have two pots of coffee, Mrs. Pedagog, please, four pounds of sugar, and a can of condensed milk. If there is any extra charge you may put it on the bill, and some day, when the common stock of the Continental Hen Trust goes up thirty or forty points, I’ll pay.”

“What’s the matter with you, Mr. Idiot?” asked Mr. Brief. “Been fasting for a week?”

“No,” replied the Idiot. “I’ve just taken my first week’s vacation, and, between you and me, I’ve come back to business so as to get rested for the second.”

“Doesn’t look as though vacation agreed with you,” said the Bibliomaniac.

“It doesn’t,” said the Idiot. “Hereafter I am an advocate of the rest-while-you-work system. Never take a day off if you can help it. There’s nothing so restful as paying attention to business, and no greater promoter of weariness of spirit and vexation of your digestion than the modern style of vacating. No more for mine, if you please.”

“Humph!” sneered the Bibliomaniac. “I suppose you went to Coney Island to get rested up, bumping the bump and looping the loop, and doing a lot of other crazy things.”

“Not I,” quoth the Idiot. “I didn’t have sense enough to go to some quiet place like Coney Island, where you can get seven square meals a day, and then climb into a Ferris-wheel and be twirled around in the air until they have been properly shaken down. I took one of the Four Hundred vacations. Know what that is?”

“No,” said Mr. Brief. “I didn’t know there were four hundred vacations with only three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. What do you mean?”

“I mean the kind of vacation the people in the Four Hundred take,” explained the Idiot. “I’ve been to a house-party up in Newport with some friends of mine who’re ’in the swim,’ and I tell you it’s hard swimming. You’ll never hear me talking about a leisure class in this country again. Those people don’t know what leisure is. I don’t wonder they’re always such a tired-looking lot.”

“I was not aware that you were in with the Smart Set,” said the Bibliomaniac.

“Oh yes,” said the Idiot. “I’m in with several of ’em – ’way in; so far in that I’m sometimes afraid I’ll never get out. We’re carrying a whole lot of wild-cats on margin for Billie Van Gelder, the cotillon leader. Tommy de Cahoots, the famous yachtsman, owes us about eight thousand dollars more than he can spare from his living expenses on one of his plunges into Copper, and altogether we are pretty long on swells in our office.”

“And do you mean to say those people invite you out?” asked the Bibliomaniac.

“All the time,” said the Idiot. “Just as soon as one of our swell customers finds he can’t pay his margins he comes down to the office and gets very chummy with all of us. The deeper he is in it the more affable he becomes. The result is there are house-parties and yacht-cruises and all that sort of thing galore on tap for us every summer.”

“And you accept them, eh?” said the Bibliomaniac, scornfully.

“As a matter of business, of course,” replied the Idiot. “We’ve got to get something out of it. If one of our customers can’t pay cash, why, we get what we can. In this particular case Mr. Reginald Squandercash had me down at Newport for five full days, and I know now why he can’t pay up his little shortage of eight hundred dollars. He’s got the money, but he needs it for other things, and, now that I know it, I shall recommend the firm to give him an extension of thirty days. By that time he will have collected from the De Boodles, whom he is launching in society, C. O. D., and will be able to square matters with us.”

“Your conversation is Greek to me,” said the Bibliomaniac. “Who are the De Boodles, and for what do they owe your friend Reginald Squandercash money?”

“The De Boodles,” explained the Idiot, “are what are known as climbers, and Reginald Squandercash is a booster.”

“A what?” cried the Bibliomaniac.

“A booster,” said the Idiot. “There are several boosters in the Four Hundred. For a consideration they will boost wealthy climbers into society. The climbers are people like the De Boodles, who have suddenly come into great wealth, and who wish to be in it with others of great wealth who are also of high social position. They don’t know how to do the trick, so they seek out some booster like Reggie, strike a bargain with him, and he steers ’em up against the ‘Among-Those-Present’ game until finally you find the De Boodles have a social cinch.”

“Do you mean to say that society tolerates such a business as that?” demanded the Bibliomaniac.

“Tolerates?” laughed the Idiot. “What a word to use! Tolerate? Why, society encourages, because society shares the benefits. Take this especial vacation of mine. Society had two five-o’clock teas, four of the swellest dinners you ever sat down to, a cotillon where the favors were of solid silver and real ostrich feathers, a whole day’s clam-bake on Reggie’s steam-yacht, with automobile-runs and coaching-trips galore. Nobody ever declines one of Reggie’s invitations, because what he has from a society point of view is the best the market affords. Why, the floral decorations alone at the fête champêtre he gave in honor of the De Boodles at his villa last Thursday night must have cost five thousand dollars, and everything was on the same scale. I don’t believe a cent less than seventy-five hundred dollars was burned up in the fire-works, and every lady present received a souvenir of the occasion that cost at least one hundred dollars.”

“Your story doesn’t quite hold together,” said Mr. Brief. “If your friend Reggie has a villa and a steam-yacht, and automobiles and coaches, and gives fêtes champêtres that cost fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, I don’t see why he has to make himself a booster of inferior people who want to get into society. What does he gain by it? It surely isn’t sport to do a thing like that, and I should think he’d find it a dreadful bore.”

“The man must live,” said the Idiot. “He boosts for a living.”

“When he has the wealth of Monte Cristo at his command?” demanded Mr. Brief.

“Reggie hasn’t a cent to his name,” said the Idiot. “I’ve already told you he owes us eight hundred dollars he can’t pay.”

“Then who in thunder pays for the villa and the lot and all those hundred-dollar souvenirs?” asked the Doctor.

“Why, this year, the De Boodles,” said the Idiot. “Last year it was Colonel and Mrs. Moneybags, whose daughter, Miss Fayette Moneybags, is now clinching the position Reggie sold her at Newport over in London, whither Reggie has consigned her to his sister, an impecunious American duchess – the Duchess of Nocash – who is also in the boosting business. The chances are Miss Moneybags will land one of England’s most deeply indebted peers, and, if she does, Reggie will receive a handsome check for steering the family up against so attractive a proposition.”

“And you mean to tell us that a plain man like old John De Boodle, of Nevada, is putting out his hard-earned wealth in that way?” demanded Mr. Brief.

“I didn’t mean to mention any names,” said the Idiot. “But you’ve spotted the victim. Old John De Boodle, who made his sixty million dollars in six months, after having kept a saloon on the frontier for forty years, is the man. His family wants to get in the swim, and Reggie is turning the trick for them; and, after all, what better way is there for De Boodle to get in? He might take sixty villas at Newport and not get even a peep at the divorce colony there, much less a glimpse of the monogamous set acting independently. Not a monkey in the Zoo would dine with the De Boodles, and in his most eccentric moment I doubt if Tommy Dare would take them up, unless there was somebody to stand sponsor for them. A cool million might easily be expended without results by the De Boodles themselves; but hand that money over to Reggie Squandercash, whose blood is as blue as his creditors’ sometimes get, and you can look for results. What the Frohman’s are to the stage, Reggie Squandercash is to society. He’s right in it; popular as all spenders are; lavish as all people spending other people’s money are apt to be. Old De Boodle, egged on by Mrs. De Boodle and Miss Mary Ann De Boodle (now known as Miss Marianne De Boodle), goes to Reggie and says: ‘The old lady and my girl are nutty on society. Can you land ’em?’ ‘Certainly,’ says Reggie, ‘if your pocket is long enough.’ ‘How long is that?’ asks De Boodle, wincing a bit. ‘A hundred thousand a month, and no extras, until you’re in,’ says Reggie. ‘No reduction for families?’ asks De Boodle, anxiously. ‘No,’ says Reggie. ‘Harder job.’ ‘All right,’ says De Boodle, ‘here’s my check for the first month.’ That’s how Reggie gets his Newport villa, his servants, his horses, yacht, automobiles, and coaches. Then he invites the De Boodles up to visit him. They accept, and the fun begins. First it’s a little dinner to meet my friends Mr. and Mrs. De Boodle, of Nevada. Everybody there, hungry, dinner from Sherry’s, best wines in the market. De Boodles covered with diamonds, a great success, especially old John De Boodle, who tells racy stories over the demi-tasse when the ladies have gone into the drawing-room. De Boodle voted a character. Next thing, bridge-whist party. Everybody there. Society a good winner. The De Boodles magnificent losers. Popularity cinched. Next, yachting-party. Everybody on board. De Boodle on deck in fine shape. Champagne flows like Niagara. Poker game in main cabin. Food everywhere. De Boodles much easier. Stiffness wearing off, and so on and so on, until finally Miss De Boodle’s portrait is printed in nineteen Sunday newspapers all over the country. They’re launched, and Reggie comes into his own with a profit for the season in a cash balance of fifty thousand dollars. He’s had a bully time all summer, entertained like a prince, and comes to the rainy season with a tidy little umbrella to keep him out of the wet.”

“And can he count on that as a permanent business?” asked Mr. Whitechoker.

“My dear sir, the rock of Gibraltar is no solider and no more permanent,” said the Idiot. “For as long as there is a Four Hundred in existence, human nature is such that there will also be a million who will want to get into it.”

“At such a cost?” demanded the Bibliomaniac.

“At any cost,” replied the Idiot. “Even people who know they cannot swim want to get in it.”

XII
HE MAKES A SUGGESTION TO THE POET

”GOOD-MORNING, Homer, my boy,” said the Idiot, genially, as the Poet entered the breakfast-room. “All hail to thee. Thou art the bright particular bird of plumage I most hoped to see this rare and beauteous summer morning. No sweet-singing robin-redbreast or soft-honking canvasback for yours truly this A.M., when a living, breathing, palpitating son of the Muses lurks near at hand. I fain would make thee a proposition, Shakespeare dear!”

“Back pedal there! Avaunt with your flowery speech, oh Idiot!” cried the Doctor. “Else will I call an ambulance.”

“No ambulance for mine,” chortled the Idiot.

“Nay, Sweet Gas-bags,” quoth the Doctor. “But for once I fear me we may be scorched by this Pelée of words that thou spoutest forth.”

“What’s the proposition, Mr. Idiot?” asked the Poet. “I’m always open to anything of the kind, as the Subway said when an automobile fell into it.’”

“I thirst for laurels,” said the Idiot, “and I propose that you and I collaborate on a book of poems for early publication. With your name on the title-page and my poems in the book I think we can make a go of it.”

“What’s the lay?” asked the Poet, amused, but wary. “Sonnets, or French forms, or just plain snatches of song?”

“Any old thing as long as it runs smoothly,” replied the Idiot. “Only the poems must fit the title of the book, which is to be Now.”

“Now?” said the Poet.

“Now!” repeated the Idiot. “I find in reading over the verse of the day that the ‘Now’ poem always finds a ready market. Therefore, there must be money in it, and where the money goes there the laurels are. You know what Browning Robinson, the Laureate of Wall Street, wrote in his ‘Message to Posterity’:

 
“‘Oh, when you come to crown my brow,
Bring me no bay nor sorrel;
Give me no parsley wreath, but just
The legal long green laurel.’”
 

“I never heard that poem before,” laughed the Poet, “though the sentiment in these commercial days is not unfamiliar.”

“True,” said the Idiot. “Alfred Austin Biggs, of Texas, voiced the same idea when he said:

 
“‘Crown me not with spinach,
Wreathe me not with hay;
Place no salad on my head
When you bring the bay.
Give me not the water-cresses
To adorn my flowing tresses,
But at e’en
Crown my pockets good and strong
With the green —
The green that’s long.’”
 

“Do you remember that?” asked the Idiot.

“Only faintly,” said the Poet. “I think you read it to me once before, just after you – er – ah – rather just after Alfred Austin Biggs, of Texas – wrote it.”

The Idiot laughed. “I see you’re on,” he said. “Anyhow, it’s good sentiment, whether I wrote it or Biggs. Fact is, in my judgment, what the poet of to-day ought to do is to collect the long green from the present and the laurel from posterity. That’s a fair division. But what do you say to my proposition?”

“Well, it’s certainly – er – cheeky enough,” said the Poet. “Do I understand it? – you want me to father your poems. To tell the truth, until I hear some of them, I can’t promise to be more than an uncle to them.”

“That’s all right,” said the Idiot. “You ought to be cautious, as a matter of protection to your own name. I’ve got some of the goods right here. Here’s a little thing called ‘Summer-tide!’ It shows the whole ‘Now’ principle in a nutshell. Listen to this:

 
“Now the festive frog is croaking in the mere,
And the canvasback is honking in the bay,
And the summer-girl is smiling full of cheer
On the willieboys that chance along her way.
 
 
“Now the skeeter sings his carols to the dawn,
And bewails the early closing of the bar
That prevents the little nips he seeks each morn
On the sea-shore where the fatling boarders are.
 
 
“Now the landlord of the pastoral hotel
Spends his mornings, nights, and eke his afternoons,
Scheming plans to get more milk from out the well,
And a hundred novel ways of cooking prunes.
 
 
“Now the pumpkin goes a pumpking through the fields,
And the merry visaged cows are chewing cud;
And the profits that the plumber’s business yields
Come a-tumbling to the earth with deadly thud.
 
 
“And from all of this we learn the lesson sweet,
The soft message of Dame Nature, grand and clear,
That the winter-time is gone with storm and sleet,
And the soft and jolly summer-tide is here.
 

How’s that? Pretty fair?”

“Well, I might consent to be a cousin to a poem of that kind. I’ve read worse and written some that are quite as bad. But you know, Mr. Idiot, even so great a masterpiece as that won’t make a book,” said the Poet.

“Of course it won’t,” retorted the Idiot. “That’s only for the summer. Here’s another one on winter. Just listen:

 
“Now the man who deals in mittens and in tabs
Is a-smiling broadly – aye, from ear to ear —
As he reaches out his hand and fondly grabs
All the shining, golden shekels falling near.
 
 
“Now the snow lies on the hill-side and the roof,
And the birdling to the sunny southland flies;
While the frowning summer landlord stands aloof,
And to solemncholy meditation hies.
 
 
“Now the tinkling of the sleigh-bells tinge the air,
And the coal-man is as happy as can be;
While the hulking, sulking, grizzly seeks his lair,
And the ice-man’s soul is filled with misery.
 
 
“Clad in frost are all the distant mountain-peaks,
And the furnace is as hungry as a boy;
While the plumber, as he gloats upon the leaks,
Is the model that the painter takes for ‘Joy.’
 
 
“And from all of this we learn the lesson sweet —
The glad message of Dame Nature, grand and clear:
That the summer-time has gone with all its heat,
And the crisp and frosty winter days are here.
 

You see, Mr. Poet, that out of that one idea alone – that cataloguing of the things of the four seasons – you can get four poems that are really worth reading,” said the Idiot. “We could call that section ‘The Seasons,’ and make it the first part of the book. In the second part we could do the same thing, only in greater detail, for each one of the months. Just as a sample, take the month of February. We could run something like this in on February:

 
“Now o’er the pavement comes a hush
As pattering feet wade deep in slush
That every Feb.
Doth flow and ebb.”
 

“I see,” said the Poet. “It wouldn’t take long to fill up a book with stuff like that.”

“To make the appeal stronger, let me take the month of July, which is now on,” resumed the Idiot. “You may find it even more convincing:

 
“Now the fly —
The rhubarb-pie —
The lightning in the sky —
Thermometers so spry —
That leap up high —
The roads all dry,
The hoboes nigh,
The town a-fry,
The mad ki-yi
A-snarling by,
The crickets cry —
All tell us that it is July.
 

Eh?”

“I don’t believe anybody would believe I wrote it, that’s all,” said the Poet, shaking his head dubiously. “They’d find out, sooner or later, that you did it, just as they discovered that Will Carleton wrote ‘Paradise Lost,’ and Dick Davis was the real author of Shakespeare. Why don’t you publish the thing over your own name?”

“Too modest,” said the Idiot. “What do you think of this:

 
“Now the festive candidate
Goes a-sporting through the State,
And he kisses babes from Quogue to Kalamazoo;
For he really wants to win
Without spending any tin,
And he thinks he has a chance to kiss it through.”
 

“That’s fair, only I don’t think you’ll find many candidates doing that sort of thing nowadays,” said the Poet. “Most public men I know of would rather spend their money than kiss the babies. That style of campaigning has gone out.”

“It has in the cities,” said the Idiot. “But back in the country it is still done, and the candidate who turns his back on the infant might as well give up the race. I know, because a cousin of mine ran for supervisor once, and he was licked out of his boots because he tried to do his kissing by proxy – said he’d give the kisses in a bunch to a committee of young ladies, who could distribute them for him. Result was everybody was down on him – even the young ladies.”

“I guess he was a cousin of yours, all right,” laughed the Doctor; “that scheme bears the Idiot brand.”

“Here’s one on the opening of the opera season,” said the Idiot:

 
“Now the fiddlers tune their fiddles
To the lovely taradiddles
Of old Wagner, Mozart, Bizet, and the rest.
Now the trombone is a-tooting
Out its scaley shute-the-chuteing
And the oboe is hoboing with a zest.
 
 
“Now the dressmakers are working —
Not a single minute shirking —
Making gowns with frills and fal-lals mighty queer,
For the Autumn days are flying,
And there’s really no denying
That the season of the opera is near.”
 

Mr. Brief took a hand in the discussion at this moment.

“Then you can have a blanket verse,” he said, scribbling with his pencil on a piece of paper in front of him. “Something like this:

 
“And as Time goes on a-stalking,
And the Idiot still is talking
In his usual blatant manner, loud and free,
With his silly jokes and rhyme,
It is – well it’s any time
From Creation to the jumping-off place that you’ll find at the far end of Eterni-tie.”
 

“That settles it,” said the Idiot, rising. “I withdraw my proposition. Let’s call it off, Mr. Poet.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Mr. Brief. “Isn’t my verse good?”

“Yes,” said the Idiot. “Just as good as mine, and that being the case it isn’t worth doing. When lawyers can write as good poetry as real poets, it doesn’t pay to be a real poet. I’m going in for something else. I guess I’ll apply for a job as a motorman, and make a name for myself there.”

“Can a motorman make a name for himself?” asked the Doctor.

“Oh yes,” said the Idiot. “Easily. By being civil. A civil motorman would be unique.”

“But he wouldn’t make a fortune,” suggested the Poet.

“Yes he would, too,” said the Idiot. “If he could prove he really was civil, the vaudeville people would pay him a thousand dollars a week and tour the country with him. He’d draw mobs.”

With which the Idiot left the dining-room.

“I think his poems would sell,” smiled Mrs. Pedagog.

“Yes,” said Mr. Pedagog. “Chopped up fine and properly advertised, they might make a very successful new kind of breakfast food – provided the paper on which they were written was not too indigestible.”