“I haven't written anything that has lasted a hundred years yet,” said
I.
“Oh, yes, I think you have,” replied Boswell, and the machine seemed to
laugh as he wrote out his answer. “I saw a joke of yours the other day
that's two hundred centuries old. Diogenes showed it to me and said that
it was a great favorite with his grandfather, who had inherited it from
one of his remote ancestors.”
A hot retort was on my lips, but I had no wish to offend my guest, so
I smiled and observed that I had frequently indulged in unconscious
plagiarism of that sort.
“I should imagine,” I hastened to add, “that to men like Charles the
First this uncertainty as to the safety of Cromwell would be great joy.”
“I hardly know,” returned Boswell. “That very question has been
discussed among us. Charles made a great outward show of grief when
he heard of the coal being delivered at the office of the Minister of
Justice, and we all thought him quite magnanimous, but it leaked out,
just before I left to come here, that he sent his private secretary to
the palace with a Panama hat and a palm-leaf fan for Cromwell, with his
congratulations.
“That seems to savor somewhat of sarcasm.”
“Oh, ultimately Hades is bound to be a republic,” replied Boswell.
“There are too many clever and ambitious politicians among us for the
place to go along as a despotism much longer. If the place were filled
up with poets and society people, and things like that, it might go on
as an autocracy forever, but you see it isn't. To men of the caliber
of Alexander the Great and Bonaparte and Caesar, and a thousand other
warriors who never were used to taking orders from anybody, but were
themselves headquarters, the despotic sway of Apollyon is intolerable,
and he hasn't made any effort to conciliate any of them. If he had
appointed Bonaparte commander-in-chief of his army and made a friend of
him, instead of ordering him to be hanged every month for 415,000 years,
or put Caesar in as Secretary of State, instead of having him roasted
three times a month for seventy or eighty centuries, he would have
strengthened his hold. As it is, he has ignored all these people
officially, treats them like criminals personally; makes friends with
Mazarin and Powhatan, awards the office of Tax Assessor to Dick Turpin,
and makes old Falstaff commander of his Imperial Guard. And just because
poor Ben Jonson scribbled off a rhyme for my paper, The Gazette--a rhyme
running:
Mazarin And Powhatan,
Turpin and Falstaff,
Form, you bet, A cabinet
To make a donkey laugh.
Mazarin And Powhatan
Run Apollyon's state.
The Dick and Jacks Collect the tax--
The people pay the freight.
--just because Jonson wrote that and I published it, my paper was
confiscated, Jonson was boiled in oil for ten weeks, and I was seized
and thrown into a dungeon where a lot of savages from the South Sea
Islands tattooed the darned old jingle between my shoulder blades in
green letters, and not satisfied with this barbaric act, right under
the jingle they added the line, in red letters, 'This edition strictly
limited to one copy, for private circulation only,' and they every one
of 'em, Apollyon, Mazarin, and the rest, signed the guarantee personally
with red-hot pens dipped in sulphuric acid. It makes a valuable
collection of autographs, no doubt, but I prefer my back as nature made
it. Talk about enlightened government under a man who'll permit things
like that to be done!”