Read Ebook: The Asbestos Society of Sinners detailing the diversions of Dives and others on the playground of Pluto with some broken threads of drop-stitch history picked up by a newspaper man in Hades and woven into a Stygian nights' entertainment by Fogg Lawrence Daniel

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Ebook has 637 lines and 35701 words, and 13 pages

"No more questions, if you please. I am not on the witness stand, nor will I consent to be interviewed. Besides, talking is an infraction of the rules of the Asbestos Society."

"Do they seek to muzzle the press?" I asked indignantly.

"So few newspaper men come this way that that isn't necessary," returned Charon. "We have a free press. It is said that 'the devil frequently becomes a publisher by way of diversion.' This is the Styx, not the Delaware, and we are going to Hades, not to Philadelphia, thank goodness! The order was framed to muzzle some one more formidable than reporters or devils--woman!"

"The Asbestos Society is quite a suggestive name."

"Its formation was quite recent. A learned scientist up on the earth, by tapping on the ground to invoke Pluto, discovered extensive deposits of asbestos in Hades. As soon as the news reached the Styx, nothing would satisfy 'Boss' Tweed but the formation of a society for the purpose of robbing cremation of its traditional terrors. As to wish is to have, every denizen of the domain of the departed is now wearing an asbestos suit. Dives must have his diversion, even if the devil is cheated out of his own."

We had crossed over the Styx. Charon quickly made fast to a wharf and prepared to disembark. As I landed I noticed on the dock a legend which read: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

At last I was in Hades!

Shady Sinners of the Styx.

I was in the region of Outer Darkness to which the dead are banished to await the judgment. All about me was a misty blackness so oppressive that one felt as if wedged between mountains. My feet sank in the soft earth, composed of those good intentions with which I had helped to pave the road to Hell. Voices of other days seemed to sound in my ears; out of the shadowy mist forms of ghostly men and women emerged and then were lost to sight, swallowed up in the darkness. Perceiving a glimmering light in the distance I hastened toward it. A phantom house barred my path, but I flitted through it as though it were not. A pale twilight now made objects discernible and I breathed more freely, for I no longer stumbled over the good resolutions, which, being broken, blocked the pavement.

A troop of spectres surrounded me and tried to stop my progress. Shades though they were, their attentions were annoying and I tried to brush them aside. My hands passed through shadows and the phantoms laughed in derision.

"What's the news?" they cried again and again.

I hadn't come to Hades to be interviewed, and knowing from the inside some of its perils, I declined to relate what the upper world was doing. This enraged the shades, who gathered about me threateningly. Just then one of my companions on the Styx yachting trip came to my aid. His appearance seemed to inspire the spectres with terror, for they all fled. The newcomer was talkative.

"Did you recognize in the leader of that band our old friend, Diogenes?" he asked.

"No, I never met the gentleman. Up on earth when any one is looking for an honest man, he doesn't come to a newspaper office: he goes to a detective agency."

My companion gave a scarcely perceptible start.

"Diogenes is no longer looking for an honest man. Poor fellow, he knows it's no use. He thought he had an honest man a few years ago in 'Boss' Tweed, but the politician fell from the high pedestal of the 'man higher up' when he consented to pose for a caricature of himself by Nast. Our friend of the tub and lantern has begun to wonder if when he finds an honest man it will prove to be a bachelor girl! Not long ago President Harper sent a professor from the University of Chicago to tell Diogenes that he could have an honest man as soon as he had bled him for another hundred million. So the philosopher is waiting for--"

"John D. Rockefeller!"

"Your deduction, my dear journalist, does you credit."

Somewhat piqued that I did not reply, the stranger said:

"Why don't you express wonder that I knew you were a journalist? Watson always does."

"There is only one Watson," I protested. "Besides, it has always seemed to me that he was singularly obtuse. Unless you lent him your spectacles, Watson couldn't hold down a job in the city room of a New York daily for twenty-four hours. I'm not a journalist, but I acknowledge that 'newspaper man' is written all over me, from the pencil in my pocket to my 'nose for news,' which is abnormally developed. It's the easiest thing in the world to tell a newspaper man by his nose, an actor by his clothes and a detective by his cocaine syringe. For instance, you are--"

"The shade of Sherlock Holmes, just returned from a trip to earth. But I really died when I fell over the cliff. That fall made Conan Doyle a Sir. He thought that if he could bring me back to life I would make him an Earl. He tried to breathe in me the breath of life, but while the dear public wept at my death, they viewed my resurrection with indifference. Ghost stories have been exorcised for all time, so I'm back here for good."

"Did Satan send for you?"

"Yes, to assist him in ultimately securing the three persons on earth whom he is most eagerly awaiting--David Belasco, John Kendrick Bangs, and Marie Corelli.

"The author of the 'Darling of the Gods,' in order to lend realism to the final scene, made a compact with Satan to reproduce Hades on the New York stage; in return he is to give his soul--or his salary--as soon as the play has run its course. That's the reason Belasco prolonged the run of 'The Darling of the Gods,' even after it ceased to pay expenses. A theatrical advance agent, who is to transfer the entire production to Hades, was here several weeks ago and said that the thousandth performance had been reached. Yo San, who is serving her thousand years of penance--a year for each day of the play's run--says she never would have thought of being wicked if Belasco had not prompted her from the wings. The man who could write 'To lie a little is better than to be unhappy much' deserves a place alongside of George Washington."

"What! Is the father of his country here, too?"

"Oh, yes! they're all here. Washington is more of a father than ever. He had no family in life, but he has one here larger than he likes--the children of the only woman he never loved. It's strange how many women go out of their way to remind George how he met defeat at their hands long before he fought the British."

"Evidently women of those days didn't appreciate veracity."

"Don't throw that cherry tree at his head when you see him or he'll think you have an axe to grind. He has never been able to find out who wrote that fable, AEsop being dead and George Ade unborn. When he does, Hades will be too hot to hold both of them, although of course there's no change of weather to speak of, as the mercury never seeks the bulb. It is always trying to knock the roof off its glass house; that's the reason there is no throwing of stones in the under world."

"But what has Satan against John Kendrick Bangs?"

"His Majesty likes to be taken seriously. Most practical jokers, you know, resent a joke at their own expense. While he delights in playing with men, to make fun of him is an offense which Satan cannot condone. Then you know Bangs sent me in 'Pursuit of the House-boat' and I frustrated a great many plans of His Majesty.

"Lucifer describes woman--to disabuse your mind of the impression that I have held converse with his Satanic Highness, I will state that I am quoting Marie Corelli, his press agent--Lucifer describes woman as a frivolous doll of pink and white with long hair frequently not her own. He hates women, for they have made him what he is and keep him so, according to Marie. 'Women,' he says, 'are much less sensitive than men and infinitely more heartless. They are mothers of the human race and the faults of the race are chiefly due to them.' Considering that the eternal feminine is so fond of him, I am surprised that the Evil One does not reciprocate, but then Lucifer was once an angel and we all know that however angelic she of infinite variety may appear, she is not an angel. I have heard men of moods and appetite talk of women in the same strain as Lucifer and so have ceased to wonder that each woman knows one particular man--usually her husband--whom she describes as a devil.

"Lucifer had found out the truth of the Latin proverb which says 'Trust not a woman, even when dead,' and as he didn't want any divided skirt rule, he had planned to have Capt. Kidd take them to Paris or to Italy, which Robert Burton says is a hell for women. Satan thought he was well rid of them until after the day of judgment, so you can imagine his burning rage when, following Bangs' orders, I brought them safely back to Hades. When the humorist leaves the earth it will be jumping out of the frying pan of a vivid imagination into a very hot fire of reality."

"And Marie Corelli? I thought her 'Sorrows of Satan'--"

"That's just it. Through all the centuries Lucifer lacked a champion until Marie Corelli sat in judgment on the world and gave it fits after reading 'Paradise Lost' and losing her heart as well as her head--as many another girl has done--to the angel who 'fell, never to rise again.' Lucifer would have had no attraction for most women if he had not fallen. Milton made him a hero, many persons have embraced him, but no one ever fully understood him except Marie, and great shall be her reward."

"How can there be rewards in Hades?"

"Oh, we have our society here just as in the upper region, only the world asks who a man is; here the Smart Set asks who he was. Caste is as strong here as in your Four Million and in our upper Ten Thousand."

"But even yet I do not understand how the champion of His Satanic Majesty is to be rewarded."

"Lucifer has long wanted a wife. Marie Corelli alone pleases his fancy, besides possessing the necessary qualifications for the position. Here she will be supreme; she will rule even the arch fiend himself. To her kings will bow and princes kneel. Won't she make it hot for some of the reviewers who 'roasted' her on earth! There is only one place where reviews live--in Hell. There is a torridness of climate here which agrees with them. After all, Hades is no more than a caricature of your world and the doings of men.

"Your society is but vanity; what, then, shall be said of the festivities of Hades? We dine, and our Barmecide feast leaves a nauseating feeling of emptiness. Here amusement is the lash of correction. All is illusion; nothing is real. The fashions of all the centuries flourish here at one time, for every fashion which has had its day straightway goes to Hell. I sometimes think that is the principal reason why women are dissatisfied here; they had to follow the fashion in vogue while they were on the earth and when a late comer appears in a new style hat or dress the other women suffer torments worse than any Satan could devise, especially on Easter Sunday.

"The twilight of Hades forms a sort of X-ray which passes through the clothes and flesh and enables us to see into the heart and mind of one another. The other day Paul Jones met George Washington, walking arm in arm with King George the Fourth. He stopped to say:

"Admiral, I'm glad my children are giving you the honors which are justly yours." Yet as his mind was as an open book, Jones read his thoughts thus:

"'Why couldn't that meddlesome Porter let well enough alone, instead of bringing a mummy from France to oust me from my place as first in the hearts of my countrymen?'"

Sherlock Holmes puffed reflectively on the shade of a cigar for a few moments; then knocking off an imaginary ash, he continued:

"Whether matches are made in Heaven is a question, but they certainly are not made in Hell, despite the abundance of brimstone and the presence of Lucifer. Courtship is impossible where the heart betrays and fine words are belied by revealed thoughts, where the naked truth cannot be clothed in 'fig' language. When all reality has vanished, there can be no delusion, so that men who seldom spoke in the other world save to utter a falsehood have come to speak the truth here. There is only one exception--George Washington."

"You are rather hard on--"

"Remember that Hades is the only land which holds the mirror up to nature. In the flash of the earth's footlights, we act our part in the play of life to dazzle other men and blind them to our faults. Life is a series of poses, each like the film of a moving picture which by the juggling of the operator suggests continuous action, though composed of many lifeless photographs. Our life is an optical illusion. We are judged by what men see us do and yet they perhaps never see us when the mask is off and we have forgotten to pose. We strike our attitude and the world applauds or jeers. Only when life's candle is snuffed out do we forget to pose, for then a great awe is upon us. What a haunting thought it is that 'the evil that men do lives after them'! In life we hugged our sins to ourselves, guarding them zealously; so in death, why cannot they, like the good we do, be decently interred with our bones? When we are laid low, why must our sins go on a rampage of their own, both in the upper and the under worlds? In Hades the mask has been torn away and we see man as he is, not as he would have us see him."

"That must be diverting."

"Hades is the best place in the universe for the study of history. Socrates is here but his philosophy, as well as his wife, has deserted him; he is now a chronic kicker. Moses strikes his rod on the rocks in vain, for molten lava flows instead of water; the result of his rage is seen at Vesuvius, the devil's chimney. Pontius Pilate is forever washing his hands, but the red blood flows afresh. Shakespeare tells him that the damned spot will not out. Eve is setting the fashion in fig leaves and serpentine dresses, but like her earthly descendants, is discontented, although she takes a certain spiteful satisfaction in the fact that the number of women in Hades is on the increase. Methuselah is hunting for the fountain of perpetual youth. He wants to be a boy again and his favorite poem is 'Backward, turn backward, O Time, in thy flight.' He suffers a periodic attack of second childishness every thousand years."

"And John Paul Jones?"

"Poor Paul! he never will forgive me for disturbing his bones."

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