<h2><SPAN name="VI" id="VI"></SPAN>VI<br/> Social Expansion</h2>
<p>"We were talking about University Extension the other day, Mr. Pedagog,"
said the Idiot, as the School-master folded up the newspaper and put it
in his pocket, "and I, as you remember, suggested that it might better
be called Social Expansion."</p>
<p>"Did you?" said Mr. Pedagog, coldly. "I don't remember much about it. I
rarely make a note of anything you may say."</p>
<p>"Well, I did suggest the change of name, whether your memory is
retentive or not, and I have been thinking the matter over a good deal
since, and I think I've got hold of an idea," returned the Idiot.</p>
<p>"In that case," said the Bibliomaniac, "we would better lock the door.
If you have really got hold of an idea you should be very careful not to
let it get away from you."</p>
<p>"No danger of that," said the Idiot, with a smile. "I have it securely
locked up here," tapping his forehead.</p>
<p>"It must be lonesome," said Mr. Pedagog.</p>
<p>"And rather uncomfortable—if it is a real idea," observed the Doctor.
"An idea in the Idiot's mind must feel somewhat as a tall, stout Irish
maid feels when she goes to her bedroom in one of those Harlem
flat-houses."</p>
<p>"You men are losing a great opportunity," said the Idiot, with a
scornful glance at the three professional gentlemen. "The idea of your
following the professions of pedagogy, medicine, and literature, when
the three of you combined could make a fortune as an incarnate comic
paper. I don't see why you don't make a combination like those German
bands that play on the street corners, and go about from door to door,
and crack your jokes just as they crack their music. I am sure you'd
take, particularly in front of barber-shops."</p>
<p>"It would be hard on the comic papers," said the Poet, who was getting a
little unpopular with his fellow-boarders because of his tendency,
recently developed, to take the Idiot's part in the breakfast-table
discussions. "They might be so successful that the barber-shops, instead
of taking the comic papers for their customers to read, would employ one
or more of them to sit in the middle of the room and crack jokes aloud."</p>
<p>"We couldn't rival the comic papers though," said the Doctor, wishing to
save his dignity by taking the bull by the horns. "We might do the
jokes well enough, but the comic papers are chiefly pictorial."</p>
<p>"You'd be pictorial enough," said the Idiot. "Wasn't it you, Mr.
Pedagog, that said the Doctor here looked like one of Cruikshank's
physicians, or as if he had stepped out of Dickens's pages, or something
like it?"</p>
<p>"I never said anything of the sort!" cried the School-master,
wrathfully; "and you know I didn't."</p>
<p>"Who was it said that?" asked the Idiot, innocently, looking about the
table. "It couldn't have been Mr. Whitechoker, and I know it wasn't the
Poet or my Genial Friend who occasionally imbibes. Mr. Pedagog denies
it; I didn't say it; Mrs. Pedagog wouldn't say it. That leaves only two
of us—the Bibliomaniac and the Doctor himself. I don't think the Doctor
would make a personal remark of that kind, and—well, there is but one
conclusion. Mr. Bibliomaniac, I am surprised."</p>
<p>"What?" roared the Bibliomaniac, glaring at the Idiot. "Do you mean to
fasten the impertinence on me?"</p>
<p>"Far from it," returned the Idiot, meekly. "Very far from it. It is
fate, sir, that has done that—the circumstantial evidence against you
is strong; but then, mercifully enough, circumstantial evidence is not
permitted to hang a man."</p>
<p>"Now see here, Mr. Idiot," said the Bibliomaniac, firmly and
impressively, "I want you to distinctly understand that I am not going
to have you put words into my mouth that I never uttered. I—"</p>
<p>"Pray, don't attack me," said the Idiot. "I haven't made any charge
against you. I only asked who could have said that the Doctor looked
like a creation of Cruikshank. I couldn't have said it, because I don't
think it. Mr. Pedagog denies it. In fact, every one here has a clear
case of innocence excepting yourself, and I don't believe <i>you</i> said
it, only the chain of circumstance—"</p>
<p>"Oh, hang your chain of circumstance!" interrupted the Bibliomaniac.</p>
<p>"It is hung," said the Idiot, "and it appears to make you very
uncomfortable. However, as I was saying, I think I have got hold of an
idea involving a truly philanthropic and by no means selfish scheme of
Social Expansion."</p>
<p>"Heigho!" sighed Mr. Pedagog. "I sometimes think that if I had not the
honor to be the husband of our landlady I'd move away from here. Your
views, sir, are undermining my constitution."</p>
<p>"You only think so, Mr. Pedagog," replied the Idiot. "You are simply
going through a process of intellectual reconstruction at my hands. You
feel exactly as a man feels who has been shut up in the dark for years
and suddenly finds himself in a flood of sunlight. I am doing with you
as an individual what I would have society do for mankind at large—in
other words, while I am working for individual expansion upon the raw
material I find here, I would have society buckle down to the
enlargement of itself by the improvement of those outside of itself."</p>
<p>"If you swim in water as well as you do in verbiage," said the
Bibliomaniac, "you must be able to go three or four strokes without
sinking."</p>
<p>"Oh, as for that, I can swim like a duck," said the Idiot. "You can't
sink me."</p>
<p>"I fancied not," observed Mr. Pedagog, with a smile at his own joke.
"You are so light I wonder, indeed, that you don't rise up into space,
anyhow."</p>
<p>"What a delightful condition of affairs that suggestion opens up!" said
the Idiot, turning to the Poet. "If I were you I'd make a poem on that.
Something like this, for instance:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"I am so very, very light<br/></span>
<span class="i2">That gravitation curbs not me.<br/></span>
<span class="i0">I rise up through the atmosphere<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Till all the world I plainly see.<br/></span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"I dance about among the clouds,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">An airy, happy, human kite.<br/></span>
<span class="i0">The breezes toss me here and there,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">To my exceeding great delight.<br/></span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"And when I would return to sup,<br/></span>
<span class="i2">To breakfast, or perchance to dine,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">I haul myself once more to earth<br/></span>
<span class="i2">By tugging on a piece of twine."<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>Mr. Pedagog grinned broadly at this.</p>
<p>"You aren't entirely without your good points," he said. "If we ever
accept your comic-paper idea we'll have to rely on you for the nonsense
poetry."</p>
<p>"Thank you," said the Idiot. "I'll help. If I had a man like you to give
me the suggestions I could make a fortune out of poetry. The only
trouble is I have to quarrel with you before I can get you to give me a
suggestion, and I despise bickering."</p>
<p>"So do I," returned Mr. Pedagog. "Let's give up bickering and turn our
attention to—er—Social Extension, is it?"</p>
<p>"Yes—or Social Expansion," said the Idiot. "Some years ago the world
was startled to hear that in the city of New York there were not more
than four hundred people who were entitled to social position, and, as I
understand it, as time has progressed the number has still further
diminished. Last year the number was only one hundred and fifty, and, as
I read the social news of to-day, not more than twenty-five people are
now beyond all question in the swim. At dinners, balls, functions of all
sorts, you read the names of these same twenty-five over and over again
as having been present. Apparently no others attended—or, if they did,
they were not so indisputably entitled to be present that their names
could be printed in the published accounts. Now all of this shows that
society is dying out, and that if things keep on as they are now going
it will not be many years before we shall become a people without
society, a nation of plebeians."</p>
<p>"Your statement so far is lucid and logical," said Mr. Pedagog, who did
not admire society—so called—and who did not object to the goring of
an ox in which he was not personally interested.</p>
<p>"Well, why is this social contraction going on?" asked the Idiot.
"Clearly because Social Expansion is not an accepted fact. If it were,
society would grow. Why does it not grow? Why are its ranks not
augmented? There is raw material enough. You would like to get into the
swim; so would I. But we don't know how. We read books of etiquette,
but they are far from being complete. I think I make no mistake when I
say they are utterly valueless. They tell us no more than the funny
journal tells us when it says:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'Never eat pease with a spoon;<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Never eat pie with a knife;<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Never put salt on a prune;<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Never throw crumbs at your wife.'"<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>They tell most of us what we all knew before. They tell us not to wear
our hats in the house; they tell us all the obvious things, but the
subtleties of how to get into society they do not tell us. The comic
papers give us some idea of how to behave in society. We know from
reading the funny papers that a really swell young man always leans
against a mantel-piece when he is calling; that the swell girl sits on a
comfortable divan with her feet on a tiger-skin rug, and they converse
in epigram. Sometimes the epigram is positively rude; when it is not
rude it is so dull that no one wonders that the tiger's head on the rug
represents the tiger as yawning. But, while this is instructive, it
teaches us how to behave on special occasions only. You or I might call
upon a young woman who did not sit on a divan, who had no tiger-skin rug
to put her feet on, and whose parlor had a mantel-piece against which we
could not lean comfortably. What are we to do then? As far as they go,
the funny papers are excellent, but they don't go far enough. They give
us attractive pictures of fashionable dinners, but it is always of the
dinner after the game course. Some of us would like to know how society
behaves while the soup is being served. We know that after the game
course society girls reach across the table and clink wine-glasses with
young men, but we do not know what they do before they get to the clink
stage. Nowhere is this information given. Etiquette books are silent on
the subject, and though I have sought everywhere for information, I do
not know to this day how many salted almonds one may consume at dinner
without embarrassing one's hostess. Now, if I can't find out, the
million can't find out. Wherefore, instead of shutting themselves
selfishly up and, by so doing, forcing society finally into dissolution,
why cannot some of these people who know what is what give
object-lessons to the million; educate them in <i>savoir-faire</i>?</p>
<p>"Last summer there was a play put on at one of our theatres in which
there was a scene at a race-track. At one side was a tally-ho coach. For
the first week the coach was an utterly valueless accessory, because the
people on it were the ordinary supers in the employ of the theatre. They
did not know how to behave on a coach, and nobody was interested. The
management were suddenly seized with a bright idea. They invited several
swell young men who knew how things were done on coaches to come and do
these things on their coach. The young men came and imparted a realism
to the scene that made that coach the centre of attraction. People who
went to that play departed educated in coach etiquette. Now there lies
my scheme in a nutshell. If these twenty-five, the Old Guard of society,
which dines but never surrenders, will give once a week a social
function in some place like Madison Square Garden, to which the million
may go merely as spectators, not as participators, is there any doubt
that they would fail to be instructed? The Garden will seat eight or ten
thousand people. Suppose, for an instance, that a dozen of your best
exponents of what is what were to give a dinner in the middle of the
arena, with ten thousand people looking on. Do you mean to say that of
all that vast audience no one would learn thereby how to behave at a
dinner?"</p>
<p>"It is a great scheme," said the Doctor.</p>
<p>"It is!" said the Idiot, "and I venture to say that a course of, say,
twelve social functions given in that way would prove so popular that
the Garden would turn away every night twice as many people as it could
accommodate."</p>
<p>"It would be instructive, no doubt," said the Bibliomaniac; "but how
would it expand society? Would you have examinations?"</p>
<p>"Most assuredly," said the Idiot. "At the end of the season I should
have a rigid examination of all who chose to apply. I would make them
dine in the presence of a committee of expert diners, I would have them
pass a searching examination in the Art of Wearing a Dress Suit, in the
Science of Entering a Drawing-room, in the Art of Behavior at Afternoon
Teas, and all the men who applied should also be compelled to pass a
physical examination as an assurance that they were equal to the task of
getting an ice for a young lady at a ball."</p>
<p>"Society would get to be too inclusive and would cease to be exclusive,"
suggested Mr. Whitechoker.</p>
<p>"I think not," said the Idiot. "I should not give a man or a woman the
degree of B.S. unless he or she had passed an examination of one hundred
per cent."</p>
<p>"B.S.?" queried Mr. Pedagog.</p>
<p>"Yes," returned the Idiot. "Bachelor of Society—a degree which, once
earned, should entitle one to recognition as a member of the upper ten
anywhere in Christendom."</p>
<p>"It is superb!" cried Mr. Pedagog, enthusiastically.</p>
<p>"Yes," said the Idiot. "At ten cents a function it would beat University
Extension out of sight, and, further, it would preserve society. If we
lose society we lose caste, and, worse than all, our funny men would
have to go out of business, for there would be no fads or Willieboys
left to ridicule."</p>
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