“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

DRAMATIST

Plays 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.