act I should probably have gone on borrowing from them for years, and instead of owing them nothing to-day, as I do, I should have been their debtor to the tune of two or three thousand dollars.”
“Don’t you take any stock in what the Idiot tells you in that matter, Mr. Poet,” said Mr. Brief. “The national banks are perfectly justified in protecting themselves as they do. If they didn’t demand collateral security they’d be put out of business in fifteen minutes by people like the Idiot, who consider it a hardship to have to pay up.”
“As the lady said when she was asked the name of her favorite author, ‘Pshaw!’” retorted the Idiot. “Likewise fudge – a whole panful of fudges! I don’t object to paying my debts; fact is, I know of no greater pleasure. What I do object to is the kind of collateral the banks demand. They always want something a man hasn’t got and, in most cases, hasn’t any chance of getting. If I had a thousand-dollar bond I wouldn’t need to borrow five hundred dollars, yet when I go to the bank and ask for the five hundred the thousand-dollar bond is what they ask for.”
“Not always,” said Mr. Brief. “If you can get your note indorsed you can get the money.”
“That’s true enough, but fellows like myself can’t always find a captain of industry who is willing to take a long-shot to do the indorsing,” said the Idiot. “Besides, under the indorsement plan you merely ask another man to be responsible for your debt, and that isn’t fair. The whole system is wrong. Every man to his own collateral, I say. Give me the bank that will lend money to the chap that needs it on the security of his own product. Mr. Whitechoker, say, is short on cash and long on sermons. My style of bank would take one barrel of his sermons and salt ’em down in the safe-deposit company as security for the money he needs. The Poet here, finding the summer approaching and not a cent in hand to replenish his wardrobe, should be able to secure an advance of two or three hundred dollars on his sonnets, rondeaux, and lyrics – one dollar for each two-and-a-half-dollar sonnet, and so on. The grocer should be able to borrow money on his dried apples, his vinegar pickles, his canned asparagus, and other non-perishable assets, such as dog-biscuit, Roquefort cheese, and California raisins. The tailor seeking an accommodation of five hundred dollars should not be asked how many times he has been sentenced to jail for arson, and required to pay in ten thousand shares of Steel common, in order to get his grip on the currency, but should be approached appropriately and asked how many pairs of trousers he is willing to pledge as security for the loan.”
“I don’t know where I would come in on that proposition,” said the Doctor. “There are times when we physicians need money, too.”
“Pooh!” said the Idiot. “You are not a non-producer. It doesn’t take a very smart doctor these days to produce patients, does it? You could assign your cases to the bank. One little case of hypochondria alone ought to be a sufficient guarantee of a steady income for years, properly managed. If you haven’t learned how to keep your patients in such shape that they have to send for you two or three times a week, you’d better go back to the medical school and fit yourself for your real work in life. You never knew a plumber to be so careless of his interests as to clean up a job all at once, and what the plumber is to the household, the physician should be to the individual. Same way with Mr. Brief. With the machinery of the law in its present shape there is absolutely no excuse for a lawyer who settles any case inside of fifteen years, by which time it is reasonable to suppose his client will get into some new trouble that will keep him going as a paying concern for fifteen more. There isn’t a field of human endeavor in which a man applies himself industriously that does not produce something that should be a negotiable security.”
“How about burglars?” queried the Bibliomaniac.
“I stand corrected,” said the Idiot. “The burglar is an exception, but then he is an exception also at the banks. The expert burglar very seldom leaves any security for what he gets at the banks, and so he isn’t affected by the situation one way or the other.”
“Oh, well,” said Mr. Brief, rising, “it’s only a pipe-dream all the way through. They might start in on such a proposition, but it would never last. When you went in to borrow fifteen dollars, putting up your idiocy as collateral, the emptiness of the whole scheme would reveal itself.”
“You never can tell,” observed the Idiot. “Even under their present system the banks have done worse than that.”
“Never!” cried the Lawyer.
“Yes, sir,” replied the Idiot. “Only the other day I saw in the papers that a bank out in Oklahoma had loaned a man ten thousand dollars on sixty thousand shares of Hot Air preferred.”
“And is that worse than Idiocy?” demanded Mr. Brief.
“Infinitely,” said the Idiot. “If a bank lost fifteen dollars on my idiocy it would be out ninety-nine hundred and eighty-five dollars less than that Oklahoma institution is on its hot-air loan.”
“Bosh! What’s Hot Air worth on the Exchange to-day?”
“As a selling proposition, zero and commissions off,” said the Idiot. “Fact is, they’ve changed its name. It is now known as International Nitting.”
V
HE SUGGESTS A COMIC OPERA
”THERE’S a harvest for you,” said the Idiot, as he perused a recently published criticism of a comic opera. “There have been thirty-nine new comic operas produced this year and four of ’em were worth seeing. It is very evident that the Gilbert and Sullivan industry hasn’t gone to the wall whatever slumps other enterprises have suffered from.”
“That is a goodly number,” said the Poet. “Thirty-nine, eh? I knew there was a raft of them, but I had no idea there were as many as that.”
“Why don’t you go in and do one, Mr. Poet?” suggested the Idiot. “They tell me it’s as easy as rolling off a log. All you’ve got to do is to forget all your ideas and remember all the old jokes you ever heard, slap ’em together around a lot of dances, write two dozen lyrics about some Googoo Belle, hire a composer, and there you are. Hanged if I haven’t thought of writing one myself.”
“I fancy it isn’t as easy as it looks,” observed the Poet. “It requires just as much thought to be thoughtless as it does to be thoughtful.”
“Nonsense,” said the Idiot. “I’d undertake the job cheerfully if some manager would make it worth my while, and, what’s more, if I ever got into the swing of the business I’ll bet I could turn out a libretto a day for three days of the week for the next two months.”
“If I had your confidence I’d try it,” laughed the Poet, “but, alas! in making me Nature did not design a confidence man.”
“Nonsense, again,” said the Idiot. “Any man who can get the editors to print sonnets to ‘Diana’s Eyebrow,’ and little lyrics of Madison Square, Longacre Square, Battery Place, and Boston Common, the way you do, has a right to consider himself an adept at bunco. I tell you what I’ll do with you: I’ll swap off my confidence for your lyrical facility, and see what I can do. Why can’t we collaborate and get up a libretto for next season? They tell me there’s large money in it.”
“There certainly is if you catch on,” said the Poet. “Vastly more than in any other kind of writing that I know. I don’t know but that I would like to collaborate with you on something of the sort. What is your idea?”
“Mind’s a blank on the subject,” sighed the Idiot. “That’s the reason I think I can turn the trick. As I said before, you don’t need ideas. Better go without ’em. Just sit down and write.”
“But you must have some kind of a story,” persisted the Poet.
“Not to begin with,” said the Idiot. “Just write your choruses and songs, slap in your jokes, fasten ’em together, and the thing is done. First act, get your hero and heroine into trouble. Second act, get ’em out.”
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