The Inventions of the Idiot

by John Kendrick Bangs

  VII

  A Beggar's Hand-book

  "Mr. Idiot," said the Poet one morning, as the waffles were served, "youare an inventive genius. Why don't you invent an easy way to make afortune? The trouble with most methods of making money is that theyinvolve too much labor."

  "I have thought of that," said the Idiot. "And yet the great fortuneshave been made in a way which involved very little labor, comparativelyspeaking. You, for instance, probably work harder over a yard of poetrythat brings you in ten dollars than any of our great railroad magnateshave over a mile of railroad which has brought them in a million."

  "Which simply proves that it is ideas that count rather than labor,"said the Poet.

  "Not exactly," said the Idiot. "If you put a hundred ideas into aquatrain you will get less money for it than you would for a two-volumeepic in which you have possibly only half an idea. It isn't idea so muchas nerve that counts. The man who builds railroads doesn't advance anyparticular idea, but he shows lots of nerve, and it is nerve that makeswealth. I believe that if you literary men would show more nerve forceand spare the public the infliction of what you call your ideas, youwould make more money."

  "How would you show nerve in writing?" queried the Bibliomaniac.

  "If I knew I'd write and make my fortune," said the Idiot."Unfortunately, I don't know how one can show nerve in writing, unlessit be in taking hold of some particularly popular idiosyncrasy ofmankind and treating it so contemptuously that every one would want tomob you. If you could get the public mad enough at you to want to mobyou they'd read everything you'd write, simply to nourish their wrath,and you'd soon be cutting coupons for a living, and could then afford totake up more ideas--coupon-cutters can afford theories. For my own part,one reason why I do not myself take up literature for a profession isthat I have neither the nerve nor the coupons. I'd probably run along inthe rut like a majority of the writers of to-day, and wouldn't have thegrit to strike out in a new line of my own. Men say, and perhaps veryproperly, this is the thing that has succeeded in the past. I'll dothis. Something else that appears alluring enough in the abstract hasnever been done, and for that reason I won't do it. There have beenclever men before me, men clever enough to think of this something thatI fondly imagine is original, and they haven't done it. Doubtless theyrefrained from doing it for good and sufficient reasons, and I am notgoing to be fool enough to set my judgment up against theirs. In otherwords, I lack the nerve to go ahead and write as I feel. I prefer tostudy past successes, with the result that I am moderately successfulonly. It's the same way in every line of business. Precedent guides inall things, but where occasionally you find a man courageous enough tocast precedent to the winds, one of two things happens. Either fortuneor ruin follows. Hence, the thing to do if you want to make a fortune isto eliminate the possibility of ruin as far as may be. You cannot ruin aman who has nothing. He is down on bed-rock, anyhow; so for a receiptfor fortune I should say, start a pauper, show your nerve, and you'llmake a pile, or you won't make a pile. If you make it you are fortunate.If you fail to make it you are no more unfortunate than you were beforeyou started."

  "For plausibility, Mr. Idiot," said Mr. Pedagog, "you are to me aperfect wonder. I do not think that any one can deny, with confidenceborn of certainty, the truth of your premises, and it must be admittedthat your conclusions are based properly upon those premises, and yetyour conclusions are almost invariably utterly absurd, if not absolutelygrotesque. Here is a man who says, to make a fortune become a beggar!"

  "Precisely," said the Idiot. "There is nothing like having a clean slateto work on. If you are not a beggar you have something, and havingsomething promotes caution and tends to destroy nerve. As a beggar youhave everything to gain and nothing to lose, so you can plunge. You canswim better in deep water than in the shallow."

  "Well," said the Doctor, "enlighten us on this point. You may not knowhow to show nerve as a writer--in fact, you confess that you don't. Howwould you show nerve as a beggar? Would you strive to enforce yourdemands and degenerate into a common highwayman, or would you simply goin for big profits, and ask passers-by for ten dollars instead of tencents?"

  "He'd probably take a bag of dynamite into a millionaire's office andthreaten to blow him to pieces if he didn't give him a house and lot,"sneered the Bibliomaniac.

  "Not at all," said the Idiot. "That's cowardice, not nerve. If I wentinto a millionaire's office and demanded a million--or a house and loteven--armed with a bag full of newspapers, pretending it held dynamite,it might be more like nerve; but my beggar would do nothing contrary tothe law. He'd simply be nervy, that's all--cheeky, perhaps you'd callit. For instance, I believe that if I were to hire in the elevated carsone of those advertising spaces above the windows, and were to place inthat space a placard saying that I was by nature too lazy to work, toofond of life to starve, too poor to live, and too honest to steal, andwould be placed in affluence if every man and woman who saw that signwould send me ten cents a week in two-cent postage-stamps for five weeksrunning, I should receive enough money to enable me to live at the mostexpensive hotel in town during that period. By living at that hotel andpaying my bills regularly I could get credit enough to set myself up inbusiness, and with credit there is practically no limit to thepossibilities of fortune. It is simply honest nerve that counts. Thebeggar who asks you on the street for five cents to keep his family fromstarving is rebuffed. You don't believe his story, and you know thatfive cents wouldn't keep a family from starving very long. But thefellow who accosts you frankly for a dime because he is thirsty, andhasn't had a drink for two hours, in nine cases out of ten properlyselected ones will get a quarter for his nerve."

  "You ought to write a _Manual for Beggars_," said the Bibliomaniac. "Ihave no doubt that the Idiot Publishing Company would publish it."

  "Yes," said Mr. Pedagog. "A sort of beggar's _Don't_, for instance. Itwould be a benefit to all men, as well as a boon to the beggars. Thatmendicancy is a profession to-day there is no denying, and anythingwhich could make of it a polite calling would be of inestimable value."

  "I have had it in mind for some time," said the Idiot, blandly. "Iintended to call it _Mendicancy Made Easy_, or _the Beggar's Don't: WithTwo Chapters on Etiquette for Tramps_."

  "The chief trouble with such a book I should think," said the Poet,"would be that your beggars and tramps could not afford to buy it."

  "That wouldn't interfere with its circulation," returned the Idiot."It's a poor tramp who can't steal. Every suburban resident in creationwould buy a copy of the book out of sheer curiosity. I'd get myroyalties from them; the tramps could get the books by helpingthemselves to the suburbanites' copies as they do to chickens,fire-wood, and pies put out to cool. As for the beggars, I'd have it putinto their hands by the people they beg from. When a man comes up to awayfarer, for instance, and says, 'Excuse me, sir, but could you sparea nickel to a hungry man?' I'd have the wayfarer say, 'Excuse _me_, sir,but unfortunately I have left my nickels in my other vest; but here is acopy of the Idiot's _Mendicancy Made Easy, or the Beggar's Don't_.'"

  "And you think the beggar would read it, do you?" asked theBibliomaniac.

  "I don't know whether he would or not. He'd probably either read it orpawn it," the Idiot answered. "In either event he would be better off,and I would have got my ten per cent. royalty on the book. After the_Beggars' Manual_ I should continue my good work if I found the classfor whom it was written had benefited by my first effort. I shouldcompile as my contribution to the literature of mendicancy for thefollowing season what I should call _The Beggar's Elite Directory_. Thiswould enlarge my sphere a trifle. It would contain as complete lists ascould be obtained of persons who give to street beggars, with theiraddresses, so that the beggars, instead of infesting the streets atnight might go to the houses of these people and collect their incomesin a more business-like and less undignified fashion. Added to thiswould be two lists, one for tramps, stating what families in the suburbskept dogs, what families gave, whether what t
hey gave was digestible ornot, rounding up with a list of those who do not give, and who havetelephone connection with the police station. This would enable them toavoid dogs and rebuffs, would save the tramp the time he expends onfutile efforts to find work he doesn't want, and as for the people whohave to keep the dogs to ward off the tramps, they, too, would bebenefited, because the tramps would begin to avoid them, and in a shortwhile they would be able to dispense with the dogs. The other listwould be for organ-grinders, who are, after all, only beggars of adifferent type. This list would comprise the names of persons who aremusical and who would rather pay a quarter than listen to a hand-organ.By a judicious arrangement with these people, carried on bycorrespondence, the organ-grinder would be able to collect a largerevenue without venturing out, except occasionally to play before thehouse of a delinquent subscriber in order to remind him that he had lethis contract expire. So, by slow degrees, we should find beggars doingtheir work privately and not publicly, tramps circulating only amongthose whose sympathies they have aroused, and organ-grinding only amemory."

  "The last, I think, would not come about," said Mr. Pedagog. "For thereare people who like the music of hand-organs."

  "True--I'm one of 'em. I'd hire a hansom to follow a piano-organ aboutthe city if I could afford it, but as a rule the hand-organ lovers areof the one-cent class," returned the Idiot. "The quarter class arepeople who would rather not hear the hand-organ, and it is to them thata grinder of business capacity would naturally address himself. It isfar pleasanter to stay at home and be paid large money for doing nothingthan to undertake a weary march through the city to receive small sumsfor doing something. That's human nature, Mr. Pedagog."

  "I presume it is," said Mr. Pedagog; "but I don't think your scheme is.Human nature works, but your plan wouldn't."

  "Well, of course," said the Idiot, "you never can tell about ideals. Thefact that an ideal is ideal is the chief argument against its amountingto much. But I am confident that if my _Beggar's Don't_ and _EliteDirectory_ fail, my other book will go."

  "You appear to have the writing of a library in mind," sneered theBibliomaniac.

  "I have," said the Idiot. "If I write all the books I have in mind, thepublic library will be a small affair beside mine."

  "And your other book is to be what?" queried Mr. Whitechoker.

  "_Plausible Tales for Beggars to Tell_," said the Idiot. "If the beggarcould only tell an interesting story he'd be surer of an ear in which towhisper it. The usual beggar's tale is commonplace. There's no art init. There are no complications of absorbing interest. There is not asoul in creation, I venture to say, but would be willing to have abeggar stop right in the middle of his story. The tales I'd write forthem would be so interesting that the attention of the wayfarer would bearrested at once. His mind would be riveted on the situation at once,and, instead of hurrying along and trying to leave the beggar behind, hewould stop, button-hole him, and ask him to sit down on a convenientdoorstep and continue. If a beggar could have such a story to tell aswould enable him in the midst of one of its most exciting episodes towhisper hoarsely into the ear of the man whose nickel he was seeking,'The rest of this interesting story I will tell you in Central Park atnine o'clock to-morrow night,' in such a manner as would impel thelistener to meet him in the Park the following evening, his fortunewould be made. Such a book I hope some day to write."

  "I have no doubt," said Mr. Whitechoker, "that it will be anentertaining addition to fiction."

  "Nor have I," said the Idiot. "It will make the writers of to-day greenwith envy, and, as for the beggars, if it is not generally known thatit is I and not they who are responsible for the work, the beggars willshortly find themselves in demand as writers of fiction for themagazines."

  "And you?" suggested the Poet.

  "I shall be content. Mere gratitude will force the beggars to send methe magazine orders, and _I'll_ write their articles and be glad of theopportunity, giving them ten per cent. of the profits. I know a man whomakes fifty dollars a year at magazine work, and one of my ambitions isto rival the Banker-Poets and Dry Goods Essayists by achieving fame asthe Boarding-house Dickens."