From the New York Times Book Review, April 23, 1904:

"The familiar boarding house Idiot of Mr. John Kendrick Bangs reappears in a new volume of humorous conversations entitled, "The Inventions of the Idiot". These talks around the breakfast table of Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog, in which the utterances of the Idiot dominate those of the other boarders in length and profundity, relate to the evils of bad cooking, the possibility of a trolly line across the Atlantic to banish seasickness, the desirability of converting the Idiot's intellectual gifts into a universal trust, the ineffectiveness of "university extensive", as the Idiot see it and the desirability of "social expansion", the wealth of beggers, a scheme for "progressive waffles" at the breakfast table, the need of a clearing house for poetry and other subjects of equal importance." Mr. Bang's Idiot, an amiable, quick-witted loquncious personage, has retained his individuality a long term of years, though it be severly tested by the keen public demand for veracious reports of his utterances. Few personages, even in fiction, could hold their own so well while talking so much as this cheerful Idiot. He is always clear minded and alive to the signs of the times."