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By Root 1380 0

and fish (nobody knows who betrayed to the cities the secret that the waters of Stay More were teeming with easy-to-catch fish, and that the air was full of fine game birds, but at any rate the sportsmen came) and they patronized Lum Ingledew’s store, buying their tackle and ammunition from him, and buying tins of sardines and Vienna sausages to eat on crackers for their lunch; he also sold them whiskey. The sportsmen could not help noticing the idiots on the porch, and, unaware that the normal population was congregating at the mill behind the store, they mistakenly assumed that the idiots were typical, and they carried back to their cities a gross misrepresentation of the Ozark people, which is undoubtedly the origin of all of the spurious humor, not to mention the ridicule, that has been perpetuated ever since. In fact the idiots represented only a very small percentage of the populace. The sportsmen also depleted the reserves of fish and game, but nobody protested, either because they didn’t know what was happening or because, like Lum, they needed the money that the sportsmen brought with them and spent. An occasional sportsman would invite one or two of the idiots to accompany him fishing or hunting, although he would soon discover that idiots are useless for practically anything.

The idiots of Stay More never got the sourhours; they sometimes attended, but could not understand, Brother Stapleton’s Magic Bible Shows; but they were never afflicted with the sourhours, nor, indeed, any emotion or feeling: they neither grieved over deaths nor exulted over pleasures. If they especially enjoyed eating, it was not possible to tell. They slept because it came natural to them. The only thing that they apparently wanted to do, and which they did all the time, was to loll and squat on the porch of Lum’s store. They were loitering there thus one afternoon when Eli Willard next returned to Stay More.

Eli Willard was distressed, on two accounts: 1, he was sorry to see that Stay More now had a full-fledged general store, to compete with his peddling; and 2, he was sorry to see that the younger generation of Stay Morons were such sorry specimens; some of them looked like the Mongolians he had seen on his trip around the world. Maybe, he thought, these were the same uncouth youngsters who had thrown rocks at him when he had brought his rejected message of Unitarianism. He was not now carrying that message; he had returned to traffic in material goods, particularly, this time around, grooming aids, which these youths on the store porch could obviously put to good use. In addition to a line of toothbrushes, ear cleaners, hair tonics, body braces and trusses and other grooming aids, he had rebottled (and perfumed) his unsold kerosine and was now marketing it as “Willard’s Miracle All-Purpose Hand Cleaner and Lubricant.”

He began with a demonstration of this latter. He dipped his hands into the dust of the road and covered his hands thoroughly with dirt, rubbing and smearing the dirt all over his hands. The idiots watched him closely. Then from a container in his wagon, he took out handfuls of soot and blacked his hands. “Now, watch,” he said, needlessly, since all eyes hung on his every move. He uncapped a bottle of his miracle all-purpose hand cleaner, poured some into one palm, and rubbed his hands together. Presto! All the dirt and soot were loosened and he wiped it off on a towel. “Two bits a bottle,” he said, and held three bottles in each hand, offering them, but there were no takers. Perhaps, he reflected, there was no future whatever in kerosine, as far as Stay More was concerned.

Then he demonstrated the toothbrush. The idiots stared at him. He next demonstrated the ear cleaner, which had a tiny scoop at one end and a sponge at the other end of an ornate ivory handle. The idiots not only stared at him but also at one another. He next demonstrated the hair tonic. Since his own hair was mostly gone, he selected a bushy-headed boy from his audience. As he sprinkled the tonic on the boy’s hair the boy began whimpering and kicking.