It was a beautiful night on the Styx, and the silvery surface of that
picturesque stream was dotted with gondolas, canoes, and other craft to
an extent that made Charon feel like a highly prosperous savings-bank.
Within the house-boat were gathered a merry party, some of whom were on
mere pleasure bent, others of whom had come to listen to a debate, for
which the entertainment committee had provided, between the venerable
patriarch Noah and the late eminent showman P. T. Barnum. The question
to be debated was upon the resolution passed by the committee, that "The
Animals of the Antediluvian Period were Far More Attractive for Show
Purposes than those of Modern Make," and, singular to relate, the
affirmative was placed in the hands of Mr. Barnum, while to Noah had
fallen the task of upholding the virtues of the modern freak. It is with
the party on mere pleasure bent that we have to do upon this occasion.
The proceedings of the debating-party are as yet in the hands of the
official stenographer, but will be made public as soon as they are ready.
The pleasure-seeking group were gathered in the smoking-room of the club,
which was, indeed, a smoking-room of a novel sort, the invention of an
unknown shade, who had sold all the rights to the club through a third
party, anonymously, preferring, it seemed, to remain in the Elysian
world, as he had been in the mundane sphere, a mute inglorious Edison. It
was a simple enough scheme, and, for a wonder, no one in the world of
substantialities has thought to take it up. The smoke was stored in
reservoirs, just as if it were so much gas or water, and was supplied on
the hot-air furnace principle from a huge furnace in the hold of the
house-boat, into which tobacco was shovelled by the hired man of the club
night and day. The smoke from the furnace, carried through flues to the
smoking-room, was there received and stored in the reservoirs, with each
of which was connected one dozen rubber tubes, having at their ends amber
mouth-pieces. Upon each of these mouth-pieces was arranged a small meter
registering the amount of smoke consumed through it, and for this the
consumer paid so much a foot. The value of the plan was threefold. It
did away entirely with ashes, it saved to the consumers the value of the
unconsumed tobacco that is represented by the unsmoked cigar ends, and it
averted the possibility of cigarettes.
Enjoying the benefits of this arrangement upon the evening in question
were Shakespeare, Cicero, Henry VIII., Doctor Johnson, and others. Of
course Boswell was present too, for a moment, with his note-book, and
this fact evoked some criticism from several of the smokers.
"You ought to be up-stairs in the lecture-room, Boswell," said
Shakespeare, as the great biographer took his seat behind his friend the
Doctor. "Doesn't the _Gossip_ want a report of the debate?"
"It does," said Boswell; "but the _Gossip_ endeavors always to get the
most interesting items of the day, and Doctor Johnson has informed me
that he expects to be unusually witty this evening, so I have come here."
"Excuse me for saying it, Boswell," said the Doctor, getting red in the
face over this unexpected confession, "but, really, you talk too much."
"That's good," said Cicero. "Stick that down, Boz, and print it. It's
the best thing Johnson has said this week."
Boswell smiled weakly, and said: "But, Doctor, you did say that, you
know. I can prove it, too, for you told me some of the things you were
going to say. Don't you remember, you were going to lead Shakespeare up
to making the remark that he thought the English language was the
greatest language in creation, whereupon you were going to ask him why he
didn't learn it?"
"Get out of here, you idiot!" roared the Doctor. "You're enough to give
a man apoplexy."
"You're not going back on the ladder by which you have climbed, are you,
Samuel?" queried Boswell, earnestly.
"The wha-a-t?" cried the Doctor, angrily. "The ladder--on which I
climbed? You? Great heavens! That it should come to this! . . . Leave
the room--instantly! Ladder! By all that is beautiful--the ladder upon
which I, Samuel Johnson, the tallest person in letters, have climbed! Go!
Do you hear?"
Boswell rose meekly, and, with tears coursing down his cheeks, left the
room.
"That's one on you, Doctor," said Cicero, wrapping his toga about him. "I
think you ought to order up three baskets of champagne on that."
"I'll order up three baskets full of Boswell's remains if he ever dares
speak like that again!" retorted the Doctor, shaking with anger. "He--my
ladder--why, it's ridiculous."
"Yes," said Shakespeare, dryly. "That's why we laugh."
"You were a little hard on him, Doctor," said Henry VIII. "He was a
valuable man to you. He had a great eye for your greatness."
"Yes. If there's any feature of Boswell that's greater than his nose and
ears, it's his great I," said the Doctor.
"You'd rather have him change his I to a U, I presume," said Napoleon,
quietly.
The Doctor waved his hand impatiently. "Let's drop him," he said.
"Dropping one's biographer isn't without precedent. As soon as any man
ever got to know Napoleon well enough to write him up he sent him to the
front, where he could get a little lead in his system."
"I wish I had had a Boswell all the same," said Shakespeare. "Then the
world would have known the truth about me."
"It wouldn't if he'd relied on your word for it," retorted the Doctor.
"Hullo! here's Hamlet."
As the Doctor spoke, in very truth the melancholy Dane appeared in the
doorway, more melancholy of aspect than ever.
"What's the matter with you?" asked Cicero, addressing the new-comer.
"Haven't you got that poison out of your system yet?"
"Not entirely," said Hamlet, with a sigh; "but it isn't that that's
bothering me. It's Fate."
"We'll get out an injunction against Fate if you like," said Blackstone.
"Is it persecution, or have you deserved it?"
"I think it's persecution," said Hamlet. "I never wronged Fate in my
life, and why she should pursue me like a demon through all eternity is a
thing I can't understand."
"Maybe Ophelia is back of it," suggested Doctor Johnson. "These women
have a great deal of sympathy for each other, and, candidly, I think you
behaved pretty rudely to Ophelia. It's a poor way to show your love for
a young woman, running a sword through her father every night for pay,
and driving the girl to suicide with equal frequency, just to show
theatre-goers what a smart little Dane you can be if you try."
"'Tisn't me does all that," returned Hamlet. "I only did it once, and
even then it wasn't as bad as Shakespeare made it out to be."
"I put it down just as it was," said Shakespeare, hotly, "and you can't
dispute it."
"Yes, he can," said Yorick. "You made him tell Horatio he knew me well,
and he never met me in his life."
"I never told Horatio anything of the sort," said Hamlet. "I never
entered the graveyard even, and I can prove an alibi."
"And, what's more, he couldn't have made the remark the way Shakespeare
has it, anyhow," said Yorick, "and for a very good reason. I wasn't
buried in that graveyard, and Hamlet and I can prove an alibi for the
skull, too."
"It was a good play, just the same," said Cicero.
"Very," put in Doctor Johnson. "It cured me of insomnia."
"Well, if you don't talk in your sleep, the play did a Christian service
to the world," retorted Shakespeare. "But, really, Hamlet, I thought I
did the square thing by you in that play. I meant to, anyhow; and if it
has made you unhappy, I'm honestly sorry."
"Spoken like a man," said Yorick.
"I don't mind the play so much," said Hamlet, "but the way I'm
represented by these fellows who play it is the thing that rubs me the
wrong way. Why, I even hear that there's a troupe out in the western
part of the United States that puts the thing on with three Hamlets, two
ghosts, and a pair of blood-hounds. It's called the Uncle-Tom-Hamlet
Combination, and instead of my falling in love with one crazy Ophelia, I
am made to woo three dusky maniacs named Topsy on a canvas ice-floe,
while the blood-hounds bark behind the scenes. What sort of treatment is
that for a man of royal lineage?"
"It's pretty rough," said Napoleon. "As the poet ought to have said,
'Oh, Hamlet, Hamlet, what crimes are committed in thy name!'"
"I feel as badly about the play as Hamlet does," said Shakespeare, after
a moment of silent thought. "I don't bother much about this wild Western
business, though, because I think the introduction of the bloodhounds and
the Topsies makes us both more popular in that region than we should be
otherwise. What I object to is the way we are treated by these so-called
first-class intellectual actors in London and other great cities. I've
seen Hamlet done before a highly cultivated audience, and, by Jove, it
made me blush."
"Me too," sighed Hamlet. "I have seen a man who had a walk on him that
suggested spring-halt and locomotor ataxia combined impersonating my
graceful self in a manner that drove me almost crazy. I've heard my 'To
be or not to be' soliloquy uttered by a famous tragedian in tones that
would make a graveyard yawn at mid-day, and if there was any way in which
I could get even with that man I'd do it."
"It seems to me," said Blackstone, assuming for the moment a highly
judicial manner--"it seems to me that Shakespeare, having got you into
this trouble, ought to get you out of it."
"But how?" said Shakespeare, earnestly. "That's the point. Heaven knows
I'm willing enough."
Hamlet's face suddenly brightened as though illuminated with an idea.
Then he began to dance about the room with an expression of glee that
annoyed Doctor Johnson exceedingly.
"I wish Darwin could see you now," the Doctor growled. "A kodak picture
of you would prove his arguments conclusively."
"Rail on, O philosopher!" retorted Hamlet. "Rail on! I mind your
railings not, for I the germ of an idea have got."
"Well, go quarantine yourself," said the Doctor. "I'd hate to have one
of your idea microbes get hold of me."
"What's the scheme?" asked Shakespeare.
"You can write a play for _me_!" cried Hamlet. "Make it a farce-tragedy.
Take the modern player for your hero, and let _me_ play _him_. I'll bait
him through four acts. I'll imitate his walk. I'll cultivate his voice.
We'll have the first act a tank act, and drop the hero into the tank. The
second act can be in a saw-mill, and we can cut his hair off on a buzz-
saw. The third act can introduce a spile-driver with which to drive his
hat over his eyes and knock his brains down into his lungs. The fourth
act can be at Niagara Falls, and we'll send him over the falls; and for a
grand climax we can have him guillotined just after he has swallowed a
quart of prussic acid and a spoonful of powdered glass. Do that for me,
William, and you are forgiven. I'll play it for six hundred nights in
London, for two years in New York, and round up with a one-night stand in
Boston."
"It sounds like a good scheme," said Shakespeare, meditatively. "What
shall we call it?"
"Call it _Irving_," said Eugene Aram, who had entered. "I too have
suffered."
"And let me be Hamlet's understudy," said Charles the First, earnestly.
"Done!" said Shakespeare, calling for a pad and pencil.
And as the sun rose upon the Styx the next morning the Bard of Avon was
to be seen writing a comic chorus to be sung over the moribund tragedian
by the shades of Charles, Aram, and other eminent deceased heroes of the
stage, with which his new play of _Irving_ was to be brought to an
appropriate close.
This play has not as yet found its way upon the boards, but any
enterprising manager who desires to consider it may address
_Hamlet_,
_The House-Boat_,
_Hades-on-the-Styx_.
He is sure to get a reply by return mail, unless Mephistopheles
interferes, which is not unlikely, since Mephistopheles is said to have
been much pleased with the manner in which the eminent tragedian has put
him before the British and American public.