"Well, old man," said the Poet, as the Idiot entered the breakfast-room on the morning of Valentine's day, "how did old St. Valentine treat you? Any results worth speaking of?"
"Oh, the usual lay-out," returned the Idiot, languidly. "Nine hundred and forty-two passionate declarations of undying affection from unknown lady friends in all parts of the civilized world; one thousand three hundred and twenty-four highly colored but somewhat insulting intimations that I had better go 'way back and sit down from hitherto unsuspected gentlemen friends scattered from Maine to California; one small can of salt marked 'St. Valentine to the Idiot,' with sundry allusions to the proper medical treatment of the latter's freshness, and a small box containing a rubber bottle-stopper labelled 'Cork up and bust.' I can't complain."
"Well, you did come in for your share of it, didn't you?" said Mr. Brief.
"Yes," said the Idiot, "I think I got all that was coming to me, and I wouldn't have minded it if I hadn't had to pay three dollars over-due postage on 'em. I don't bother much if some anonymous chap off in the wilds of Kalikajoo takes the trouble to send me a funny picture of a monkey grinding a hand-organ with 'the loving regards of your brother,' or if somebody else who is afraid of becoming too fond of me sends me a horse-chestnut with a line to the effect that here is one I haven't printed, I don't feel like getting mad; but when I have to pay the postage on the plaguey things it strikes me it is rubbing it in a little too hard, and if I could find two or three of the senders I'd spend an hour or two of my time banging their heads together."
"I got off pretty well," said the Bibliomaniac. "I only got one valentine, and though it cast some doubt upon the quality of my love for books, I found it quite amusing. I'll read it to you."
Here the Bibliomaniac took a small paper from his pocket and read the following lines:
"THE HUNGRY BIBLIOMANIAC
"If only you would cut your books
As often as your butter,
When people ask you what's inside
You wouldn't sit and sputter.
The reading that hath made you full,
The reading that doth chain you,
Is not from books, or woman's looks,
But fresh from off the menu."
"What do you think of that?" asked the Bibliomaniac, with a chuckle, as he folded up his valentine and stowed it away in his pocket once more.
"I think I can spot the sender," said the Idiot, fixing his eyes sternly upon the Poet. "It takes genius to get up a rhyme like 'menu' and 'chain you,' and I know of only one man at this board or at any other who is equal to the task."
"If you mean me," retorted the Poet, flushing, "you are mightily mistaken. I wouldn't waste a rhyme like that on a personal valentine when I could tack it on to the end of a sonnet and go out and sell it for two-fifty."
"Then you didn't do it, eh?" demanded the Idiot.
"No. Did you?" asked the Poet, with his eyes twinkling.
"Sir," said the Idiot, "if I had done it, would I have had the unblushing effrontery to say, as I just now did say, that its author was a genius?"
"Well, we're square, anyhow," said the Poet. "You cast me under suspicion, to begin with, and it was only fair that I should whack back. I got a valentine myself, and I suspect it was from the same hand. It runs like this:
"TO THE MINOR POET
"You do not pluck the fairy flowers
That bloom on high Parnassus,
Nor do you gather thistles like
Some of those mystic asses
Who browse about old Helicon
In hope to fill their tummies;
Yours rather are those dandy-lines--
Gilt-topped chrysanthemummies--
Quite pleasant stuff
That ends in fluff--
Yet when they are beholden
Make all the world look golden."
"Well," ejaculated the Idiot, "I don't see what there is in that to make you angry. Seems to me there's some very nice compliments in that. For instance, your stuff when 'tis
'beholden
Makes all the world look golden,'
according to your anonymous correspondent. If he'd been vicious he might have said something like this:
'--withal so supercilious
They make the whole earth bilious.'"
The Poet grinned. "I'm not complaining about it. It's a mighty nice little verse, I think, and my only regret is that I do not know who the chap was who sent it. I'd like to thank him. I had an idea you might help me," he said, with a searching glance.
"I will," said the Idiot. "If the man who sent you that ever reveals his identity to me I will tell him you fell all over yourself with joy on receiving his tribute of admiration. How did you come out, Doctor?"
"Oh, he remembered me, all right," said the Doctor. "Quite in the same vein, too, only he's not so complimentary. He calls me 'The Humane Surgeon,' and runs into rhyme after this fashion:
"O, Doctor Blank's a surgeon bold,
A surgeon most humane, sir;
And what he does is e'er devoid
Of ordinary pain, sir.
"If he were called to amputate
A leg hurt by a bullet,
He wouldn't take a knife and cut--
But with his bill he'd pull it."
"He must have had some experience with you, Doctor," said the Idiot. "In fact, he knows you so well that I am inclined to think that the writer of that valentine lives in this house, and it is just possible that the culprit is seated at this table at this moment."
"I think it very likely," said the Doctor, dryly. "He's a fresh young man, five feet ten inches in height--"
"Pooh--pooh!" said the Idiot. "That's the worst description of Mr. Brief I ever heard. Mr. Brief, in the first place, is not a young man, and he isn't fresh--"
"I didn't mean Mr. Brief," said the Doctor, significantly.
"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself to intimate that Mr. Whitechoker, a clergyman, would stoop to the writing of such a rhyme as that," cried the Idiot. "People nowadays seem to me to be utterly lacking in that respect for the cloth to which it is entitled. Mr. Brief, if you really wrote that thing you owe it to Mr. Whitechoker to own up and thus relieve him of the suspicion the Doctor has so unblushingly cast upon him."
"I can prove an alibi," said the Lawyer. "I could no more turn a rhyme than I could play 'Parsifal' on a piano with one finger, and I wouldn't if I could. I judge, from what I know of the market value of poems these days, that that valentine of the Doctor's is worth about two dollars. It would take me a century to write it, and inasmuch as my time is worth at least five dollars a year it stands to reason that I would not put in five hundred dollars' worth of effort on a two-dollar job. So that lets me out. By-the-way, I got one of these trifles myself. Want to hear it?"
"I am just crazy to hear it," said the Idiot. "If any man has reduced you to poetry, Mr. Brief, he's a great man. With all your many virtues, you seem to me to fit into a poetical theme about as snugly as an automobile with full power on in a china-shop. By all means let us have it."
"This modern St. Valentine of ours has reduced the profession to verse with a nicety that elicits my most profound admiration," said Mr. Brief. "Just listen to this:
"The Lawyer is no wooer, yet
To sue us is his whim.
The Lawyer is no tailor, but
We get our suits from him.
The longest things in all the world--
They are the Lawyer's briefs,
And all the joys he gets in life
Are other people's griefs.
Yet spite of all the Lawyer's faults
He's one point rather nice:
He'll not remain lest you retain
And never gives advice."
"The author of these valentines," said the Doctor, "is to be spotted, the way I diagnose the case, by his desire that professional people should be constantly giving away their services. He objects to the Doctor's bill and he slaps sarcastically at the Lawyer because he doesn't give advice. That's why I suspect the Idiot. He's a professional Idiot, and yet he gives his idiocy away."
"When did I ever give myself away?" demanded the Idiot. "You are talking wildly, Doctor. The idea of your trying to drag me into this thing is preposterous. Suppose you show down your valentine and see if it is in my handwriting."
"Mine is typewritten," said the Doctor.
"So is mine," said the Bibliomaniac.
"Mine, too," said the Poet.
"Same here," said Mr. Brief.
"Well, then," said the Idiot, "I'm willing to write a page in my own hand without any attempt to disguise it, and let any handwriting expert decide as to whether there is the slightest resemblance between my chirography and these typewritten sheets you hold in your hand."
"That's fair enough," said Mr. Whitechoker.
"Besides," persisted the Idiot, "I've received one of the things myself, and it'll make your hair curl, if you've got any. Typewritten like the rest of 'em. Shall I read it?"
By common consent the Idiot read the following:
"Idiot, zany, brain of hare,
Dolt and noodle past compare,
Buncombe, bosh, and verbal slosh,
Mind of nothing, full of josh,
Madman, donkey, dizzard-pate,
U. S. Zero Syndicate,
Dull, depressing, lack of wit,
Incarnation of the nit.
Minus, numskull, drivelling baby,
Greenhorn, dunce, and dotard Gaby;
All the queer and loony chorus
Found in old Roget's Thesaurus,
Flat and crazy through and through,
That, O Idiot--that is you.
Let me tell you, sir, in fine,
I won't be your Valentine.
"What do you think of that?" asked the Idiot, when he had finished. "Wouldn't that jar you?"
"I think it's perfectly horrid," said Mrs. Pedagog. "Mary, pass the pancakes to the Idiot. Mr. Idiot, let me hand you a full cup of coffee. John, hand the Idiot the syrup. Why, how a thing like that should be allowed to go through the mails passes me!"
And the others all agreed that the landlady's indignation was justified, because they were fond of the Idiot in spite of his faults. They would not see him abused, at any rate.
"Say, old man," said the Poet, later, "I really thought you sent those other valentines until you read yours."
"I thought you would," said the Idiot. "That's the reason why I worked up that awful one on myself. That relieves me of all suspicion."
