“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.”
“And for the third?” queried the Poet.
“Don’t have a third,” said the Idiot. “A third is always superfluous; but, if you must have it, make up some kind of a vaudeville show and stick it in between the first and second.”