"WASTED MY ENERGY UPON THE UNRESPONSIVE AIR"
"I'm perfectly willing he should if he'll only discriminate," retorted the Idiot. "We have enough old clothes in this house, my dear Poet, to give a banquet of seventeen courses to six hundred moths every night for the next six months. If they would content themselves with that I should be satisfied. But they won't. They eat up my new clothes; they destroy my new hats; they munch away upon my most treasured golf-vests. That is why I asked you if you knew anything about moths. I am anxious to reform them. As you have said, I have gone into inventing, and my inventions are wholly designed to meet long-felt wants in all households. The man who invents a scheme to circumvent or properly to satisfy the appetite of the moth will find his name indissolubly linked with fame. I have thought, and thought, and thought about it. The moth must either be domesticated or extinguished. I have tried to extinguish him, but without avail. When he has flown forth I have endeavored to punch him in the head, and I have wasted my energy upon the unresponsive air. Did you ever undertake to punch a moth in the head?"
"Never," said the Poet. "I am not a fighter."
"My dear boy," rejoined the Idiot, "I don't know a hero in real life or in fiction who could meet a moth on his own ground. I read about Mr. Willie B. Travers, of New York, who can drive four horses about the arena at the horse show without turning a hair. I read about Emerson McJones, of Boston, putting up his face against the administration on a question of national import. I have read of the prowess of Alexander, of Cæsar, of D'Artagnan, of Bonaparte, and of Teddy Roosevelt, but there isn't a man among 'em who can fight the moth. You can bombard him with a gatling-gun loaded to the muzzle with camphor-balls, and he still waves his banner defiantly in your face. You may lunge at him with a rapier, and he jumps lightly aside, and to express his contempt bites a hole in your parlor hangings. You can turn the hose on him, and he soars buoyantly away out of reach. You can't kill him, because you can't catch him. You can't drive him away, and until we go back to the dress of the knights of old and wear nickel-plated steel clothing, and live in rooms of solid masonry, we can't starve him out. There is, therefore, only one thing to do, and that is to domesticate him. If you in the course of your investigations into nature have ever discovered any trait in the moth that science can lay hold upon, something through which we can appeal to his better nature, if he has such a thing, you will be conferring a great boon upon the whole domestic world. What I want to find out is if he possesses some particularly well-defined taste; if there is any one kind of texture or fabric that he likes better than another. If there is such a thing I'll have a brand-new suit made of that same material especially for him, furnish a nice comfortable, warm spot in the attic as a dining-room, and let him feed there forevermore, when and how he pleases. The manners and customs of moths are an open book to most of us. His tastes are as mysterious as the ocean's depths."
The Poet shook his head dubiously. "I am afraid, my dear Idiot, that you have at last tackled a problem that will prove too much for you. How to get at the point you desire is, I fear, impossible of discovery," he said.
"It would seem so," replied the Idiot. "But I shall not despair. If the ordinary cook of commerce can be made humanly intelligent I do not see any reason why we should abandon so comparatively simple a proposition as the domesticization of the moth."
Tommy and Mollie had been listening with great interest, and as the Idiot finished Mollie observed that she thought the best way to do was to ask the moth what he liked most, but Tommy had a less conciliatory plan.
"Best thing's to get rid of 'em altogether, pa," he said. "Mollie and I'll squash 'em for you for fi' cents apiece."
Which struck the Poet as the most practical idea that had been advanced during the discussion.