An Intelligence Test for Household Implements
IN our old house we harbor a number of half-witted tools and utensils. The poker in our bookroom I believe came from Grandfather’s house in Troy. It may have been a normal poker then. Now the brass top is loose and rolls off like a layer of a disintegrated personality — but that is nothing. The poker itself is bent, at an angle exactly like a stick half under water. However you stand it up, it waggles over and fails down with a clattery thump. On its face is an idiotic smile. I find myself gradually losing all tenderness for it; old association, the recollection of fires I poked with it when I was young — they no longer mollify me. Some morons among household goods have an engaging whimsicality, and are almost as lovable as scarecrows. Nobody that I ever heard of ever lost his temper with a scarecrow, except the fox hunter in Leech’s picture in Punch, who rode furiously up to one and shouted, ‘ What, d’ ye stand there for pointing both ways at once? Why don’t ye holler out which way the fox be gone?’ And that was all to the credit of the scarecrow. He had more imagination than any man who finds sportive elements in the terror and pain of a fellow being.
Our two coal scuttles in the kitchen are perfectly coöperative if set a few inches asunder. But Aunt Jessie often does n’t set them thus; and Henry Stannard always gives them an opportunity of crooking their handles together, and then they get into one of their hysterical moods. The good, reliable shovel willingly digs down into either of them after coal; but the other one twines the curly ends of the two handles together in the most impish manner, wobbles them both around, as to an unheard syncopation, and tips one or both over if possible. We should n’t mind, if there were anything really funny in this; but it’s such a feeble kind of humor. They both have that look of low cunning as they do it. If they don’t tip over, they wobble round and round, drooling out their coal and feebly cackling as you try to set them up.
Three of the stoppers of our four sinks are feeble-minded — that is, if any real intelligence is expected of them. A person naturally endeavors to avoid scalding her hands; and consequently, when an occasion arises, as under our particular dishwashing ritual it does arise, for manœuvring a stopper into its hole when there are three or four inches of piping hot water already in the sink, one hopefully dangles it from its chain, and tries to ease it in. But habit means nothing to utensils with as low an I. Q. as the average stopper. No chain of associations will arise; it has no sense of direction or locality. It will tilt at a waggling angle, and flop to the other side, if at all, much too far. You must cool your nice hot dishwater until you can put in the stopper by main force without cooking your fingers; and then, if you have pressed it in the least bit vindictively, it sticks hard when you try to pull it out afterward; the chain then breaks, and you have to bend a fork to extract it.
The atmosphere of this article is perhaps unduly pessimistic. Not all utensils are subnormal. We have, for example, a most intelligent can opener. It is not only capable of following directions, but can initiate plans of its own for getting into well-fortified jars of olives and pickles. We have a Dover egg beater with such an extraordinary degree of intelligence that it can assume responsibility for a shelfful of strainers and biscuit cutters. As long as it is kept there, they never give trouble. Few kitchens, I suppose, are without some such benign influence, some natural leader among the pots and pans — a trusted fork or spoon. Miss Hermie Canfield had a noble dishpan — a marvel of coöperation. In its old age it developed a lesion, but such was its sagacity that it learned to fit this spot, or hole, over a trusty nail in the kitchen table, which made it water-tight; and thus it continued to hold its old position in the household for some time longer.
And yet I think it unfair to expect too much of these supernormal implements. It would be wiser, I believe, to work out a system by which the hardware dealers would assume a larger share of responsibility for the grade of intelligence of the utensils they supply us with. They might hold a public demonstration when new stock is placed on their shelves, to show householders just what is the mentality of the furnishings they are thinking of introducing into their homes.
‘Noncataleptic saucepans for frying potatoes.’
‘Depressive mania unknown among this consignment, of window shades — by government test.’
‘None of the enamel ware in this department has a lower I. Q. than 75.’
After all, I suppose we are all too much attached to our feeble-minded scuttles and pokers to place them in Old Pokers’ Homes and Scuttle Asylums. It’s more for the sake of young Mr. and Mrs. Graham, who have just come to live next door to us, that I present this plea. I’d like to see them start housekeeping with an entirely normal group of young saucepans.