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.