"'FINDING OUT WHAT IS BEING COOKED FOR DINNER'"
"No, my dear sir," said the Idiot, "for the simple reason that I should affix a cold-air box and a flue to the hermetically sealed boiler. Through the cold-air box fresh air would constantly flow into the boiler. Through the flue all the aromatic drawbacks of the cauliflower would be carried off through the chimney into the upper air. Anybody who wished to know whether we were going to have cauliflower for dinner or not would have to climb up to the roof and sniff at the chimney-top to find out."
"It is simple, isn't it, Mrs. Idiot?" Mrs. Pedagog said.
"Very," replied Mrs. Idiot. "Indeed, it seems so extremely simple that I should like to know where the complications lie."
"Where all the complications in cooking lie, my dear," said the Idiot, "in the cook. The chief complication would lie in getting a cook who could, or if she could, would, use the thing intelligently."
"I don't see," said Mr. Brief, dryly—"I don't see but that what you ought to devote your time to, my dear Idiot, is the invention of an intelligent cook."
"Humph!" laughed the Idiot. "I may be an idiot, Mr. Brief, but I'm not an ass. There are some things that man may reasonably hope to accomplish—such as setting fire to the Hudson River, or growing butternuts on the summit of Mont Blanc—but as for trying to invent an intelligent cook who would stay in the country for more than two weeks for less than ten thousand dollars a year, that, sir, is beyond all the conceptions of the human mind."
"Ain't Bridget intelligent, pa?" asked Tommy.