THE THOUGHT CLOTHIER
XXV
General Dado has been sharply criticised--roundly abused, even--formaking a claim against the Grant estate for alleged assistance inpreparing the "Memoirs" that have added to that estate some half-millionof dollars. The Philadelphia _Bulletin_ says:--"There is no mark ofcontempt so strong that it ought not to be fixed on so shameless andunblushing an ingrate." And it is this--the man's ingratitude--that mostoffends. General Grant's unswerving loyalty to Dado, his zeal in givingplaces to him so long as he had them to give, and in soliciting othersto give them when it was no longer in his own power to do so, was anoffense in the nostrils of most Americans. His intimacy with Dado wasone of the causes of Grant's being in bad odor, as it were, at a certainperiod of his career; and the present unpleasantness is a part of thepenalty for taking such a man into his bosom. The claimant is gettingthe worst of it, however, and we are tempted to overlook his ingratitudefor the sake of the following skit called forth by his appearance as athinker and clothier of thoughts.--_The Critic_.
There is something slightly pathetic in the delayed statement that someof General Grant's best thoughts were supplied by General Adam Dado.While it is a great credit to any man to do the meditating, pondering,and word-painting necessary for a book which can attain such a sale asGrant's "Memoirs," it shows a condition of affairs which every literaryman or woman must sadly deplore. Who of us is now safe?
While the warrior, as a warrior, has nothing to do but continuevictorious through life, he can not safely write a book for posterity.Literature is at all times more or less hazardous under presentcopyright regulations, but it becomes doubly so when our estates have toreimburse some silent thinker who thought things for us whileamanuensing in our employ. Even though we may have told him not to thinkthoughts for us, even though we asked him as a special favor to avoidputting his own clothing on our poor, little, shivering, naked facts,there is no law which can prevent his making that claim after we aredead.
And how can a court of law or an intelligent jury judge such a matter? Agreat man thinks a thought in the presence of two amanuenses, provided Iam right in spelling the plural in that way. He thinks a thought, I say,surrounded by those two gentlemen and an improved typewriter. He givesutterance to the thought and dies. One of the amanuensisters then statesto the jury that he thought it himself, and that his comrade clothed it.The estate is then asked to pay so much per think for the thoughts andso much at war prices for clothing the ideas. Who is able, unless it bean intelligent jury, to arrive at the truth?
The first question to ask ourselves is this: Was General Grant in thehabit of calling in a thinker whenever he wanted anything done in thatline? He says distinctly in his letter that he was not. He could not doit. It was impracticable. Supposing in the crash of battle and in themoment of victory your short, hard thinker has his head shot off and itfalls in a pumpkin orchard, where there is naturally more or less delayin identifying it, what can you do? Suppose that you were the presidentof the United States, and your think-supply got snow-bound at Newark ina vestibule train, and congress were waiting for you to veto a bill. Youcould not think the thought in the first place, and even if you couldyou would hate to send it to congress until it was properly clothed. Iam told that nothing shocks congress so much as the sudden appearance"in its midst" of a naked and new-born thought.
But General Dado has the advantage over General Grant in one respect. Hecan not be injured much. Otherwise the case is against him. But thematter will be watched with careful interest by literary peoplegenerally, and especially by soldiers and magazines with a war history.It is a warning to those who think their thoughts in unguarded momentswhile stenographers may be near to take them down and claim themafterwards. It is also a warning to people who thoughtlessly exposenaked facts in the presence of word-painters and thought-clothiers, whomay decorate and outfit these children of the brain and charge it up tothe estate.
Is the time coming when general dealers in apparel and gents' furnishinggoods for the use of bare facts, and men who attend to the costuming,draping, and swaddling of nude ideas, will compete so closely with eachother that, before a think has its eyes fairly open, one of thesegentlemen will slap a suit of clothes on it, with a Waterbury watch ineach pocket, and have a boy half way to the office with the bill?