“Bosh!” sneered the Bibliomaniac.
“It was, indeed,” said the Idiot. “And there isn’t any market for it. But the rest of you gentlemen will really delight my soul if you will do as I ask. You, Mr. Brief—what is the use of your paying out large sums of money, devoting hour after hour of your time, and practically risking your neck in choosing it, for a motor-car for me, when, as a matter of fact, I’d rather have the money? What’s the use of giving thirty-six hundred dollars for an automobile to put in my stocking when I’d be happier if you’d give me a certified check for twenty-five hundred dollars? You couldn’t get any such discount from the manufacturers, and I’d be more greatly pleased into the bargain. And you, Doctor—generous heart, that you are—why in thunder should you wear yourself out between now and Christmas-day looking for an eighteen-hundred-dollar fur-lined overcoat for me, when, as a matter of actual truth, I’d prefer a twenty-two-dollar ulster with ten crisp one-hundred-dollar bills in the change-pocket?”
“I’m sure I don’t see why I should,” said the Doctor. “And I promise you I won’t. What’s more, I’ll give you the ulster and the ten crisp one hundred dollars without fail if you’ll cash my check for eighteen hundred dollars and give me the change.”
“Certainly,” said the Idiot. “How will you have it, in dimes or nickels?”
“Any way you please,” said the Doctor, with a wink at Mr. Brief.
“All right,” returned the Idiot. “Send up the ulster and the ten crisps and I’ll give you my check for the balance. Then I’ll do the same by you, Mr. Poet. My policy involves a square deal for everybody whatever his previous condition of servitude. Last year, you may remember, you sent me a cigar and a lovely little poem of your own composition:
“When I am blue as indigo, you wrote,
And cold as is the Arctic snow,
Give me no megrims rotting.
I choose the friend
The Heavens send
Who takes me Idiyachting.
Remember that? Well, it was a mighty nice present, and I wouldn’t sell it for a million abandoned farms up in New Hampshire, but this year I’d rather have the money—say one thousand dollars and five cents—a thousand dollars instead of the poem and five cents in place of the cigar.”
“I am afraid you value my verse too high,” smiled the Poet.
“Not that one,” said the Idiot. “The mere words don’t amount to much. I could probably buy twice as many just as good for four dollars, but the way in which you arranged them, and the sentiment they conveyed, made them practically priceless to me. I set their value at a thousand dollars because that is the minimum sum at which I can be tempted to part with things that on principle I should always like to keep—like my word of honor, my conscience, my political views, and other things a fellow shouldn’t let go of for minor considerations. The value of the cigar I may have placed too high, but the poem—never.”