“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.’