The Genial Idiot

diot entered the breakfast-room, "what can I do for you

densed nerve-milk in it," replied the Idiot, wearily. "Somehow or other I have managed

eelings, eh?"

with straps, in order to stand up straight; and as for my knees-well, I never know where they are in the merry, merry spring-time

ndition of physical flabbiness of which you complain. You might swallow the United States Steel Trust, and it wouldn't help you a bit, and ten thousand bottles of nerve-milk, or any other tonic known to science, would be power

or's, I'll have it filled, unless you'll add to my ever-increasing obligation to you by lending me your own s

merely a scornful gestur

th everybody," he said. "To me it's the mushiest of times. Mushy bones; mushy poetry; mush for br

sts of winter all are

man's fancy lightly tu

e spr

o trifle with so beautiful a poem," in

h a beautiful poem?

'-and you know it," ret

elicate sentiment, but it's got more solid information in it of a valuable kind than you'll find in ten 'Locksley Halls' or a dozen Etiquette Columns in the Lady's Away From Home Magazine. It has saved

it," said the Poet. "Ca

ed the Idiot. "It

ke you driving, take y

e careful at this

re singing, singing sw

hem wearing canton-flan

h warble, 'Spring is he

l is genial,' but I f

teen minutes, that is

pril's weather has not

's weather, it is p

y's future, you can't

violets, peeping u

ight-time have bad col

and daisy twinklin

erent story from the

e morning, hailing spr

lls upon them often

we're driving, put

ter bonnet, if you

e with you sundry gar

, and ear-tabs, from t

at may happen ere we'

ill December, and is

, O Maudy-it is go

would better also bri

the noon-tide, with th

ter weather we'll be

d Mr. Brief, "that's good. I d

Idiot, "but it escapes me at the mome

her prophets-all thei

lain and simple to th

n the nursery-never

ot let your furnace

ice, I presume your rhymes are all right. But I don't think

rts of things that other people can't do and say. In a way I agree with you that a poem shouldn't necessarily be a tre

ose time! Whe

grassy

-side, and p

entangled

harm in doing what the poet so delicately suggests, but I think there sh

care, oh,

your mac

r feet be

f stanch

you fail whe

ose, gold

hand some

tent um

ature poets, but he's eternally advising people to go out in the early spring and lie on the grass somewhere, listening to cuckoos doing their cooking, watching the daffodils at their daily dill, and hearing the crocus cuss; and some sentimental reader out in

ou. You can't blame Wordsworth because som

n a poet of Wordsworth's eminence, directly or indirectly, advises people to go out and lie on the grass in early spr

t, by-the-

south of t

ld have it

ky in Ne

l to whom I have referred, and would have shown that the p

tly unconvinced, so

; "but you poets are too prone to confine your attention to the pl

dearest treasu

tter of swallows on the wing, and all that sort of thing. You'd think spring was an iridescent dream of ecstatic things; but of the tired feeling that comes over you, the spine of jelly, the wabbling knee, the chills and fever that come from sniffing 'the sc

earest treas

s of withering, b

ing bones of d

r my loved phy

sneezes of t

drop of M

winds from S

lats to move

ture, but does not mislead anybody into the belief th

he table. "I suppose if you had your way you'd have all poetry s

Idiot, folding up his napkin, and also rising to leave. "I'd just let the Board