CHAPTER VI: SOME THEORIES, DARWINIAN AND OTHERWISE
“I observe,” said Doctor Darwin, looking up from a perusal of an asbestos copy of the London Times—“I observe that an American professor has discovered that monkeys talk. I consider that a very interesting fact.”
“It undoubtedly is,” observed Doctor Livingstone, “though hardly new. I never said anything about it over in the other world, but I discovered years ago in Africa that monkeys were quite as well able to hold a sustained conversation with each other as most men are.”
“And I, too,” put in Baron Munchausen, “have frequently conversed with monkeys. I made myself a master of their idioms during my brief sojourn in—ah—in—well, never mind where. I never could remember the names of places. The interesting point is that at one period of my life I was a master of the monkey language. I have even gone so far as to write a sonnet in Simian, which was quite as intelligible to the uneducated as nine-tenths of the sonnets written in English or American.”
“Do you mean to say that you could acquire the monkey accent?” asked Doctor Darwin, immediately interested.
“In most instances,” returned the Baron, suavely, “though of course not in all. I found the same difficulty in some cases that the German or the Chinaman finds when he tries to speak French. A Chinaman can no more say Trocadéro, for instance, as the Frenchman says it, than he can fly. That peculiar throaty aspirate the Frenchman gives to the first syllable, as though it were spelled trhoque, is utterly beyond the Chinese—and beyond the American, too, whose idea of the tonsillar aspirate leads him to speak of the trochedeero, naturally falling back upon troches to help him out of his laryngeal difficulties.”
“You ought to have been on the staff of Punch, Baron,” said Thackeray, quietly. “That joke would have made you immortal.”
“I am immortal,” said the Baron. “But to return to our discussion of the Simian tongue: as I was saying, there were some little points about the accent that I could never get, and, as in the case of the German and Chinaman with the French language, the trouble was purely physical. When you consider that in polite Simian society most of the talkers converse while swinging by their tails from the limb of a tree, with a sort of droning accent, which results from their swaying to and fro, you will see at once why it was that I, deprived by nature of the necessary apparatus with which to suspend myself in mid-air, was unable to quite catch the quality which gives its chief charm to monkey-talk.”
“I should hardly think that a man of your fertile resources would have let so small a thing as that stand in his way,” said Doctor Livingstone. “When a man is able to make a reputation for himself like yours, in which material facts are never allowed to interfere with his doing what he sets out to do, he ought not to be daunted by the need of a tail. If you could make a cherry-tree grow out of a deer’s head, I fail to see why you could not personally grow a tail, or anything else you might happen to need for the attainment of your ends.”
“I was not so anxious to get the accent as all that,” returned the Baron. “I don’t think it is necessary for a man to make a monkey of himself just for the pleasure of mastering a language. Reasoning similarly, a man to master the art of braying in a fashion comprehensible to the jackass of average intellect should make a jackass of himself, cultivate his ears, and learn to kick, so as properly to punctuate his sentences after the manner of most conversational beasts of that kind.”
“Then you believe that jackasses talk, too, do you?” asked Doctor Darwin.
“Why not?” said the Baron. “If monkeys, why not donkeys? Certainly they do. All creatures have some means of communicating their thoughts to each other. Why man in his conceit should think otherwise I don’t know, unless it be that the birds and beasts in their conceit probably think that they alone of all the creatures in the world can talk.”
“I haven’t a doubt,” said Doctor Livingstone, “that monkeys listening to men and women talking think they are only jabbering.”
“They’re not far from wrong in most cases if they do,” said Doctor Johnson, who up to this time had been merely an interested listener. “I’ve thought that many a time myself.”
“Which is perhaps, in a slight degree, a confirmation of my theory,” put in Darwin. “If Doctor Johnson’s mind runs in the same channels that the monkey’s mind runs in, why may we not say that Doctor Johnson, being a man, has certain qualities of the monkey, and is therefore, in a sense, of the same strain?”
“You may say what you please,” retorted Johnson, wrathfully, “but I’ll make you prove what you say about me.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Doctor Livingstone, in a peace-making spirit. “It would not be a pleasant task for you, compelling our friend to prove you descended from the ape. I should think you’d prefer to make him leave it unproved.”
“Have monkeys Boswells?” queried Thackeray.
“I don’t know anything about ’em,” said Johnson, petulantly.
“No more do I,” said Darwin, “and I didn’t mean to be offensive, my dear Johnson. If I claim Simian ancestry for you, I claim it equally for myself.”
“Well, I’m no snob,” said Johnson, unmollified. “If you want to brag about your ancestors, do it. Leave mine alone. Stick to your own genealogical orchard.”
“Well, I believe fully that we are all descended from the ape,” said Munchausen. “There isn’t any doubt in my mind that before the flood all men had tails. Noah had a tail. Shem, Ham, and Japheth had tails. It’s perfectly reasonable to believe it. The Ark in a sense proved it. It would have been almost impossible for Noah and his sons to construct the Ark in the time they did with the assistance of only two hands apiece. Think, however, of how fast they could work with the assistance of that third arm. Noah could hammer a clapboard on to the Ark with two hands while grasping a saw and cutting a new board or planing it off with his tail. So with the others. We all know how much a third hand would help us at times.”
“But how do you account for its disappearance?” put in Doctor Livingstone. “Is it likely they would dispense with such a useful adjunct?”
“No, it isn’t; but there are various ways of accounting for its loss,” said Munchausen. “They may have overworked it building the Ark; Shem, Ham, or Japheth may have had his caught in the door of the Ark and cut off in the hurry of the departure; plenty of things may have happened to eliminate it. Men lose their hair and their teeth; why might not a man lose a tail? Scientists say that coming generations far in the future will be toothless and bald. Why may it not be that through causes unknown to us we are similarly deprived of something our forefathers had?”
“The only reason for man’s losing his hair is that he wears a hat all the time,” said Livingstone. “The Derby hat is the enemy of hair. It is hot, and dries up the scalp. You might as well try to raise watermelons in the Desert of Sahara as to try to raise hair under the modern hat. In fact, the modern hat is a furnace.”
“Well, it’s a mighty good furnace,” observed Munchausen. “You don’t have to put coal on the modern hat.”
“Perhaps,” interposed Thackeray, “the ancients wore their hats on their tails.”
“Well, I have a totally different theory,” said Johnson.
“You always did have,” observed Munchausen.
“Very likely,” said Johnson. “To be commonplace never was my ambition.”
“What is your theory?” queried Livingstone.
“Well—I don’t know,” said Johnson, “if it be worth expressing.”
“It may be worth sending by freight,” interrupted Thackeray. “Let us have it.”
“Well, I believe,” said Johnson—“I believe that Adam was a monkey.”
“He behaved like one,” ejaculated Thackeray.
“I believe that the forbidden tree was a tender one, and therefore the only one upon which Adam was forbidden to swing by his tail,” said Johnson.
“Clear enough—so far,” said Munchausen.
“But that the possession of tails by Adam and Eve entailed a love of swinging thereby, and that they could not resist the temptation to swing from every limb in Eden, and that therefore, while Adam was off swinging on other trees, Eve took a swing on the forbidden tree; that Adam, returning, caught her in the act, and immediately gave way himself and swung,” said Johnson.
“Then you eliminate the serpent?” queried Darwin.
“Not a bit of it,” Johnson answered. “The serpent was the tail. Look at most snakes to-day. What are they but unattached tails?”
“They do look it,” said Darwin, thoughtfully.
“Why, it’s clear as day,” said Johnson. “As punishment Adam and Eve lost their tails, and the tail itself was compelled to work for a living and do its own walking.”
“I never thought of that,” said Darwin. “It seems reasonable.”
“It is reasonable,” said Johnson.
“And the snakes of the present day?” queried Thackeray.
“I believe to be the missing tails of men,” said Johnson. “Somewhere in the world is a tail for every man and woman and child. Where one’s tail is no one can ever say, but that it exists simultaneously with its owner I believe. The abhorrence man has for snakes is directly attributable to his abhorrence for all things which have deprived him of something that is good. If Adam’s tail had not tempted him to swing on the forbidden tree, we should all of us have been able through life to relax from business cares after the manner of the monkey, who is happy from morning until night.”
“Well, I can’t see that it does us any good to sit here and discuss this matter,” said Doctor Livingstone. “We can’t reach any conclusion. The only way to settle the matter, it seems to me, is to go directly to Adam, who is a member of this club, and ask him how it was.”
“That’s a great idea,” said Thackeray, scornfully. “You’d look well going up to a man and saying, ‘Excuse me, sir, but—ah—were you ever a monkey?’”
“To say nothing of catechising a man on the subject of an old and dreadful scandal,” put in Munchausen. “I’m surprised at you, Livingstone. African etiquette seems to have ruined your sense of propriety.”
“I’d just as lief ask him,” said Doctor Johnson. “Etiquette? Bah! What business has etiquette to stand in the way of human knowledge? Conventionality is the last thing men of brains should strive after, and I, for one, am not going to be bound by it.”
Here Doctor Johnson touched the electric bell, and in an instant the shade of a buttons appeared.
“Boy, is Adam in the club-house to-day?” asked the sage.
“I’ll go and see, sir,” said the boy, and he immediately departed.
“Good boy that,” said Thackeray.
“Yes; but the service in this club is dreadful, considering what we might have,” said Darwin. “With Aladdin a member of this club, I don’t see why we can’t have his lamp with genii galore to respond. It certainly would be more economical.”
“True; but I, for one, don’t care to fool with genii,” said Munchausen. “When one member can summon a servant who is strong enough to take another member and do him up in a bottle and cast him into the sea, I have no use for the system. Plain ordinary mortal shades are good enough for me.”
As Munchausen spoke, the boy returned.
“Mr. Adam isn’t here to-day, sir,” he said, addressing Doctor Johnson. “And Charon says he’s not likely to be here, sir, seeing as how his account is closed, not having been settled for three months.”
“Good,” said Thackeray. “I was afraid he was here. I don’t want to have him asked about his Eden experiences in my behalf. That’s personality.”
“Well, then, there’s only one other thing to do,” said Darwin. “Munchausen claims to be able to speak Simian. He might seek out some of the prehistoric monkeys and put the question to them.”
“No, thank you,” said Munchausen. “I’m a little rusty in the language, and, besides, you talk like an idiot. You might as well speak of the human language as the Simian language. There are French monkeys who speak monkey French, African monkeys who talk the most barbarous kind of Zulu monkey patois, and Congo monkey slang, and so on. Let Johnson send his little Boswell out to drum up information. If there is anything to be found out he’ll get it, and then he can tell it to us. Of course he may get it all wrong, but it will be entertaining, and we’ll never know any difference.”
Which seemed to the others a good idea, but whatever came of it I have not been informed.
CHAPTER VII: A DISCUSSION AS TO LADIES’ DAY
“I met Queen Elizabeth just now on the Row,” said Raleigh, as he entered the house-boat and checked his cloak.
“Indeed?” said Confucius. “What if you did? Other people have met Queen Elizabeth. There’s nothing original about that.”
“True; but she made a suggestion to me about this house-boat which I think is a good one. She says the women are all crazy to see the inside of it,” said Raleigh.
“Thus proving that immortal woman is no different from mortal woman,” retorted Confucius. “They want to see the inside of everything. Curiosity, thy name is woman.”
“Well, I am sure I don’t see why men should arrogate to themselves the sole right to an investigating turn of mind,” said Raleigh, impatiently. “Why shouldn’t the ladies want to see the inside of this club-house? It is a compliment to us that they should, and I for one am in favor of letting them, and I am going to propose that in the Ides of March we give a ladies’ day here.”
“Then I shall go South for my health in the Ides of March,” said Confucius, angrily. “What on earth is a club for if it isn’t to enable men to get away from their wives once in a while? When do people go to clubs? When they are on their way home—that’s when; and the more a man’s at home in his club, the less he’s at home when he’s at home. I suppose you’ll be suggesting a children’s day next, and after that a parrot’s or a canary-bird’s day.”
“I had no idea you were such a woman-hater,” said Raleigh, in astonishment. “What’s the matter? Were you ever disappointed in love?”
“I? How absurd!” retorted Confucius, reddening. “The idea of my ever being disappointed in love! I never met the woman who could bring me to my knees, although I was married in the other world. What became of Mrs. C. I never inquired. She may be in China yet, for aught I know. I regard death as a divorce.”
“Your wife must be glad of it,” said Raleigh, somewhat ungallantly; for, to tell the truth, he was nettled by Confucius’s demeanor. “I didn’t know, however, but that since you escaped from China and came here to Hades you might have fallen in love with some spirit of an age subsequent to your own—Mary Queen of Scots, or Joan of Arc, or some other spook—who rejected you. I can’t account for your dislike of women otherwise.”
“Not I,” said Confucius. “Hades would have a less classic name than it has for me if I were hampered with a family. But go along and have your ladies’ day here, and never mind my reasons for preferring my own society to that of the fair sex. I can at least stay at home that day. What do you propose to do—throw open the house to the wives of members, or to all ladies, irrespective of their husbands’ membership here?”
“I think the latter plan would be the better,” said Raleigh. “Otherwise Queen Elizabeth, to whom I am indebted for the suggestion, would be excluded. She never married, you know.”
“Didn’t she?” said Confucius. “No, I didn’t know it; but that doesn’t prove anything. When I went to school we didn’t study the history of the Elizabethan period. She didn’t have absolute sway over England, then?”
“She had; but what of that?” queried Raleigh.
“Do you mean to say that she lived and died an old maid from choice?” demanded Confucius.
“Certainly I do,” said Raleigh. “And why should I not tell you that?”
“For a very good and sufficient reason,” retorted Confucius, “which is, in brief, that I am not a marine. I may dislike women, my dear Raleigh, but I know them better than you do, gallant as you are; and when you tell me in one and the same moment that a woman holding absolute sway over men yet lived and died an old maid, you must not be indignant if I smile and bite the end of my thumb, which is the Chinese way of saying that’s all in your eye, Betty Martin.”
“Believe it or not, you poor old back number,” retorted Raleigh, hotly. “It alters nothing. Queen Elizabeth could have married a hundred times over if she had wished. I know I lost my head there completely.”
“That shows, Sir Walter,” said Dryden, with a grin, “how wrong you are. You lost your head to King James. Hi! Shakespeare, here’s a man doesn’t know who chopped his head off.”
Raleigh’s face flushed scarlet. “’Tis better to have had a head and lost it,” he cried, “than never to have had a head at all! Mark you, Dryden, my boy, it ill befits you to scoff at me for my misfortune, for dust thou art, and to dust thou hast returned, if word from t’other side about thy books and that which in and on them lies be true.”
“Whate’er be said about my books,” said Dryden, angrily, “be they read or be they not, ’tis mine they are, and none there be who dare dispute their authorship.”
“Thus proving that men, thank Heaven, are still sane,” ejaculated Doctor Johnson. “To assume the authorship of Dryden would be not so much a claim, my friend, as a confession.”
“Shades of the mighty Chow!” cried Confucius. “An’ will ye hear the poets squabble! Egad! A ladies’ day could hardly introduce into our midst a more diverting disputation.”
“We’re all getting a little high-flown in our phraseology,” put in Shakespeare at this point. “Let’s quit talking in blank-verse and come down to business. I think a ladies’ day would be great sport. I’ll write a poem to read on the occasion.”
“Then I oppose it with all my heart,” said Doctor Johnson. “Why do you always want to make our entertainments commonplace? Leave occasional poems to mortals. I never knew an occasional poem yet that was worthy of an immortal.”
“That’s precisely why I want to write one occasional poem. I’d make it worthy,” Shakespeare answered. “Like this, for instance:
Most fair, most sweet, most beauteous of ladies,
The greatest charm in all ye realm of Hades.
Why, my dear Doctor, such an opportunity for rhyming Hades with ladies should not be lost.”
“That just proves what I said,” said Johnson. “Any idiot can make ladies rhyme with Hades. It requires absolute genius to avoid the temptation. You are great enough to make Hades rhyme with bicycle if you choose to do it—but no, you succumb to the temptation to be commonplace. Bah! One of these modern drawing-room poets with three sections to his name couldn’t do worse.”
“On general principles,” said Raleigh, “Johnson is right. We invite these people here to see our club-house, not to give them an exhibition of our metrical powers, and I think all exercises of a formal nature should be frowned upon.”
“Very well,” said Shakespeare. “Go ahead. Have your own way about it. Get out your brow and frown. I’m perfectly willing to save myself the trouble of writing a poem. Writing real poetry isn’t easy, as you fellows would have discovered for yourselves if you’d ever tried it.”
“To pass over the arrogant assumption of the gentleman who has just spoken, with the silence due to a proper expression of our contempt therefor,” said Dryden, slowly, “I think in case we do have a ladies’ day here we should exercise a most careful supervision over the invitation list. For instance, wouldn’t it be awkward for our good friend Henry the Eighth to encounter the various Mrs. Henrys here? Would it not likewise be awkward for them to meet each other?”
“Your point is well taken,” said Doctor Johnson. “I don’t know whether the King’s matrimonial ventures are on speaking terms with each other or not, but under any circumstances it would hardly be a pleasing spectacle for Katharine of Arragon to see Henry running his legs off getting cream and cakes for Anne Boleyn; nor would Anne like it much if, on the other hand, Henry chose to behave like a gentleman and a husband to Jane Seymour or Katharine Parr. I think, if the members themselves are to send out the invitations, they should each be limited to two cards, with the express understanding that no member shall be permitted to invite more than one wife.”
“That’s going to be awkward,” said Raleigh, scratching his head thoughtfully. “Henry is such a hot-headed fellow that he might resent the stipulation.”
“I think he would,” said Confucius. “I think he’d be as mad as a hatter at your insinuation that he would invite any of his wives, if all I hear of him is true; and what I’ve heard, Wolsey has told me.”
“He knew a thing or two about Henry,” said Shakespeare. “If you don’t believe it, just read that play of mine that Beaumont and Fletcher—er—ah—thought so much of.”
“You came near giving your secret away that time, William,” said Johnson, with a sly smile, and giving the Avonian a dig between the ribs.
“Secret! I haven’t any secret,” said Shakespeare, a little acridly. “It’s the truth I’m telling you. Beaumont and Fletcher did admire Henry the Eighth.”
“Thereby showing their conceit, eh?” said Johnson.
“Oh, of course, I didn’t write anything, did I?” cried Shakespeare. “Everybody wrote my plays but me. I’m the only person that had no hand in Shakespeare. It seems to me that joke is about worn out, Doctor. I’m getting a little tired of it myself; but if it amuses you, why, keep it up. I know who wrote my plays, and whatever you may say cannot affect the facts. Next thing you fellows will be saying that I didn’t write my own autographs?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Johnson, quietly. “Only there is no internal evidence in your autographs that you knew how to spell your name if you did. A man who signs his name Shixpur one day and Shikespeare the next needn’t complain if the Bank of Posterity refuses to honor his check.”
“They’d honor my check quick enough these days,” retorted Shakespeare. “When a man’s autograph brings five thousand dollars, or one thousand pounds, in the auction-room, there isn’t a bank in the world fool enough to decline to honor any check he’ll sign under a thousand dollars, or two hundred pounds.”
“I fancy you’re right,” put in Raleigh. “But your checks or your plays have nothing to do with ladies’ day. Let’s get to some conclusion in this matter.”
“Yes,” said Confucius. “Let’s. Ladies’ day is becoming a dreadful bore, and if we don’t hurry up the billiard-room will be full.”
“Well, I move we get up a petition to the council to have it,” said Dryden.
“I agree,” said Confucius, “and I’ll sign it. If there’s one way to avoid having ladies’ day in the future, it’s to have one now and be done with it.”
“All right,” said Shakespeare. “I’ll sign too.”
“As—er—Shixpur or Shikespeare?” queried Johnson.
“Let him alone,” said Raleigh. “He’s getting sensitive about that; and what you need to learn more than anything else is that it isn’t manners to twit a man on facts. What’s bothering you, Dryden? You look like a man with an idea.”
“It has just occurred to me,” said Dryden, “that while we can safely leave the question of Henry the Eighth and his wives to the wisdom of the council, we ought to pay some attention to the advisability of inviting Lucretia Borgia. I’d hate to eat any supper if she came within a mile of the banqueting-hall. If she comes you’ll have to appoint a tasting committee before I’ll touch a drop of punch or eat a speck of salad.”
“We might recommend the appointment of Raleigh to look after the fair Lucretia and see that she has no poison with her, or if she has, to keep her from dropping it into the salads,” said Confucius, with a sidelong glance at Raleigh. “He’s the especial champion of woman in this club, and no doubt would be proud of the distinction.”
“I would with most women,” said Raleigh. “But I draw the line at Lucretia Borgia.”
And so a petition was drawn up, signed, and sent to the council, and they, after mature deliberation, decided to have the ladies’ day, to which all the ladies in Hades, excepting Lucretia Borgia and Delilah, were to be duly invited, only the date was not specified. Delilah was excluded at the request of Samson, whose convincing muscles, rather than his arguments, completely won over all opposition to his proposition.
CHAPTER VIII: A DISCONTENTED SHADE
“It seems to me,” said Shakespeare, wearily, one afternoon at the club—“that this business of being immortal is pretty dull. Didn’t somebody once say he’d rather ride fifty years on a trolley in Europe than on a bicycle in Cathay?”
“I never heard any such remark by any self-respecting person,” said Johnson.
“I said something like it,” observed Tennyson.
Doctor Johnson looked around to see who it was that spoke.
“You?” he cried. “And who, pray, may you be?”
“My name is Tennyson,” replied the poet.
“And a very good name it is,” said Shakespeare.
“I am not aware that I ever heard the name before,” said Doctor Johnson. “Did you make it yourself?”
“I did,” said the late laureate, proudly.
“In what pursuit?” asked Doctor Johnson.
“Poetry,” said Tennyson. “I wrote ‘Locksley Hall’ and ‘Come into the Garden, Maude.’”
“Humph!” said Doctor Johnson. “I never read ’em.”
“Well, why should you have read them?” snarled Carlyle. “They were written after you moved over here, and they were good stuff. You needn’t think because you quit, the whole world put up its shutters and went out of business. I did a few things myself which I fancy you never heard of.”
“Oh, as for that,” retorted Doctor Johnson, with a smile, “I’ve heard of you; you are the man who wrote the life of Frederick the Great in nine hundred and two volumes—”
“Seven!” snapped Carlyle.
“Well, seven then,” returned Johnson. “I never saw the work, but I heard Frederick speaking of it the other day. Bonaparte asked him if he had read it, and Frederick said no, he hadn’t time. Bonaparte cried, ‘Haven’t time? Why, my dear king, you’ve got all eternity.’ ‘I know it,’ replied Frederick, ‘but that isn’t enough. Read a page or two, my dear Napoleon, and you’ll see why.’”
“Frederick will have his joke,” said Shakespeare, with a wink at Tennyson and a smile for the two philosophers, intended, no doubt, to put them in a more agreeable frame of mind. “Why, he even asked me the other day why I never wrote a tragedy about him, completely ignoring the fact that he came along many years after I had departed. I spoke of that, and he said, ‘Oh, I was only joking.’ I apologized. ‘I didn’t know that,’ said I. ‘And why should you?’ said he. ‘You’re English.’”
“A very rude remark,” said Johnson. “As if we English were incapable of seeing a joke!”
“Exactly,” put in Carlyle. “It strikes me as the absurdest notion that the Englishman can’t see a joke. To the mind that is accustomed to snap judgments I have no doubt the Englishman appears to be dull of apprehension, but the philosophy of the whole matter is apparent to the mind that takes the trouble to investigate. The Briton weighs everything carefully before he commits himself, and even though a certain point may strike him as funny, he isn’t going to laugh until he has fully made up his mind that it is funny. I remember once riding down Piccadilly with Froude in a hansom cab. Froude had a copy of Punch in his hand, and he began to laugh immoderately over something. I leaned over his shoulder to see what he was laughing at. ‘That isn’t so funny,’ said I, as I read the paragraph on which his eye was resting. ‘No,’ said Froude. ‘I wasn’t laughing at that. I was enjoying the joke that appeared in the same relative position in last week’s issue.’ Now that’s the point—the whole point. The Englishman always laughs over last week’s Punch, not this week’s, and that is why you will find a file of that interesting journal in the home of all well-to-do Britons. It is the back number that amuses him—which merely proves that he is a deliberative person who weighs even his humor carefully before giving way to his emotions.”
“What is the average weight of a copy of Punch?” drawled Artemas Ward, who had strolled in during the latter part of the conversation.
Shakespeare snickered quietly, but Carlyle and Johnson looked upon the intruder severely.
“We will take that question into consideration,” said Carlyle. “Perhaps to-morrow we shall have a definite answer ready for you.”
“Never mind,” returned the humorist. “You’ve proved your point. Tennyson tells me you find life here dull, Shakespeare.”
“Somewhat,” said Shakespeare. “I don’t know about the rest of you fellows, but I was not cut out for an eternity of ease. I must have occupation, and the stage isn’t popular here. The trouble about putting on a play here is that our managers are afraid of libel suits. The chances are that if I should write a play with Cassius as the hero, Cassius would go to the first night’s performance with a dagger concealed in his toga, with which to punctuate his objections to the lines put in his mouth. There is nothing I’d like better than to manage a theatre in this place, but think of the riots we’d have! Suppose, for an instant, that I wrote a play about Bonaparte! He’d have a box, and when the rest of you spooks called for the author at the end of the third act, if he didn’t happen to like the play he’d greet me with a salvo of artillery instead of applause.”
“He wouldn’t if you made him out a great conqueror from start to finish,” said Tennyson.
“No doubt,” returned Shakespeare, sadly; “but in that event Wellington would be in the other stage-box, and I’d get the greeting from him.”
“Why come out at all?” asked Johnson.
“Why come out at all?” echoed Shakespeare. “What fun is there in writing a play if you can’t come out and show yourself at the first night? That’s the author’s reward. If it wasn’t for the first-night business, though, all would be plain sailing.”
“Then why don’t you begin it the second night?” drawled Ward.
“How the deuce could you?” put in Carlyle.
“A most extraordinary proposition,” sneered Johnson.
“Yes,” said Ward; “but wait a week—you’ll see the point then.”
“There isn’t any doubt in my mind,” said Shakespeare, reverting to his original proposition, “that the only perfectly satisfactory life is under a system not yet adopted in either world—the one we have quitted or this. There we had hard work in which our mortal limitations hampered us grievously; here we have the freedom of the immortal with no hard work; in other words, now that we feel like fighting-cocks, there isn’t any fighting to be done. The great life in my estimation, would be to return to earth and battle with mortal problems, but equipped mentally and physically with immortal weapons.”
“Some people don’t know when they are well off,” said Beau Brummel. “This strikes me as being an ideal life. There are no tailors bills to pay—we are ourselves nothing but memories, and a memory can clothe himself in the shadow of his former grandeur—I clothe myself in the remembrance of my departed clothes, and as my memory is good I flatter myself I’m the best-dressed man here. The fact that there are ghosts of departed unpaid bills haunting my bedside at night doesn’t bother me in the least, because the bailiffs that in the old life lent terror to an overdue account, thanks to our beneficent system here, are kept in the less agreeable sections of Hades. I used to regret that bailiffs were such low people, but now I rejoice at it. If they had been of a different order they might have proven unpleasant here.”
“You are right, my dear Brummel,” interposed Munchausen. “This life is far preferable to that in the other sphere. Any of you gentlemen who happen to have had the pleasure of reading my memoirs must have been struck with the tremendous difficulties that encumbered my progress. If I wished for a rare liqueur for my luncheon, a liqueur served only at the table of an Oriental potentate, more jealous of it than of his one thousand queens, I had to raise armies, charter ships, and wage warfare in which feats of incredible valor had to be performed by myself alone and unaided to secure the desired thimbleful. I have destroyed empires for a bon-bon at great expense of nervous energy.”
“That’s very likely true,” said Carlyle. “I should think your feats of strength would have wrecked your imagination in time.”
“Not so,” said Munchausen. “On the contrary, continuous exercise served only to make it stronger. But, as I was going to say, in this life we have none of these fearful obstacles—it is a life of leisure; and if I want a bird and a cold bottle at any time, instead of placing my life in peril and jeopardizing the peace of all mankind to get it, I have only to summon before me the memory of some previous bird and cold bottle, dine thereon like a well-ordered citizen, and smoke the spirit of the best cigar my imagination can conjure up.”
“You miss my point,” said Shakespeare. “I don’t say this life is worse or better than the other we used to live. What I do say is that a combination of both would suit me. In short, I’d like to live here and go to the other world every day to business, like a suburban resident who sleeps in the country and makes his living in the city. For instance, why shouldn’t I dwell here and go to London every day, hire an office there, and put out a sign something like this:
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
DRAMATISTPlays written while you wait
I guess I’d find plenty to do.”
“Guess again,” said Tennyson. “My dear boy, you forget one thing. You are out of date. People don’t go to the theatres to hear you, they go to see the people who do you.”
“That is true,” said Ward. “And they do do you, my beloved William. It’s a wonder to me you are not dizzy turning over in your grave the way they do you.”
“Can it be that I can ever be out of date?” asked Shakespeare. “I know, of course, that I have to be adapted at times; but to be wholly out of date strikes me as a hard fate.”
“You’re not out of date,” interposed Carlyle; “the date is out of you. There is a great demand for Shakespeare in these days, but there isn’t any stuff.”
“Then I should succeed,” said Shakespeare.
“No, I don’t think so,” returned Carlyle. “You couldn’t stand the pace. The world revolves faster to-day than it did in your time—men write three or four plays at once. This is what you might call a Type-writer Age, and to keep up with the procession you’d have to work as you never worked before.”
“That is true,” observed Tennyson. “You’d have to learn to be ambidextrous, so that you could keep two type-writing machines going at once; and, to be perfectly frank with you, I cannot even conjure up in my fancy a picture of you knocking out a tragedy with the right hand on one machine, while your left hand is fashioning a farce-comedy on another.”
“He might do as a great many modern writers do,” said Ward; “go in for the Paper-doll Drama. Cut the whole thing out with a pair of scissors. As the poet might have said if he’d been clever enough:
Oh, bring me the scissors,
And bring me the glue,
And a couple of dozen old plays.
I’ll cut out and paste
A drama for you
That’ll run for quite sixty-two days.Oh, bring me a dress
Made of satin and lace,
And a book—say Joe Miller’s—of wit;
And I’ll make the old dramatists
Blue in the face
With the play that I’ll turn out for it.So bring me the scissors,
And bring me the paste,
And a dozen fine old comedies;
A fine line of dresses,
And popular taste
I’ll make a strong effort to please.
“You draw a very blue picture, it seems to me,” said Shakespeare, sadly.
“Well, it’s true,” said Carlyle. “The world isn’t at all what it used to be in any one respect, and you fellows who made great reputations centuries ago wouldn’t have even the ghost of a show now. I don’t believe Homer could get a poem accepted by a modern magazine, and while the comic papers are still printing Diogenes’ jokes the old gentleman couldn’t make enough out of them in these days to pay taxes on his tub, let alone earning his bread.”
“That is exactly so,” said Tennyson. “I’d be willing to wager too that, in the line of personal prowess, even D’Artagnan and Athos and Porthos and Aramis couldn’t stand London for one day.”
“Or New York either,” said Mr. Barnum, who had been an interested listener. “A New York policeman could have managed that quartet with one hand.”
“Then,” said Shakespeare, “in the opinion of you gentlemen, we old-time lions would appear to modern eyes to be more or less stuffed?”
“That’s about the size of it,” said Carlyle.
“But you’d draw,” said Barnum, his face lighting up with pleasure. “You’d drive a five-legged calf to suicide from envy. If I could take you and Cæsar, and Napoleon Bonaparte and Nero over for one circus season we’d drive the mint out of business.”
“There’s your chance, William,” said Ward. “You write a play for Bonaparte and Cæsar, and let Nero take his fiddle and be the orchestra. Under Barnum’s management you’d get enough activity in one season to last you through all eternity.”
“You can count on me,” said Barnum, rising. “Let me know when you’ve got your plan laid out. I’d stay and make a contract with you now, but Adam has promised to give me points on the management of wild animals without cages, so I can’t wait. By-by.”
“Humph!” said Shakespeare, as the eminent showman passed out. “That’s a gay proposition. When monkeys move in polite society William Shakespeare will make a side-show of himself for a circus.”
“They do now,” said Thackeray, quietly.
Which merely proved that Shakespeare did not mean what he said; for in spite of Thackeray’s insinuation as to the monkeys and polite society, he has not yet accepted the Barnum proposition, though there can be no doubt of its value from the point of view of a circus manager.
CHAPTER IX: AS TO COOKERY AND SCULPTURE
Robert Burns and Homer were seated at a small table in the dining-room of the house-boat, discussing everything in general and the shade of a very excellent luncheon in particular.
“We are in great luck to-day,” said Burns, as he cut a ruddy duck in twain. “This bird is done just right.”
“I agree with you,” returned Homer, drawing his chair a trifle closer to the table. “Compared to the one we had here last Thursday, this is a feast for the gods. I wonder who it was that cooked this fowl originally?”
“I give it up; but I suspect it was done by some man who knew his business,” said Burns, with a smack of his lips. “It’s a pity, I think, my dear Homer, that there is no means by which a cook may become immortal. Cooking is as much of an art as is the writing of poetry, and just as there are immortal poets so there should be immortal cooks. See what an advantage the poet has—he writes something, it goes out and reaches the inmost soul of the man who reads it, and it is signed. His work is known because he puts his name to it; but this poor devil of a cook—where is he? He has done his work as well as the poet ever did his, it has reached the inmost soul of the mortal who originally ate it, but he cannot get the glory of it because he cannot put his name to it. If the cook could sign his work it would be different.”
“You have hit upon a great truth,” said Homer, nodding, as he sometimes was wont to do. “And yet I fear that, ingenious as we are, we cannot devise a plan to remedy the matter. I do not know about you, but I should myself much object if my birds and my flapjacks, and other things, digestible and otherwise, that I eat here were served with the cook’s name written upon them. An omelette is sometimes a picture—”
“I’ve seen omelettes that looked like one of Turner’s sunsets,” acquiesced Burns.
“Precisely; and when Turner puts down in one corner of his canvas, ‘Turner, fecit,’ you do not object, but if the cook did that with the omelette you wouldn’t like it.”
“No,” said Burns; “but he might fasten a tag to it, with his name written upon that.”
“That is so,” said Homer; “but the result in the end would be the same. The tags would get lost, or perhaps a careless waiter, dropping a tray full of dainties, would get the tags of a good and bad cook mixed in trying to restore the contents of the tray to their previous condition. The tag system would fail.”
“There is but one other way that I can think of,” said Burns, “and that would do no good now unless we can convey our ideas into the other world; that is, for a great poet to lend his genius to the great cook, and make the latter’s name immortal by putting it into a poem. Say, for instance, that you had eaten a fine bit of terrapin, done to the most exquisite point—you could have asked the cook’s name, and written an apostrophe to her. Something like this, for instance:
Oh, Dinah Rudd! oh, Dinah Rudd!
Thou art a cook of bluest blood!
Nowhere within
This world of sin
Have I e’er tasted better terrapin.
Do you see?”
“I do; but even then, my dear fellow, the cook would fall short of true fame. Her excellence would be a mere matter of hearsay evidence,” said Homer.
“Not if you went on to describe, in a keenly analytical manner, the virtues of that particular bit of terrapin,” said Burns. “Draw so vivid a picture of the dish that the reader himself would taste that terrapin even as you tasted it.”
“You have hit it!” cried Homer, enthusiastically. “It is a grand plan; but how to introduce it—that is the question.”
“We can haunt some modern poet, and give him the idea in that way,” suggested Burns. “He will see the novelty of it, and will possibly disseminate the idea as we wish it to be disseminated.”
“Done!” said Homer. “I’ll begin right away. I feel like haunting to-night. I’m getting to be a pretty old ghost, but I’ll never lose my love of haunting.”
At this point, as Homer spoke, a fine-looking spirit entered the room, and took a seat at the head of the long table at which the regular club dinner was nightly served.
“Why, bless me!” said Homer, his face lighting up with pleasure. “Why, Phidias, is that you?”
“I think so,” said the new-comer, wearily; “at any rate, it’s all that’s left of me.”
“Come over here and lunch with us,” said Homer. “You know Burns, don’t you?”
“Haven’t the pleasure,” said Phidias.
The poet and the sculptor were introduced, after which Phidias seated himself at Homer’s side.
“Are you any relation to Burns the poet?” the former asked, addressing the Scotchman.
“I am Burns the poet,” replied the other.
“You don’t look much like your statues,” said Phidias, scanning his face critically.
“No, thank the Fates!” said Burns, warmly. “If I did, I’d commit suicide.”
“Why don’t you sue the sculptors for libel?” asked Phidias.
“You speak with a great deal of feeling, Phidias,” said Homer, gravely. “Have they done anything to hurt you?”
“They have,” said Phidias. “I have just returned from a tour of the world. I have seen the things they call sculpture in these degenerate days, and I must confess—who shouldn’t, perhaps—that I could have done better work with a baseball-bat for a chisel and putty for the raw material.”
“I think I could do good work with a baseball-bat too,” said Burns; “but as for the raw material, give me the heads of the men who have sculped me to work on. I’d leave them so that they’d look like some of your Parthenon frieze figures with the noses gone.”
“You are a vindictive creature,” said Homer. “These men you criticise, and whose heads you wish to sculp with a baseball-bat, have done more for you than you ever did for them. Every statue of you these men have made is a standing advertisement of your books, and it hasn’t cost you a penny. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that if it were not for those statues countless people would go to their graves supposing that the great Scottish Burns were little rivulets, and not a poet. What difference does it make to you if they haven’t made an Adonis of you? You never set them an example by making one of yourself. If there’s deception anywhere, it isn’t you that is deceived; it is the mortals. And who cares about them or their opinions?”
“I never thought of it in that way,” said Burns. “I hate caricatures—that is, caricatures of myself. I enjoy caricatures of other people, but—”
“You have a great deal of the mortal left in you, considering that you pose as an immortal,” said Homer, interrupting the speaker.
“Well, so have I,” said Phidias, resolved to stand by Burns in the argument, “and I’m sorry for the man who hasn’t. I was a mortal once, and I’m glad of it. I had a good time, and I don’t care who knows it. When I look about me and see Jupiter, the arch-snob of creation, and Mars, a little tin warrior who couldn’t have fought a soldier like Napoleon, with all his alleged divinity, I thank the Fates that they enabled me to achieve immortality through mortal effort. Hang hereditary greatness, I say. These men were born immortals. You and I worked for it and got it. We know what it cost. It was ours because we earned it, and not because we were born to it. Eh, Burns?”
The Scotchman nodded assent, and the Greek sculptor went on.
“I am not vindictive myself, Homer,” he said. “Nobody has hurt me, and, on the whole, I don’t think sculpture is in such a bad way, after all. There’s a shoemaker I wot of in the mortal realms who can turn the prettiest last you ever saw; and I encountered a carver in a London eating-house last month who turned out a slice of beef that was cut as artistically as I could have done it myself. What I object to chiefly is the tendency of the times. This is an electrical age, and men in my old profession aren’t content to turn out one chef-d’oeuvre in a lifetime. They take orders by the gross. I waited upon inspiration. To-day the sculptor waits upon custom, and an artist will make a bust of anybody in any material desired as long as he is sure of getting his pay afterwards. I saw a life-size statue of the inventor of a new kind of lard the other day, and what do you suppose the material was? Gold? Not by a great deal. Ivory? Marble, even? Not a bit of it. He was done in lard, sir. I have seen a woman’s head done in butter, too, and it makes me distinctly weary to think that my art should be brought so low.”
“You did your best work in Greece,” chuckled Homer.
“A bad joke, my dear Homer,” retorted Phidias. “I thought sculpture was getting down to a pretty low ebb when I had to fashion friezes out of marble; but marble is more precious than rubies alongside of butter and lard.”
“Each has its uses,” said Homer. “I’d rather have butter on my bread than marble, but I must confess that for sculpture it is very poor stuff, as you say.”
“It is indeed,” said Phidias. “For practice it’s all right to use butter, but for exhibition purposes—bah!”
Here Phidias, to show his contempt for butter as raw material in sculpture, seized a wooden toothpick, and with it modelled a beautiful head of Minerva out of the pat that stood upon the small plate at his side, and before Burns could interfere had spread the chaste figure as thinly as he could upon a piece of bread, which he tossed to the shade of a hungry dog that stood yelping on the river-bank.
“Heavens!” cried Burns. “Imperious Cæsar dead and turned to bricks is as nothing to a Minerva carved by Phidias used to stay the hunger of a ravening cur.”
“Well, it’s the way I feel,” said Phidias, savagely.
“I think you are a trifle foolish to be so eternally vexed about it,” said Homer, soothingly. “Of course you feel badly, but, after all, what’s the use? You must know that the mortals would pay more for one of your statues than they would for a specimen of any modern sculptor’s art; yes, even if yours were modelled in wine-jelly and the other fellow’s in pure gold. So why repine?”
“You’d feel the same way if poets did a similarly vulgar thing,” retorted Phidias; “you know you would. If you should hear of a poet to-day writing a poem on a thin layer of lard or butter, you would yourself be the first to call a halt.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” said Homer, quietly; “in fact, I wish the poets would do that. We’d have fewer bad poems to read; and that’s the way you should look at it. I venture to say that if this modern plan of making busts and friezes in butter had been adopted at an earlier period, the public places in our great cities and our national Walhallas would seem less like repositories of comic art, since the first critical rays of a warm sun would have reduced the carven atrocities therein to a spot on the pavement. The butter school of sculpture has its advantages, my boy, and you should be crowning the inventor of the system with laurel, and not heaping coals of fire upon his brow.”
“That,” said Burns, “is, after all, the solid truth, Phidias. Take the brass caricatures of me, for instance. Where would they be now if they had been cast in lard instead of in bronze?”
Phidias was silent a moment.
“Well,” he said, finally, as the value of the plan dawned upon his mind, “from that point of view I don’t know but what you are right, after all; and, to show that I have spoken in no vindictive spirit, let me propose a toast. Here’s to the Butter Sculptors. May their butter never give out.”
The toast was drained to the dregs, and Phidias went home feeling a little better.
CHAPTER X: STORY-TELLERS’ NIGHT
It was Story-tellers’ Night at the house-boat, and the best talkers of Hades were impressed into the service. Doctor Johnson was made chairman of the evening.
“Put him in the chair,” said Raleigh. “That’s the only way to keep him from telling a story himself. If he starts in on a tale he’ll make it a serial sure as fate, but if you make him the medium through which other story-tellers are introduced to the club he’ll be finely epigrammatic. He can be very short and sharp when he’s talking about somebody else. Personality is his forte.”
“Great scheme,” said Diogenes, who was chairman of the entertainment committee. “The nights over here are long, but if Johnson started on a story they’d have to reach twice around eternity and halfway back to give him time to finish all he had to say.”
“He’s not very witty, in my judgment,” said Carlyle, who since his arrival in the other world has manifested some jealousy of Solomon and Doctor Johnson.
“That’s true enough,” said Raleigh; “but he’s strong, and he’s bound to say something that will put the audience in sympathy with the man that he introduces, and that’s half the success of a Story-tellers’ Night. I’ve told stories myself. If your audience doesn’t sympathize with you you’d be better off at home putting the baby to bed.”
And so it happened. Doctor Johnson was made chairman, and the evening came. The Doctor was in great form. A list of the story-tellers had been sent him in advance, and he was prepared. The audience was about as select a one as can be found in Hades. The doors were thrown open to the friends of the members, and the smoke-furnace had been filled with a very superior quality of Arcadian mixture which Scott had brought back from a haunting-trip to the home of “The Little Minister,” at Thrums.
“Friends and fellow-spooks,” the Doctor began, when all were seated on the visionary camp-stools—which, by the way, are far superior to those in use in a world of realities, because they do not creak in the midst of a fine point demanding absolute silence for appreciation—“I do not know why I have been chosen to preside over this gathering of phantoms; it is the province of the presiding officer on occasions of this sort to say pleasant things, which he does not necessarily endorse, about the sundry persons who are to do the story-telling. Now, I suppose you all know me pretty well by this time. If there is anybody who doesn’t, I’ll be glad to have him presented after the formal work of the evening is over, and if I don’t like him I’ll tell him so. You know that if I can be counted upon for any one thing it is candor, and if I hurt the feelings of any of these individuals whom I introduce to-night, I want them distinctly to understand that it is not because I love them less, but that I love truth more. With this—ah—blanket apology, as it were, to cover all possible emergencies that may arise during the evening, I will begin. The first speaker on the programme, I regret to observe, is my friend Goldsmith. Affairs of this kind ought to begin with a snap, and while Oliver is a most excellent writer, as a speaker he is a pebbleless Demosthenes. If I had had the arrangement of the programme I should have had Goldsmith tell his story while the rest of us were down-stairs at supper. However, we must abide by our programme, which is unconscionably long, for otherwise we will never get through it. Those of you who agree with me as to the pleasure of listening to my friend Goldsmith will do well to join me in the grill-room while he is speaking, where, I understand, there is a very fine line of punches ready to be served. Modest Noll, will you kindly inflict yourself upon the gathering, and send me word when you get through, if you ever do, so that I may return and present number two to the assembly, whoever or whatever he may be?”
With these words the Doctor retired, and poor Goldsmith, pale with fear, rose up to speak. It was evident that he was quite as doubtful of his ability as a talker as was Johnson.
“I’m not much of a talker, or, as some say, speaker,” he said. “Talking is not my forte, as Doctor Johnson has told you, and I am therefore not much at it. Speaking is not in my line. I cannot speak or talk, as it were, because I am not particularly ready at the making of a speech, due partly to the fact that I am not much of a talker anyhow, and seldom if ever speak. I will therefore not bore you by attempting to speak, since a speech by one who like myself is, as you are possibly aware, not a fluent nor indeed in any sense an eloquent speaker, is apt to be a bore to those who will be kind enough to listen to my remarks, but will read instead the first five chapters of the Vicar of Wakefield.”
“Who suggested any such night as this, anyhow?” growled Carlyle. “Five chapters of the Vicar of Wakefield for a starter! Lord save us, we’ll need a Vicar of Sleepfield if he’s allowed to do this!”
“I move we adjourn,” said Darwin.
“Can’t something be done to keep these younger members quiet?” asked Solomon, frowning upon Carlyle and Darwin.
“Yes,” said Douglas Jerrold. “Let Goldsmith go on. He’ll have them asleep in ten minutes.”
Meanwhile, Goldsmith was plodding earnestly through his stint, utterly and happily oblivious of the effect he was having upon his audience.
“This is awful,” whispered Wellington to Bonaparte.
“Worse than Waterloo,” replied the ex-Emperor, with a grin; “but we can stop it in a minute. Artemas Ward told me once how a camp-meeting he attended in the West broke up to go outside and see a dog-fight. Can’t you and I pretend to quarrel? A personal assault by you on me will wake these people up and discombobulate Goldsmith. Say the word—only don’t hit too hard.”
“I’m with you,” said Wellington. Whereupon, with a great show of heat, he roared out, “You? Never! I’m more afraid of a boy with a bean-snapper that I ever was of you!” and followed up his remark by pulling Bonaparte’s camp-chair from under him, and letting the conqueror of Austerlitz fall to the floor with a thud which I have since heard described as dull and sickening.
The effect was instantaneous. Compared to a personal encounter between the two great figures of Waterloo, a reading from his own works by Goldsmith seemed lacking in the elements essential to the holding of an audience. Consequently, attention was centred in the belligerent warriors, and, by some odd mistake, when a peace-loving member of the assemblage, realizing the indecorousness of the incident, cried out, “Put him out! put him out!” the attendants rushed in, and, taking poor Goldsmith by his collar, hustled him out through the door, across the deck, and tossed him ashore without reference to the gang-plank. This accomplished, a personal explanation of their course was made by the quarrelling generals, and, peace having been restored, a committee was sent in search of Goldsmith with suitable apologies. The good and kindly soul returned, but having lost his book in the mêlée, much to his own gratification, as well as to that of the audience, he was permitted to rest in quiet the balance of the evening.
“Is he through?” said Johnson, poking his head in at the door when order was restored.
“Yes, sir,” said Boswell; “that is to say, he has retired permanently from the field. He didn’t finish, though.”
“Fellow-spooks,” began Johnson once more, “now that you have been delighted with the honeyed eloquence of the last speaker, it is my privilege to present to you that eminent fabulist Baron Munchausen, the greatest unrealist of all time, who will give you an exhibition of his paradoxical power of lying while standing.”
The applause which greeted the Baron was deafening. He was, beyond all doubt, one of the most popular members of the club.
“Speaking of whales,” said he, leaning gracefully against the table.
“Nobody has mentioned ’em,” said Johnson.
“True,” retorted the Baron; “but you always suggest them by your apparently unquenchable thirst for spouting—speaking of whales, my friend Jonah, as well as the rest of you, may be interested to know that I once had an experience similar to his own, and, strange to say, with the identical whale.”
Jonah arose from his seat in the back of the room. “I do not wish to be unpleasant,” he said, with a strong effort to be calm, “but I wish to ask if Judge Blackstone is in the room.”
“I am,” said the Judge, rising. “What can I do for you?”
“I desire to apply for an injunction restraining the Baron from using my whale in his story. That whale, your honor, is copyrighted,” said Jonah. “If I had any other claim to the affection of mankind than the one which is based on my experience with that leviathan, I would willingly permit the Baron to introduce him into his story; but that whale, your honor, is my stock in trade—he is my all.”
“I think Jonah’s point is well taken,” said Blackstone, turning to the Baron. “It would be a distinct hardship, I think, if the plaintiff in this action were to be deprived of the exclusive use of his sole accessory. The injunction prayed for is therefore granted. The court would suggest, however, that the Baron continue with his story, using another whale for the purpose.”
“It is impossible,” said Munchausen, gloomily. “The whole point of the story depends upon its having been Jonah’s whale. Under the circumstances, the only thing I can do is to sit down. I regret the narrowness of mind exhibited by my friend Jonah, but I must respect the decision of the court.”
“I must take exception to the Baron’s allusion to my narrowness of mind,” said Jonah, with some show of heat. “I am simply defending my rights, and I intend to continue to do so if the whole world unites in considering my mind a mere slot scarcely wide enough for the insertion of a nickel. That whale was my discovery, and the personal discomfort I endured in perfecting my experience was such that I resolved to rest my reputation upon his broad proportions only—to sink or swim with him—and I cannot at this late day permit another to crowd me out of his exclusive use.”
Jonah sat down and fanned himself, and the Baron, with a look of disgust on his face, left the room.
“Up to his old tricks,” he growled as he went. “He queers everything he goes into. If I’d known he was a member of this club I’d never have joined.”
“We do not appear to be progressing very rapidly,” said Doctor Johnson, rising. “So far we have made two efforts to have stories told, and have met with disaster each time. I don’t know but what you are to be congratulated, however, on your escape. Very few of you, I observe, have as yet fallen asleep. The next number on the programme, I see, is Boswell, who was to have entertained you with a few reminiscences; I say was to have done so, because he is not to do so.”
“I’m ready,” said Boswell, rising.
“No doubt,” retorted Johnson, severely, “but I am not. You are a man with one subject—myself. I admit it’s a good subject, but you are not the man to treat of it—here. You may suffice for mortals, but here it is different. I can speak for myself. You can go out and sit on the banks of the Vitriol Reservoir and lecture to the imps if you want to, but when it comes to reminiscences of me I’m on deck myself, and I flatter myself I remember what I said and did more accurately than you do. Therefore, gentlemen, instead of listening to Boswell at this point, you will kindly excuse him and listen to me. Ahem! When I was a boy—”
“Excuse me,” said Solomon, rising; “about how long is this—ah—this entertaining discourse of yours to continue?”
“Until I get through,” returned Johnson, wrathfully.
“Are you aware, sir, that I am on the programme?” asked Solomon.
“I am,” said the Doctor. “With that in mind, for the sake of our fellow-spooks who are present, I am very much inclined to keep on forever. When I was a boy—”
Carlyle rose up at this point.
“I should like to ask,” he said, mildly, “if this is supposed to be an audience of children? I, for one, have no wish to listen to the juvenile stories of Doctor Johnson. Furthermore, I have come here particularly to-night to hear Boswell. I want to compare him with Froude. I therefore protest against—”
“There is a roof to this house-boat,” said Doctor Johnson. “If Mr. Carlyle will retire to the roof with Boswell I have no doubt he can be accommodated. As for Solomon’s interruption, I can afford to pass that over with the silent contempt it deserves, though I may add with propriety that I consider his most famous proverbs the most absurd bits of hack-work I ever encountered; and as for that story about dividing a baby between two mothers by splitting it in two, it was grossly inhuman unless the baby was twins. When I was a boy—”
As the Doctor proceeded, Carlyle and Solomon, accompanied by the now angry Boswell, left the room, and my account of the Story-tellers’ Night must perforce stop; because, though I have never heretofore confessed it, all my information concerning the house-boat on the Styx has been derived from the memoranda of Boswell. It may be interesting to the reader to learn, however, that, according to Boswell’s account, the Story-tellers’ Night was never finished; but whether this means that it broke up immediately afterwards in a riot, or that Doctor Johnson is still at work detailing his reminiscences, I am not aware, and I cannot at the moment of writing ascertain, for Boswell, when I have the pleasure of meeting him, invariably avoids the subject.