Lawrence Daniel Fogg

“ Thomas never throws his mother in the face of his wife. He keeps his own whiskers trimmed and stays home nights. He does not come back to the partner of his bosom at three A. M. with a diagonal gait and an asinine gayety, chewing the butt of a cigar and talking in a tongue that is as unsteady as his legs. Nor does Tommy slam the door in fourteen languages when Kitty asks how that blonde hair came on his coat. But we’re all human. If you’re hunting for a perfect woman, stop—she’s dead; if for a perfect man, you’re a fool. ”

“ Because some sunflower of a girl has turned her face to another son is no excuse for you to sulk behind a cloud. This may be the age of folly, as you claim, but don’t you think that the greatest fool is he who allows a slip of a girl to rob him of his couleur de rose spectacles? Come now, ’fess up! Aren’t you making a hobby of being a hypochondriac? If you linger among the graves of the gloaming with a heart so full of shadows and eyes so abrim with tears that you cannot see beauty as it is born, you corrupt the present. ”

“ You call woman a fragrant poppy in the shade, in apparent ignorance of the fact that in Hades, where all women have shady characters, there is no perfume. You poets can scent everything but the bloom of truth. ”

“ This is the land where the politician shakes poverty by the hand before election and later altogether; where they have a congress of four hundred men to make laws for a supreme court of nine to set aside; where they have prayers on the floor of the national capitol and whiskey in the basement; where men vote for what they do not want for fear they will get what they want by voting for it; where other men stay away from the polls one day and swear about the result the other three-hundred and sixty-four days in the year. ”

“ In the rustle of the competitor’s greenbacks which are tainted with the tears of women and the blood of men, no capitalist hears the cry of the widow and orphan more quickly than he who is seeking to shear the fleece of an innocent and confiding lot of lambs swallowed in the vortex of frenzied finance.”
“How about the tainted tricks of politics?” I asked. “I might have been a politician myself if I hadn’t been converted and so became a newspaper man instead.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hades, as you will soon learn, is more of a news centre than London, and so I have heard that in recent years the city hall of New York was draped in mourning for Hiram Cronk, last survivor of the War of 1812, whose only claim to fame was that he did not die sooner. If earthly honors died on earth I wouldn’t complain, but they are all reproduced in Hades, which is a burlesque of the upper world. Ever since Ambassador Porter found a body which he thought might have looked like me had I looked like that body, I have been given homage by every man in Hades. ”

“ America is a nation whose goddess of Liberty was foreign born, baptized in blood, then sent into exile, where, serene and indifferent, she turns her back on the land of her adoption and looks out to sea, a heartless statue! This is a country without a language of its own, with a national hymn that sings only of New England and is set to stolen music, whose only national dance is the cakewalk and most popular tune a rag-time coon song ”

“ Thus spoke Judas and departed.
“Mortals say that money cannot be carried beyond the grave,” explained Tweed; “but there is spirit money as well as spirit men. Grafter Judas hanged himself to get rid of thirty pieces of silver—foolish man! How little fitted he would have been for life in New York; on the board of aldermen, for instance, or as a district boss. We New Yorkers are frequently afflicted with itching palms, but money never burns our fingers as it does that of Judas in Hades. ”

“ It is to be called ‘The Ascent of Man.’ No more is man the old Adam, [Pg 111] the Eden of his perfect behind him forbidding its gardens of delight. In his present imperfect is the creative hauntings of the perfect he is yet to be. As in the old days the man said, ‘The woman’—so it is the woman who has given man the new birth. Creation always did centre about a petticoat, fables and creeds to the contrary notwithstanding.”
“I asked Mother Eve about her childhood the other day, and she seemed lamentably ignorant of her younger days.” ”

“ American elections are held in the suicidal atmosphere of drear November, when the candidates roam about, seeking whom they can deceive. If saying what isn’t true so often that you end by believing it yourself, constitutes a liar, and if the lie is a sin to everybody but oneself, it is to be hoped the recording angel charitably shuts up his book and takes a vacation about election time. ”

“ The party plank is a see-saw to catch votes. I stand upon this platform: I am in favor of making Hades the centre of the universe as it now is of the earth, and building a bridge over the Styx to New York, so that disappointed politicians and all others weary of life may here find refuge and a warm welcome. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So disgustingly peaceful is the Quaker City that one can lean out of the window in his pajamas and dip up water for the morning bath without waking up the policeman on the beat; all is so quiet along the Delaware to-night that no sticks of dynamite are piled on the front doorstep and no sky-scrapers are being erected between twilight and dawn to be demolished for something else as soon as the tenants have been elevated to the twentieth story. ”

“ Soul has sunk beneath the seductions of the senses. The demon of desire so entices men that for the amorous allurement of Kipling’s Vampire—the woman who did not care—they would go to Hell and consider the trip an enjoyable excursion. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ Night, when deep sleep falleth upon man, has come too early. When a babe, he smelleth the bottle afar off and lo! children cry for the soothing syrup which the man would fain put away. Before his eye is dimmed by the sunset glow, the light of his life is quenched in four ounces of chloroform.
“According to this medical expert,” continued Methuselah, “when a man proposes to celebrate his sixtieth birthday by emigrating beyond the Styx, he is to buy a ticket and pay for it with poison or pistol. ”

“ Discussions regarding Hades have waxed almost as hot as the subject of dispute itself. Most people believe it is built on the Turkish bath plan with departments of varying temperature. Those are the kind of people who swallow the thermometer of Dr. Doubt and die by degrees. If you find it as pleasant as John Kendrick Bangs did, you will want to stay and join the Stygian smart set, so I’ll transfer your insurance from the Equality to the Rock of Gibraltar and see to it that your sister does not starve or freeze, whatever may be the climatic fate of her brother. ”

“ As there appears to be no other candidate who is so anxious for the office of janitor of the hall of fame and general benefactor of Hades as I, it seems to me that no other qualifications are needed. However, there are some persons who are conceited enough to imagine that they will give me a hard run for my money. Why, fellow-citizens and voters, these men are not even natives of this fair country, the finest the sun forgot to shine upon! ‘Tis true they have been naturalized, but they never can be civilized. They may have push and cheek, but they lack the pull to get there. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A check is drawn for each man who has his price, to stop him from branding his neighbor a thief. Never analyze the gold given as a gift. Does it matter which cow gave the skimmed milk if we get the cream? If our pocketbook is made corpulent enough to choke our scruples, shall we inquire if our benefactor has cobwebs on his conscience? A man’s criminality ought not to be based on the size of his bank account.”
“Greed and graft have always been blood money relations,” I said. “In the dawn of history Adam owned the whole world except one little tree and he wouldn’t be happy till he got that.” ”

“ Higher critics deny the decalogue and bone Jonah’s fish until it resembles an eel. Even our modern writers play ping pong with hearts and the seventh commandment, for to them love is nothing unless it brings in ten per cent royalty. Society has become sensuous; we are having rather too much of the body. ”

“ To be called an editor made me quite willing to come back to the subject—even reporters are susceptible to flattery.
“Anything that will distract one’s attention from the thermometer is welcome,” said young Lochinvar. “Can you wonder that a lover sighs like a furnace in this heated season when one sizzles by degrees? Alas! there are no summer girls in Hades, for they exist only in the shadow of an ice cream parlor. But I object to the company of Jonah on the excursion. He would hoodoo the whole trip and some of us wouldn’t get back to the Styx alive!” ”

“ All change!” sang out the voice in the megaphone. But the car did not stop. As if shot from a catapult it leaped over the trees and vaulted the aquarium. It fluttered in the air and then settled down in the waters of the bay like a bird with a broken wing.
When I opened my eyes I was being rolled over a barrel, and an ambulance surgeon was forcing some very bad whiskey down my throat. ”

“ Suppose you were again an earthly ruler with unlimited power, what would you do?”
[Pg 82]
“I hardly know,” she confessed naively and added: “But I think my first move would be to curb the freedom of the press by pensioning off all the newspaper men, so that we celebrities might have our fanciful fads without being interviewed. Not that I object to the interview or to the interviewer. ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’—to most men.”
“And fiction is more interesting than truth and much more believable—to most women,” I retorted. “You know Heine says that woman is at once apple and serpent. ”

“ Possessing Judas’ faculty, I could have paid each man his price and yet the money would always have returned!”
“In the scales of God,” declaimed Portia, “charity will outweigh gold, unless Dives and Lazarus have changed places since the last tidings we had of them.”
“For all that,” concluded Tweed, “the only objection I ever found to tainted money was that ‘taint enough! A little thieving is a dangerous thing; graft much or you’ll taste the penitentiary spring. Though Justice is blind, she isn’t deaf, and he who can jingle the most gold usually wins his case. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To never exchange loving glances with the maiden of the moment, but to dishonor the day by looking off into the eyes of some dream darling who cannot come to your bosom is like another Enoch Arden’s hopeless gaze for a sail that never brings him again to the kisses of Annie Lee. If I mistake not, your name is a patent of your English ancestry, but without that leaf from your family tree, I should recognize you as a countryman; to be loyal to a sweetheart clasped and lost is possible only to the man whose cradle rocked between the English Channel and the Irish Sea. ”

“ As for me, I’m tired of being called ‘truthful George’: it calls for such plain language that somebody’s feelings are sure to be singed. What’s the use of telling the truth when a lie is so much more believable and—interesting?”
Being busily engaged in writing a letter to the city editor of the New York Universe, I did not notice that the blare of the megaphone had ceased. ”

“ Before that time, he courts women and wine more assiduously than wisdom and common sense.”
“A man’s early life is too much taken up with breach-of-promise cases, divorces and the stock exchange to care whether or not the world owes him a living or to take the trouble to collect it. Though the financial acumen of Humpty Dumpty does not make Wall Street tremble, it tumbles to a good thing long before he takes a fall to himself. The bears come out of their pits and the bulls leave their greenbacks to seek other and greener goods to devour.” ”

“ I have never dissented from that view, for apple sass and serpents’ tongues have always been the desserts woman serves up to man. Eve plucked the first fruit from the forbidden tree, but many another fair hand has since robbed the genealogical orchard. ”

“ Even an immortal queen is enough like her mortal sisters not to relish a stab at vanity. You men praise us women and then ruffle our hair by saying you didn’t mean it. Of course, we forgive you, but to forget is not so easy. ”