The Enchanted Typewriter

“Spoken like a philosopher!” I cried. “And if I can help you, my dear Boswell, count upon me. In anything you may do, whether you start a monthly magazine, a sporting weekly, or a purely American Sunday newspaper, you are welcome to anything I can do for you.”

“You are very kind,” returned Boswell, appreciatively, “and if I need your services I shall be glad to avail myself of them. Just at present, however, my plans are so fully prepared that I do not think I shall have to call upon you. With Sherlock Holmes engaged to write twelve new detective stories; Poe to look after my tales of horror; D’Artagnan dictating his personal memoirs; Lucretia Borgia running my Girls’ Department; and others too numerous to mention, I have a sufficient supply of stuff to fill up; but if you feel like writing a few poems for me I may be able to use them as fillers, and they may help to make your name so well known in Hades that next year I shall be able to print a Worldly Letter from you every week with a good chance of its proving popular.”

And with this promise Boswell left me to get out the first number of The Cimmerian: a Sunday Magazine for all. Taking him at his word, I sent him the following poem a few days later:

    LOCALITY

 
    Whither do we drift,
    Insensate souls, whose every breath
    Foretells the doom of nothingness?
    Yet onward, upward let it be
    Through all the myriad circles
    Of the ensuing years—
    And then, pray what?
    Alas! ‘tis all, and never shall be stated.
    Atoms, yet atomless we drift,
    But whitherward?
 

I had intended this for one of our leading magazines, but it seemed so to lack the mystical quality, which is essential to a successful magazine poem in our sphere, that I deemed it best to try it on Boswell.

VI. THE BOSWELL TOURS: PERSONALLY CONDUCTED

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.

VII. AN IMPORTANT DECISION

For some time after the organization of the Pleasure Tours, the Enchanted Type-Writer appeared to be deserted. Night after night I watched over it with great care lest I should lose any item of interest that might come to me from below, but, much to my sorrow, things in Hades appeared to be dull—so dull that the machine was not called into requisition at all. I little guessed what important matters were transpiring in that wonderful country. Had I done so, I doubt I should have waited so patiently, although my only method of getting there was suicide, for which diversion I have very little liking. On the twenty-fourth night of waiting, however, the welcome sound of the bell dragged me forth from my comfortable couch, whither, expecting nothing, I had retired early.

“Glad to hear your pleasant tinkle again,” I said. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’m glad to get back,” returned Boswell, for it was he who was manipulating the keys. “I’ve been so infernally busy, however, over the court news, that I haven’t had a minute to spare.”

“Court news, eh?” I said. “You are going to open up a society column, are you?”

“Not I,” he replied. “It’s the other kind of a court. We’ve been having some pretty hot litigation down in Hades since I was here last. The city of Cimmeria has been suing the State of Hades for ten years back dog-taxes.”

“For what?” I cried.

“Unpaid dog-taxes for ten years,” Boswell explained. “We have just as much government below in our cities as you have, and I will say for Hades that our cities are better run than yours.”

“I suppose that is due to the fact that when a man gets to Hades he immediately becomes a reformer,” I suggested, with a wink at the machine, which somehow or other did not seem to appreciate the joke.

“Possibly,” observed Boswell. “Whatever the reason, however, the fact remains that Cimmeria is a well-governed city, and, what is more, it isn’t afraid to assert its rights even as against old Apollyon himself.”

“It’s safe enough for a corporation,” said I. “Much safer for a corporation which has no soul, than for an individual who has. You can’t torture a city—”

“Oh, can’t you!” laughed Boswell. “Humph. Apollyon can make it as hot for a city as he can for an individual. It is evident that you never heard of Sodom and Gomorrah—which is surprising to me, since your jokes about Lot’s wife being too fresh and getting salted down, would seem to indicate that you had heard something about the punishment those cities underwent.”

“You are right, Bozzy,” I said. “I had forgotten. But tell me about the dog-tax. Does the State own a dog?”

“Does it?” roared Boswell. “Why, my dear fellow, where were you brought up and educated. Does the State own a dog!”

“That’s what I asked you,” I put in, meekly. “I may be very ignorant, unless you mean the kind that we have in our legislatures, called the watch-dogs of the treasury, or, perhaps, the dogs of war. But I never thought any city would be crazy enough to make the government take out a license for them.”

“Never heard of a beast named Cerberus, I suppose?” said Boswell.

“Yes, I have,” I answered. “He guards the gates to the infernal regions.”

“Well—he’s the bone of contention,” said Boswell. “You see, about ten years ago the people of Cimmeria got rather tired of the condition of their streets. They were badly paved. They were full of good intentions, but the citizens thought they ought to have something more lasting, so they voted to appropriate an enormous sum for asphalting. They didn’t realize how sloppy asphalt would become in that climate, but after the asphalt was put down they found out, and a Beelzebub of a time of it they had. Pegasus sprained his off hind leg by slipping on it, Bucephalus got into it with all four feet and had to be lifted out with a derrick, and every other fine horse we had was more or less injured, and the damage suits against the city were enormous. To remedy this, the asphalting was taken up and a Nicholson wood pavement was put down. This was worse than the other. It used to catch fire every other night, and, finally, to protect their houses, the people rose up en masse and ripped it all to pieces.

“This necessitated a third new pavement, of Belgian blocks, to pay for which the already overburdened city of Cimmeria had to issue bonds to an enormous amount, all of which necessitated an increase of taxes. Naturally, one of the first taxes to be imposed was a dog-tax, and it was that which led to this lawsuit, which, I regret to say, the city has lost, although Judge Blackstone’s decision was eminently fair.”

“Wouldn’t the State pay?” I asked.

“Yes—on Cerberus as one dog,” said Boswell. “The city claimed, however, that Cerberus was more than that, and endeavored to collect on three dogs—one license for each head. This the State declined to pay, and out of this grew further complications of a distressing nature. The city sent its dog-catchers up to abscond with the dog, intending to cut off two of its heads, and return the balance as being as much of the beast as the State was entitled to maintain on a single license. It was an unfortunate move, for when Cerberus himself took the situation in, which he did at a glance, he nabbed the dog-catcher by the coat-tails with one pair of jaws, grabbed hold of his collar with another, and shook him as he would a rat, meanwhile chewing up other portions of the unfortunate official with his third set of teeth. The functionary was then carried home on a stretcher, and subsequently sued the city for damages, which he recovered.

“Another man was sent out to lure the ferocious beast to the pound with a lasso, but it worked no better than the previous attempt. The lasso fell all right tight about one of the animal’s necks, but his other two heads immediately set to work and gnawed the rope through, and then set off after the dog-catcher, overtaking him at the very door of the pound. This time he didn’t do any biting, but lifting the dog-catcher up with his various sets of teeth, fastened to his collar, coat-tails, and feet respectively, carried him yelling like a trooper to the end of the wharf and dropped him into the Styx. The result of this was nervous prostration for the dog-catcher, another suit for damages for the city, and a great laugh for the State authorities. In fact,” Boswell added, confidentially, “I think perhaps the reason why the Prime-minister hasn’t got Apollyon to hang the whole city government has been due to the fun they’ve got out of seeing Cerberus and the city fighting it out together. There’s no doubt about it that he is a wonderful dog, and is quite capable of taking care of himself.”

“But the outcome of the case?” I asked, much interested.

“Defeat for the city,” said Boswell. “Failing to enforce its authority by means of its servants, the city undertook to recover by due process of law. The dog-catchers were powerless; the police declined to act on the advice of the commissioners, since dog-catching was not within their province; and the fire department averred that it was designed for the putting out of fires and not for extinguishing fiery canines like Cerberus. The dog, meanwhile, to show his contempt for the city, chewed the license-tag off the neck upon which it had been placed, and dropped it into a smelting-pot inside the gates of the infernal regions that was reserved to bring political prisoners to their senses, and, worse than all, made a perfect nuisance of himself by barking all day and baying all night, rain or shine.”

“Papers in a suit at law were then served on Mazarin and the other members of Apollyon’s council, the causes of complaint were recited, and damages for ten years back taxes on two dogs, plus the amounts recovered from the city by the two injured dog-catchers, were demanded. The suit was put upon the calendar, and Apollyon himself sat upon the bench with Judge Blackstone, before whom the case was to be tried.

“On both sides the arguments were exceedingly strong. Coke appeared for the city and Catiline for the State. After the complaint was read, the attorney for the State put in his answer, that the State’s contention was that the ordinance had been complied with, that Cerberus was only one dog, and that the license had been paid; that the license having been paid, the dog-catchers had no right to endeavor to abduct the animal, and that having done so they did it at their own peril; that the suit ought to be dismissed, but that for the fun of it the State was perfectly willing to let it go on.

“In rebuttal the plaintiff claimed that Cerberus was three dogs to all intents and purposes, and the first dog-catcher was called to testify. After giving his name and address he was asked a few questions of minor importance, and then Coke asked:

“‘Are you familiar with dogs?’

“‘Moderately,’ was the answer. ‘I never got quite so intimate with one as I did with him.’

“‘With whom?’ asked Coke.

“‘Cerberus,’ replied the witness.

“‘Do you consider him to be one dog, two dogs or three dogs?’

“‘I object!’ cried Catiline, springing to his feet. ‘The question is a leading one.’

“‘Sustained,’ said Blackstone, with a nervous glance at Apollyon, who smiled reassuringly at him.

“‘Ah, you say you know a dog when you see one?’ asked Coke.

“‘Yes,’ said the witness, ‘perfectly.’

“‘Do you know two dogs when you see them, or even three?’ asked Coke.

“‘I do,’ replied the witness.

“‘And how many dogs did you see when you saw Cerberus?’ asked Coke, triumphantly.

“‘Three, anyhow,’ replied the witness, with feeling, ‘though afterwards I thought there was a whole bench-show atop of me.’

“‘Your witness,’ said Coke.

“A murmur of applause went through the court-room, at which Apollyon frowned; but his face cleared in a moment when Catiline rose up.

“‘My cross-examination of this witness, your honor, will be confined to one question.’ Then turning to the witness he said, blandly: ‘My poor friend, if you considered Cerberus to be three dogs anyhow, why did you in your examination a moment since refer to the avalanche of caninity, of which you so affectingly speak, as him?’

“‘He is a him,’ said the witness.

“‘But if there were three, should he not have been a them?’

“Coke swore profanely beneath his breath, and the witness squirmed about in his chair, confused and broken, while both Judge Blackstone and Apollyon smiled broadly. Manifestly the point of the defence had pierced the armor of the plaintiff.

“‘Your witness for re-direct,’ said Catiline.

“‘No thanks,’ retorted Coke; ‘there are others,’ and, motioning to his first witness to step down, he called the second dog-catcher.

“‘What is your business?’ asked Coke, after the usual preliminary questions.