The Inventions of the Idiot

"They'd be easy," said the Idiot. "I wouldn't have any hasheesh in the mixture for them. Welsh rarebit would do, and you'd get poems so mysterious and jokes so uproarious that the whole world would soon be filled with wonder and with laughter. In short, Dreamaline would go into every walk of life. Music, letters, art, poetry, finance. Every man according to his bent or his tastes could partake. Every man could make with it his own little world in which he was himself the prime mover, and so harmless would it be that when next morning he awoke he would be as tranquil and as happy as a babe. I hope, gentlemen, to see the day when Dreamaline is an established fact, when we cannot enter a household in the land that does not have hanging on its walls, after the manner of those glass fire hand-grenades, a wire rack holding a row of bottles labelled Art, Letters, Music, and so on, instead of libraries, picture-galleries, music-rooms, and laboratories. The rich and the poor alike may have it. The child who loves to have stories told to him will cry for it; the poor wanderer who loves opera and cannot afford even to pass the opera-house in a cable-car, can go into a drug-store, and for a cent, begged of a kind-hearted pedestrian on the street, purchase a sufficient quantity to imagine himself a box-holder; the ambitious statesman can through its influences enjoy the sensation of thinking himself President of the United States. Not a man, woman, or child lives but would find it a boon, and as harmless as a Graham cracker. That, gentlemen, is my crowning invention, and until I see it realized I invent no more. Good-morning."