into the swing of the business I'll bet I could turn out a libretto a
day for three days of the week for the next two months."

"If I had your confidence I'd try it," laughed the Poet, "but alas, in
making me Nature did not design a confidence man."

"Nonsense again," said the Idiot. "Any man who can get the editors to
print Sonnets to Diana's Eyebrow, and little lyrics of Madison Square,
Longacre Square, Battery Place and Boston Common, the way you do, has a
right to consider himself an adept at bunco. I tell you what I'll do
with you. I'll swap off my confidence for your lyrical facility and see
what I can do. Why can't we collaborate and get up a libretto for next
season? They tell me there's large money in it."

"There certainly is if you catch on," said the Poet. "Vastly more than
in any other kind of writing that I know. I don't know but that I would
like to collaborate with you on something of the sort. What is your
idea?"

"Mind's a blank on the subject," sighed the Idiot. "That's the reason I
think I can turn the trick. As I said before, you don't need ideas.
Better off without 'em. Just sit down and write."

"But you must have some kind of a story," persisted the Poet.

"Not to begin with," said the Idiot. "Just write your choruses and
songs, slap in your jokes, fasten 'em together, and the thing is done.
First act, get your hero and heroine into trouble. Second act, get 'em
out."