"Yes," said the Idiot, in response to an inquiry from the Poet, who was passing a Sunday with him at Castle Idiot, "I have found that there is a great deal of poetry in the apparently uninspiring little things of a household. There is to me as much poetry in a poker as there is in a snow-clad Alp, if you only have an eye to find it; and I am sure that to thousands of housewives the whole land over a sonnet to a clothes-pin, written by one who knows the clothes-pin's nature intimately, would be far more appealing than a similar number of lines trying to prove that we are all miserable phantoms flitting across a morass of woe."

The Poet pulled away thoughtfully at his pipe. He was a broad-minded poet, and while he had never owned a poker of his own, he was ready to admit its possibilities; but he could not follow his friend closely enough to admit that it contained as much that was inspiring as did Mont Blanc, for instance, a bright particular Alp of which he was very fond.

The Idiot continued:

"A ton of coal contains far more warmth than a woman's eyebrow; sends the mind of a thoughtful person chasing backward to the time when it lay snugly hid in the fair breast of nature; to the joys and woes of the toilers who mined it; through a variety of complexities of life, every one of them fraught with noble thoughts. Yet who ever wrote dainty verses to a ton of coal, and who hasn't at one time or another in his life written about the eyebrows of some woman?"

The Poet laughed this time. "A triolet to a ton of coal would be a glorious thing now, wouldn't it?" he observed.

"No," said the Idiot. "A triolet could never be a glorious thing under any circumstances; but to the extent that a ton of coal contains a certain amount of grandeur in the service it renders to mankind, I think the form would be ennobled somewhat by the substance. Let's try it and see."

"You do it," said the Poet; "I really don't think I could do the subject justice."

The Idiot got out a pencil and a pad of paper and began.

"I don't think I'll make it a triolet," he said, after biting the end of his pencil for a few moments. "A whole ton is a good deal to cram into a triolet. I'll just make it a plain poem of the go-as-you-please variety instead, eh?"

"In the manner of Whitman, perhaps?" suggested the Poet, dryly.

"Just so," said the Idiot. "In the manner of Whitman; in fact, I think the manner of Whitman is the only manner for the poetic description of a ton of coal."

He began to scribble on the pad.

"I'm going to call this 'Content,'" he said in a few moments. "Contentment strikes me as the main lesson a ton of coal teaches."

He scribbled on, and in four or five minutes he put down his pencil and read the following lines:

"I'm glad I'm not as men are—
Always worrying about something, and often about nothing;
About what was and what wasn't;
Fretting about what may be and what might have been;
Wondering whether when they are called upon to do their duty
They'll be able to do it,
And generally deciding they won't,
To their own discomfort.
And if so be they're women,
Cogitating from morn till night,
From night till morn,
Wherewithal shall they be clothed,
And if their hats are on straight!
Yea!
I am glad I am not like one of these,
But am myself—
A ton of coal—jetty in my blackness and luminous in my bituminosity.
Lying here in the cellar content and not bothering a bit.
Not needing income or clothes, and wearing no hat, and with no complexion to bother about.
Happy and serene about my duty,
Certain that I shall succeed when the time for action comes;
Knowing that I shall burn,
And in the burning glow like the polar star.
Cackling and crackling,
Hissing and smoking,
Full of heat,
A satisfaction to mankind,
And never worth less than $5.65, delivered!
Ah, me! What bliss to be a ton of coal!
I am content."

The Poet nodded his pleasure at the effort. "It is charmingly put," he said. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that the idea of contentment is the last one that I should ever have extracted from contemplation of a binful of anthracite, and yet when I consider how you put it I wonder it has not occurred to every one. You have the manner of the Whitman parodist down fine, too."

"Thank you," said the Idiot. "It is entirely natural to me. I think, too, that using the Whitman lack of form carries with it the notion of the coal sliding down the chute, don't you? Coal runs into the cellar in such an irresponsible, formless way, eh?"

"Precisely," smiled the Poet. "You have the right notion about that. The form of a poem should really be adapted to the substance. It should be descriptive, always. Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade' has in its rhythm nothing more or less than the clatter of the horses' hoofs as they and their riders dashed through the valley of death at Balaklava. And how vividly Southey's brook comes before the mind in its mad rush downward as one reads that wonderfully lyrical poem. Why don't you write a book of household poetry? You seem to me to be eminently well qualified to undertake it."

"I intend to," said the Idiot. "In fact, I've begun it already. Written five or six. Like to see 'em?"

"Indeed I should," said the Poet. "Anything you do interests me."

The Idiot went to his desk and took from it a few pages of manuscript.

"Here is a thing on pokers I did the other night. I called it 'The Song of the Poker Bold.'" And then he read these lines:

"Warder of the grate am I,
Ever standing near;
Poking, poking all day long,
Knowing naught of fear.
"Keeping coals up to their work,
Setting them aglow,
Minding not the scorching heat,
Rather like it so.
"Knocking ashes right and left,
Flirting with the tiles;
Bossing tongs and seeing that
The brazen kettle biles.
"And the little girls and boys
As they watch me pause,
Wishing that I'd talk and tell
'Bout old Santa Claus!
"Cracking jokes with crickets on
The merry hearth, elate;
Happy lot indeed is mine—
Warder of the grate!"

"Splendid!" cried the Poet, clapping his hands with enthusiasm. "Splendid! A good stiff pokeresque lyric, and your characterization of the poker as the 'Warder of the Grate' gives it a flavor of romance. You could almost imagine the implement going out into a mediÆval world in search of knightly adventure—a sort of hearth-stone Quixote. Have you tackled the clothes-pin yet?"

"Yes," replied the Idiot. "Indeed, my first effort was a lyric on the clothes-pin. I started one night to do the contents of the kitchen-dresser drawer in French forms, but the first thing I took out was an egg-beater, and it wouldn't go, so I did the clothes-pin lyric. I call it

"FIDELITY

"Blow, ye winds,
I fear ye not;
Blast, ye simoon,
Sere and hot!
"Hurricane,
And cyclone, too,
Blow, I have no
Fear of you.
"Lacking beauty,
Lacking grace,
Lacking handsome
Form and face;
"Lacking soul
And intellect,
Still I stand up,
Proud, erect.
"For the Fates
Have given me
Wondrous great
Tenacity.
"And success,
Both fair and fine,
Comes to him
Who holds his line.
"Burrs can stick
And so can glue—
Mucilage,
Stratena, too;
"But there's nothing
Holds so fast
As the clothes-pin
To the last."

"And you gave up the egg-beater altogether?" asked the Poet, restraining a natural inclination to find flaws in the construction of the clothes-pin poem.

"Oh no," said the Idiot, "I knocked off a little quatrain on that. I called it 'The Speedy Egg-Beater,' and it goes like this:

"Great Maude S. can beat all steeds,
However speedy be their legs;
But I distance her with ease
When it comes to beating eggs."

"I really think that you would have done better to give up the egg-beater," said the Poet, grown critical. "I've no patience with one-rhymed quatrains. Now if you had written:

"Great Maude S. can beat all steeds,
However speedy be their legs;
But despite her doughty deeds;
I can beat her beating eggs,

"I should not have objected."

"I accept the amendment," replied the Idiot, meekly. "I realized the weakness of the thing myself, and thought of changing it into a couplet, where you only need one rhyme. How's this on a 'Carpet-Tack'?"

"However dull the day,
However dull the skies,
However dark the night may be,
My spirits ever rise.
"For though I'm but a carpet-tack,
Afar from moil and strife,
No one can ever truly say
That mine's a pointless life."

"That is very good," said the Poet. "I think almost any editor of any comic paper would be willing to pay you three dollars for that. It is as good as your poem on a ton of coal—simple in its expression and sweet in sentiment."

"I thought you'd think so," said the Idiot. "It struck me so. I've got one on a screw-driver, too, that is very much of the same order, and conveys a moral lesson to the reader who is always reaching out after the unattainable. It reads as follows:

"I cannot tool a tally-ho,
I cannot drive a nag;
I dare not hold the ribbons
On a hack or rumbling drag.
"I could not guide the reins upon
A simple billy-goat,
And I should hesitate to try
To drive a can-al boat.
"But I don't mind these things at all,
For I can drive a screw,
And I am happy, for that's just
What I was meant to do."

"The fourth line of the second verse is weak, but otherwise it's good," commented the Poet. "It's not a can-al boat; it's a can-al boat, and all the poetic license in the world wouldn't excuse your taking such a liberty with language."

"I appreciate that," said the Idiot. "But I don't see how I could get around it."

"There's only one way," said the Poet. "I think if you omitted that verse altogether you'd improve the poem."

"Then I should have to eliminate the billy-goat," said the Idiot. "That takes a great deal of humor out of it. I always laugh when I encounter a beast like that in poetry; he seems so helpless when incarcerated in a poem."

"That may be," observed the Poet. "But it is my belief that the goat, of all animals in the kingdom, was the last one designed to be used in poetry, anyhow. He is bad enough in prose, and in this case will butt your poem to oblivion if you insist on keeping him in it. Any more?"

"No," said the Idiot; "that's the last."

"Well, you've got a good start," said the Poet, rising to light his pipe, which had gone out. "And if I were you I'd go on and finish the book. 'The Idiot's Book of Household Poetry' would have a great sale. It has but one drawback that I can see. You harp on one string too much. Every one of your poems preaches contentment, satisfaction—nothing else."

"That," said the Idiot, "is not an objection, but a virtue; for what other lesson," he added, with a glance of pride at his surroundings, "what other lesson, my dear Poet, should a home try to teach, and what other sentiment can mean so much to mankind?"

"I don't know," said the Poet, with a little sigh. "I haven't ever had a home; I've always boarded."

Whereupon the Idiot rose up from his chair, and putting his arm about his friend's shoulder, said:

"How you do talk! Never had a home? Why, my dear fellow, what's this? It's yours as long as it's mine!"