I am reminded of that joke, rather grim forsooth, which Lowell thought the best ever made. It is in The Frogs of Aristophanes. The god Dionysus and his slave Xanthias are travelling the road to Hades, the slave as a matter of course carrying the pack for the two. They meet a procession bearing a corpse to the tomb. Xanthias begs the dead man to take the pack with him as he is borne so comfortably on the same road to the nether world. Whereupon they dicker over the portage. “Two shillings for the job,” says the corpse, sitting up on his bier. “Too much,” says Xanthias. “Two shillings,” insists the corpse. “One and sixpence,” cries Xanthias. “I’d see myself alive first!” says the corpse, sinking down on the bier.
LV
JACK TO PHILIP
Dear Mr. Towers:
The young lady have the letter you wrote me and I cant get it. But you needent bother about writing any more tales. I guess you done the best you could, but we dont neither one like what you told about the witch and them young people in the forest. Why do the knight stand there fighting the witch when the old man have run off with his girl? Why dont he take out after them and leave the witch to bleed to death? And the young lady thinks of it worse than I do. She went on awful when she read it, and cried. I guess she was sorry about the way the knight kept on cutting off that woman’s legs and arms even if she was bad. She don’t say nothing else nice about you now, nor let me. But she says you are the crewelest man she have known. And she cries a heap when there aint nothing the matter, and blames at every thing. The old gentleman feels bad about it but he dont know what to do. I guess now he wishes he hadent fooled with the young lady’s salvation none. Because she have told him one day when he was trying to talk pious at her, not to say nothing, that she dident believe in nothing now but damnation. And he say “Dont talk that way before the child.” But I aint come to neither one of them things yet.
Your trew Frend,
Jack O’Meara.
P.S.—She goes to see her tree spirit every day. But she dont talk to him no more. She just lays down on her face and cries.
LVI