Chapter 4

“Exactly,” ejaculated Boswell.

“Well, then,” said I, “if celibacy is wrong, the surest way to protest against it is to marry as many times as you can.”

“By Jove!” said Boswell, tapping the keys yearningly, as though he wished he might spare his hand to shake mine, “you are a man after my own heart.”

“Thanks, old chap,” said I, reaching out my hand and shaking it in the air with my visionary friend--“thanks. I've studied these things with some care, and I've tried to find a reason for everything in life as I know it. I have always regarded Henry as a moral man--as is natural, since in spite of all you can say he is the real head of the English Church. He wasn't willing to be married a second or a seventh time unless he was really a widower. He wasn't as long in taking notice again as some modern widowers that I have met, but I do not criticise him on that score. I merely attribute his record to his kingly nature, which involves necessarily a quickness of decision and a decided perception of the necessities which is sadly lacking in people who are born to a lesser station in life. England demanded a queen, and he invariably met the demand, which shows that he knew something of political economy as well as of matrimony; and as I see it, being an American, a man needs to know something of political economy to be a good ruler. So many of our statesmen have acquired a merely kindergarten knowledge of the science, that we have had many object-lessons of the disadvantages of a merely elementary knowledge of the subject. To come right down to it, I am a great admirer of Henry. At any rate, he had the courage of his heart-convictions.”

“You really surprise me,” tapped Boswell. “I never expected to find an American so thoroughly in sympathy with kings and their needs.”

“Oh, as for that,” said I, “in America we are all kings and we are not without our needs, matrimonial and otherwise, only our courts are not quite so expeditious as Henry's little axe. But what was Henry's attitude towards this extraordinary flight of Xanthippe's?”

“Wrath,” said Boswell. “He was very much enraged, and withdrew his advertisements, declined to give our society reporters the usual accounts of the functions his wives chaperoned, and, worst of all, has withdrawn himself and induced others to withdraw from the symposium I was preparing for my special Summer Girls' issue, which is to appear in August, on 'How Men Propose.' He and Brigham Young and Solomon and Bonaparte had agreed to dictate graphic accounts of how they had done it on various occasions, and Queen Elizabeth, who probably had more proposals to the square minute that any other woman on record, was to write the introduction. This little plan, which was really the idea of genius, is entirely shattered by Mrs. Socrates's infernal interference.”

“Nonsense,” said I. “Don't despair. Why don't you come out with a plain statement of the facts? Apologize.”

“You forget, my dear sir,” interposed Boswell, “that one of the fundamental principles of Hades as an institution is that excuses don't count. It isn't a place for repentance so much as for expiation, and I might apologize nine times a minute for forty years and would still have to suffer the penalty of the offence. No, there is nothing to be done but to begin my newspaper work again, build up again the institution that Xanthippe has destroyed, and bear my misfortunes like a true spirit.”

“Spoken like a philosopher!” I cried. “And if I can help you, my dear Boswell, count upon me. In anything you may do, whether you start a monthly magazine, a sporting weekly, or a purely American Sunday newspaper, you are welcome to anything I can do for you.”

“You are very kind,” returned Boswell, appreciatively, “and if I need your services I shall be glad to avail myself of them. Just at present, however, my plans are so fully prepared that I do not think I shall have to call upon you. With Sherlock Holmes engaged to write twelve new detective stories; Poe to look after my tales of horror; D'Artagnan dictating his personal memoirs; Lucretia Borgia running my Girls' Department; and others too numerous to mention, I have a sufficient supply of stuff to fill up; but if you feel like writing a few poems for me I may be able to use them as fillers, and they may help to make your name so well known in Hades that next year I shall be able to print a Worldly Letter from you every week with a good chance of its proving popular.”

And with this promise Boswell left me to get out the first number of The Cimmerian: a Sunday Magazine for all. Taking him at his word, I sent him the following poem a few days later:

LOCALITY

Whither do we drift, Insensate souls, whose every breath Foretells the doom of nothingness? Yet onward, upward let it be Through all the myriad circles Of the ensuing years-- And then, pray what? Alas! 'tis all, and never shall be stated. Atoms, yet atomless we drift, But whitherward?

I had intended this for one of our leading magazines, but it seemed so to lack the mystical quality, which is essential to a successful magazine poem in our sphere, that I deemed it best to try it on Boswell.

VI. THE BOSWELL TOURS: PERSONALLY CONDUCTED

It was and will no doubt be considered, even by those who are not too friendly towards myself, a daring idea, and it was all my own. One night, several weeks after the interview with Boswell just narrated, the idea came to me simultaneously with the first tapping of the keys for the evening upon the Enchanted Type-Writer. It was Boswell's touch that summoned me from my divan. My family were on the eve of departure for a month's rest from care and play in the mountains, and I was looking forward to a period of very great loneliness. But as Boswell materialized and began his work upon the machine, the great idea flashed across my mind, and I resolved to “play it” for all it was worth.

“Jim,” said I, as I approached the vacant chair in which he sat--for by this time the great biographer and I had got upon terms of familiarity--“Jim,” said I, “I've got a very gloomy prospect ahead of me.”

“Well, why not?” he tapped off. “Where do you expect to have your gloomy prospects? They can't very well be behind you.”

“Humph!” said I. “You are facetious this evening.”

“Not at all,” he replied. “I have been spending the day with my old-time boss, Samuel Johnson, and I am so saturated with purism that I hardly know where I am. From the Johnsonian point of view you have expressed yourself ill--”

“Well, I am ill,” I retorted. “I don't know how far you are acquainted with home life, but I do know that there is no greater homesickness in the world than that of the man who is sick of home.”

“I am not an imitator,” said Boswell, “but I must imitate you to the extent of saying humph! I quote you, and, doing so, I honor you. But really, I never thought you could be sick of home, as you put it--you who are so happy at home and who so wildly hate being away from home.”

“I'm not surprised at that, my dear Boswell,” said I. “But you are, of course, familiar with the phrase 'Stone walls do not a prison make?'”

“I've heard it,” said Boswell.

“Well, there's another equally valid phrase which I have not yet heard expressed by another, and it is this: 'Stone walls do not a home make.'”

“It isn't very musical, is it?” said he.

“Not very,” I answered, “but we don't all live magazine lives, do we? We have occasionally a sentiment, a feeling, out of which we do not try 'to make copy.' It is undoubtedly a truth which I have not yet seen voiced by any modern poet of my acquaintance, not even by the dead-baby poets, that home is not always preferable to some other things. At any rate, it is my feeling, and is shortly to represent my condition. My home, you know. It has its walls and its pictures, and its thousand and one comforts, and its associations, but when my wife and my children are away, and the four walls do not re-echo the voices of the children, and my library lacks the presence of madame, it ceases truly to be home, and if I've got to stay here during the month of August alone I must have diversion, else I shall find myself as badly off as the butterfly man, to whom a vaudeville exhibition is the greatest joy in life.”

“I think you are queer,” said Boswell.

“Well, I am not,” said I. “However low we may set the standard of man, Mr. B.”--and I called him Mr. B. instead of Jim, because I wished to be severe and yet retain the basis of familiarity--“however low we may set the standard of man, I think man as a rule prefers his home to the most seductive roof-garden life in existence.”

“Wherefore?” said he, coldly.

“Wherefore my home about to become unattractive through the absence of my boys and their mother, I shall need some extraordinary diversion to accomplish my happiness. Now if you can come here, why can't others? Suppose to-night you dash off on the machine a lot of invitations to the pleasantest people in Hades to come up here with you and have an evening on earth, which isn't all bad.”

“It's a scheme and a half,” said Boswell, with more enthusiasm than I had expected. “I'll do it, only instead of trying to get these people to make a pilgrimage to your shrine, which I think they would decline to do--Shakespeare, for instance, wouldn't give a tuppence to inspect your birthplace as you have inspected his--I'll institute a series of 'Boswell's Personally Conducted Pleasure Parties,' and make you my agent here. That, you see, will naturally make your home our headquarters, and I think the scheme would work a charm, because there are a great many well-known Stygians who are curious to revisit the scenes of their earlier state, but who are timid about coming on their own responsibility.”

“I see,” said I. “Immortals are but mortal after all, with all the timidity and weaknesses of mortality. But I agree to the proposition, and if you wish it I'll prepare to give them a rousing old time.”

“And be sure to show them something characteristic,” said Boswell.

“I will,” I replied; “I may even get up a trolley-party for them.”

“I don't know what a trolley-party is, but it sounds well,” said Boswell, “and I'll advertise the enterprise at once. 'Boswell's Personally Conducted Pleasure Parties. First Series, No. 1. Trolleying Through Hoboken. For the Round Trip, Four Dollars. Supper and All Expenses Included. No Tips. Extra Lady's Ticket, One Dollar.'”

“Hold on!” I cried. “That can't be. These affairs will really have to be stag-parties--with my wife away, you know.”

“Not if we secure a suitable chaperon,” said Boswell.

“Anyhow!” said I, with great positiveness. “You don't suppose that in the absence of my family I'm going to have my neighbors see me cavorting about the country on a trolley-car full of queens and duchesses and other females of all ages? Not a bit of it, my dear James. I'm not a strictly conventional person, but there are some points between which I draw lines. I've got to live on this earth for a little while yet, and until I leave it I must be guided more or less in what I do by what the world approves or disapproves.”

“Very well,” Boswell answered. “I suppose you are right, but in the autumn, when your family has returned--”

“We can discuss the matter again,” said I, resolved to put off the question for as long a time as I could, for I candidly confess that I had no wish to make myself responsible for the welfare of such Stygian ladies as might avail themselves of the opportunity to go off on one of Boswell's tours. “Show the value and beauties of your plan to the influential men of Hades first, my dear Boswell,” I added, “and then if they choose they can come again and bring their wives with them on their own responsibility.”

“I fancy that is the best plan, but we ought to have some variety in these tours,” he replied. “A trolley-party, however successful, would not make a great season for an entertainment bureau, would it?”

“No, indeed,” said I. “You are perfectly right about that. What you want is one function a week during the summer season. Open with the trolley-party as No. 1 of your first series. Follow this with 'An Evening of Vaudeville: The Grand Tour of the Roof Gardens.' After that have a 'Sunday at the Sea-side--Surf Bathing, Summer Girls and Sand.' That would make a mighty attractive line for your advertisement.”

“Magnificent. I don't see why you don't give up poetry and magazine work and get a position as poster-writer for a circus. You are only a mediocre magazinist, but in the poster business you'd be a genius.”

This was tapped off with such manifest sincerity that I could not take offence, so I thanked him and resumed.

“The grand finale of your first series might be 'A Tandem Scorch: A Century Run on a Bicycle Built for Two Hundred!'”

“Magnificent!” cried Boswell, with such enthusiasm that I feared he would smash the machine. “I'll devote a whole page of my Sunday issue to the prospectus--but, to return to the woman question, we ought really to have something to announce for them. Hades hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I can't afford to scorn the sex. You needn't have anything to do with them if you don't want to--only tell me something I can announce, and I'll make Henry the Eighth solid again by putting that branch of the enterprise in his wives' hands. In that way I'll kill two birds with one stone.”

“That's all very well, Boswell, but I'm afraid I can't,” said I. “It's hard enough to know how to please a mortal woman without attempting to get up a series of picnics for the rather miscellaneous assortment of ladies who form your social structure below. All men are alike, and man's pleasures in all times have been generally the same, but every woman is unique. I never knew two who were alike, and if it's all the same to you I'd rather you left me out of your ladies' tours altogether. Of course I know that even the Queen of Sheba would enjoy a visit to a Monday sale at one of our big department stores, and I am quite as well aware that nine out of ten women in Hades or out of it would enjoy the millinery exhibition at the opera matinee--and if these two ideas impress you at all you are welcome to them--but beyond this I have nothing to suggest.”

“Well, I'm sure those two ideas are worth a great deal,” returned Boswell, making a note of them; “I shall announce four trips to Monday sales--”

“Call 'em 'To Bargaindale and Back: The Great Marked-down Tour,' and be sure you add, 'For Able-bodied Women Only. No Tickets Issued Except on Recommendation of your Family Physician.' This is especially important, for next to a war or a football match there's nothing that I know of that is quite so dangerous to the participants as a bargain day.”

“I'll bear what you say in mind,” quoth Boswell, and he made a note of my injunction. “And immediately upon my return to Hades I will request an audience with Henry's queens, and ask them to devise a number of other tours likely to prove profitable and popular.”

Shortly after my visitor departed and I retired. The next day my family deserted me and went to the mountains, and all my fears as to the inordinate sense of loneliness which was to be my lot were realized. Even Boswell neglected me apparently for a week. I went to my desk daily and returned at night hoping that my type-writer would bring forth something of an interesting nature, but naught other than disappointment awaited me. For a whole blessed week I was thrown back upon the society of my neighbors for diversion. The type-writer gave no sign of being.

Little did I guess that Boswell was busy working up my scheme in his Stygian home!

But it came to pass finally that I was roused up. Walking one morning to my desk to find a bit of memoranda I needed, I discovered a type-written slip marked, “No time for small talk. Boswell's tours grand success. Trolley-party to-night. Ten cars wanted. Jim.”

It was a large order for a town like mine, where forty thousand people have to get along with five cars--two open ones for winter and two closed for summer, and one, which we have never seen, which is kept for use in the repair-shop. I was in despair. Ten car-loads of immortals coming to my house for a trolley-party under such conditions! It was frightful! I did the best I could, however.

I ordered one trolley-car to be ready at eight, and a large variety of good things edible and drinkable, the latter to be held subject to the demand-notes of our guests.

As may be imagined, I did little real work that day, and when I returned home at night I was on tenter-hooks lest something should go wrong; but fortunately Boswell himself came early and relieved me of my worry--in fact, he was at the machine when I entered the house.

“Well,” he said, “have you the ten cars?”

“What do you take me for,” said I, “a trolley-car trust? Of course I haven't. There are only five cars in town, one of which is kept in the repair-shop for effect. I've hired one.”

“Humph!” he cried. “What will the kings do?”

“Kings!” I cried. “What kings?”

“I have nine kings and one car-load of common souls besides for this affair,” he explained. “Each king wants a special car.”

“Kings be jiggered!” said I. “A trolley-party, my much beloved James, is an essentially democratic institution, and private cars are not de rigueur. If your kings choose to come, let 'em hang on by the straps.”

“But I've charged 'em extra!” cried Boswell.

“That's all right,” said I, “they receive extra. They have the ride plus the straps, with the privilege of standing out on the platform and ringing the gong if they want to. The great thing about the trolley-party is that there's no private car business about it.”

“Well, I don't know,” Boswell murmured, reflectively. “If Charles the First and Louis Fourteenth don't kick about being crowded in with all the rest, I can stand anything that Frederick the Great or Nero might say; but those two fellows are great sticklers for the royal prerogative.”

“There isn't any such thing as royal prerogative on a trolley-car,” I retorted, “and if they don't like what they get they can sit down in the waiting-room and wait until we get back.”

But Boswell's fears were not realized. Charles and Louis were perfectly delighted with the trolley-party, and long before we reached home the former had rung up the fare-register to its full capacity, while the latter, a half-a-dozen times, delightedly occupied himself in mastering the intricacies of the overhead wire. The trolley-party was an undoubted success. The same remains to be said of the vaudeville expedition of the following week. The same guests and potentates attended this, to the number of twenty, and the Boswell tours were accounted a great enterprise, and bade fair to redeem the losses of the eminent journalist incurred during Xanthippe's administration of his affairs; but after the bicycle night I had to withdraw from the combination to save my reputation. The fact upon which I had not counted was that my neighbors began to think me insane. I had failed to remember that none of these visiting spirits was visible to us in this material world, and while my fellow-townsmen were disposed to lay up my hiring of a special trolley-car for my own private and particular use against the eccentricity of genius, they marvelled greatly that I should purchase twenty of the best seats at a vaudeville show seemingly for my own exclusive use. When, besides this, they saw me start off apparently alone on one tandem bicycle, followed by twenty-eight other empty wheels, which they could not know were manipulated by some of the most famous legs in the history of the world, from Noah's down to those of Henry Fielding the novelist, they began to regard me as something uncanny.

Nor can I blame them. It seems to me that if I saw one man scorching along a road alone on a tandem bicycle chatting to an empty front-seat, I should think him queer, but if following in his wake I perceived twenty-eight other wheels, scorching up hill and down dale without any visible motive power, I should regard him as one who was in league with the devil himself.

Nevertheless, I judge from what Boswell has told me that I am regarded in Hades as a great benefactor of the people there, for having established a series of excursions from that world into this, a service which has done much to convince the Stygians that after all, if only by contrast, the life below has its redeeming features.

VII. AN IMPORTANT DECISION

For some time after the organization of the Pleasure Tours, the Enchanted Type-Writer appeared to be deserted. Night after night I watched over it with great care lest I should lose any item of interest that might come to me from below, but, much to my sorrow, things in Hades appeared to be dull--so dull that the machine was not called into requisition at all. I little guessed what important matters were transpiring in that wonderful country. Had I done so, I doubt I should have waited so patiently, although my only method of getting there was suicide, for which diversion I have very little liking. On the twenty-fourth night of waiting, however, the welcome sound of the bell dragged me forth from my comfortable couch, whither, expecting nothing, I had retired early.

“Glad to hear your pleasant tinkle again,” I said. “I've missed you.”

“I'm glad to get back,” returned Boswell, for it was he who was manipulating the keys. “I've been so infernally busy, however, over the court news, that I haven't had a minute to spare.”

“Court news, eh?” I said. “You are going to open up a society column, are you?”

“Not I,” he replied. “It's the other kind of a court. We've been having some pretty hot litigation down in Hades since I was here last. The city of Cimmeria has been suing the State of Hades for ten years back dog-taxes.”

“For what?” I cried.

“Unpaid dog-taxes for ten years,” Boswell explained. “We have just as much government below in our cities as you have, and I will say for Hades that our cities are better run than yours.”

“I suppose that is due to the fact that when a man gets to Hades he immediately becomes a reformer,” I suggested, with a wink at the machine, which somehow or other did not seem to appreciate the joke.

“Possibly,” observed Boswell. “Whatever the reason, however, the fact remains that Cimmeria is a well-governed city, and, what is more, it isn't afraid to assert its rights even as against old Apollyon himself.”

“It's safe enough for a corporation,” said I. “Much safer for a corporation which has no soul, than for an individual who has. You can't torture a city--”

“Oh, can't you!” laughed Boswell. “Humph. Apollyon can make it as hot for a city as he can for an individual. It is evident that you never heard of Sodom and Gomorrah--which is surprising to me, since your jokes about Lot's wife being too fresh and getting salted down, would seem to indicate that you had heard something about the punishment those cities underwent.”

“You are right, Bozzy,” I said. “I had forgotten. But tell me about the dog-tax. Does the State own a dog?”

“Does it?” roared Boswell. “Why, my dear fellow, where were you brought up and educated. Does the State own a dog!”

“That's what I asked you,” I put in, meekly. “I may be very ignorant, unless you mean the kind that we have in our legislatures, called the watch-dogs of the treasury, or, perhaps, the dogs of war. But I never thought any city would be crazy enough to make the government take out a license for them.”

“Never heard of a beast named Cerberus, I suppose?” said Boswell.

“Yes, I have,” I answered. “He guards the gates to the infernal regions.”