A House-Boat on the Styx | Page 8

bad hand as an amanuensis. It's no use, Bacon, we know a thing or two. I'm a New-Englander, I am."
"Well," said Bacon, shrugging his shoulders as though the results of the controversy were immaterial to him, "have it so if you please. There isn't any money in Shakespeare these days, so what's the use of quarrelling? I wrote Hamlet, and Shakespeare knows it. Others know it. Ah, here comes Sir Walter Raleigh. We'll leave it to him. He was cognizant of the whole affair."
"I leave it to nobody," said Shakespeare, sulkily.
"What's the trouble?" asked Raleigh, sauntering up and taking a chair under the cue-rack. "Talking politics?"
"Not we," said Bacon. "It's the old question about the authorship of Hamlet. Will, as usual, claims it for himself. He'll be saying he wrote Genesis next."
"Well, what if he does?" laughed Raleigh. "We all know Will and his droll ways."
"No doubt," put in Nero. "But the question of Hamlet always excites him so that we'd like to have it settled once and for all as to who wrote it. Bacon says you know."
"I do," said Raleigh.
"Then settle it once and for all," said Bacon. "I'm rather tired of the discussion myself."
"Shall I tell 'em, Shakespeare?" asked Raleigh.
"It's immaterial to me," said Shakespeare, airily. "If you wish-- only tell the truth."
"Very well," said Raleigh, lighting a cigar. "I'm not ashamed of it. I wrote the thing myself."
There was a roar of laughter which, when it subsided, found Shakespeare rapidly disappearing through the door, while all the others in the room ordered various beverages at the expense of Lord Bacon.
CHAPTER III
: WASHINGTON GIVES A DINNER

It was Washington's Birthday, and the gentleman who had the pleasure of being Father of his Country decided to celebrate it at the Associated Shades' floating palace on the Styx, as the Elysium Weekly Gossip, "a Journal of Society," called it, by giving a dinner to a select number of friends. Among the invited guests were Baron Munchausen, Doctor Johnson, Confucius, Napoleon Bonaparte, Diogenes, and Ptolemy. Boswell was also present, but not as a guest. He had a table off to one side all to himself, and upon it there were no china plates, silver spoons, knives, forks, and dishes of fruit, but pads, pens, and ink in great quantity. It was evident that Boswell's reportorial duties did not end with his labors in the mundane sphere.
The dinner was set down to begin at seven o'clock, so that the guests, as was proper, sauntered slowly in between that hour and eight. The menu was particularly choice, the shades of countless canvas-back ducks, terrapin, and sheep having been called into requisition, and cooked by no less a person than Brillat-Savarin, in the hottest oven he could find in the famous cooking establishment superintended by the government. Washington was on hand early, sampling the olives and the celery and the wines, and giving to Charon final instructions as to the manner in which he wished things served.
The first guest to arrive was Confucius, and after him came Diogenes, the latter in great excitement over having discovered a comparatively honest man, whose name, however, he had not been able to ascertain, though he was under the impression that it was something like Burpin, or Turpin, he said.
At eight the brilliant company was arranged comfortably about the board. An orchestra of five, under the leadership of Mozart, discoursed sweet music behind a screen, and the feast of reason and flow of soul began.
"This is a great day," said Doctor Johnson, assisting himself copiously to the olives.
"Yes," said Columbus, who was also a guest--"yes, it is a great day, but it isn't a marker to a little day in October I wot of."
"Still sore on that point?" queried Confucius, trying the edge of his knife on the shade of a salted almond.
"Oh no," said Columbus, calmly. "I don't feel jealous of Washington. He is the Father of his Country and I am not. I only discovered the orphan. I knew the country before it had a father or a mother. There wasn't anybody who was willing to be even a sister to it when I knew it. But G. W. here took it in hand, groomed it down, spanked it when it needed it, and started it off on the career which has made it worth while for me to let my name be known in connection with it. Why should I be jealous of him?"
"I am sure I don't know why anybody anywhere should be jealous of anybody else anyhow," said Diogenes. "I never was and I never expect to be. Jealousy is a quality that is utterly foreign to the nature of an honest man. Take my own case, for instance. When I was what they call alive, how did I live?"
"I don't know," said