"Do you find that your customers pay a higher average for such purposes than other people?" I asked.
"I have not the least doubt that it will prove to be so whenever you will get together the statistics," answered Budlong with great assurance.
"I can’t help it: I couldn’t bear to lose my dear old pastor—"
"Look here!" broke in Budlong, with some heat. "Hold on! I haven’t time for details to-day. I’ll talk it out with you next time. But bear this one thing in mind—the Sermonate is not the Pastorate; and Budlong and Faber haven’t offered yet to sell you a PASTOR; have they?"
I declare I had never thought of it before—I was brought up under the stated preaching of the gospel as practised in New England—but it isn’t: they hadn’t. I perceived how wide an inquiry this distinction opened up; and so, dropping the ethical aspects of the business, I took my friend’s hint, and came back to facts.
"No, you haven’t. And the only thing that I need detain you for any longer, is to get a few more points about the extent and prospects of the business, such as will look well in my article."
"Certainly. Well—of course I can’t go into details of dividends; but nobody wants to sell any of our stock. I defy you to find one single share in the market. That’s proof of prosperity, I think. It is thought so in the case of the Chemical Bank, at any rate.
"In the first place, as to prospects: Besides ministers for the home market, we sent an agent over to the other side last summer, who writes us that he is coming home with a large contract and full specifications from the Humble Nicephorus, as he calls himself, the patriarch of Moscow, for two hundred and fifty Greek papas; and a small one, to be followed by others if we give satisfaction, from the Sheik-ul-Islam at Constantinople, for four dozen howling dervishes. The Greek priests will be a great improvement in the country parishes, for they can’t get drunk; and I’ve already gotten up a working model dervish, with pith upper works and lead heels, that will whirl three hundred times a minute for four hours consecutively, and howl like a northeaster the whole time. The agent just called in at Rome; but the Roman service is so complicated, there’s so much travel in it, and they care so little, in comparison, about sermons, anyhow, that we can’t do anything with them.
"So much for the ministerial department. You have the necessary facts about the lecturers. The other items that will be found most interesting are, I think, a few of the details that we have thought of for improving our mechanisms, and a few ideas about the further application of our principle.
"Now, for instance, our big brazen head—of course, you understand that we only made a large one in imitation of Friar Bacon’s—suggested to me, the other day, that we could supply an economical article of army chaplains. We are in correspondence with Gen. Sherman about it now. He’s a man of genius; and I shouldn’t wonder if he would allow an experiment at our expense. I have calculated that a chaplain not more than eleven feet seven and one-half inches high, could be built and voiced so as to preach to two hundred and fifty thousand men at once. I should call these the Boanerges style, or Sons of Thunder.
"But I fancy a far more successful thing will be made out of our patent politicians; that is, if we can ever get them into use. But, if once the community is well accustomed to our ministers and lecturers, they can hardly help seeing the enormous economy to be made by the use of our politicians. Consider the saving of money, in a single year, by substituting for the present style of state and national politicians an equal number of individuals who cannot drink whiskey, who can not charge a price for influence nor for making speeches, who are legally incapable of becoming president, who can not hold any credit mobilier stock; in short, who are, by the very law of their being, unable to do any thing except their duty. Take one single item of this saving: every session of Congress costs the country something like two million dollars, I believe it is. Now, if the speeches were deducted, about seven-ninths of this would be saved, as near as I can calculate; and a few able business-men could do the real work of the session in the other two-ninths. Now, there are three hundred and seventeen members of Congress, all told. Suppose each makes only ten speeches per session—a ludicrously low estimate—and you have three thousand one hundred and seventy in all, which cannot at present in any event be made at a faster rate than two at a time—one in the Senate, and one in the House. What I propose is to fit up a proper room in the Capitol, like our proving-room, well deafened throughout, and to have a proper number of the patent members of Congress a-going there day and night, until all the speeches of the session are delivered. Suppose there are twenty-five of them, which I will contract to furnish at a most liberal discount from our retail prices, and we will allow three hours per speech; that is, eight speeches each, per day of twenty-four hours: then you have in all two hundred speeches per day, or the whole session’s supply of three thousand one hundred and seventy worked off in less than sixteen business-days, and not a living soul obliged to hear them, either, except my two workmen, who take it watch and watch, to oil the honorable gentlemen, and wind them up, and stick their speeches into them.
"For the campaign speakers, I should add an extra strong pump-handle action in the right arm, and a smile movement in the face."
I couldn’t help a suggestion of my own here: "A smile movement! You said they wouldn’t drink."
"No slang, please," said Budlong, rather miffed for the moment.
"Beg pardon. But here’s another idea really. Why couldn’t you let them drink? It’s very popular in some sections. You could have a tin stomach on purpose with a faucet; and they could drink the same whiskey over, year in and year out."
"No," said Budlong firmly. "No immoral practice shall be countenanced by this concern, nor any thing introduced that could offend the most fastidious. Now, don’t interrupt me with any more of your nonsense, but just listen to my other improvements.
"For travelers or residents abroad, we have designed what might be called a private chaplain, or you might almost call it a bottle angel, in contrast to the bottle imp of the German story."
"Speaking of traveling," I observed, "have you thought of anything in the missionary line? It would take the jungle fever a long time to destroy a patent missionary."
"And a very hearty cannibal to eat him," replied Budlong. "No, we negotiated with the Borrioboola Gha concern; but they couldn’t give references. The American Board won’t touch us. Fact is, preaching isn’t of so much account for missionary purposes at present, as doing good; and we can’t get up a machine that will do good of itself. That would be a moral perpetual motion—a more incredible absurdity than the mechanical one that I cured Smith of. To be sure, I did correspond a little with some of the great physiologists about that very idea, out of curiosity. Beale wrote me that it was no harder than to build a human being in a shop. Rather satirical, hey? Huxley seemed to imply that Beale’s notions were those of an ass, and that the idea was one not to be despaired of. But I guess we shall leave the missionaries along with the pastors. Souls are not in our line."