The Inventions of the Idiot

"That isn't my scheme at all," said the Idiot. "You have a monopoly of your own work always if you choose to avail yourself of it, and, as you say, a man would be crazy to do so. What I'd like to see established is a sort of Poetic Clearing-house Association. Supposing, for instance, that I opened an office in Wall Street--a Bank for Poets, in which all writers of verse could deposit their rhymes as they write them, and draw against them just as they do in ordinary banks with their money. It would be fine. Take a man like Swinburne, for instance, or our friend here. Our poet could take a sonnet he had written, endorse it, and put it in the bank. He'd be credited with one sonnet, and wouldn't have to bother his head about it afterwards. He could draw against it. If the Clearing-house company could dispose of it to a magazine his draft would be honored in cash to its full value, less discount charges, which would include postage and commissions to the company." "And suppose the company failed to dispose of it?" suggested the Poet. "They'd do just as ordinary banks do with checks--stamp it 'Not Good,'" said the Idiot. "That, however, wouldn't happen very often if the concern had an intelligent receiving-teller to detect counterfeits. If the receiving-teller were a man fit for the position and a poet brought in a quatrain with five lines in it, he could detect it at once and hand it back. So with comic poems. I might go there with a poem I thought was comic, and proceed to deposit it with the usual deposit slip. The teller would look at it a second, scrutinize the humor carefully, and then if it was not what I thought it, would stamp it 'Not Comic' or 'Counterfeit.' It is perfectly simple."