“Fool-tide’s good,” said Mr. Brief. “Where did you get that?”
“Oh, I pried it out of my gray-matter ’way back in the last century,” said the Idiot. “It grew out of a simple little prank I played one April 1st upon an uncle of mine. I bored a hole in the middle of a pine log and filled it with powder. We had it that night on the hearth, and a moment later there wasn’t any hearth. In talking the matter over later with my father and mother and the old gentleman, in order to turn the discussion into more genial channels, I asked why, if the Yule-log was appropriate for the Yule-tide, the Fool-log wasn’t appropriate for the Fool-tide.”
“I hope you got the answer you deserved,” said the Bibliomaniac.
“I did,” sighed the Idiot. “I got all there was coming to me—slippers, trunk-strap, hair-brush, and plain hand; but it was worth it. All the glories of Vesuvius, Etna, Popocatepetl, and Pelée rolled into one could never thereafter induce in me anything approaching that joyous sensation that I derived from the spectacle of that fool-log and that happy hearth soaring up through the chimney together, hand in hand, and taking with them such portions of the flues, andirons, and other articles of fireplace vertu as cared to join them in their upward flight.”
“You must have been a holy terror as a boy,” said the Doctor. “I should not have cared to live on your block.”
“Oh, I wasn’t so bad,” observed the Idiot. “I never was vicious or malicious in what I did. If I poured vitriol into the coffee-pot at breakfast my father and mother knew that I didn’t do it to give pain to anybody. If I hid under my maiden aunt’s bed and barked like a bull-dog after she had retired, dear old Tabitha knew that it was all done in a spirit of pleasantry. When I glued my grandfather’s new teeth together with stratina, that splendid old man was perfectly aware that I had no grudge I was trying thus to repay; and certainly the French teacher at school, when he sat down on an iron bear-trap I had set for him in his chair, never entertained the notion that there was the slightest animosity in my act.”
“By jingo!” cried the Bibliomaniac. “I’d have spanked you good and hard if I’d been your mother.”
“Don’t you fret—she did it; that is, she did up to the time I was ten years old, and then she had such a shock she gave up corporeal punishment altogether,” said the Idiot.
“Had a shock, eh?” smiled the Lawyer. “Nearly killed you, I suppose, giving you what you deserved?”
“No,” said the Idiot. “Spanked me with a hair-brush without having removed a couple of Excelsior torpedoes from my pistol-pocket. On the second whack I appeared to explode. Poor woman! She didn’t know I was loaded, and from that time on she was as afraid of me as most other women are of a gun.”