The Inventions of the Idiot

"You'd have found it easy," said Mr. Pedagog, dryly. "Would I?" said the Idiot. "I'll have to take your word for it, sir, for I have never been a jackass, and so cannot form an opinion on the subject." "Pride goeth before a fall," said Mr. Whitechoker, seeing a chance to work in a moral reflection. "Exactly," said the Idiot. "Wherefore I admire pride. It is a danger-signal that enables man to avoid the fall. If Adam had had any pride he'd never have fallen--but speaking about my controlling my tongue, it is not entirely out of the range of possibilities that I shall lose control of myself." "I expected that, sooner or later," said the Doctor. "Is it to be Bloomingdale or a private mad-house you are going to?" "Neither," replied the Idiot, calmly. "I shall stay here. For, as the poet says, "''Tis best to bear the ills we hov Nor fly to those we know not of.'" "Ho!" jeered the Poet. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that I do not think you are a success in quotation. Hamlet spoke those lines differently." "Shakespeare's Hamlet did. My little personal Shakespeare makes his Hamlet an entirely different, less stilted sort of person," said the Idiot. "You have a personal Shakespeare, have you?" queried the Bibliomaniac. "Of course I have," the Idiot answered. "Haven't you?" "I have not," said the Bibliomaniac, shortly. "Well, I'm sorry for you then," sighed the Idiot, putting a fried potato in his mouth. "Very sorry. I wouldn't give a cent for another man's ideals. I want my own ideals, and I have my own ideal of Shakespeare. In fancy, Shakespeare and I have roamed over the fields of Warwickshire together, and I've had more fun imagining the kind of things he and I would have said to each other than I ever got out of his published plays, few of which have escaped the ungentle hands of the devastators."