“That’s the point I was getting at,” said the Idiot, “and I wanted to have a talk with you on the subject. I’ve read a lot of your stuff in the past eight or ten years, and, in my humble judgment, it is better than any of that rhymed nonsense of Henry Wintergreen Boggs, whose name appears in the newspapers every day in the year; of Susan Aldershot Spinks, whose portrait is almost as common an occurrence in the papers as that of Lydia Squinkham; of Circumflex Jones, the eminent sweet-singer of Arizona; or of Henderson Hartley MacFadd, the Canadian Browning, of whom the world is constantly hearing so much. I have wondered if you were going about it in the right way. What is your plan for winning fame?”
“Oh, I keep plodding away, doing the best I can all the while,” said the Poet. “If there’s any good in my stuff, or any stuff in my goods, I’ll get my reward some day.”
“Fifty or a hundred years after you’re dead, eh?” said the Idiot.
“Yes,” smiled the Poet.
“Well—your board-bills won’t be high then, anyhow,” said the Idiot. “That’s one satisfaction, I presume. They tell me Homer hasn’t eaten a thing for over twenty centuries. Seems to me, though, that if I were a poet I’d go in for a little fame while I was alive. It’s all very nice to work the skin off your knuckles, and to twist your gray matter inside out until it crocks and fades, so that your great-grandchildren can swell around the country sporting a name that has become a household word, but I’m blessed if I care for that sort of thing. I don’t believe in storing up caramels for some twenty-first-century baby that bears my name to cut his teeth on, when I have a sweet tooth of my own that is pining away for the lack of nourishment; and, if I were you, I’d go in for the new method. What if Browning and Tennyson and Longfellow and Poe did have to labor for years to win the laurel crown, that’s no reason why you should do it. You might just as well reason that because your forefathers went from one city to another in a stage-coach you should eschew railways.”
“I quite agree with you,” replied the Poet. “But in literature there is no royal road to fame that I know of.”
“What!” cried the Idiot. “No royal road to fame in letters! Why, where have you been living all these years, Mr. Poet? This is the age of the Get Fame-Quick Scheme. You can make a reputation in five minutes, if you only know the ropes. I know of at least two department stores where you can go and buy all you want of it, and in all its grades—from notoriety down to the straight goods.”
“Fame? At a department store!” put in Mr. Whitechoker, incredulously.
“Certainly,” said the Idiot. “Ready-made laurels on demand. Why not? It’s the easiest thing in the world. Fact is, between you and me, I am considering a plan now for the promoting of a corporation to be called the United States Fame Company, Limited, the main purpose of which shall be to earn money for its stockholders by making its customers famous at so much per head. It won’t make any difference whether the customer wishes to be famous as an actor, a novelist, or a poet, or any other old thing. We’ll turn the trick for him, and guarantee him more than a taste of immortality.”
“You may put me down for four dollars’ worth of notoriety,” said Mr. Brief, with a laugh.