STYGIAN SIFTINGS.

Printers’ Pi Cooked to a Crisp for the Delectation of Lovers of Realism, and Served Hot from the Griddle of Our Reporter’s Imagination.

Devil-baked by Arthur Big Brain and Willie Randy’s Nurse.

N. B.—We have the largest circulation and we can prove it. We always arrange the event to suit the “extra.” Our paper is read; our contemporary is redder. Imitation is the sincerest proof of color blindness. We print all the news that no one else will print. It’s all here and all untrue. If you see it in the Siftings, you may be excused for having your doubts. We cater to the great reading public, not to the Sunday School. There is no hyphenated heaviness in this paper. Our motto: More muck to mix.

EDITORIAL: AN ELECTION PROPHECY.

Owing to the many claims presented, the Stygian Siftings acknowledges that it is a difficult matter to decide who has been the greatest benefactor to Hell, but we think Nero should be accorded the palm. We say this not because we wish to play favorites, but merely for the sake of harmony, which we believe would be best secured by the selection of Nero, the violinist, at the coming election to fill the position of janitor in the hall of fame.

NERO RECALLED FROM THE CATACOMBS.

(From the Cimmerian Chatterbox.)

We do not reprint legends of the bib and rattle, so we treat our contemporary with the contemptuous silence which it deserves. Its scissor blades are longer than the nose of its editor. A subsidized press, which the Stygian Siftings is known to be, is unworthy of notice. But to the candidate put forth, whose conduct needs careful editing and much blue pencil, we would apostrophize thusly: Nero, your only claim to fame is that you murdered your mother, kicked your wife down stairs and made Rome howl while you painted the town red. Many another man has done all three and only got his picture in the rogues’ gallery and the newspapers in return for his efforts. Nero, put that upon your catgut and play it to the shades of the tunes you have murdered! Nero was born without whiskers and he’s had many a close shave since then. Who was the first shaver? A coupon for a hair cut and a cup of red ink given for the best answer!

THE CANDIDATE SPEAKS.

(Oration of Nero Stenographically Reported for the Stygian Siftings.)

Ladies and Fellow-Citizens—If it please the ladies, I come to speak in my own behalf and crave your attention and your vote. As there appears to be no other candidate who is so anxious for the office of janitor of the hall of fame and general benefactor of Hades as I, it seems to me that no other qualifications are needed. However, there are some persons who are conceited enough to imagine that they will give me a hard run for my money. Why, fellow-citizens and voters, these men are not even natives of this fair country, the finest the sun forgot to shine upon! ‘Tis true they have been naturalized, but they never can be civilized. They may have push and cheek, but they lack the pull to get there.

Some men are so suspicious that they won’t take stock in anything except the thermometer; under the present climatic conditions in Hades, that is bound to rise. The time for prejudice is past. It may be necessary to remind the opposition that we are a populous community. We have not taken into our limits any farm lands. In all our borders there are only solid blocks of houses with here and there a football park, where the players may break each other’s bones on the gridiron. There are other institutions to which we might refer with pride, but the metropolitan press is stirring them up with a muck rake. We own up to all the charges made and herein we differ from summer resorts up on the earth, where they sit on the lid and say their prayers, and then lie a little about the real condition of things in their community. The Stygianite, who lives in the earth and not on it, cannot prevaricate without being found out. He owns up whenever he has to, and that is pretty often. Up on earth, however, descendants of Ananias are as numberless as the hairs on the head of an after-taking advertisement.

I do not desire to answer the idiotorial attack of the editor of the Cimmerian Chatterbox, for I agree with him that it is better to boil your candidates in printers’ ink before election than to roast them afterward.

If I decide to accept the office which the chairman of the Roman executive committee assures me will be tendered to the only Nero, I promise you all exemption from taxes, divorce without six months’ probation in the backwoods—anything and everything you ask shall be yours. You deposit the ballot; Nero will do the rest.

Among the reforms I intend to institute will be a wholesale cleaning of Hades. I will put fresh paint on the houses daily to keep Alexander from wearing out the buildings by leaning against them. I will install couches in the public parks for men who have run for office so much that they must be tired, and I will not debar any of the candidates I defeat from six feet of Squatters’ Ground. I will even distribute campaign mirrors to others who would like to see themselves as I see them. Of course I believe that the man should seek the office, but the only reason I ask for your votes is so that I may have another office to put on my official letter-head. I’m not sure I can find room for it, but I can increase the size of the paper and perhaps employ another typewriter. Don’t be like a balance wheel, ready to move in either direction on the slightest provocation. The man who borrows trouble on election day must return the goods if he bets on the wrong man. Never mind if the reformers ask: “Where did he get it?” Every politician knows where his graft comes from; call on me the day after election and I’ll see that you all get yours. Don’t sell your vote for a mess of political pottage without seeing the color of my long green.

And now I must conclude, for my voice is husky with much speaking. Most of the great orators are dead. Cicero is dead; Demosthenes is dead, and to tell the truth, gentlemen, I don’t feel very much alive myself! (Great applause.)

NERO’S LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.

To the Dilettante Political Club: Greeting—It is with pleasure that I accept the endorsement of your distinguished body. All I ask is that if the voters don’t feel like giving the position to me, kindly turn down the other fellows. Alexander and Louis XIV. will serve their constitutions, but not their country. They offered their services in the late unpleasantness, but only on condition that they were not to leave the country unless the enemy entered it. Your endorsement of me has been hanging over their heads like a dynamite bomb swung from a socialistic cobweb. Now the silence of political oblivion has fallen with a dull, sickening thud, and they are shaking in their boots with muffled ice and bated breath.

The party plank is a see-saw to catch votes. I stand upon this platform: I am in favor of making Hades the centre of the universe as it now is of the earth, and building a bridge over the Styx to New York, so that disappointed politicians and all others weary of life may here find refuge and a warm welcome.

I am in favor of fortifying the Styx, which would give Captain Kidd and his pirates a chance to swoop down on the commerce in New York Bay and get back to Hades unmolested. They could also form a combination with the chicken thieves of the African colony, and the supply of fowls brought across the river would establish for all time the pre-eminence of Hades as an all-the-year-’round resort.

Yours for harmony,
Nero, Rex.

Hotel Hereafter,
Cimmeria, Hades-on-Styx.
Mephisto, Proprietor and Cook.

WHEN IS WAGED THE BATTLE OF BALLOTS.

The Siftings is informed, on the best of authority, that an election is in progress. On his way to the office, the editor was buttonholed by a ward heeler and handed a pawned ticket. He was then conducted to a booth, where he retired—except for about three feet of trousers and two of leather. Having scratched to his heart’s content, he saw his ballot chewed by a stuffed box, and was permitted to go to his sanctum, there to forecast the outcome—a more uncertain quantity than the weather brewed in the department of the interior. Our reporter says it’s all over but the shouting and he is shouting for Nero one minute and for Alexander the next. Personally, the editor is in doubt as to whom will be elected. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, he has heard the speeches of three of the candidates and has read the predictions of the chairmen of the different parties. One side or the other must be laboring under a “misapprehension.” Our attorney assures us that this phrase is perfectly safe. Having already two suits for libel on hand, we don’t feel like starting a clothing store to get rid of surplus suits. Misfit personalities always give the editor a libel suit. He needs a font of nonpareil with many daggers in it to keep off a minion of misunderstanding. Our attorney is Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. (See advertising columns.)

Alexander needs a few votes and Nero needs a lot and by the time they get through needing, there will be no votes left for anybody else. Louis XIV. has bolted his party and is running on an independent ticket. It is said that his name appears on the voting lists of all the wards; if so, he ought to be challenged. However, “Boss” Tweed, who is chairman of Nero’s campaign committee, may be confidentially expected to look out for his candidate’s interests—and his own.

Some say the dark horse will win, having the support of the tea party gang and of the Prince of Darkness. In this spirit-moving campaign no one knows where the population is going to focus. The residence of a repeater is a mystery deeper than the fixed locale of a New York poolroom. After all, Hades is a good deal like the earth, where graveyards, forgetting the ethics of etiquette, yawn on election day to permit dead men to vote. Just as the paper goes to press, it is stated that pasters are being freely used and that 5,876,433 candidates have sprung up. The voting is still going on. If the polls close at the usual time, it is believed there would be about twenty small boys who had been overlooked in the voting, and these would kick as soon as they discovered they were not in the running.

We understand that in Hades woman has her rights, that she can exercise her franchise, yet not a single woman has voted to-day. It all goes to show that a woman desires only what she can’t get. She would rather use the ballots for curling papers or to trim her bonnet than to put into a stuffed box. But there’s another reason. According to the registration, not one woman in Hades is of votable age. None would acknowledge being more than “sweet and twenty!”

ELECTION EXTRA! LAST EDITION!

The battle of ballots is over. The last scratched ticket has been counted and the victor is—“Boss” Tweed! The New York politician, as Nero’s manager, had charge of the distribution of tickets and pasted his own name over that of the Roman emperor. All’s fair in war and politics. Tweed deserves a tablet in the corridors of the hall of fame as well as the key to its front door!

NOAH’S PERSONALLY CONDUCTED
EXCURSION TO EARTH.

CHAPTER XI.
Noah’s Personally Conducted Excursion to Earth.

ALL the Stygian colony was thrown into a state of unusual excitement one hot December morning by the following posters replacing the campaign lithographs of Nero and Alexander:

LAST CHANCE TO COOL OFF!
Unsurpassed Funseeking
EXCURSION
To the Mirth-provoking Region of
EARTH
On Saturday, December 18.
(Next day Sunday, giving ample time to get back—also
to recover and look sober)
BASEBALL AT THE BATTERY.

The committee guarantees the game, not the quality of the playing. Umpire Shylock promises to make the score as close as his nature will permit. This is the line-up:

Noah, Chairman,
P. T. Barnum,
Captain Kane.

All that week Noah’s personally-conducted excursion to earth was the one topic of conversation. The Stygianites ceased to watch the thermometer and even forgot to stone the clerk of the weather bureau. It was the burning question of the hour in Hades and smouldered for several days.

Two days after it had been posted, I joined the group reading the circular for the ’steenth time.

“Is Noah capable of being at the helm?” asked Napoleon. “His record indicates that all he knows could be printed on a postage stamp without cancelling the stamp.”

“He may be behind the times,” volunteered Methuselah, “but at least you must give Noah credit for knowing enough to come in out of the rain, which is more than could be said of most of the people of his day and generation.”

“To my knowledge,” quoth Alexander, “there are but two instances recorded of our good friend Populi going wrong; first, when he refused to follow Noah into the Ark before I was born; second, when he failed to elect yours truly as custodian of the keys to the hall of fame.”

“What mean the mystic letters ‘R. s. v. p.’?” asked Columbus, re-reading the circular.

“Being an Italian, you Ought to know Greek,” I rejoined, becoming first Ade to the injured Dooleyism, who didn’t Seem to get My Dust. Some Pagan Spaniards can’t see an American joke without Housetop Comment in Capital Letters. But I had gone Too Far to Ring Off, so I spoke in a Tone like an English check: “It’s a Foreign Phrase used by Americans in inviting People They Don’t Want. Translated into United States R. s. v. p. reads: Rush in; shake hands; Victual up; Pull Out. Moral: Don’t be Inquisitive, for if I read History and the Zodiac aright, it’s a Cinch that you’ll have to hide your Elongated Flappers by Retreating to the Shadows of the Tall Cedars.”

“Revenons a nos moutons, redacteur,” protested Napoleon, who abhorred slang and preferred his followers and his fables without any morals. To be called an editor made me quite willing to come back to the subject—even reporters are susceptible to flattery.

“Anything that will distract one’s attention from the thermometer is welcome,” said young Lochinvar. “Can you wonder that a lover sighs like a furnace in this heated season when one sizzles by degrees? Alas! there are no summer girls in Hades, for they exist only in the shadow of an ice cream parlor. But I object to the company of Jonah on the excursion. He would hoodoo the whole trip and some of us wouldn’t get back to the Styx alive!”

Just then Izaak Walton joined the group.

“I wonder,” he said, “what Jonah’s mother-in-law said when he returned home and told that story of the whale as his excuse for remaining out three nights. Other men tell variations of the same story, but they make them less fishy.”

“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 of complaint from any of them. How do you account for that, prophet?”

“Speaking from experience, I would say that one mother-in-law is quite enough to have in a family unless a man is fond of excitement,” answered Joe Smith.

“Boswell, what have I said on that subject,” asked Dr. Johnson. “I hate to repeat myself, but having said everything that’s worth saying, it’s up to Boswell.”

“If every Johnson had his Boswell, Washington might come into his own,” said that general. “But I suppose I ought to be satisfied, for am I not the father of my country?”

“You seem to think you are the father of the whole world,” snapped Adam, who was jealous of the American. “That distinction belonged to me when your country was still shrouded in the mists of the unknown. I have talked with all the historians and as far as I can learn, you are the father of no one and certainly not of your country. You aren’t even a Pilgrim Father and if all Americans followed in the footsteps of their first president, vital statistics would be less satisfactory to Roosevelt than they are. Now, when I was a boy—”

“Listen to the oldest inhabitant,” jeered Washington. “Adam recalls his boyhood days with extraordinary vividness for a man who never had any.”

“You may have been first at banquets and first in the hearts of your countrymen,” continued Adam, “but you weren’t first in the heart of your wife. As you married a widow, some man must have been ahead of you there.”

“Then there’s that old cherry tree fable which ought to have been uprooted from the school-books long ago,” said Ananias, who also had an axe to grind. “It’s unfortunate for the perpetuation of truthfulness that the only offspring of the father of his country is a chestnutty cherry tree, with a few chips lying on the ground.”

Baron Munchausen gave George Washington a resounding slap on the back.

“You ought to give up being a pattern of veracity and take to writing fiction,” he said. “An historical novel by General Washington would be the Great American Novel which publishers have announced for the last hundred years and which many authors have thought themselves bald-headed trying to produce.”

“I understand that after the ball game, Tennyson will write ‘The Charge of the Eleven.’”

“Isn’t he wrong in his numeral? Baseball is a nine, which is somewhat of a discrepancy.”

“Oh, that’s poetic license!”

“May I be Shakespearean a moment?” asked Lord Bacon.

“You cannot, even for a moment,” declared the Bard of Avon. “I allow no infringements on my copyright.”

“Don’t get excited,” returned milord. “All shades look alike to me and it would be a poor expert who couldn’t prove you were somebody else by your signature. Besides, who is Shakespeare anyway? The sweets of notoriety are not for you. You have never been interviewed, your picture does not figure in any patent-medicine advertisement, and no phonograph record repeats your blankety-blank verse without variation. Why, Bill, in these days you couldn’t pass an examination in Shakespeare without the assistance of half a dozen books of notes, a glossary, and five professors to tell you what you meant. To be the writer of a coon song is to be famous; to pen ‘Hamlet’ is simply to provide food for bookworms.”

“Let’s arbitrate,” suggested Æsop.

“None of your fables for mine,” said Shakespeare, slangily. “You would designate two dogs; I would select two cats; they would call in a fox for the odd. The arbitrators would come to talk it over. I would smile and rub the cats’ fur the right way. You would fill the dogs with porterhouse steak rare, broiled till the air for miles around would be rich with the odor, and served with butter gravy. I would cram the cats with liver and cream. You would turn the fox loose in the chicken yard and give him the run of the goose pasture. Oh, I know how arbitrations are run, whether they be conducted by cats or by capital!”

“This is no occasion for petty jealousies,” remonstrated Izaak Walton. “I would rather cull flowers just now from the banks of a trout stream than train for a prize fight. Hip! hip! hip! for the Hippodrome! Have you forgotten that you are going to exchange Hades for New York, where you can pull the sky over you for cover, use the moon in place of an incandescent light, the four points of the compass for bed posts and a morning shower for an alarm clock? We are going to find rest near the heart of Nature, where bookmakers are unknown and politicians have no higher ambition than to sit on a rail fence and dream of whittling down the salaries of the school teachers when they get a place on the board of education.”

“Boss” Tweed smiled for the first time since his election as janitor of the hall of fame.

“Noah may have a map of the road to the millennium,” he said, “but he has gotten side-tracked if he thinks New York is one of the stations along that route!”

THE MAN WITH THE MEGAPHONE.

CHAPTER XII.
The Man with the Megaphone.

“WE’RE off,” sang out Noah, using a huge megaphone which could be heard throughout the length of the train. “Perhaps it was not necessary to tell you that we had started, but the megaphone man on all ‘Seeing New York’ trips is expected to begin his lecture with that observation, and as we’re going to the earth, we must do as mortals do.

“Due notice of our return will be published in the newspapers, but as our stay in the metropolis is indefinite, our address has been left with the constable, and the maid has been instructed to accept service.

“Speaking of maids reminds me that the dear women are rather hotter under their lace collars just now than usual and are saying things quite horrid. You see King Henry the Eighth insisted upon leaving the women at home. To this Cæsar was opposed.

“‘Your wife may be above suspicion,’ said Henry, ‘but I’m not so sure about mine. Six women tagging after a man are just about half a dozen too many.’

“Sir Walter Raleigh joined forces with Cæsar and they brought the matter to the attention of His Satanic Majesty. The metropolitan stores have just announced a bargain sale of dress goods, so Lucifer knew he would have an insurrection on his hands if he didn’t let the woman go shopping. You will notice that the ladies are with us.”

“If Lucifer had not been a fallen angel,” whispered King Henry in my ear, “he would not have known women so well!”

“Have you noticed the charming costume of Mother Eve, who is chaperoning the party?” asked Ward McAllister. “Her hat is made up of a little basket turned upside down, with trailing plants hanging from the top, kept from falling by a tangled mass of ribbon, tickled by a feather that like the ostrich from which it was taken, hides its head in a mound of lace and—but how can a mere man describe a woman’s bonnet adequately unless he has paid the bill for it? Adam says he would get a divorce if he could name anybody but a snake as co-respondent.”

The megaphone continued to assault our ear drums.

“We are still in the region regarded as mythical by Robert Ingersoll,” went on Noah, “and I am pleased to say that that gentleman is returning to haunt the famous city which is assessed for one of our largest avenues paved with good intentions. This resolution business begins January first with a bracing against booze and a curtailing of the smoke luxury, but it’s bones to nickels that it ends on the third day of grace with a general retreat all along the line and the devil in full pursuit. Most men proceed to lay a whole sidewalk before the grade is fixed.”

The train started up hill with a jolt, but disdaining to notice the inconvenience of his passengers—it was a personally-conducted tour,—the Grand Sir Knight of the Hand Car continued:

“This road is inclined to take you to your destination, and I trust the gravity of the situation appeals to you. Passengers are permitted to do one of three things: They may remain seated on the up grade provided they ply their fans vigorously enough to keep the engine from getting a hot box; or they may get out and walk up hill, or if they need exercise, they may get out and push. This is a free country where pull doesn’t count.

“We always look out for the comfort of our patrons. No passenger ever got a cinder in his eye from a locomotive on this road. Electricity is the motive power and it may interest the scientists present to learn that I have discovered the composition of electricity and with it the secret of life. Its power is derived from the action of its principal element, oxygen, in the process of uniting with the other element, hydrogen, with which it compounds in varying proportions up to seven parts by weight of oxygen to one of hydrogen, beyond which point the product becomes water. Up on earth, they need coal or its equivalent to furnish power to produce electricity. Down here we make it from the decomposition of water and permitting the oxygen and the hydrogen to re-unite. As a result of this friction we get a fire many times hotter than that produced by coal, emitting oxygen instead of carbonic acid gas. That explains the exhilaration of the air of Hades and is one reason for its popularity as a health resort.

“No charge is ever made on this line for excessive baggage. You may carry as much as you please, provided you carry it yourself. The only live stock taken in the baggage cars are camels. These ‘water wagons’ might be useful if the assembled company gets dry before New York is reached, and if the train should break down, the camel can always be depended upon to get a hump on itself.

“The Stygian subway, ladies and gentlemen, is the greatest scenic route in the world—on a clear day. From the observation cars one gets a view of all that is to be seen—earth and darkness. This road is a great feat of engineering from the fact that it has no tunnels, no bridges and no curves. It is the only double tracked line in Hades and each rail is so widely separated from its fellow that they are not on speaking terms.

“A third rail was added for safety and rapid progress, movement having been the order of things since the earth began to revolve upon its axis. It was found that a single track would not fit the rolling stock and an attempt to propel a two-wheel car over a single-rail road by Ananias provoked much cussing. The road-bed did not lie so well as the engineer who laid it!

“This is the only line in the world where the time-tables are made solely to suit the public and where a man never loses his train nor his temper. If the schedule as formulated by the general manager, Myself, does not suit you, application to the division superintendent, Myself, will be all that is necessary. Complaints to the general passenger, agent, Myself, are at once referred to Me in My capacity of president and thus no time is lost in red tape. I hold every office within the gift of the road, the only practical solution to labor difficulties.

“We are now nearing Hellgate, which is at the entrance to New York. Never having been to America, I asked Benedict Arnold to write the remainder of the lecture. You may therefore depend upon this description of the Great Republic as being strictly impartial and without prejudice. As an aside, I may as well tell you that before starting for New York, Arnold took the precaution to put an iron band around his pocketbook.

“America, according to the man who sold it, is the land where preachers are paid from $500 to $20,000 according to their ability to dodge Satan and tickle the ears of the wealthy; where no clergyman writes a sermon without a concordance in one hand and a popular novel in the other; where the deacons conduct an auction for the best pews, and where there is a daily round of theatricals by the Sunday School and chicken suppers by the Ladies’ Aid, with collections and religion thrown in for a change on Sunday.

“This is the land where the politician shakes poverty by the hand before election and later altogether; where they have a congress of four hundred men to make laws for a supreme court of nine to set aside; where they have prayers on the floor of the national capitol and whiskey in the basement; where men vote for what they do not want for fear they will get what they want by voting for it; where other men stay away from the polls one day and swear about the result the other three-hundred and sixty-four days in the year.

“American elections are held in the suicidal atmosphere of drear November, when the candidates roam about, seeking whom they can deceive. If saying what isn’t true so often that you end by believing it yourself, constitutes a liar, and if the lie is a sin to everybody but oneself, it is to be hoped the recording angel charitably shuts up his book and takes a vacation about election time. If one party could gain control of the whole earth, its leaders would start an agitation to make their opponents go to the expense of fencing it in.

“The American press is nothing if not enterprising. Why, if King Edward were to fall downstairs tomorrow and break his meerschaum pipe, New Yorkers would know of it, through their newspapers, five hours before he knew it himself!

“Hades gets most of its paving material from the American metropolis, Apollyon having been given a perpetual contract by the Board of Aldermen. In New York there is such a multiplication of conveniences that an electrician, a telephone girl and a plumber have to occupy one’s flat day and night to keep things in order. It is the antithesis of Philadelphia and of Venice, whose streets are never torn up every second day for subways or to insert more pipes. So disgustingly peaceful is the Quaker City that one can lean out of the window in his pajamas and dip up water for the morning bath without waking up the policeman on the beat; all is so quiet along the Delaware to-night that no sticks of dynamite are piled on the front doorstep and no sky-scrapers are being erected between twilight and dawn to be demolished for something else as soon as the tenants have been elevated to the twentieth story.

“This is the land where the captain of industry is he whose pockets so bulge with other people’s money that the door of the prison is not large enough to admit him; where the golden calf is worshipped as a god and the church is used as a waste-basket for unuttered prayers and for good resolutions, newly born; where to be virtuous is to be a crank, and to be honest is to be lonesome; where the citizens sit on the safety valve of conscience and throw wide open the throttle of energy; where the seat of intellect is in the stomach.

“The principal product of this remarkable country is girls, who tolerate rich papas only until they can buy a duke or a prince at the reigning market quotation. The American girl divides her attention between picture hats, chewing gum and ice cream sodas, beginning the day with an orange phosphate at ten A.M., and finishing it and the pocketbook of her steady company at twelve P.M. with a menu of soft-shell crabs, lobsters and Roman punch eaten without a qualm of conscience or a disordered stomach!

“America is a country where to look after the interests of capital is statesmanship and to do anything for labor is socialism and anarchy; where politicians before election orate upon the identity of interests of the capitalist who lives on The Avenue and the laborer who is kept in the back alley: a point which becomes so obscured the day after election as to require the help of the police and the militia to make clear. It is a youthful, boasting nation which forgets the aphorism that children should be seen and not heard, whose every citizen holds a firecracker in one hand, a Fourth of July oration in the other and wears Declaration of Independence chips upon his shoulders in perpetual challenge to the world.

“America is a nation whose goddess of Liberty was foreign born, baptized in blood, then sent into exile, where, serene and indifferent, she turns her back on the land of her adoption and looks out to sea, a heartless statue! This is a country without a language of its own, with a national hymn that sings only of New England and is set to stolen music, whose only national dance is the cakewalk and most popular tune a rag-time coon song; a land whose people never allow the voice of conscience to speak louder than the bell of the cash register.”

“Despite his century of banishment, Benedict Arnold is still a traitor to his country,” I observed.

“Not at all,” answered Washington. “Why, he doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘traitor’ when separated from its Websterian environment. His so-called betrayal of his country was but an incident to his winning a woman, and where there’s a woman, man will make a way. Before the organization of the Asbestos Society of Sinners, the historians conspired with Pluto to fry us in our own fat, but now, immune in our asbestos attire, it’s Siberia for Satan, and there’s always something doing in the Douma of the Dead. As for me, I’m tired of being called ‘truthful George’: it calls for such plain language that somebody’s feelings are sure to be singed. What’s the use of telling the truth when a lie is so much more believable and—interesting?”

Being busily engaged in writing a letter to the city editor of the New York Universe, I did not notice that the blare of the megaphone had ceased. It was not until the car shot out of the darkness that the letter dropped from my hand. I gasped in astonishment.

“The Battery! All change!” sang out the voice in the megaphone. But the car did not stop. As if shot from a catapult it leaped over the trees and vaulted the aquarium. It fluttered in the air and then settled down in the waters of the bay like a bird with a broken wing.

When I opened my eyes I was being rolled over a barrel, and an ambulance surgeon was forcing some very bad whiskey down my throat. Whether it was the liquor or the water I had swallowed I know not, but my surroundings seemed those of the Twenty-third Street water front, west, rather than of the Battery. Was I being rescued from the sinking of a ferry boat or from Noah’s Ark? Had my trip to Hades consumed only the flash of the grain of sand in Time’s hour-glass which had seen me sink to the bottom of the river and rise again, or had I been the guest of the shades of the Styx for a day, a month, a year? A man who had taken a whiskey straight might have solved the problem, but to a man whose brain was befuddled by mixed drinks, coherent thought was impossible. I fell asleep, content to drift and drift and dream—of devils.

The End.

THE LAND OF FULFILLED DESIRE.

EPILOGUE.
The Land of Fulfilled Desire.

My dear Mr. Bangs:

I have been to Hades in search of a sensation, but even the devil couldn’t keep a newspaper man down and so once more I am in the territory of the tired—New York. It may interest you to know that I am holding down the city desk of the Universe, the former incumbent having disappeared shortly before my return from the domain of the departed. He left a letter addressed to his successor and I feel that I am violating no confidence in divulging its contents:

“What impels me to record the experiences of this, my last night on earth, I do not know. Perhaps it is to counterfeit courage, for when a man receives a ‘ticket to the hereafter’ he feels the need of something to brace his backbone, just as a boy will whistle in make-believe bravery on rounding a dark corner.

“I felt more than ordinarily weary, for I seemed to be losing my grip on my work and on—life! For several minutes I had been idly toying with a pearl-handled revolver which I used as a paper weight, when a rustling of paper made me turn. On the floor was a letter.

“‘That’s odd,’ I muttered. ‘The shades who deliver letters from our Stygian correspondent usually lay them upon my desk like any well-regulated ghost would do.’

“As I stooped to pick up the epistle, I noticed that my blue pencil lay upon my pen, the two forming a cross. Then I knew what had exorcised the shade and frightened it away. To an imaginative man, the episode was uncanny. And it was night!

“Using the penholder as a paper cutter, I tore open the envelope and took out the letter. It began without formalities:

“‘I suppose my interviews with Cimmerian citizens were pronounced the most sensational fakes of the year. Did you state whether the manuscript from the domain of the departed had a sulphurous tinge or was redolent with spices and perfumes? The wireless correspondence from Hades-on-Styx must have created much excitement on earth. People may doubt the genuineness of my description of Hades, but they will have a hot time proving me wrong, although nowadays not even the parson believes in a scorch for every sin. Don’t you want to come and take my place as scribe to Satan? I have been fighting down a desire to have you visit this subterranean resort, for did one but express the wish, it would be gratified in this, the Land of Fulfilled Desire. If Pluto says “Come”—’

“Obeying a sudden impulse, I struck a match and held the letter in the flame. Instantly it was snatched from my hand, though I could see no one. At the same moment every electric light in the building went out, leaving the place in darkness. On the air was a pungent odor of brimstone.

“‘The devil!’ I ejaculated. That invocation sealed my fate: it was the Styx and the Simple Life for mine, via the Jersey ferry. And it was night!”

In the lore of Longfellow, “All the rest is mystery.”

Lawrence Daniel Fogg.