CANTO XI.

HIPRAH HUNT’S ARRIVAL AT THE CENTRAL STATION.

A FACSIMILE OF MR HUNT’S PASSPORT,——TRANSLATED READS: “PASS HIPRAH HUNT, AWARM ADVOCATE OF THE CAUSE.”OLD NICK.

MAP OF A HELL DISTRICT.(From a design by Mr. Hunt.)

MAP OF A HELL DISTRICT.

(From a design by Mr. Hunt.)

Mr. Huntcourteously declines the aid of guides whose services are offered by Satan preferring, as he explains, to go unattended, and makes his way to what is known as the first district of Hell.

Here he sees old Charon the pilot, who started his career as the Styx ferryman with a boat hardly large enough to hold two college professors, but who now runs a large double-decked steamer fitted out with modern improvements and accommodating eight hundred souls.

THIS IS CAPTAIN CHARON.

Mr. Huntsees Charon’s boat take on a load of passengers. He watches it pull out from the pier and cross the river. An orchestra, consisting of a bass horn and an accordion, supplies the torture on the run from shore to shore. Wearing nothing but a mackintosh and gaiters the Captain stands on the roof of the pilot house grimly scanning the black waves.

CROSSING THE RIVER STYX.

Cominginto the second district Mr. Hunt is debating which way he shall proceed, when he hears a scuffling on the heated asphalt road behind him. He turns and sees passing a drove of human-footed sheep, led by a monkey, whose contortions they are compelled to imitate. Mr. Hunt consults his guide book and learns that these are the people who did things because others did them, never taking the trouble to think for themselves.

THE SHEEP.

Theexplorer has not journeyed far in the first department of the second district when he beholds Minos, the Infernal Judge.

Up the terraced enclosure, arranged directly in front of the Judge, in rows of hundreds and extending as far as the eye can reach, Mr. Hunt sees the sinners awaiting their turn to be sentenced.

When the ill-fated soul stands before this Supreme Court he confesses everything.

An Irish policeman leads a trembling sinner to trial.

“Well, what have you to say?” asks the Judge in a loud voice.

“Your Honor, I confess that I have always been somewhat obstinate.”

“Yes; I know you,” answers the Judge, “you are one of these pig-headed fellows—you never admit it even if you know you are wrong. Officer, remove him to the stubborn district.”

WHERE JUDGE MINOS ADMINISTERS JUSTICE.

Takinghis way down the rugged slope Mr. Hunt comes to the hot region where people who took no pride in their work are punished.

Here he finds the tailors who made ill-fitting clothes steaming and fuming, attired in their own misfits.

In different sections of the same department he sees engravers, carpenters, artists and various other offenders of the same class.

This discovery may serve as a warning to all those on earth who, thinking rather of the money they will gain by it than of its quality, hurry and slight their work.

TAILORS WHO WOULDN’T LEARN THEIR TRADE.

Next, by permission, he goes along the edge of a void, and, turning to the right, comes to the district where street-corner mashers are punished.

“Under huge flat rocks they feebly flounder, while their despondent murmurs fill the haunted air.”

“MASHERS.”

Consultinghis map Mr. Hunt chooses a road that leads down to the gulf where slow people learn a lesson in activity.

His guide book explains who a few of the slow people are.

The merchant who readily agrees to deliver goods at a specified time and invariably fails to do so.

The person who blocks a line of people at a railway ticket office while asking needless questions.

The business man who spends three hours at lunch knowing that his partner cannot leave the office until he returns.

The explorer inspects the machinery that is devised for the punishment of these individuals and then journeys on his way.

SLOW PEOPLE MADE ACTIVE.

Passingthrough a gloomy ravine, Mr. Hunt’s curiosity is aroused by a sound of fiendish revelry.

Following the direction of the noise he comes into that region which, according to his guide book, is occupied by the “fools of success.”

Here he finds the man who climbed up in the world and then forgot his friends.

“As a cat clings to a tree trunk,” says the poet, “while dogs dance ’round with laughing tongues,” so this malefactor hangs high up a spike-covered pole, while “fiends make merry at his sorry plight.”

Keeping well out of view the explorer continues his travels.

HE CLIMBED UP IN THE WORLD AND THEN FORGOT THE FRIENDS WHO HELPED HIM CLIMB.

Whilecautiously proceeding down a smoke-swept region of the third section, Mr. Hunt sees the Limitless Express of the Grand Bump Railroad shrieking and rocking on its way to the bottomless pit.

NOT A PLEASURE EXCURSION.

Mr. Huntcrosses an aqueduct and finds himself in a district where people are tormented who have defrauded or abused others by the use of hypnotic power. It appears that the Demons have the power of hypnotism themselves and treat their victims as the latter treated others while on earth.

FATE OF A HYPNOTIST.

Thepoet relates the punishment of such as were too suspicious.

Here he finds the man who suspects that everybody is trying to cheat him, and also the man who thinks that every philanthropist has pecuniary reasons for his good deeds.

These and many others are turned into a rocky region to be chased and tormented by strange animals called Bunklefrights and Snoopflaps. These animals have large, piercing eyes, and sharp-pointed tails and toe nails with which they prick their victims, laughing the while with a peculiar sound that reminds Mr. Hunt of a violent bronchial cough.

HE WAS TOO SUSPICIOUS.

Mr. Hunttakes his way down a long declivity up which the blinding steam hurries “as a blizzard sweeps up a prairie slope.” Here he looks out over the vast territory where the professional tramps are made miserable. They are compelled to submit to everlasting baths in vats of boiling water.

THE PROFESSIONAL TRAMPS.

Remountingby the same path which led to the department spoken of in the preceding Canto, the explorer now passes over into the sixth section.

His guide book tells him that here the bores are punished.

He takes note of the penalty that follows the man who continually talks about himself, and others of the bore species; then, showing his passport, he steps into a descending elevator, with instructions to be put off at the next station.

BORING A BORE.

Alightingfrom the elevator Mr. Hunt makes his way to the district where he sees the conscience-thumping machines at work, an illustration of which is in his guide book.

A manufacturer who has taken the invention of a poor man and made a fortune out of it, without compensating the inventor, is found bound to the platform of one of these machines underneath a trip-hammer that plays an eternal tattoo on his sinful old head.

HE STOLE AN INVENTION.

Stillin the same department he sees many more souls who walked over the rights of others in an excess of sordid ambition.

High up over a narrow rushing river, his body stretched and fastened from bank to bank, he finds one of these culprits serving as a footbridge over which the Demons walk.

This department also contains the obnoxious photographers, who, ignoring all rights of privacy, practiced “snap-shooting” on whomsoever they pleased.

HE WALKED OVER OTHERS.

Ona shelf of the rugged slope our explorer now sees a malefactor whose fate after all seems hardly adequate to his fault. He is the man who eats in defiance of all laws of decency. The days when he spaded pie into his mouth or drew soup through his mustache with a sound like a leaking hydrant, are now but a hideous memory.

HE ATE LIKE A PIG.

Mr. Huntnow proceeds onward to the bridge that crosses the ninth chasm.

In this region he finds the lawyers, every one of whom is gagged.

The explorer reflects on the necessity of this penalty and passes on.

THE DEPARTMENT FOR LAWYERS.

Justacross the River Lethe there lies a small territory where the explorer finds the caricaturists who ridiculed public men for money—not principle.

He describes their punishment, which is to look forever at pictures of themselves made after they have been rolled, kneaded, pulled and twisted out of all semblance to their former selves.

Mr. Hunt is not disturbed by pangs of pity as he journeys on.

THE POLITICAL CARTOONISTS.(A Little Distorted Themselves.)

THE POLITICAL CARTOONISTS.

(A Little Distorted Themselves.)

Throughan almost interminable cavern the explorer now comes out into a vast mountainous region called the “Devil’s Hunting Ground.”

Corrupt men in public office, who combined and threw the blame of their guilt on one man are found in this region transformed into wild animals, for the amusement of Satan’s sharp-shooting devils.

Though they escaped public abuse on earth and prided themselves on not being “found out,” it is different in Hell.

Here they are scapegoats themselves, and are hunted and shot by Demons armed with blunderbusses that fire five pounds of salt with one revolution of a wheel trigger.

HUNTING SCAPEGOATS.

Mr. Hunt’shat is blown off by a stormy blast, and going down a deep ravine to recover it, he beholds a hideous monster called the Tip System.

This animal sits upright on its two feet. It is a beast of mouth and stomach. Its height is that of twenty men. On the full length of its pale green front a ladder rests. Men toil up this ladder with vats of food and pour the contents into the animal’s hungry maw.

Their labor never ends, for the monster’s appetite increases in proportion as it is fed. Perhaps it is just as well, for the explorer discovers that the men who have this work to do are the porters and waiters who neglected and insulted customers when not tipped.

THE MONSTER TIP SYSTEM.

Mr. Huntnow takes the Infernal Elevated Train and gets off at the district where editors are punished.

He finds them classified in his guide book and takes note of a few of them:

“Editors who never credited stolen articles.”

“Editors who threatened public men with abuse if they refused to do as they dictated.”

“Editors who were very careful not to publish disagreeable truths about people of wealth, and so-called ‘social station,’ but never hesitated to print anything about people outside this select circle.”

Huge red-hot waste baskets hold them, the worst offenders being at the bottom.

EDITORS.

MAKING THE BEST OF IT.Bad Actor: “Well, anyway, there’s one comforting thing about this region; no matter how bad one acts, he can’t get a frost.”

MAKING THE BEST OF IT.

Bad Actor: “Well, anyway, there’s one comforting thing about this region; no matter how bad one acts, he can’t get a frost.”

Aimlesslymaking his way through the crackling heat, Mr. Hunt comes face to face with the inventor who is responsible for the barb-wire fence.

His lot is not a pleasant one. He is compelled to sit forever on his own invention.

THE INVENTOR OF THE BARB-WIRE FENCE.

Inthis Canto Mr. Hunt describes the meeting with that historic personage, Farinata.

He relates a conversation he had with Dante which interests the explorer.

Farinata tells him also of the burning hardships and similarity in the temperature which he has endured for several hundred years. He remembers but one holiday in all that time, the occasion being a ball game gotten up by a picked nine of American sinners against the world.

A GREAT EVENT.

Closeby Mr. Hunt learns the fate of deceptive land agents.

These men who urged poor people to migrate to a barren country under the impression that it was a paradise, and advertised beautiful homes in ideal locations which turned out to be the reverse of the printed descriptions, are lifted high in the car of an observation elevator with promises of a fine view of the surrounding country and choice of cool corner lots. When at a great height a Demon pulls a lever, a trap-door opens and the agent falls into a furnace of brimstone fire.

THE FALL OF A DECEIVING LAND-AGENT.

Inthe twelfth district most of the brimstone mines of the region are located.

Here confined to hard labor are many kinds of culprits. Among them Mr. Hunt thinks he recognizes an old neighbor who was too lazy to shovel the snow from his sidewalk.

While watching these laborers a Demon overseer calls his attention to a brood of spirits leaping and tumbling amongst the distant crags.

They are embezzlers, carrying heavy bags of stones and being pursued by swift-winged devils.

A TASK OF PERPETUAL SHOVELLING.

Stillin the same gulf the explorer sees a sign which points to the “trash dumping ground.” Curious to see what is called trash in Satan’s domain, he follows the road that leads down through the red rock and comes to a pit “which all the words of Italy’s bard would fail in power to describe.”

In the bottom of this vast hole heaps of gnarled and shrivelled-up souls have fallen and are still falling. He learns that these are the souls of people who continually tried to underrate, or detract from, the success of others.

EXEMPT.Guard: “Two new arrivals from the Metropolis.”District Superintendent: “Who are they?”Guard: “Woman says she’s been running a boarding house for twenty years, and man says he’s been living in boarding houses for twenty years.”District Supt.: “Make them comfortable; both have had Hell enough.”

EXEMPT.

Guard: “Two new arrivals from the Metropolis.”

District Superintendent: “Who are they?”

Guard: “Woman says she’s been running a boarding house for twenty years, and man says he’s been living in boarding houses for twenty years.”

District Supt.: “Make them comfortable; both have had Hell enough.”

“Standinglike patient oxen in their stalls,” Mr. Hunt discovers a row of hapless souls, each held tightly by the nose in the grip of a vice.

This is the just penalty ordained for those who habitually intruded their noses into the affairs of others.

In an enclosure of the same district notorious prize-fighters, wearing eiderdown mittens, are compelled to fight big brawny Demons wearing spiked gloves.

HE POKED ABOUT IN OTHER PEOPLE’S AFFAIRS.

Inthe next district, which reeks with stifling odors, Mr. Hunt discovers “reckless talkers” eating their own words, which are served red hot on platters in the form of tarts.

Out of curiosity Mr. Hunt takes a bite of this Infernal food. For an instant he feels “as one ripped inwards, then sickened at sea.”

He remains in an unconscious condition for a long time, but is aroused finally by a clap of thunder and again slowly resumes his journey.

THE RECKLESS TALKERS.

Beingweak from the result of testing Infernal food, the explorer accepts an invitation to ride in an automobile to the next district.

Over the same territory that Dante traversed afoot in the year 1314, Mr. Hunt now travels in this modern fashion.

HIPRAH HUNT TAKES A RIDE IN AN AUTOMOBILE.

Hugginga rocky ledge closely, Mr. Hunt gropes his way to a lower plain in the same region where he sees the punishment meted out to bribe-taking aldermen.

These are shoveled into ovens built for that purpose.

It is Mr. Hunt’s opinion that under pressure of the fierce heat the victims may regret at times that they accepted bribes for the giving of contracts and franchises.

BRIBE-TAKING ALDERMEN.

Upthrough the Stygian darkness a terrible tumult of voices smites the ear of the explorer. Peering down the jaws of a deep pit he sees the souls of the bucket-shop gamblers.

Through the flickering red light that pervades this region the explorer makes his way to the next district.

THE BUCKET-SHOP GAMBLERS.

Inwhat is called the Carousal of Hell, Mr. Hunt sees the long-legged devils.

Some of these have legs thirty feet long. They hop about, chasing victims, in a game of tag. The feature of the game that makes it interesting for the devils is that they are never “it.”

People who “jump at conclusions” are some of the unfortunates who are kept dodging and guessing in this department.

PLAYING TAG WITH PEOPLE WHO “JUMP AT CONCLUSIONS.”

Underthe escort of a Demon overseer, Mr. Hunt is directed into a department where he witnesses the punishment of a man who on earth wore fine clothes, while his wife and children went about in shabby attire. Here the victim is made to wear an old dress of pink calico and a bright green hat with yellow trimmings, set on sideways.

A CASE OF SELFISHNESS.

Mr. Huntfinds himself on the corner of Brimstone Avenue and Ripsnort Place, where he sees that type of street-car conductor who, if he did not happen to feel in the mood, would not stop his car as you stood gesticulating wildly for his attention. Chained to a red hot griddle, where the cars pass continually to and from the foot-ball games, he shouts in vain to the grip-fiend and Demon-passengers for relief.

He is lucky if nothing worse is hurled at him than a hoarse mocking laugh.

A HAUGHTY CONDUCTOR.

Comingto a spot where the plain, spoken of in the preceding Canto, terminates in an almost perpendicular steep, the traveller discovers through the thick fog hovering below the dim outline of the battlements surrounding the female department. On seeing a sign “No gentlemen admitted,” his native chivalry causes him to retire without investigating the prohibited region.

ONE SECTION OF THE NEW FEMALE DEPARTMENT.

Thoughthe low moans of tormented souls disconcert him somewhat, Mr. Hunt courageously continues his journey.

The next district he explores is that one where the souls are frozen in cakes of ice. It is called the Cold-Storage Pit.

“People who warm up to us while we are successful, but turn cold in time of misfortune,” are occupants of this region.

Mr. Hunt learns that this is the most densely crowded district in the whole Infernal Empire, and that it is being enlarged by three hundred acres to accommodate the many who unfortunately still roam the earth.

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