"Not in the least curious. Do you think I want to scatter broadcast the
seeds of litigation in a regenerated world? Put down the name of Chief
Justice Good of the United States Supreme Court. He'll see that equity
prevails."
"And only six writers," continued Smith.
"And that's probably too many," said Cosmo. "Set down under that head
Peter Inkson, whom I will engage to record the last scenes on the
drowning earth; James Henry Blackwitt, who will tell the story of the
voyage; Jules Bourgeois, who can describe the personnel of the
passengers; Sergius Narishkoff, who will make a study of their
psychology; and Nicolao Ludolfo, whose description of the ark will be an
invaluable historic document a thousand years hence."
"But you have included no poets," remarked Smith.
"Not necessary," responded Cosmo. "Every human being is a poet at
bottom."
"And no novelists," persisted the secretary.
"They will spring up thicker than weeds before the waters are half
gone--at least, they would if I let one aboard the ark."
"Editors--two?"
"That's right. And two too many, perhaps. I'll take Jinks of the
_Thunderer_, and Bullock of the _Owl._"
"But both of them have persistently called you an idiot."
"For that reason I want them. No world could get along without some real
idiots."
"I am rather surprised at the next entry, if you will permit me to speak
of it," said Joseph Smith. "Here you have forty-two places reserved for
players."
"That means twenty-eight adults, and probably some youngsters who will
be able to take parts," returned Cosmo, rubbing his hands with a
satisfied smile. "I have taken as many players as I conscientiously
could, not only because of their future value, but because they will do
more than anything else to keep up the spirits of everybody in the ark.
I shall have a stage set in the largest saloon."
Joseph Smith scowled, but held his peace. Then, glancing again at the
paper, he remarked that there was but one philosopher to be provided
for.
"It is easy to name him," said Cosmo. "Kant Jacobi Leergeschwätz."
"Why he?"
"Because he will harmlessly represent the metaphysical _genus_, for
nobody will ever understand him."
"Musicians twelve?"
"Chosen for the same reason as the players," said Cosmo, rapidly writing
down twelve names because they were not easy to pronounce, and handing
them to Smith, who duly copied them off.
When this was done Cosmo himself called out the next
category--"'speculative geniuses.'"
"I mean by that," he continued, "not Wall Street speculators, but
foreseeing men who possess the gift of looking into the 'seeds of time,'
but who never get a hearing in their own day, and are hardly ever
remembered by the future ages which enjoy the fruits whose buds they
recognized."
Cosmo mentioned two names which Joseph Smith had never heard, and told
him they ought to be written in golden ink.
"They are _sui generis_, and alone in the world. They are the most
precious cargo I shall have aboard," he added.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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