Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged. In particular the spelling of proper names viz. Catharine of Arragon remain.

In chapter XI,[ page 146]:
“By the bye,” I put in, “it seems to me the
Morman has the biggest kick coming against
his wives’ mothers, yet I've never heard a word....

Morman is almost certainly Mormon or Mormon man.

THE ASBESTOS SOCIETY OF SINNERS

The Asbestos
Society
of Sinners

Detailing the Diversions of Dives and others on the Playground
of Pluto, with some broken threads of Drop-stitch
History, picked up by a Newspaper man
in Hades and woven into a Stygian Nights’
Entertainment.

BY

LAWRENCE DANIEL FOGG

MAYHEW PUBLISHING COMPANY
92-100 Ruggles Street
Boston, Mass.

Copyright, 1906
by
Lawrence Daniel Fogg
All Rights Reserved.

Dedicated to
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
Who first made Hades a pleasant place of abode and aroused
in his reader a desire to go cruising on the Styx

CONTENTS:

Pleasantries in Passing.

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS, House-boat-on-the-Styx, care The Century Association, New York—Perhaps you, as self-elected jester at the court of the Son of the Morning, will wonder that a newspaper man should deliberately set out on a pilgrimage to Hades. I have often been told I ought to go there, but I pause on the banks of the Styx for reflection ere I rush in where all but fools fear to tread. Yet in mirroring forth the doings of the diocese of Bishop Beelzebub, I shall cast no reflections save on the dead, who can reflect no more, and like that other clown, more famous than I, will “use the devil himself with courtesy.” Having been an iconoclast, and as it is only a step from the breaking of idols to the smashing of trusts, I have had the temerity to dream of ending the monopoly of the particular section of the universe hitherto sacred to Lucifer and Bangs. As you have a copyright on Hades, you could make it hot for me if I invaded your territory without permission, so I ask you for a “dead head” pass. I don’t claim more than my rightful share; there will still be room enough for both of us to roast chestnuts on the other side of the Styx.

Pardon this discomfiture of sense by nonsense, yet I am not going to make an excuse for this abuse of absurdities, for what is nonsense but the flower of sense, the wine of wit, the harmony of humor sounded by an organ crankless, the pipe of Pan replaced by one of briar wood? But as Princess Scheherazade might have said: “That’s another kind of a smoke as well as another kind of a story.” Even in this “Stygian Nights’ Entertainment,” I cannot hope to equal her record of a “Thousand Nights and One”—whether I mean spent in story-telling or smoking in Hades I leave to your imagination. But then, I am not a woman!

As Hell has ceased to have a place in theology, there is no reason why the devil should not get his due in fiction. Emigration will set his way as soon as the character of the Cimmerian climate becomes definitely ascertained, but my trip to Hades will be more than a climatological tour. While in the interest of science, my subterranean explorations ought to point a pun and tangle a tale.

Your “farthest south” was to the Styx. I shall not linger there, but if I can elude Cerberus, I shall slip through the gates where we are told to “abandon hope,” and take up my habitation in Hades, with daily commutation to New York. Methinks the inquisitor of the fountain pen ought to have as much fun from a frolic with the heroes of history in their present abode as the inquisitor of the fork and flame.

Nor do I fear that this Stygian sequel to “the history that is written” will be shunned as something sacrilegious, for the average American is so generous regarding bookmakers that he will buy anything, concerning anything, at any time and in any place. He will not even register a protest on the ledger of the Hotel Hereafter!

If you will permit a newspaper man to go on a second “Pursuit of the Houseboat,” I would like to dedicate this account of a trip to the playground of Pluto to the man who blazed the way to Hell. May I have a shady corner in Hades, with the degree—three above zero—of A. S. S., meaning, of course, member of the Asbestos Society of Sinners?

Till death do us unite beyond the Styx, and assuring you of a warm reception, weatherwise and otherwise, when you too shall get a summons from Satan, believe me, happy to go

After you, my dear Bangs,
LAWRENCE DANIEL FOGG.

Castle Craig,
The Hanging Hills,
Meriden, Connecticut.
All Fools’ Day (April 1).

My dear Mr. Fogg—Although many critics have given me Hades, I have never recorded any exclusive claim to its possession. You are therefore wholly at liberty to go there yourself—for literary purposes only, I hope—in so far as I am concerned. As for the dedication, I feel highly honored and send you my most cordial thanks for the compliment.

Faithfully yours,
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.

The Century Association,
New York, N. Y.
Moving Day (May 1).

THE SUMMONS FROM SATAN.

CHAPTER I.
The Summons from Satan.

WHILE waiting for an assignment, in the local room of the New York Universe, I began to while away the time by reading the fulsome effusions of the press agent of Greater Luna Park. They aroused in me the spirit of covetousness—I envied the press agent his vocabulary, which put the supply of superlatives into bankruptcy; and I was jealous of the success of Thompson & Dundy, whom I hoped some day to rival. Their first success had come with “A Trip to the Moon;” why might not I—

“Go to Hell,” I read on the paper which the “copy” boy just then thrust into my hand. Before I could question him, the “devil” had gone.

I glanced suspiciously at my fellow-scribes to see who had perpetrated the joke, if such it was, but no one seemed to be watching what effect the command had upon me. I again examined the odd message. It was in the handwriting of Mr. Burroughs, the city editor, so to him I went. Holding out the slip of paper, I said:

“I have just received an assignment to ‘cover’ a certain subterranean resort named after the box in which printers throw battered type, but as the route there is unfamiliar, I have come to you for instructions.”

The “czar” of the city room frowned, but on reading the missive the frown was succeeded by an amused smile.

“Who gave you this?” he asked.

“The ‘devil’.”

“That is evident from its contents. It must have been that new boy Jake, who took the slip off my desk when a telephone call interrupted me as I was writing. Had I completed the message it would have read ‘Go to Hellgate.’ A wreck has just occurred there and our marine reporter has telephoned for assistance. However, you are aware that I have made it a rule never to change an assignment. I make no exception in your case to-night.”

“What!” I gasped.

“Remember also that this paper never accepts an excuse. You must either hand in your story or your resignation. Perhaps I ought to explain further, though the Universe has no place for the newspaper man who cannot achieve the impossible or for the reporter who wants a reason for what he is told to do. We want men who can carry ‘a message to Garcia’—or to Lucifer, if need be.

“The ting-a-ling of my desk telephone at the psychological moment when I had unconsciously consigned you to a colder climate than that of New York, was a summons from Satan. Why it didn’t come through the medium of the ‘printer’s devil’ is a mystery, unless His Majesty desired to show me that he is up-to-date in having a system of telephones installed by a famous electrician who recently crossed his wires and the Styx. I tried to transfer him to the managing editor by telling him that he had got a wrong connection, as my jurisdiction is limited, but he assured me that Hades is less than a hundred miles from New York, which makes me responsible for what happens there! Not a very pleasant thought, is it?

“Lucifer wants you to go to Cimmeria and interview Henry the Eighth. His much-married Majesty is angry at the liberties the historical novelists have taken with his wives and wants to divorce himself of his wrath through the columns of the Universe. Satan also wishes us to decide a dispute between Adam and Methuselah as to whom is the oldest inhabitant.”

“But how in the name of—”

“Don’t say it,” warned the city editor. “That word is always expressed by a blank in the paper, so you might as well leave it blank in your speech. Besides, to say it would be justification for keeping you down there, and we want that interview without fail, even if you have to write it on asbestos and deliver it to mortals at a seance of the Society for Psychic Research. We want the work well done, so you will have to take your chances of being scorched.

“Discussions regarding Hades have waxed almost as hot as the subject of dispute itself. Most people believe it is built on the Turkish bath plan with departments of varying temperature. Those are the kind of people who swallow the thermometer of Dr. Doubt and die by degrees. If you find it as pleasant as John Kendrick Bangs did, you will want to stay and join the Stygian smart set, so I’ll transfer your insurance from the Equality to the Rock of Gibraltar and see to it that your sister does not starve or freeze, whatever may be the climatic fate of her brother.

“Don’t take the subway route to the under world, for then your chances of coming back would be grounded. You are to take the Twenty-third Street Ferry for the Jersey shore. New York and Hell are said to be convertible terms, but I’ve never before heard New Jersey given that distinction. However, Bangs says that’s the route, and as he plays golf with good intentions over there every summer, he ought to know.

“Don’t take any baggage, except perhaps your sister’s sunshade, as only shades and shady characters are permitted to cross the River Styx. You more nearly come under the second category than any other member of the staff, so I have chosen you. As you may need ‘money to burn,’ call on the cashier for a ‘sinking fund’ before you start on your journey.

“By-the-by, while you are in Hades you might ask John Paul Jones whether he would prefer burial in New York, Washington, Annapolis, Philadelphia or Ocean Grove. That would be a ‘scoop’ worth more than the marital intemperance of the Mormon king. Get his signature so that if ‘our friends, the enemy,’ cry fake we can show them ‘what’s in a name.’ As Mr. Bangs, by the exercise of his imagination, was enabled to penetrate the Stygian regions, a newspaper man should have no difficulty in doing likewise by the exercise of his nerve; but if Charon bars the gate owing to your being still in the flesh, this will admit you. It’s a skeleton key.”

Half an hour later I stood on the deck of a ferryboat which was plowing the waters of the North River. Obedience to the commands of the “czar” of the city room soon becomes second nature to a newspaper man, and I had often boasted that I would go anywhere on earth or under the earth if sent there by Mr. Burroughs. I squared my shoulders to the breeze from the bay and resolved that I would not fail now that I had been put to the test, even if—A shudder finished the sentence; my mind stood palsied as I faced the Unknown.

It was a night of Stygian blackness, just the one to be chosen for such a dark mission. We were now nearing the Jersey shore and could hear the lap of the waves on the piling in the slip. A blaze of light astern showed that one of the boats was on its return trip. The hands of the clock on the ferry building pointed to midnight.

Out of the inky blackness suddenly loomed a great battleship which struck as much terror to our hearts as if it had been the Flying Dutchman. Had it been a merchantman we should have thought it was indeed the famous phantom ship, for it displayed no lights and the decks were deserted. Our captain signalled to reverse engines, but the order came too late. The two vessels collided with a mighty crash. There was a rending of timbers, an inrushing of water, a cry of despair from the passengers, then a stampede for the life preservers.

I had no sooner got a cork belt properly adjusted, as I thought, than the ferryboat sank. The suction drew me down and down and down; then I shot up to the surface again, feet foremost. I expected that the life belt would right me as soon as I came to the surface, but as I continued to hang head downward, the awful truth flashed over me—the belt had not been sufficiently tightened under my arms and had slipped down. Convulsively I struggled, but in the effort only succeeded in swallowing more water. The blur of a thousand lights danced before my eyes in the floating bubbles of the phosphorescent water, a roar as of a mighty artillery thundered in my ears—then all became a blank; in newspaper parlance, I had ceased to be “live matter.”

That sinking fund with which I had provided myself before leaving the mundane earth must have carried me a long distance downward, for when I opened my eyes I was upon the banks of the River Styx. Presently Charon’s yacht came in sight. There was no one on board but Captain Charon himself, for with the exception of Lazarus, John Kendrick Bangs, and myself, no round trip tickets have ever been issued to Hades.

“Step lively, please,” yelled Charon, who had evidently been a Broadway trolley conductor earlier in his career. His success in knocking down fares had prompted Satan to employ him to transfer “fares” over the River Styx. The American invasion has extended downward as well as outward. To hear the motto of New York on the banks of the Styx made me feel quite at home, especially when Charon added: “Plenty of room up front.”

A number of shades had stepped aboard the yacht. I was following them when Charon halted me.

“Stop your whistling,” he commanded. “Do you think this is a Sunday school picnic or a political rally? I don’t believe you are eligible for the journey, anyway. Hades is the only place within the fifty-mile limit that is not a side show for New York tourists. This yacht transports shades only.”

“Well, you see,” I began hesitatingly, “Lorimer says clothes don’t make the man, but that they make three-fourths of him, and this suit is of the very latest shade of blue.”

“I’ve been told gray is fashionable just now,” he commented, critically. “Everybody in Hades has the blues, so you won’t be off color,” he added, somewhat mollified.

“Then you know my ancestors are all shades,” I pleaded, “and our city editor says I have a shady reputation.”

“A newspaper man!” Charon gasped, his face growing pale. “I’ll have to let you come aboard, or you will go back and ‘roast’ me, and I get all the ‘roasting’ I can stand in Hades between trips. A newspaper man! “Nuff said. Jump aboard.”

“Where is the house-boat?” I asked, ever on the lookout for “copy.”

“Everyone nowadays asks that fool question,” Charon retorted, angrily. “I believe John Bangs, like George Eliot, is a woman, for he can’t keep a secret, while Harper & Brothers offer him royalties for it. Shortly after the ‘Pursuit of the House-boat’ that craft disappeared from the river and Sherlock Holmes with it. He went back to haunt Conan Doyle, I guess. I hope he won’t come back again in a hurry, for he made no end of trouble with his inferences and his deductions.”

“What—”

“No more questions, if you please. I am not on the witness stand, nor will I consent to be interviewed. Besides, talking is an infraction of the rules of the Asbestos Society.”

“Do they seek to muzzle the press?” I asked indignantly.

“So few newspaper men come this way that that isn’t necessary,” returned Charon. “We have a free press. It is said that ‘the devil frequently becomes a publisher by way of diversion.’ This is the Styx, not the Delaware, and we are going to Hades, not to Philadelphia, thank goodness! The order was framed to muzzle some one more formidable than reporters or devils—woman!”

“The Asbestos Society is quite a suggestive name.”

“Its formation was quite recent. A learned scientist up on the earth, by tapping on the ground to invoke Pluto, discovered extensive deposits of asbestos in Hades. As soon as the news reached the Styx, nothing would satisfy ‘Boss’ Tweed but the formation of a society for the purpose of robbing cremation of its traditional terrors. As to wish is to have, every denizen of the domain of the departed is now wearing an asbestos suit. Dives must have his diversion, even if the devil is cheated out of his own.”

We had crossed over the Styx. Charon quickly made fast to a wharf and prepared to disembark. As I landed I noticed on the dock a legend which read: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

At last I was in Hades!

SHADY SINNERS OF THE STYX.

CHAPTER II.
Shady Sinners of the Styx.

I WAS in the region of Outer Darkness to which the dead are banished to await the judgment. All about me was a misty blackness so oppressive that one felt as if wedged between mountains. My feet sank in the soft earth, composed of those good intentions with which I had helped to pave the road to Hell. Voices of other days seemed to sound in my ears; out of the shadowy mist forms of ghostly men and women emerged and then were lost to sight, swallowed up in the darkness. Perceiving a glimmering light in the distance I hastened toward it. A phantom house barred my path, but I flitted through it as though it were not. A pale twilight now made objects discernible and I breathed more freely, for I no longer stumbled over the good resolutions, which, being broken, blocked the pavement.

A troop of spectres surrounded me and tried to stop my progress. Shades though they were, their attentions were annoying and I tried to brush them aside. My hands passed through shadows and the phantoms laughed in derision.

“What’s the news?” they cried again and again.

I hadn’t come to Hades to be interviewed, and knowing from the inside some of its perils, I declined to relate what the upper world was doing. This enraged the shades, who gathered about me threateningly. Just then one of my companions on the Styx yachting trip came to my aid. His appearance seemed to inspire the spectres with terror, for they all fled. The newcomer was talkative.

“Did you recognize in the leader of that band our old friend, Diogenes?” he asked.

“No, I never met the gentleman. Up on earth when any one is looking for an honest man, he doesn’t come to a newspaper office: he goes to a detective agency.”

My companion gave a scarcely perceptible start.

“Diogenes is no longer looking for an honest man. Poor fellow, he knows it’s no use. He thought he had an honest man a few years ago in ‘Boss’ Tweed, but the politician fell from the high pedestal of the ‘man higher up’ when he consented to pose for a caricature of himself by Nast. Our friend of the tub and lantern has begun to wonder if when he finds an honest man it will prove to be a bachelor girl! Not long ago President Harper sent a professor from the University of Chicago to tell Diogenes that he could have an honest man as soon as he had bled him for another hundred million. So the philosopher is waiting for—”

“John D. Rockefeller!”

“Your deduction, my dear journalist, does you credit.”

Somewhat piqued that I did not reply, the stranger said:

“Why don’t you express wonder that I knew you were a journalist? Watson always does.”

“There is only one Watson,” I protested. “Besides, it has always seemed to me that he was singularly obtuse. Unless you lent him your spectacles, Watson couldn’t hold down a job in the city room of a New York daily for twenty-four hours. I’m not a journalist, but I acknowledge that ‘newspaper man’ is written all over me, from the pencil in my pocket to my ‘nose for news,’ which is abnormally developed. It’s the easiest thing in the world to tell a newspaper man by his nose, an actor by his clothes and a detective by his cocaine syringe. For instance, you are—”

“The shade of Sherlock Holmes, just returned from a trip to earth. But I really died when I fell over the cliff. That fall made Conan Doyle a Sir. He thought that if he could bring me back to life I would make him an Earl. He tried to breathe in me the breath of life, but while the dear public wept at my death, they viewed my resurrection with indifference. Ghost stories have been exorcised for all time, so I’m back here for good.”

“Did Satan send for you?”

“Yes, to assist him in ultimately securing the three persons on earth whom he is most eagerly awaiting—David Belasco, John Kendrick Bangs, and Marie Corelli.

“The author of the ‘Darling of the Gods,’ in order to lend realism to the final scene, made a compact with Satan to reproduce Hades on the New York stage; in return he is to give his soul—or his salary—as soon as the play has run its course. That’s the reason Belasco prolonged the run of ‘The Darling of the Gods,’ even after it ceased to pay expenses. A theatrical advance agent, who is to transfer the entire production to Hades, was here several weeks ago and said that the thousandth performance had been reached. Yo San, who is serving her thousand years of penance—a year for each day of the play’s run—says she never would have thought of being wicked if Belasco had not prompted her from the wings. The man who could write ‘To lie a little is better than to be unhappy much’ deserves a place alongside of George Washington.”

“What! Is the father of his country here, too?”

“Oh, yes! they’re all here. Washington is more of a father than ever. He had no family in life, but he has one here larger than he likes—the children of the only woman he never loved. It’s strange how many women go out of their way to remind George how he met defeat at their hands long before he fought the British.”

“Evidently women of those days didn’t appreciate veracity.”

“Don’t throw that cherry tree at his head when you see him or he’ll think you have an axe to grind. He has never been able to find out who wrote that fable, Æsop being dead and George Ade unborn. When he does, Hades will be too hot to hold both of them, although of course there’s no change of weather to speak of, as the mercury never seeks the bulb. It is always trying to knock the roof off its glass house; that’s the reason there is no throwing of stones in the under world.”

“But what has Satan against John Kendrick Bangs?”

“His Majesty likes to be taken seriously. Most practical jokers, you know, resent a joke at their own expense. While he delights in playing with men, to make fun of him is an offense which Satan cannot condone. Then you know Bangs sent me in ‘Pursuit of the House-boat’ and I frustrated a great many plans of His Majesty.

“Lucifer describes woman—to disabuse your mind of the impression that I have held converse with his Satanic Highness, I will state that I am quoting Marie Corelli, his press agent—Lucifer describes woman as a frivolous doll of pink and white with long hair frequently not her own. He hates women, for they have made him what he is and keep him so, according to Marie. ‘Women,’ he says, ‘are much less sensitive than men and infinitely more heartless. They are mothers of the human race and the faults of the race are chiefly due to them.’ Considering that the eternal feminine is so fond of him, I am surprised that the Evil One does not reciprocate, but then Lucifer was once an angel and we all know that however angelic she of infinite variety may appear, she is not an angel. I have heard men of moods and appetite talk of women in the same strain as Lucifer and so have ceased to wonder that each woman knows one particular man—usually her husband—whom she describes as a devil.

“Lucifer had found out the truth of the Latin proverb which says ‘Trust not a woman, even when dead,’ and as he didn’t want any divided skirt rule, he had planned to have Capt. Kidd take them to Paris or to Italy, which Robert Burton says is a hell for women. Satan thought he was well rid of them until after the day of judgment, so you can imagine his burning rage when, following Bangs’ orders, I brought them safely back to Hades. When the humorist leaves the earth it will be jumping out of the frying pan of a vivid imagination into a very hot fire of reality.”

“And Marie Corelli? I thought her ‘Sorrows of Satan’—”

“That’s just it. Through all the centuries Lucifer lacked a champion until Marie Corelli sat in judgment on the world and gave it fits after reading ‘Paradise Lost’ and losing her heart as well as her head—as many another girl has done—to the angel who ‘fell, never to rise again.’ Lucifer would have had no attraction for most women if he had not fallen. Milton made him a hero, many persons have embraced him, but no one ever fully understood him except Marie, and great shall be her reward.”

“How can there be rewards in Hades?”

“Oh, we have our society here just as in the upper region, only the world asks who a man is; here the Smart Set asks who he was. Caste is as strong here as in your Four Million and in our upper Ten Thousand.”

“But even yet I do not understand how the champion of His Satanic Majesty is to be rewarded.”

“Lucifer has long wanted a wife. Marie Corelli alone pleases his fancy, besides possessing the necessary qualifications for the position. Here she will be supreme; she will rule even the arch fiend himself. To her kings will bow and princes kneel. Won’t she make it hot for some of the reviewers who ‘roasted’ her on earth! There is only one place where reviews live—in Hell. There is a torridness of climate here which agrees with them. After all, Hades is no more than a caricature of your world and the doings of men.

“Your society is but vanity; what, then, shall be said of the festivities of Hades? We dine, and our Barmecide feast leaves a nauseating feeling of emptiness. Here amusement is the lash of correction. All is illusion; nothing is real. The fashions of all the centuries flourish here at one time, for every fashion which has had its day straightway goes to Hell. I sometimes think that is the principal reason why women are dissatisfied here; they had to follow the fashion in vogue while they were on the earth and when a late comer appears in a new style hat or dress the other women suffer torments worse than any Satan could devise, especially on Easter Sunday.

“The twilight of Hades forms a sort of X-ray which passes through the clothes and flesh and enables us to see into the heart and mind of one another. The other day Paul Jones met George Washington, walking arm in arm with King George the Fourth. He stopped to say:

“Admiral, I’m glad my children are giving you the honors which are justly yours.” Yet as his mind was as an open book, Jones read his thoughts thus:

“‘Why couldn’t that meddlesome Porter let well enough alone, instead of bringing a mummy from France to oust me from my place as first in the hearts of my countrymen?’”

Sherlock Holmes puffed reflectively on the shade of a cigar for a few moments; then knocking off an imaginary ash, he continued:

“Whether matches are made in Heaven is a question, but they certainly are not made in Hell, despite the abundance of brimstone and the presence of Lucifer. Courtship is impossible where the heart betrays and fine words are belied by revealed thoughts, where the naked truth cannot be clothed in ‘fig’ language. When all reality has vanished, there can be no delusion, so that men who seldom spoke in the other world save to utter a falsehood have come to speak the truth here. There is only one exception—George Washington.”

“You are rather hard on—”

“Remember that Hades is the only land which holds the mirror up to nature. In the flash of the earth’s footlights, we act our part in the play of life to dazzle other men and blind them to our faults. Life is a series of poses, each like the film of a moving picture which by the juggling of the operator suggests continuous action, though composed of many lifeless photographs. Our life is an optical illusion. We are judged by what men see us do and yet they perhaps never see us when the mask is off and we have forgotten to pose. We strike our attitude and the world applauds or jeers. Only when life’s candle is snuffed out do we forget to pose, for then a great awe is upon us. What a haunting thought it is that ‘the evil that men do lives after them’! In life we hugged our sins to ourselves, guarding them zealously; so in death, why cannot they, like the good we do, be decently interred with our bones? When we are laid low, why must our sins go on a rampage of their own, both in the upper and the under worlds? In Hades the mask has been torn away and we see man as he is, not as he would have us see him.”

“That must be diverting.”

“Hades is the best place in the universe for the study of history. Socrates is here but his philosophy, as well as his wife, has deserted him; he is now a chronic kicker. Moses strikes his rod on the rocks in vain, for molten lava flows instead of water; the result of his rage is seen at Vesuvius, the devil’s chimney. Pontius Pilate is forever washing his hands, but the red blood flows afresh. Shakespeare tells him that the damned spot will not out. Eve is setting the fashion in fig leaves and serpentine dresses, but like her earthly descendants, is discontented, although she takes a certain spiteful satisfaction in the fact that the number of women in Hades is on the increase. Methuselah is hunting for the fountain of perpetual youth. He wants to be a boy again and his favorite poem is ‘Backward, turn backward, O Time, in thy flight.’ He suffers a periodic attack of second childishness every thousand years.”

“And John Paul Jones?”

“Poor Paul! he never will forgive me for disturbing his bones.”

“I thought Ambassador Porter—”

“Do you mean to say that Watson hasn’t told the world about my last and greatest case? Why, that was the very reason I returned to earth! Ambassador Porter came over to England and besought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to find the dead sea dog. Only one man could do it—myself. Lucifer refused to give me up, but Dr. Doyle matched his cunning with that of His Satanic Majesty, gave him a dose of cocaine, and won. Watson says each case is more difficult than the last, but I do pride myself that this exploit would have baffled every one save the great Sherlock Holmes. By a series of deductions I came to the conclusion that the bones of John Paul Jones would be found wrapped in tinfoil, encased in a leaden coffin, swimming in alcohol under a stable. With this information it was easy for Porter to do the rest. As Watson says: ‘It was all so absurdly simple!’”

“Tell me your story.”

At sight of my note book the detective shook his head.

“I commissioned Watson to do that, but Conan Doyle, who owns the copyright, may wish to give the Ambassador the credit until he comes to join us on the banks of the Styx. I never did seek notoriety, but Dr. Doyle, while waiting for patients who never came, reversed the usual practice of physicians; he brought a dead man to life, and of course I was so grateful that I took cocaine to drug my modesty and—the literary market.”

“The latest news we had of you on earth was that you had retired to study bee-farming on Sussex Downs.”

“Bee-farming? That is the most unkind sting of all! Then Sussex must reach down to Hades, for here I am, Oslerized and ostracized. James Payne calls books the chloroform of the mind and so I have been embalmed between covers, and ‘finis’ written for my epitaph. Never mind, it is a matter of indifference to me now that I have had my revenge on that pirate.”

“Pirate!” I gasped.

Holmes laughed at my horrified tone.

“You forget that I’m English,” he said. “When I pointed out to Porter that the way to fame lay in a dead man’s shoes I paid off a score of more than a century’s standing. Maybe you are not aware that when a body is disturbed after being once buried, its soul must inhabit the Outer Darkness a thousand years longer than the original decree. Let us see how the admiral bears up under the shock. In Wishland that is an easy matter. Paul Jones, I desire your presence.”

A moment’s pause, then out of the twilight flitted the spectre of a man in naval dress. A husky voice came to us as from the throat of a phonograph:

“A thousand years more! No quarter! No quarter! ‘I had only just begun to fight!’”

The detective laughed mirthlessly.

“What a merry place is Hades! Imagine a thing and you have it. Think, and at once the thought takes visible form. Truly, this is a land of magic that needs no Aladdin’s lamp. Behold the jugglery of fulfilled desire—that is John Paul Jones!”

JOHN BROWN’S BODY AND THE
BONES OF JOHN PAUL JONES.

CHAPTER III.
John Brown’s Body and the Bones of John Paul Jones.

THAT Paul Jones was not alone soon became evident. With his coming, other ghostly forms had taken shape in the semi-gloom and the admiral became the centre of a throng which included the greatest men of all time—the only great men, in fact, for one must die before he can be accorded any measure of greatness. Only in the perspective of the past does a man loom large in the vision of the present.

“It were better to be a live politician than a dead hero,” observed Paul Jones, reading my thoughts. Then he sighed.

“But you are honored on earth and even here,” I said, with a glance around the circle at the illustrious members of the Asbestos Society of Sinners.

“Earthly honor is but hysteria,” Jones replied wearily. “Yet, ‘twas ever thus. One is usually crushed by the honors showered upon him, as were the Romans in attending the banquet of Emperor Elagabalus, who rained roses upon his guests until all were buried and smothered by the flowers. Like them ‘bouquets’ are thrown at me when I am dead, of which I would have been more appreciative while living. Yet ‘bouquets’ are preferable to ‘brickbats,’ even though they do not make so lasting an impression. Hades, as you will soon learn, is more of a news centre than London, and so I have heard that in recent years the city hall of New York was draped in mourning for Hiram Cronk, last survivor of the War of 1812, whose only claim to fame was that he did not die sooner. If earthly honors died on earth I wouldn’t complain, but they are all reproduced in Hades, which is a burlesque of the upper world. Ever since Ambassador Porter found a body which he thought might have looked like me had I looked like that body, I have been given homage by every man in Hades. The joke of the matter—if a Scotchman may take an Irish bull by the horns and joke at his own funeral—is that there is no certainty about the body being mine.”

“Do you doubt it in the face of—”

“When face to face with a dead doubt, don’t look a gift corpse in the mouth,” interrupted the admiral dryly. “Had Porter done so, he would have discovered two gold teeth, and I really must insist that if that body is mine, those teeth were filled after I died. In the old days, before the doctors invented appendicitis, I did not mind swallowing all the grape sent with the enemy’s compliments, but I always did draw the line at the dentist’s chair, and any manipulator of the forceps would have struck a snag had he investigated my corpse too closely. Perhaps I ought not to complain, for it may be that if I keep my mouth shut I shall get a decent funeral, and unfortunately this is supposed to be my funeral.”

“But the proofs,” I remonstrated.

“My dear fellow, it is easy to pile up proofs on a dead man, for he cannot rise up to refute them. Here is a dead body; Paul Jones is dead: therefore, this must be Paul Jones. That may be logic but it is not common-sense. Yet this text-book reasoning is no more absurd than the ‘proofs.’ First of all, there was the absence of a coffin plate; had the body been missing instead of the name it would have been more worthy of notice. An autopsy has revealed traces of the disease of which I died, and this after a hundred years! If they were as expert in diagnosing the living as they are in cutting up the dead, fewer of the mistakes of the doctors would have to be buried from sight and mind. Then these learned savants triumphantly point to the height as a sure proof that this is the body of Jones and not of Smith, though both families are so numerous that the bones of one more or less doesn’t matter save as a museum exhibit—from which fate may the Stars and Stripes protect me! It seems from this deduction that I was the only person ever born into the world who ever attained to a stature of five feet and seven inches. That’s what a man gets for measuring up to the standard! The most remarkable coincidence of all is that neither uniform nor sword was found. Evidently Paris makes it a custom to bury its dead, civilian and officer alike, in a shroud of mystery, epaulets and gold stripes.

“Really, the only proof distilled is that the body was found floating in alcohol. I was so fond of that preservative in life, according to the historical novelists, that if a dead body can move of its own volition, I know mine would have sought out the alcohol. It may be the body of John Jones or John Smith, or it may be the remains of some Johnny Craupaud of a century ago; who knows? A slip of genealogy has lost thrones and made more than one man get off the earth.”

“At least you must concede it is not often that many cities squabble over the honor of giving sepulture to a man’s remains.”

“After a century of neglect,” retorted Jones, “‘history repeats itself,’ as my friend Tom Heyward will tell you.”

“‘Seven cities warred for Homer being dead

Who living had no roof to shroud his head!’”

“It’s a wonder some of those cities did not foresee the coming events of which Homer was the shadow and make a play for Jones. Now, Seward, it’s your turn. Come, Tom, speak your little piece.”

“‘Great Homer’s birthplace seven rival cities claim;

Too mighty such monopoly of fame.’”

Paul Jones was about to speak when he was interrupted by a newcomer who chanted:

“‘Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead

Through which the living Homer begged his bread.’”

“That is Mr. Anon,” whispered Lord Bacon. “Shakespeare is quite jealous of him, for Anon claims to be the most voluminous author in the world and, like Byron’s reviewer, has ‘just enough learning to misquote.’ He seldom quotes anyone correctly, not even excepting himself, but in this he is not unlike those other authors whom excess of egotism persuades into signing their names to that which would be their own had not some one said it before.”

“‘Heed him not, gentle sirs,

’Tis but the fool,’”

observed Shakespeare.

“I ought to give you a pension for making my sayings so well known; I notice you never quote your own sentiments because mine answer all purposes so much better.”

It was Lord Bacon who spoke.

“I was talking of you, I grant that,” retorted Shakespeare. “Shall I repeat it? My wife says that it’s only by a hair—”

“You two men are always quarreling,” interrupted Anon. “Please keep the age of Anne from his lordship’s notice, for she hath a way to fry his Bacon. My lord, you should never judge a poet by his hair.”

“Nor yet by his feet,” interrupted Longfellow; “although if a poet looks well to his feet there are no heights to which he cannot climb.”

“I accept the measure of your judgment,” went on Anon calmly. “As for the lady, Delilah’s barber stunt convinced Samson it isn’t wise to tell the truth to a woman.”

“Yet I must insist,” continued Lord Bacon, “that Shakespeare is rather shy of hair to be a real poet. Of course, I have heard the story that Anne Hathaway, after a conference with Delilah, sought to reduce the strength of the Samson of letters by cutting his name from Shakespeare to Shakspeare and trimming his hair to make assurance doubly sure, but Lot’s wife, in looking backward, has recommended that the pig-tale be swallowed with a grain of salt. My dear Willie, your poetry has pains in its feet, your rhyme has received the absent treatment, and your rythm, like your hair, is lacking.”

“Oh, well, hair doesn’t grow on brains,” retorted the claimant to “Hamlet.”

But Anon was not to be out-argued, and continued:

“A hirsute chrysanthemum growing on a man’s head is more likely to indicate a quarterback Freshman on the gridiron than a hunchback poet on the Mount of Parnassus. As for the poet’s other extreme, metrical feet are not always symmetrical.”

“You’ve told it all—so for a spell

For more rhymes where’s the reason?

Besides, just now we are in h—”

“That’s blank verse,” interrupted Shakespeare.

“You mean damn!” interjected Lord Bacon, profanely. “Let me lend you the metres, Bill, so that you may measure up to my standard, or else cork the rythmic bottle and spill no more mimic blood of red ink.”

“The gas man is the only person who controls my metre,” said the Bard of Avon, chuckling at his own wit. “You quite sweep me off my metaphorical feet. That may not be original, but I have no aspirations in the direction of originality.”

“The last broker who arrived from Wall Street says that you are too full of quotations to be original,” sneered Lord Bacon.

“Have you forgotten that you once said ‘a man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others?’ Bartlett allows you seven pages, while he gives me more than a hundred. Familiarity breeds imitators. Even in quotations, you follow after me.”

“If you wear so long a face, you’ll stub your toe on your chin,” observed Anon, noting that Lord Bacon was getting the worst of his controversy with Shakespeare. “Never mind Bill’s raving. Burton tells him he larded his lean books with the fat of others’ works. Maybe that’s the reason why he gives his readers mental dyspepsia; to inwardly digest ‘Hamlet’ would disagree with the stomach of an ostrich. After all, the world knows that Shakespeare was not a man but a syndicate, to which I was the largest contributor. I’ll call the man a plagiarist who says I’m a liar.”

No one cared to knock off the verbal chip which Anon had put upon his shoulders, so Paul Jones resumed:

“Have I equalled Homer’s record?”

“Of course,” I answered; “you, as an American, couldn’t stand being beaten by a foreigner like Homer, even though you are both dead ones. You are claimed by New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Arlington, Richmond, Fredericksburg, Annapolis, and Ocean Grove. I believe there are a few other cities whose names have escaped my memory. Have you any preference in the matter?”

“It’s odd no one has thought about consulting me before. I could have settled the controversy at once. France did not treat me or my bones very well, yet I can’t say I am glad to leave there. It isn’t very pleasant to be dead, but it’s worse to have people squabble over your body. I wonder if Porter ever heard the adage ‘Let the dead rest in peace,’ and that other one ‘Cursed be he who moves my bones!’ You’ve seen two dogs fight over a bone, but you never saw the bone fight. I am nothing but bones.”

“New York’s claim—”

“I hope they won’t bury me in New York. I’ve heard it said that the metropolis is noisy enough to wake the dead and it is certain that my presence would make Captain Landais turn over in his grave. I always did bore Landais and so if I invaded the territory of the tired, St. Patrick’s cemetery would yawn and give up its dead.”

“Had you been a politician,” observed Matt Quay, “some faction of our party would long since have unearthed one of your letters in which you had selected your burial place.”

“You have not yet told me your choice,” I reiterated, remembering the city editor’s parting words.

“I would rather be embalmed in the throbbing heart of the sea, with which my own heart beat so long in unison. My grave has been unmarked for a century, so why not forever? I would prefer to be commander of that greatest army of all, the unknown dead, whose resting place is marked only by monuments of billows and flowers of feathery spray. A bridal veil of silver surge is as elaborate a shroud as I desire.”

“How about cremation?”

“We’ll get enough of that down here some day, so it is useless to undergo the ‘roasting’ process twice. Yet it has its advantages. Soldiers and sailors don’t get much time for godliness, you know, and as cleanliness is next to it, cremation might—”

“John Brown’s body lies a smouldering in—”

That was as far as Mr. Anon could proceed, for he had fired John Brown’s anger. That worthy said he was hanged if he were going to allow anybody to “roast” him by any such incendiary remark.

“Choke him off,” came the chorus from all sides. “Here’s a rope. String him up.”

This brought up such unpleasant recollections of the past that John Brown subsided. I hastened to pacify him by observing:

“You have no cause for disquiet, for your bones lie peacefully in the Adirondacks at North Elba.”

“Hush!” warned Holmes. “That word always invokes Napoleon.”

The Corsican had indeed materialized. He glared at me as he said:

“Peace at Elba? If you found peace there, you accomplished more than did the great Napoleon, and that were impossible.”

“Ah, but you see I hadn’t met my Waterloo,” I retorted. Wellington laughed tauntingly.

“Neither had I when I went to Elba,” supplemented Bonaparte, and then and there I met my Waterloo at the hands of Napoleon. It is poor policy for a writer of history to dispute the maker of it, though I am aware the historical novelists hold other views. For a moment it seemed as if Wellington’s tantalizing mirth would precipitate another battle between the illustrious warriors. Then the two men shook hands, looking like two prize fighters about to enter the ring. Nothing happened, however, and with a trace of disappointment in his tone,—for immortals are very like mortals and he dearly loved a fight,—Paul Jones went on:

“It is a good thing I’m dead, for living heroes always get restless and tumble from the clay pedestal on which an admiring public places them. Heroes should be handled with care, for they are perishable goods. Both Dewey and Dowie have had their day. Dewey turned his house over to his wife so the sheriff couldn’t get it, as many another man has done before and since. Evidently the dear public didn’t believe the two were one, for the hero-worshippers swept him to obscurity on a tidal wave of regretful tears. I wonder if he said it was all Mrs. Dewey’s fault. You know it is more difficult to manage a wife in America nowadays than it was in the days of Solomon, when the wives were so frequent that a man couldn’t remember which one was to blame.”

“The English still claim that you were a pirate,” I observed.

“I feel quite honored at so illustrious an accession to our ranks,” said Captain Kidd.

The admiral smiled.

“Stop your Kidding,” he said to the pirate. “I believe my conduct was unsatisfactory to them on several occasions when I bearded the lion in his channel. The English are queer. They made Captain Pierson a baronet for getting defeated.”

“If we had had Paul Jones,” said Lord Nelson, “we would have made him prime minister and buried him in Westminster Abbey. England is the most grateful of all nations.”

“You need not remind me of the ungratefulness of republics,” rejoined Jones. “I have experienced it, though I am not a living example. But, my lord, I wish I had had you pitted against me in the days of ’77; I would dearly have loved to have exchanged shots with you.”

“You are too kind,” drawled Nelson, lifting his monocle to his blind eye. “I really can’t see you in that light.”

“You have an eye single to your own interest,” I said to Nelson; then turning to Jones:

“We have swung around the circle and you haven’t yet told me—”

“We will leave it to Roosevelt,” replied the admiral. “Whether it is John Brown, John Jones or Johnny Craupaud, he will see that the body gets a square deal—box!”

“How about your epitaph? I would suggest: First in war, last in peace, and at present in the hearts of his countrymen, to mark the tomb of the father of the American navy. That epitomizes your whole career.”

“I do not want to usurp Washington’s paternal honors. Of course all epitaphs are written by Mephisto, ‘the father of liars,’ as you know, but if mine were to be truthful, my tomb would bear the simple inscription:

“Pause, stranger, yet weep not,

For here lies the body of

John Paul Jones—perhaps!”

HENRY VIII. AND HIS HAREM IN
HADES.

CHAPTER IV.
Henry VIII. and His Harem in Hades.

“QUAKER worship may be as appropriate as any other kind on Sunday,” observed William Penn, “but this silence is getting on my nerves. Why don’t you say something funny, you humorists? What’s the use of having famous funny men in this society if they cannot enliven Hades on a dull Sabbath?”

“I’m not in the humor to be humorous to-night,” said Bret Harte, who was busily engaged in making “Condensed Novels” by tearing to shreds without reading, their contents from the title page to the finis; book reviewing they designate it up on earth.

“Do you call that wit?” sneered Eugene Field.

“If you can define the difference between wit and humor, I’ll promise to laugh the next time you see things at night,” retorted Harte.

“Eternity is too short for definitions, except to a philologist,” evaded Field. “Ask Dick Whately; the archbishop of Dublin is the only man who discriminates English synonyms.”

“I know when you don’t ask me,” replied the doctor. “Consult Webster.”

“Mortal cannot live by wit alone,” commented that philologist.

“Being immortal, I can,” said Johnson.

“Mark that down, Boswell, even if Shakespeare does object to the doctor’s company on the Mount of Parnassus. A man of perpetual inspiration ought to use a fountain pen, but in the absence of a point to Johnson’s wit, Demosthenes will lend you a pebble.”

“As I live in a glass hot-house, I never throw stones,” gurgled the orator, after a vain effort to clear his throat of a pill from the laboratory of Nature.

“On earth I always kept a box of bon mots on my chimney piece,” put in Sydney Smith.

“If they had been chocolate bon bons, you would have been a sustaining favorite among the ladies,” chuckled King Henry the Eighth.

“Where knowledge of women is concerned, I bow to your marital Majesty,” acquiesced Smith. “Mere man never becomes a post-graduate on femininology, but he can manage to get up a bowing acquaintance with women after he is married to six of them. It seems to me that Utah would be a good place to study her ‘of infinite variety.’ I have often thought that much of Solomon’s wisdom came from his three hundred wives.”

“With such a match-making father,” I put in, my newspaper instinct scenting “copy,” “I have often wondered why good Queen Bess never married.”

“I’m sorry Elizabeth didn’t keep up the family reputation,” answered the king, “but I guess she thought I did marrying enough for the whole family. Besides, Bess had her hands full ruling the kingdom and her temper without attempting to rule a husband. However, I never could understand why she turned a deaf ear to Sir Walter’s pleading. He wooed her so long with his eyes that she asked him one day why he was such a mute, inglorious Raleigh. He replied that a beggar who is dumb should challenge double pity. As many another man has done since then, the silent lover lost his head over a woman.”

“That’s the King James version,” retorted Sir Walter. “It seems to me that your Majesty should confine yourself to rattling the skeletons in your own Bluebeard’s closet.”

“I see you have a sharp tongue to match the edge of the axe which brought you to your knees. You had a reason for what you did on earth, but you lost your reason along with your head when you left the upper world. By the shade of Anne Boleyn,” went on the king, becoming more and more enraged as he proceeded, “were we on earth, your insolence should cause you to swing from Tyburn’s tree.”

“You can’t string me up,” sneered Raleigh. “No man ever made a monkey of me.”

“No, but a woman did. You can’t cloak what you did for Elizabeth. Now Anne—”

“You forget yourself,” angrily interrupted Anne Boleyn, who had just come upon the scene.

“But you won’t allow me to forget you!” ruefully retorted the king.

“It’s time you came home, Henry. You’ve been keeping altogether too late hours at the club recently and I’ve come to take you home.”

“But I had promised to take tea with Catharine Parr,” rebelled Henry. “You know she is rightfully my wife.”

“Really? You forget that decrees of divorce are not binding in Hades, whether they have been executed by the hangsman or by the justice.”

“I appeal to Judge Blackstone.”

“This is altogether without precedent, but I must support the lady,” responded the jurist, gallantly.

“Then take her. Bless you, my children. I’ve no hard feelings, Anne. May no decrees of court or fate terminate your second union. I’ve sampled the wine of her womanhood, Judge, and as wine improves with age, it ought to be even better now than it was some hundreds of years ago.”

“It isn’t every man who would give his wife a recommendation,” diplomatically remarked Blackstone, alarmed at the construction Henry had placed on his gallantry, and noting that Anne Boleyn seemed pleased thereby. “I fear, however, that Satan would object to any but Lucifer matches in Hades, so until you strike brimstone, Anne here is still your wife.”

“How about the others?” groaned Henry.

“You must settle that with them,” evaded the jurist. “I think one wife would be enough for me, but as you have made your harem, you can’t lie out of it.”

“Henry!” The tone was threatening. The king meekly arose and cast an appealing glance at me.

“I would be delighted to have your company,” he said. “In the olden days I should have commanded, but Anne has taken the command from me. You know I want you to denounce those hysterical novelists who have taken liberties with my wives.”

“I’d like to see them take liberties with me,” aggressively brindled madam.

“They couldn’t do that,” soothingly replied his Majesty. “No, they painted you in your true colors: a study in black and white.”

“Where do you live?” I inquired.

“On Eighth Avenue, of course,” returned the king, as if that were a foregone conclusion. “Lucifer named and numbered the streets after a recent visit to New York. Ward McAllister wanted me to live in apartments at Twenty-third Street and Fifth Avenue, but the ‘skidoo set’ was not exclusive enough for me and I said I would live on Eighth Avenue or go back to England. Charon wouldn’t listen to that, as he said I had given him only a single trip ticket. So I am domiciled on Eighth Avenue, which we have now reached. Here I live with my six wives.”

“Six?” I exclaimed, as we entered the royal palace. “I thought it was eight wives. Why did they call you Henry the Eighth if it were not because of the number of your consorts? The only thing we Americans know about you is that you had more wives than the law allows, and instituted a church to enable you to get another.”

“America?” muttered the king. “I don’t remember where that is. Down here, however, we refer all questions of geography to Atlas. My dear, won’t you ask him to come here if he isn’t too weary from carrying on his shoulder the chip of a world which no one will knock off.”

But Her Grace did not move.

“Your church was instituted too late to be binding on me,” she said, her nose becoming an acute retrousse. “The word obey didn’t cut any figure in our matrimonial contract.”

“If I once chopped off your head, as the historians say, you’ve snapped mine off since,” grumbled his hen-pecked Majesty.

“My head was divorced from my shoulders. I should have preferred the courts of law to courting the axe.”

“There! don’t cry or you will cause the carpet to mildew. My dear, never try to salt down a man’s affections with briny tears.”

A queenly woman entered the room. I arose to greet her. The king’s fat interfered with his gallantry; besides, the woman was his wife, which explains while it does not justify.

“My sister and my wife,” said Henry, presenting me to Catharine of Arragon. “It’s the only case on record where a woman, after promising to be a man’s sister, became his wife. Do you wonder that I began to feel quite rich in family relations? Although I murdered my sister-in-law, I left it to the punsters to murder the mothers-in-law who came after me.”

“The historians say that my fall from kingly favor was a matter of conscience,” mused Her Grace. “Didn’t the still small voice make itself heard when you severed the bonds of matrimony with your little hatchet?”

“Not at all, Catharine. I left my conscience on the executioner’s block to flirt with yours!”

“And married again!”

“Of course. Matrimony always had much attraction for me, although I realize that a man had better fall into the sea than fall in love and marry. A corpse devoured by crabs is no less harrowing than the spectacle of a man devoured by love, and it is better to multiply crabs than to multiply sinners and fools. Matrimony is a foretaste of purgatory to which no man should be called upon to submit before death.”

“No wonder you got dyspepsia and gout from indulging your taste.”

“There you are again, Anne, throwing ancient history in my teeth. Did you ever hear how I got rid of the gout?”

I shook my head.

“Ah, thank goodness, one incident of my life has escaped the novelists. Lucifer is compiling a mammoth work ‘Every Man His Own Historian’ to which we are all contributing. It promises to to be one of the ‘six best sellers.’ Permit me to read a chapter from my autobiography:

“I must have fallen asleep upon my throne. I dreamed that a great iron safe had fallen upon my feet and awoke to find a hideous-looking creature seated complacently upon my bandaged foot. I groaned and tried to shake him off, but he still clung there and the weight of his body seemed to be pushing red-hot needles into the swollen flesh.

“He took off his cap with a courtly bow.

“‘Allow me to introduce myself as Mr. Gout, M. D.,’ he said.

“‘What! you are Mr. Gout, who is responsible for my sufferings and you actually have the impudence to come here! Why, oh my foot!’

“‘Do you know why I am so attentive to you?’

“‘From pure cussedness, confound you! Ow-oh, I wish you would keep your attentions to yourself.’

“‘That’s the way of the world. A man is indiscreet, and when he has to pay the penalty, lays the blame on some one else. My duty is to remind you that you cannot abuse this body with impunity.’

“The hideous creature began to jump up and down on my foot. Maddened by the pain, I picked up a heavy dictionary lying near and hurled seventy thousand words bound in calf at him. The aim was too low and Webster fell over my foot. Then I fainted. The Gout had gone!”

“Now that you have disposed of Dr. Gout, let us go back to our original subject—women,” I said, smiling. “A man who has had six wives ought to have some knowledge of the feminine character.”

Just then John Heyward entered. The king turned to him.

“Just in time, fool,” he said. “Answer our American friend: What is a woman?”

“‘A rag and a bone and a hank of hair.’ That sounds like a before-treatment advertisement, but is really original with Kipling. As for myself, although a fool, I don’t attempt to designate a woman by a descriptive tag, as if she were a special brand of chocolates. To man, woman is a sphinx endowed with a voice. He never gets more than a telephonic acquaintance with her, and the woman always hangs up the receiver and monopolizes the transmitter.”

“Listen to the words of a wise fool who wears a dunce cap for a crown,” approved Henry. “Right you are, Heyward, and one woman is very much like another.”

“I beg to differ,” said the poet. “Women are different, not only in their baptismal labels, but in that some women have a husband and others have a cat. Women have often been compared to cats, but did you ever contrast cats and men? Thomas never throws his mother in the face of his wife. He keeps his own whiskers trimmed and stays home nights. He does not come back to the partner of his bosom at three A. M. with a diagonal gait and an asinine gayety, chewing the butt of a cigar and talking in a tongue that is as unsteady as his legs. Nor does Tommy slam the door in fourteen languages when Kitty asks how that blonde hair came on his coat. But we’re all human. If you’re hunting for a perfect woman, stop—she’s dead; if for a perfect man, you’re a fool. Elijahs are no longer translated without being prepared for the undertaker. Yet methinks that if one could forget other folks’ mistakes as easily as one’s own, there would be less scandal.”

He turned to Catharine Parr.

“One thing has always puzzled me. Why is it that women prefer to be old men’s darlings, that you enjoy being clouds in the sunset’s glow rather than in the noontide glory?”

“The setting sun always gives a golden lining to the clouds it embraces, but to drop the figurative—we are soaring rather high—and come down to earth, women marry old men so that they may soon become widows.”

Henry nervously tried to adjust an imaginary crown that weighed heavily on his head.

“Seymour plucked the weeds from the garden of your widowed life before the first blade of grass had pushed up from a newly-made grave. O Inconstancy! O Woman! Of two things, one. Orpheus went to Hell to find his wife. He failed to win her from her refuge in the shades because he looked back to discern her features. Had Euridice retraced the path from Hell without bringing with her surcease from domestic woe, Orpheus would have wished her back down that familiar track. I wish he would pay us another visit. I’d loan him five of mine.”

“Which wife would you retain?” asked Catharine Howard.

“Catharine,” answered Henry, diplomatically.

All three who bore that name beamed with gratification.

“Catharine is always at Parr,” continued the king. His fondness for punning nearly proved his undoing.

“I’m not below Parr,” angrily exclaimed Catharine of Arragon. “I come before her.”

“No, you came,” corrected the king. “It’s merely a question of tense. Many a woman promises to be a sister to the devil who has never received a proposal.”

“That’s a good one on you!” laughed the fool. “Her Grace of Arragon promised to be a sister to you! What do you say to that?”

“My answer is written in history. ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away,’ for which ‘blessed be the name of the Lord.’ I replaced my wives, so that the supply would always equal the demand. I believed that as long as the Lord took, it was my duty to take.”

The king paused long enough to drink a cup of pink tea and to eat some breaded calves’ brains for inspiration.

“When trouble comes,” continued Henry, “some people fly to matrimony, thinking drink too vulgar.”

“Your troubles have been many, judging by your marital intemperance.”

“They were, but my troubles always came singly,” chuckled the king. “As fast as I executed one, another came, but I made sure I was off with the old head before I coveted the new.”

“The only bright thing an American can remember to have heard Punch say is ‘don’t’ when matrimony is on the horizon, but then Punch is English and England has no Ali Ben Theodore—peace to his Strenuosity—to turn the throne into a pulpit for dissertations on vital statistics in the hope that he may make census taking an unnecessary burden of government. Modern philologists were seriously considering the advisability of eliminating the word ‘papa’ from the dictionary, when the leading exponent of the life effective raised the question as to why mamma’s lap wasn’t filled. When the president becomes advance agent for the stork hope is born, but if the stork continues to be derelict in its duties, we might give the eagle a trial in an endeavor to have this statistical indictment set aside.”

“What does Mr. Roosevelt know about the rights of unattached bachelors?” asked Catharine the Third. “He isn’t a bachelor and never was one; he was born domestic and to the domestic man nothing ever happens—except the buying of more cradles.”