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Coffee and Repartee

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<h2>V</h2> "When you get through with the fire, Mr. Pedagog," observed the Idiot, one winter's morning, noticing that the ample proportions of the School-master served as a screen to shut off the heat from himself and the genial gentleman who occasionally imbibed, "I wish you would let us have a little of it. Indeed, if you could conveniently spare so little as one flame for my friend here and myself, we'd be much obliged." "It won't hurt you to cool off a little, sir," returned the School-master, without moving. "No, I am not so much afraid of the injury that may be mine as I am concerned for you. If that fire should melt our only refrigerating material, I do not know what our good landlady would do. Is it true, as the Bibliomaniac asserts, that Mrs. Smithers leaves all her milk and butter in your room overnight, relying upon your coolness to keep them fresh?" <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/image011.png" width-obs="557" height-obs="399" alt=""'IF YOU COULD SPARE SO LITTLE AS ONE FLAME'"" title=""'IF YOU COULD SPARE SO LITTLE AS ONE FLAME'"" /> "'IF YOU COULD SPARE SO LITTLE AS ONE FLAME'"</div> "I never made any such assertion," said the Bibliomaniac, warmly. "I am not used to having my word disputed," returned the Idiot, with a wink at the genial old gentleman. "But I never said it, and I defy you to prove that I said it," returned the Bibliomaniac, hotly. "You forget, sir," said the Idiot, coolly, "that you are the one who disputes my assertion. That casts the burden of proof on your shoulders. Of course if you can prove that you never said anything of the sort, I withdraw; but if you cannot adduce proofs, you, having doubted my word, and publicly at that, need not feel hurt if I decline to accept all that you say as gospel." "You show ridiculous heat," said the School-master. "Thank you," returned the Idiot, gracefully. "And that brings us back to the original proposition that you would do well to show a little yourself." "Good-morning, gentlemen," said Mrs. Smithers, entering the room at this moment. "It's a bright, fresh morning." "Like yourself," said the School-master, gallantly. "Yes," added the Idiot, with a glance at the clock, which registered 8.45—forty-five minutes after the breakfast hour—"very like Mrs. Smithers—rather advanced." To this the landlady paid no attention; but the School-master could not refrain from saying, "Advanced, and therefore not backward, like some persons I might name." "Very clever," retorted the Idiot, "and really worth rewarding. Mrs. Smithers, you ought to give Mr. Pedagog a receipt in full for the past six months." "Mr. Pedagog," returned the landlady, severely, "is one of the gentlemen who always have their receipts for the past six months." "Which betrays a very saving disposition," accorded the Idiot. "I wish I had all I'd received for six months. I'd be a rich man." "Would you, now?" queried the Bibliomaniac. "That is interesting enough. How[Pg 50] men's ideas differ on the subject of wealth! Here is the Idiot would consider himself rich with $150 in his pocket—" <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/image012.png" width-obs="407" height-obs="639" alt="THE SCHOOL-MASTER AS A COOLER" title="THE SCHOOL-MASTER AS A COOLER" /> THE SCHOOL-MASTER AS A COOLER</div> "Do you think he gets as much as that?" put in the School-master, viciously. "Five dollars a week is rather high pay for one of his—" "Very high indeed," agreed the Idiot. "I wish I got that much. I might be able to hire a two-legged encyclopædia to tell me everything, and have over $4.75 a week left to spend on opera, dress, and the poor but honest board Mrs. Smithers provides, if my salary was up to the $5 mark; but the trouble is men do not make the fabulous fortunes nowadays with the ease with which you, Mr. Pedagog, made yours. There are, no doubt, more and greater opportunities to-day than there were in the olden time, but there are also more men trying to take advantage of them. Labor in the business world is badly watered. The colleges are turning out more men in a week nowadays than the whole country turned out in a year forty years ago, and the quality is so poor that there has been a general reduction of wages all along the line. Where does the struggler for existence come in when he has to compete with the college-bred youth who, for fear of not getting employment anywhere, is willing to work for nothing? People are not willing to pay for what they can get for nothing." "I am glad to hear from your lips so complete an admission," said the School-master, "that education is downing ignorance." "I am glad to know of your gladness," returned the Idiot. "I didn't quite say that education was downing ignorance. I plead guilty to the charge of holding the belief that unskilled omniscience interferes very materially with skilled sciolism in skilled sciolism's efforts to make a living." "Then you admit your own superficiality?" asked the School-master, somewhat surprised by the Idiot's command of syllables. "I admit that I do not know it all," returned the Idiot. "I prefer to go through life feeling that there is yet something for me to learn. It seems to me far better to admit this voluntarily than to have it forced home upon me by circumstances, as happened in the case of a college graduate I know, who speculated on Wall Street, and lost the hundred dollars that were subsequently put to a good use by the uneducated me." "From which you deduce that ignorance is better than education?" queried the School-master, scornfully. "For an omniscient," returned the Idiot, "you are singularly near-sighted. I have made no such deduction. I arrive at the conclusion, however, that in the chase for the gilded shekel the education of experience is better than the coddling of Alma Mater. In the satisfaction—the personal satisfaction—one derives from a liberal education, I admit that the sons of Alma Mater are the better off. I never could hope to be so self-satisfied, for instance, as you are." "No," observed the School-master, "you cannot raise grapes on a thistle farm. Any unbiassed observer looking around this table," he added, "and noting Mr. Whitechoker, a graduate of Yale; the Bibliomaniac, a son of dear old Harvard; the Doctor, an honor man of Williams; our legal friend here, a graduate of Columbia[Pg 54]—to say nothing of myself, who was graduated with honors at Amherst—any unbiassed observer seeing these, I say, and then seeing you, wouldn't take very long to make up his mind as to whether a man is better off or not for having had a collegiate training." "There I must again dispute your assertion," returned the Idiot. "The unbiassed person of whom you speak would say, 'Here is this gray-haired Amherst man, this book-loving Cambridge boy of fifty-seven years of age, the reverend graduate of Yale, class of '55, and the other two learned gentlemen of forty-nine summers each, and this poor ignoramus of an Idiot, whose only virtue is his modesty, all in the same box.' And then he would ask himself, 'In what way have these sons of Amherst, Yale, Harvard, and so forth, the better of the unassuming Idiot?'" "The same box?" said the Bibliomaniac. "What do you mean by that?" "Just what I say," returned the Idiot. "The same box. All boarding, all eschewing luxuries of necessity, all paying their bills with difficulty, all sparsely clothed; in reality, all keeping Lent the year through. 'Verily,' he would say, 'the Idiot has the best of it, for he is young.'" And leaving them chewing the cud of reflection, the Idiot departed. "I thought they were going to land you that time," said the genial gentleman who occasionally imbibed, later; "but when I heard you use the word 'sciolism,' I knew you were all right. Where did you get it?" "My chief got it off on me at the office the other day. I happened in a mad moment to try to unload some of my original observations on him apropos of my getting to the office two hours late, in which it was my endeavor to prove to him that the truly safe and conservative man was always slow, and so apt to turn up late on occasions. He hopped about the office for a minute or two, and then he informed me that I was an 18-karat sciolist. I didn't know what he meant, and so I looked it up." "And what did he mean?" "He meant that I took the cake for superficiality, and I guess he was right," replied the Idiot, with a smile that was not altogether mirthful. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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