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Coffee and Repartee

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<h2>VI</h2> "Good-morning!" said the Idiot, cheerfully, as he entered the dining-room. To this remark no one but the landlady vouchsafed a reply. "I don't think it is," she said, shortly. "It's raining too hard to be a very good morning." <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/image013.png" width-obs="267" height-obs="657" alt="BOBBO" title="BOBBO" /> BOBBO</div> "That reminds me," observed the Idiot, taking his seat and helping himself copiously to the hominy. "A friend of mine on one of the newspapers is preparing an article on the 'Antiquity of Modern Humor.' With your kind permission, Mrs. Smithers, I'll take down your remark and hand it over to Mr. Scribuler as a specimen of the modern antique joke. You may not be aware of the fact, but that jest is to be found in the rare first edition of the Tales of Bobbo, an Italian humorist, who stole everything he wrote from the Greeks." "So?" queried the Bibliomaniac. "I never heard of Bobbo, though I had, before the[Pg 58] auction sale of my library, a choice copy of the Tales of Poggio, bound in full crushed Levant morocco, with gilt edges, and one or two other Italian Joe Millers in tree calf. I cannot at this moment recall their names." "At what period did Bobbo live?" inquired the School-master. "I don't exactly remember," returned the Idiot, assisting the last potato on the table over to his plate. "I don't know exactly. It was subsequent to B.C., I think, although I may be wrong. If it was not, you may rest assured it was prior to B.C." "Do you happen to know," queried the Bibliomaniac, "the exact date of this rare first edition of which you speak?" "No; no one knows that," returned the Idiot. "And for a very good reason. It was printed before dates were invented." The silence which followed this bit of information from the Idiot was almost insulting in its intensity. It was a silence that spoke, and what it said was that the Idiot's idiocy was colossal, and he, accepting the stillness as a tribute, smiled sweetly. "What do you think, Mr. Whitechoker," he said, when he thought the time was ripe for renewing the conversation—"what do you think of the doctrine that every day will be Sunday by-and-by?" "I have only to say, sir," returned the Dominie, pouring a little hot water into his milk, which was a bit too strong for him, "that I am a firm believer in the occurrence of a period when Sunday will be to all practical purposes perpetual." "That is my belief, too," observed the School-master. "But it will be ruinous to our good landlady to provide us with one of her exceptionally fine Sunday breakfasts every morning." "Thank you, Mr. Pedagog," returned Mrs. Smithers, with a smile. "Can't I give you another cup of coffee?" "You may," returned the School-master, pained at the lady's grammar, but too courteous to call attention to it save by the emphasis with which he spoke the word "may." "That's one view to take of it," said the Idiot. "But in case we got a Sunday breakfast every day in the week, we, on the other hand, would get approximately what we pay for. You may fill my cup too, Mrs. Smithers." "The coffee is all gone," returned the landlady, with a snap. "Then, Mary," said the Idiot, gracefully, turning to the maid, "you may give me a glass of ice-water. It is quite as warm, after all, as the coffee, and not quite so weak. A perpetual Sunday, though, would have its drawbacks," he added, unconscious of the venomous glances of the landlady. "You, Mr. Whitechoker, for instance, would be preaching all the time, and in consequence would soon break down. Then the effect upon our eyes from habitually reading the Sunday newspapers day after day would be extremely bad; nor must we forget that an eternity of Sundays means the elimination 'from our midst,' as the novelists say, of baseball, of circuses, of horse-racing, and other necessities of life, unless we are prepared to cast over the Puritanical view of Sunday which now prevails. It would substitute Dr. Watts for 'Annie Rooney.' We should lose 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay' entirely, which is a point in its favor." <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/image012a.png" width-obs="400" height-obs="582" alt=""'READING THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS'"" title=""'READING THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS'"" /> "'READING THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS'"</div> "I don't know about that," said the genial old gentleman. "I rather like that song." "Did you ever hear me sing it?" asked the Idiot. "Never mind," returned the genial old gentleman, hastily. "Perhaps you are right, after all." The Idiot smiled, and resumed: "Our shops would be perpetually closed, and an enormous loss to the shopkeepers would be sure to follow. Mr. 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 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. I am willing to admit this, in the face of the fact that wash-day meals are invariably atrocious. Contracts would be void, as a rule, because Sunday is a dies non." "A what?" asked the Idiot. "A non-existent day in a business sense," put in the School-master. "Of course," said the landlady, scornfully. "Any person who knows anything knows that." "Then, madame," returned the Idiot, rising from his chair, and putting a handful of sweet crackers in his pocket—"then I must put in a claim for $104 from you, having been charged, at the rate of one dollar a day for 104 dies nons in the two years I have been with you." "Indeed!" returned the lady, sharply. "Very well. And I shall put in a counterclaim for the lunches you carry away from breakfast every morning in your pockets." "In that event we'll call it off, madame," returned the Idiot, as with a courtly bow and a pleasant smile he left the room. "Well, I call him 'off,'" was all the landlady could say, as the other guests took their departure. And of course the School-master agreed with her. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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