"'IT TOOK MY HIRED MAN TWO WEEKS TO SCRUB IT OUT'"
"Not they," said the Idiot; "not by a long shot. They combined against me, and next morning when I started for town I found my sidewalk in worse shape than ever. One flag had written upon it the pleasing mandate 'Go drown yourself.' Another bore the mystic word 'Chump' in great capital letters, and at the end of my walk was a pastel portrait of myself, of rough and awkward composition, labelled with my name in full. It took my hired man two weeks to scrub it out. And on the following Hallowe'en they strung a huge banner on my telephone wires, inscribed 'The Idiot Asylum,' and every blessed gate I have to my name had been removed from the premises."
"What an outrage!" cried the Poet.
"Not a bit of it. Merely a suburban ebullition," said the Idiot. "They don't mean anything by it. They are mere children, after all, and from their point of view I have interfered with their rights."
"And you propose to stand all this?" asked the Poet. "If I were you I'd get a pile of broken bottles, as they do in England, and place them along the top of that wall so that they couldn't possibly use it."
"Brutal custom, that," said the Idiot. "May do for Englishmen; won't do here at all. In the first place, it spoils the appearance of the wall; in the second place, it is not efficacious; in the third place, it would place me in a false position. Everybody'd soon be asking where I got all those bottles. An Englishman drinks enough beer in the course of a week to keep his walls covered with broken bottles for a century. I don't, and I'm not going to buy bottles. I've got a better scheme."
"Ah!" cried the Poet. "Now we are coming to the invention."
"Merely an extension of my 'Hired-Man-Discourager,'" said the Idiot. "Simple, and I trust efficacious. I am going to put a live wire along the coping of my wall. Broken bottles are cheap, my dear Poet, but they don't work. If I put broken bottles on my wall the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Wooers would meet on my lawn and pass resolutions against me, and ultimately they would demand the use of my parlor, unless I misunderstand their nature.
"The lovers' rights must be respected always, and I'm truly thankful that they have stopped short at my frontage. When they operate along my frontier-line they are harmless, interesting, even amusing. If they carry their principles through and penetrate beyond the edge, why, then Mrs. Idiot and I will have to give it up.
"My scheme is to make them feel that they are welcome to the wall, but to make the wall—well, to give an element of surprise to the wall. Just as Jimpsonberry's man is soon to be surprised electrically, which is legitimately, so do I propose to surprise these inconsiderate persons who cut down my hedges, who scribble up my sidewalk with their poems, and who hang Hallowe'en banners on my telephone wires. I wish them all well, but next spring when they attempt to revive the customs of the past they will find that even I am resentful."