Pleasantries in Passing.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS, House-boat-on-the-Styx, care The Century Association, New York—Perhaps you, as self-elected jester at the court of the Son of the Morning, will wonder that a newspaper man should deliberately set out on a pilgrimage to Hades. I have often been told I ought to go there, but I pause on the banks of the Styx for reflection ere I rush in where all but fools fear to tread. Yet in mirroring forth the doings of the diocese of Bishop Beelzebub, I shall cast no reflections save on the dead, who can reflect no more, and like that other clown, more famous than I, will “use the devil himself with courtesy.” Having been an iconoclast, and as it is only a step from the breaking of idols to the smashing of trusts, I have had the temerity to dream of ending the monopoly of the particular section of the universe hitherto sacred to Lucifer and Bangs. As you have a copyright on Hades, you could make it hot for me if I invaded your territory without permission, so I ask you for a “dead head” pass. I don’t claim more than my rightful share; there will still be room enough for both of us to roast chestnuts on the other side of the Styx.
Pardon this discomfiture of sense by nonsense, yet I am not going to make an excuse for this abuse of absurdities, for what is nonsense but the flower of sense, the wine of wit, the harmony of humor sounded by an organ crankless, the pipe of Pan replaced by one of briar wood? But as Princess Scheherazade might have said: “That’s another kind of a smoke as well as another kind of a story.” Even in this “Stygian Nights’ Entertainment,” I cannot hope to equal her record of a “Thousand Nights and One”—whether I mean spent in story-telling or smoking in Hades I leave to your imagination. But then, I am not a woman!
As Hell has ceased to have a place in theology, there is no reason why the devil should not get his due in fiction. Emigration will set his way as soon as the character of the Cimmerian climate becomes definitely ascertained, but my trip to Hades will be more than a climatological tour. While in the interest of science, my subterranean explorations ought to point a pun and tangle a tale.
Your “farthest south” was to the Styx. I shall not linger there, but if I can elude Cerberus, I shall slip through the gates where we are told to “abandon hope,” and take up my habitation in Hades, with daily commutation to New York. Methinks the inquisitor of the fountain pen ought to have as much fun from a frolic with the heroes of history in their present abode as the inquisitor of the fork and flame.
Nor do I fear that this Stygian sequel to “the history that is written” will be shunned as something sacrilegious, for the average American is so generous regarding bookmakers that he will buy anything, concerning anything, at any time and in any place. He will not even register a protest on the ledger of the Hotel Hereafter!
If you will permit a newspaper man to go on a second “Pursuit of the Houseboat,” I would like to dedicate this account of a trip to the playground of Pluto to the man who blazed the way to Hell. May I have a shady corner in Hades, with the degree—three above zero—of A. S. S., meaning, of course, member of the Asbestos Society of Sinners?
Till death do us unite beyond the Styx, and assuring you of a warm reception, weatherwise and otherwise, when you too shall get a summons from Satan, believe me, happy to go
After you, my dear Bangs,LAWRENCE DANIEL FOGG.
Castle Craig,The Hanging Hills,Meriden, Connecticut.All Fools’ Day (April 1).
My dear Mr. Fogg—Although many critics have given me Hades, I have never recorded any exclusive claim to its possession. You are therefore wholly at liberty to go there yourself—for literary purposes only, I hope—in so far as I am concerned. As for the dedication, I feel highly honored and send you my most cordial thanks for the compliment.
Faithfully yours,JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.
The Century Association,New York, N. Y.Moving Day (May 1).