“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declined to give our society reporters the usual accounts of the functions his wives chaperoned, and, worst of all, has withdrawn himself and induced others to withdraw from the symposium I was preparing for my special Summer Girls' issue, which is to appear in August, on 'How Men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.