The Inventions of the Idiot

"Why have wet feet at all if electricity is to be so all-powerful?" suggested Mr. Whitechoker. "Why not devise an electrical foot-protector and ward off all possibility of damp, cold feet?" "You couldn't do that with men and women constituted as they are," said the Idiot. "Your foot-protector would no doubt be a good thing, but so are rubber overshoes. Nothing will ever be patented to compel a man to keep his feet dry, and he won't do it except under compulsion, but once having his feet wet he will seek the remedy. It's the Elixir of Life that I bank on most, however. I don't believe there is one among us, excepting Mrs. Pedagog, to whom twenty-five was not the most delightful period of existence. To Mrs. Pedagog, as to all women, eighteen is the limit. But men at twenty-five and women at eighteen know so much, enjoy so much, regard themselves so highly! There is nothing blase about them then. Disillusion--which I think ought to be called dissolution--comes later. At thirty a man discovers that the things he knew at twenty-five aren't so; and as for a woman at twenty-five, if so be she is unmarried, her life is empty, and if so be she is married, she has cares in the shape of children and a husband, who as a theory was a poet, but who as a reality is a mere business machine who is oftentimes no fonder of staying at home than he was before he was married and went out to see her every night."