John Kendrick Bangs 
Idiot at Home 

Excerpt: ""My dear, " said the Idiot one morning, as he and his good wife and the two little ones, Mollie and Tommy, sat down at the breakfast-table, "now that we are finally settled in our new house I move we celebrate. Let’s give a dinner to my old friends of Mrs. Smithers’s; they were nice old people, and I should like to get them together again. I saw Dr. Pedagog in the city yesterday, and he inquired most affectionately, not to say anxiously, about the children." "Why should he be anxious about the children?" asked Mrs. Idiot, placidly, as she sweetened her husband’s coffee. "Does he suspect them of lacking completeness or variety?" The Idiot tapped his forehead significantly. "He didn’t know whether they take after you or after me, but I relieved his mind on that score, " he said. "I told him that they didn’t take after anybody that either of us ever knew. They have started in on a line of Idiocy that is entirely their own. He seemed very much pleased when I said that, and observed that he was glad to hear it.""