It was and will no doubt be considered, even by those who are not too
friendly towards myself, a daring idea, and it was all my own. One
night, several weeks after the interview with Boswell just narrated, the
idea came to me simultaneously with the first tapping of the keys for
the evening upon the Enchanted Type-Writer. It was Boswell's touch that
summoned me from my divan. My family were on the eve of departure for
a month's rest from care and play in the mountains, and I was
looking forward to a period of very great loneliness. But as Boswell
materialized and began his work upon the machine, the great idea flashed
across my mind, and I resolved to “play it” for all it was worth.
“Jim,” said I, as I approached the vacant chair in which he sat--for
by this time the great biographer and I had got upon terms of
familiarity--“Jim,” said I, “I've got a very gloomy prospect ahead of
me.”
“Well, why not?” he tapped off. “Where do you expect to have your gloomy
prospects? They can't very well be behind you.”
“Humph!” said I. “You are facetious this evening.”
“Not at all,” he replied. “I have been spending the day with my old-time
boss, Samuel Johnson, and I am so saturated with purism that I hardly
know where I am. From the Johnsonian point of view you have expressed
yourself ill--”
“Well, I am ill,” I retorted. “I don't know how far you are acquainted
with home life, but I do know that there is no greater homesickness in
the world than that of the man who is sick of home.”
“I am not an imitator,” said Boswell, “but I must imitate you to the
extent of saying humph! I quote you, and, doing so, I honor you. But
really, I never thought you could be sick of home, as you put it--you
who are so happy at home and who so wildly hate being away from home.”
“I'm not surprised at that, my dear Boswell,” said I. “But you are, of
course, familiar with the phrase 'Stone walls do not a prison make?'”
“I've heard it,” said Boswell.
“Well, there's another equally valid phrase which I have not yet heard
expressed by another, and it is this: 'Stone walls do not a home make.'”
“It isn't very musical, is it?” said he.
“Not very,” I answered, “but we don't all live magazine lives, do we? We
have occasionally a sentiment, a feeling, out of which we do not try 'to
make copy.' It is undoubtedly a truth which I have not yet seen voiced
by any modern poet of my acquaintance, not even by the dead-baby poets,
that home is not always preferable to some other things. At any rate,
it is my feeling, and is shortly to represent my condition. My home,
you know. It has its walls and its pictures, and its thousand and one
comforts, and its associations, but when my wife and my children are
away, and the four walls do not re-echo the voices of the children, and
my library lacks the presence of madame, it ceases truly to be home, and
if I've got to stay here during the month of August alone I must have
diversion, else I shall find myself as badly off as the butterfly man,
to whom a vaudeville exhibition is the greatest joy in life.”
“I think you are queer,” said Boswell.
“Well, I am not,” said I. “However low we may set the standard of man,
Mr. B.”--and I called him Mr. B. instead of Jim, because I wished to be
severe and yet retain the basis of familiarity--“however low we may set
the standard of man, I think man as a rule prefers his home to the most
seductive roof-garden life in existence.”
“Wherefore?” said he, coldly.
“Wherefore my home about to become unattractive through the absence of
my boys and their mother, I shall need some extraordinary diversion to
accomplish my happiness. Now if you can come here, why can't others?
Suppose to-night you dash off on the machine a lot of invitations to the
pleasantest people in Hades to come up here with you and have an evening
on earth, which isn't all bad.”
“It's a scheme and a half,” said Boswell, with more enthusiasm than I
had expected. “I'll do it, only instead of trying to get these people
to make a pilgrimage to your shrine, which I think they would decline to
do--Shakespeare, for instance, wouldn't give a tuppence to inspect
your birthplace as you have inspected his--I'll institute a series of
'Boswell's Personally Conducted Pleasure Parties,' and make you my agent
here. That, you see, will naturally make your home our headquarters, and
I think the scheme would work a charm, because there are a great many
well-known Stygians who are curious to revisit the scenes of
their earlier state, but who are timid about coming on their own
responsibility.”
“I see,” said I. “Immortals are but mortal after all, with all the
timidity and weaknesses of mortality. But I agree to the proposition,
and if you wish it I'll prepare to give them a rousing old time.”
“And be sure to show them something characteristic,” said Boswell.
“I will,” I replied; “I may even get up a trolley-party for them.”
“I don't know what a trolley-party is, but it sounds well,” said
Boswell, “and I'll advertise the enterprise at once. 'Boswell's
Personally Conducted Pleasure Parties. First Series, No. 1. Trolleying
Through Hoboken. For the Round Trip, Four Dollars. Supper and All
Expenses Included. No Tips. Extra Lady's Ticket, One Dollar.'”
“Hold on!” I cried. “That can't be. These affairs will really have to be
stag-parties--with my wife away, you know.”
“Not if we secure a suitable chaperon,” said Boswell.
“Anyhow!” said I, with great positiveness. “You don't suppose that in
the absence of my family I'm going to have my neighbors see me cavorting
about the country on a trolley-car full of queens and duchesses and
other females of all ages? Not a bit of it, my dear James. I'm not a
strictly conventional person, but there are some points between which I
draw lines. I've got to live on this earth for a little while yet, and
until I leave it I must be guided more or less in what I do by what the
world approves or disapproves.”
“Very well,” Boswell answered. “I suppose you are right, but in the
autumn, when your family has returned--”
“We can discuss the matter again,” said I, resolved to put off the
question for as long a time as I could, for I candidly confess that I
had no wish to make myself responsible for the welfare of such Stygian
ladies as might avail themselves of the opportunity to go off on one
of Boswell's tours. “Show the value and beauties of your plan to the
influential men of Hades first, my dear Boswell,” I added, “and then if
they choose they can come again and bring their wives with them on their
own responsibility.”
“I fancy that is the best plan, but we ought to have some variety in
these tours,” he replied. “A trolley-party, however successful, would
not make a great season for an entertainment bureau, would it?”
“No, indeed,” said I. “You are perfectly right about that. What you
want is one function a week during the summer season. Open with the
trolley-party as No. 1 of your first series. Follow this with 'An
Evening of Vaudeville: The Grand Tour of the Roof Gardens.' After that
have a 'Sunday at the Sea-side--Surf Bathing, Summer Girls and Sand.'
That would make a mighty attractive line for your advertisement.”
“Magnificent. I don't see why you don't give up poetry and magazine
work and get a position as poster-writer for a circus. You are only a
mediocre magazinist, but in the poster business you'd be a genius.”
This was tapped off with such manifest sincerity that I could not take
offence, so I thanked him and resumed.
“The grand finale of your first series might be 'A Tandem Scorch: A
Century Run on a Bicycle Built for Two Hundred!'”
“Magnificent!” cried Boswell, with such enthusiasm that I feared he
would smash the machine. “I'll devote a whole page of my Sunday issue to
the prospectus--but, to return to the woman question, we ought really
to have something to announce for them. Hades hath no fury like a woman
scorned, and I can't afford to scorn the sex. You needn't have anything
to do with them if you don't want to--only tell me something I can
announce, and I'll make Henry the Eighth solid again by putting that
branch of the enterprise in his wives' hands. In that way I'll kill two
birds with one stone.”
“That's all very well, Boswell, but I'm afraid I can't,” said I. “It's
hard enough to know how to please a mortal woman without attempting to
get up a series of picnics for the rather miscellaneous assortment of
ladies who form your social structure below. All men are alike, and
man's pleasures in all times have been generally the same, but every
woman is unique. I never knew two who were alike, and if it's all the
same to you I'd rather you left me out of your ladies' tours altogether.
Of course I know that even the Queen of Sheba would enjoy a visit to a
Monday sale at one of our big department stores, and I am quite as well
aware that nine out of ten women in Hades or out of it would enjoy
the millinery exhibition at the opera matinee--and if these two ideas
impress you at all you are welcome to them--but beyond this I have
nothing to suggest.”
“Well, I'm sure those two ideas are worth a great deal,” returned
Boswell, making a note of them; “I shall announce four trips to Monday
sales--”
“Call 'em 'To Bargaindale and Back: The Great Marked-down Tour,' and be
sure you add, 'For Able-bodied Women Only. No Tickets Issued Except on
Recommendation of your Family Physician.' This is especially important,
for next to a war or a football match there's nothing that I know of
that is quite so dangerous to the participants as a bargain day.”
“I'll bear what you say in mind,” quoth Boswell, and he made a note of
my injunction. “And immediately upon my return to Hades I will request
an audience with Henry's queens, and ask them to devise a number of
other tours likely to prove profitable and popular.”
Shortly after my visitor departed and I retired. The next day my family
deserted me and went to the mountains, and all my fears as to the
inordinate sense of loneliness which was to be my lot were realized.
Even Boswell neglected me apparently for a week. I went to my desk
daily and returned at night hoping that my type-writer would bring forth
something of an interesting nature, but naught other than disappointment
awaited me. For a whole blessed week I was thrown back upon the society
of my neighbors for diversion. The type-writer gave no sign of being.
Little did I guess that Boswell was busy working up my scheme in his
Stygian home!
But it came to pass finally that I was roused up. Walking one morning to
my desk to find a bit of memoranda I needed, I discovered a type-written
slip marked, “No time for small talk. Boswell's tours grand success.
Trolley-party to-night. Ten cars wanted. Jim.”
It was a large order for a town like mine, where forty thousand people
have to get along with five cars--two open ones for winter and two
closed for summer, and one, which we have never seen, which is kept for
use in the repair-shop. I was in despair. Ten car-loads of immortals
coming to my house for a trolley-party under such conditions! It was
frightful! I did the best I could, however.
I ordered one trolley-car to be ready at eight, and a large variety of
good things edible and drinkable, the latter to be held subject to the
demand-notes of our guests.
As may be imagined, I did little real work that day, and when I returned
home at night I was on tenter-hooks lest something should go wrong; but
fortunately Boswell himself came early and relieved me of my worry--in
fact, he was at the machine when I entered the house.
“Well,” he said, “have you the ten cars?”
“What do you take me for,” said I, “a trolley-car trust? Of course I
haven't. There are only five cars in town, one of which is kept in the
repair-shop for effect. I've hired one.”
“Humph!” he cried. “What will the kings do?”
“Kings!” I cried. “What kings?”
“I have nine kings and one car-load of common souls besides for this
affair,” he explained. “Each king wants a special car.”
“Kings be jiggered!” said I. “A trolley-party, my much beloved James,
is an essentially democratic institution, and private cars are not de
rigueur. If your kings choose to come, let 'em hang on by the straps.”
“But I've charged 'em extra!” cried Boswell.
“That's all right,” said I, “they receive extra. They have the ride
plus the straps, with the privilege of standing out on the platform
and ringing the gong if they want to. The great thing about the
trolley-party is that there's no private car business about it.”
“Well, I don't know,” Boswell murmured, reflectively. “If Charles the
First and Louis Fourteenth don't kick about being crowded in with all
the rest, I can stand anything that Frederick the Great or Nero
might say; but those two fellows are great sticklers for the royal
prerogative.”
“There isn't any such thing as royal prerogative on a trolley-car,” I
retorted, “and if they don't like what they get they can sit down in the
waiting-room and wait until we get back.”
But Boswell's fears were not realized. Charles and Louis were perfectly
delighted with the trolley-party, and long before we reached home the
former had rung up the fare-register to its full capacity, while the
latter, a half-a-dozen times, delightedly occupied himself in mastering
the intricacies of the overhead wire. The trolley-party was an undoubted
success. The same remains to be said of the vaudeville expedition of
the following week. The same guests and potentates attended this, to
the number of twenty, and the Boswell tours were accounted a great
enterprise, and bade fair to redeem the losses of the eminent journalist
incurred during Xanthippe's administration of his affairs; but after
the bicycle night I had to withdraw from the combination to save my
reputation. The fact upon which I had not counted was that my neighbors
began to think me insane. I had failed to remember that none of these
visiting spirits was visible to us in this material world, and while
my fellow-townsmen were disposed to lay up my hiring of a special
trolley-car for my own private and particular use against the
eccentricity of genius, they marvelled greatly that I should purchase
twenty of the best seats at a vaudeville show seemingly for my own
exclusive use. When, besides this, they saw me start off apparently
alone on one tandem bicycle, followed by twenty-eight other empty
wheels, which they could not know were manipulated by some of the most
famous legs in the history of the world, from Noah's down to those
of Henry Fielding the novelist, they began to regard me as something
uncanny.
Nor can I blame them. It seems to me that if I saw one man scorching
along a road alone on a tandem bicycle chatting to an empty front-seat,
I should think him queer, but if following in his wake I perceived
twenty-eight other wheels, scorching up hill and down dale without any
visible motive power, I should regard him as one who was in league with
the devil himself.
Nevertheless, I judge from what Boswell has told me that I am regarded
in Hades as a great benefactor of the people there, for having
established a series of excursions from that world into this, a service
which has done much to convince the Stygians that after all, if only by
contrast, the life below has its redeeming features.