“No longer ago than this morning,” I said, “I had exactly that idea of giving them advantages; but I found that the difficulty lies not with the ability to give, but with the inability or unwillingness to take. You see I have a great deal of surplus wealth myself—”
Mr. Vedder's eyes flickered up at me.
“Yes,” I said. “I've got immense accumulations of the wealth of the ages—ingots of Emerson and Whitman, for example, gems of Voltaire, and I can't tell what other superfluous coinage!” (And I waved my hand in the most grandiloquent manner.) “I've also quite a store of knowledge of corn and calves and cucumbers, and I've a boundless domain of exceedingly valuable landscapes. I am prepared to give bountifully of all these varied riches (for I shall still have plenty remaining), but the fact is that this generation of vipers doesn't appreciate what I am trying to do for them. I'm really getting frightened, lest they permit me to perish from undistributed riches!”
Mr. Vedder was still smiling.
“Oh,” I said, warming up to my idea, “I'm a regular multimillionaire. I've got so much wealth that I'm afraid I shall not be as fortunate as jolly Andy Carnegie, for I don't see how I can possibly die poor!”
“Why not found a university or so?” asked Mr. Vedder.
“Well, I had thought of that. It's a good idea. Let's join our forces and establish a university where truly serious people can take courses in laughter.”
“Fine idea!” exclaimed Mr. Vedder; “but wouldn't it require an enormous endowment to accommodate all the applicants? You must remember that this is a very benighted and illiterate world, laughingly speaking.”
“It is, indeed,” I said, “but you must remember that many people, for a long time, will be too serious to apply. I wonder sometimes if any one ever learns to laugh really laugh much before he is forty.”
“But,” said Mr. Vedder anxiously, “do you think such an institution would be accepted by the proletariat of the serious-minded?”