"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Whitechoker. "But London is a cold, godless place."
"And Paris is vile," suggested Mr. Brief.
"To the man who has only himself to think of," said the Idiot.
"And Italy is dirty," said the Bibliomaniac.
"There's water in Venice," observed the Idiot. "Not very clean water, to be sure, but wet enough to wash the edges of the sidewalks."
"And travel is uncomfortable," observed the Poet.
"Admitted," said the Idiot. "Travel is about the hardest work and the worst-paid work I know of, but we cannot help ourselves. Now that we are rich we must accept the penalties imposed by modern society upon the wealthy. You never knew a rich man to lead a comfortable life, did you, Mr. Pedagog?"
"There are few of them who seem to know how," admitted the Schoolmaster. "But--you do."
"No doubt," said the Idiot. "But you see I do not wish to be ostentatiously different from my kind, so having made a fortune I am going to live as people of fortune do and be as uncomfortable as I know how."
"I don't understand about this fortune," said Mr. Brief. "Have you run up against a rich uncle somewhere, or is this sudden wealth the result of your inventions, concerning which we have heard so much lately?"
"Neither," replied the Idiot. "The fact is, I made an investment some years ago in a certain stock, for which I paid twenty-three. I sold it three weeks ago for one hundred and sixty-three, clearing one hundred and forty dollars each on a thousand shares."
"One hundred and forty thousand dollars profit!" cried Mr. Whitechoker.
"Yes," said the Idiot, calmly, "that's about the size of it. Terrible, isn't it? Here I was a happy man; content to stay at home and toil eight hours a day for a small stipend; living in tolerable comfort, and nothing to worry over. All of a sudden this thing happens, and like all other men of wealth I must become a wanderer. I shudder to think of what might have happened if I'd made a million; I shouldn't have had a home at all then."
The guests looked at their host with amazement. To most of them he had reached the supreme moment of his idiocy.
"Ahem!" said the Poet. "I fail to see why."
"Look at the ways of the millionaire and you'll see," observed the Idiot, suavely. "Given his million he gives up his house and builds himself a small, first-class hotel in some big city, which for the greater part of the year is occupied by servants. He next erects a country palace at Lenox or at Newport. This he calls a cottage, though it usually looks more like a public library or a hospital or a club-house. Then he builds himself a camp, with stained-glass windows, in the Adirondacks, and has to float a small railroad in order to get himself and his wife's trunks into camp. Shortly after these follows a bungalow modelled after a French château, somewhere in the South, and then a yacht warranted to cross the ocean in ten days, and to produce sea-sickness twelve hours sooner than the regular ocean-steamer, becomes one of the necessities of life. Result, he never lives anywhere. To occupy all his residences, camps, and bungalows he has to keep eternally on the move, and when he thinks he needs a trip to Europe he has his yacht got ready and sends it over, going himself on a fast steamer. He meets his yacht at Southampton, and orders the captain to proceed directly to some Mediterranean port, going himself, meanwhile, to London. After a month of London he goes to Paris, and thence to the Mediterranean port, where, after steaming aboard of the yacht for three or four days, he sends the boat back to New York and returns himself by the regular liner. Oh, it's a terrible thing to be a millionaire and have nowhere to lay one's head, with every poorer man envying you, many hating you, and hands raised against you everywhere."