John Bangs - The Enchanted Typewriter стр 4.

Like capital and labor here? I queried.

In a sense, yespossibly more like your Colonial Dames, and Daughters of the Revolution. For instance, great organizations are in process of formationpeople are beginning to flock together for purposes of protection. Charles the First and Henry the Eighth and Louis the Fourteenth have established Ye Ancient and Honorable Order of Kings, to which only those who have actually worn crowns shall be eligible. The painters have gotten together with a Society of Fine Arts, the sculptors have formed a Society of Chisellers, and all the authors from Homer down to myself have got up an Authors Club where we have a lovely time talking about ourselves, no man to be eligible who hasnt written something that has lasted a hundred years. Perhaps, if you are thinking of coming over soon, youll let me put you on our waiting-list?

I smiled at his seeming inconsistency and let myself into his snare.

I havent written anything that has lasted a hundred years yet, said I.

Oh, yes, I think you have, replied Boswell, and the machine seemed to laugh as he wrote out his answer. I saw a joke of yours the other day thats two hundred centuries old. Diogenes showed it to me and said that it was a great favorite with his grandfather, who had inherited it from one of his remote ancestors.

A hot retort was on my lips, but I had no wish to offend my guest, so I smiled and observed that I had frequently indulged in unconscious plagiarism of that sort.

I should imagine, I hastened to add, that to men like Charles the First this uncertainty as to the safety of Cromwell would be great joy.

I hardly know, returned Boswell. That very question has been discussed among us. Charles made a great outward show of grief when he heard of the coal being delivered at the office of the Minister of Justice, and we all thought him quite magnanimous, but it leaked out, just before I left to come here, that he sent his private secretary to the palace with a Panama hat and a palm-leaf fan for Cromwell, with his congratulations.

That seems to savor somewhat of sarcasm.

Oh, ultimately Hades is bound to be a republic, replied Boswell. There are too many clever and ambitious politicians among us for the place to go along as a despotism much longer. If the place were filled up with poets and society people, and things like that, it might go on as an autocracy forever, but you see it isnt. To men of the caliber of Alexander the Great and Bonaparte and Caesar, and a thousand other warriors who never were used to taking orders from anybody, but were themselves headquarters, the despotic sway of Apollyon is intolerable, and he hasnt made any effort to conciliate any of them. If he had appointed Bonaparte commander-in-chief of his army and made a friend of him, instead of ordering him to be hanged every month for 415,000 years, or put Caesar in as Secretary of State, instead of having him roasted three times a month for seventy or eighty centuries, he would have strengthened his hold. As it is, he has ignored all these people officially, treats them like criminals personally; makes friends with Mazarin and Powhatan, awards the office of Tax Assessor to Dick Turpin, and makes old Falstaff commander of his Imperial Guard. And just because poor Ben Jonson scribbled off a rhyme for my paper, The Gazettea rhyme running:

just because Jonson wrote that and I published it, my paper was confiscated, Jonson was boiled in oil for ten weeks, and I was seized and thrown into a dungeon where a lot of savages from the South Sea Islands tattooed the darned old jingle between my shoulder blades in green letters, and not satisfied with this barbaric act, right under the jingle they added the line, in red letters, This edition strictly limited to one copy, for private circulation only, and they every one of em, Apollyon, Mazarin, and the rest, signed the guarantee personally with red-hot pens dipped in sulphuric acid. It makes a valuable collection of autographs, no doubt, but I prefer my back as nature made it. Talk about enlightened government under a man wholl permit things like that to be done!

I ought not to have done it, but I couldnt help smiling.

I must say, I observed, apologetically, that the treatment was barbarous, but really I do think it showed a sense of humor on the part of the government.

No doubt, replied Boswell, with a sigh; but when the joke is on me I dont enjoy it very much. Im only human, and should prefer to observe that the government had some sense of justice.

The apparently empty chair before the machine gave a slight hitch forward, and the type-writer began to tap again.

Youll have to excuse me now, observed Boswell through the usual medium. I have work to do, and if youll go to bed like a good fellow, while I copy off the minutes of the last meeting of the Authors Club, Ill see that you dont lose anything by it. After I get the minutes done I have an interesting story for my Sunday paper from the advance sheets of Munchausens Further Recollections, which I shall take great pleasure in leaving for you when I depart. If you will take the bundle of manuscript I leave with you and boil it in alcohol for ten minutes, you will be able to read it, and, no doubt, if you copy it off, sell it for a goodly sum. It is guaranteed absolutely genuine.

Very well, said I, rising, Ill go; but I should think you would put in most of your time whacking at the government editorially, instead of going in for minutes and abstract stories of adventure.

You do, eh? said Boswell. Well, if you were in my place youd change your mind. After my unexpected endorsement by the Emperor and his cabinet, Ive decided to keep out of politics for a little while. I can stand having a poem tattooed on my back, but if it came to having a three-column editorial expressing my emotions etched alongside of my spine, Im afraid Id disappear into thin air.

So I left him at work and retired. The next morning I found the promised bundle of manuscripts, and, after boiling the pages as instructed, discovered the following tale.

III. FROM ADVANCE SHEETS OF BARON MUNCHAUSENS FURTHER RECOLLECTIONS

It is with some very considerable hesitation that I come to this portion of my personal recollections, and yet I feel that I owe it to my fellow-citizens in this delightful Stygian country, where we are all enjoying our well-earned rest, to lay before them the exact truth concerning certain incidents which have now passed into history, and for participation in which a number of familiar figures are improperly gaining all the credit, or discredit, as the case may be. It is not a pleasant task to expose an impostor; much less is it agreeable to expose four impostors; but to one who from the earliest timesand when I say earliest times I speak advisedly, as you will see as you read onto one, I say, who from the earliest times has been actuated by no other motive than the promulgation of truth, the task of exposing fraud becomes a duty which cannot be ignored. Therefore, with regret I set down this chapter of my memoirs, regardless of its consequences to certain figures which have been of no inconsiderable importance in our community for many yearsfigures which in my own favorite club, the Associated Shades, have been most welcome, but which, as I and they alone know, have been nothing more than impostures.