A House-Boat on the Styx | Page 9

Doctor Johnson, turning his head as he spoke so that Boswell could not fail to hear. "I wasn't there."
Boswell nodded approvingly, chuckled slightly, and put the Doctor's remark down for publication in The Gossip.
"You're doubtless right, there," retorted Diogenes. "What you don't know would fill a circulating library. Well--I lived in a tub. Now, if I believed in envy, I suppose you think I'd be envious of people who live in brownstone fronts with back yards and mortgages, eh?"
"I'd rather live under a mortgage than in a tub," said Bonaparte, contemptuously.
"I know you would," said Diogenes. "Mortgages never bothered you-- but I wouldn't. In the first place, my tub was warm. I never saw a house with a brownstone front that was, except in summer, and then the owner cursed it because it was so. My tub had no plumbing in it to get out of order. It hadn't any flights of stairs in it that had to be climbed after dinner, or late at night when I came home from the club. It had no front door with a wandering key-hole calculated to elude the key ninety-nine times out of every hundred efforts to bring the two together and reconcile their differences, in order that their owner may get into his own house late at night. It wasn't chained down to any particular neighborhood, as are most brownstone fronts. If the neighborhood ran down, I could move my tub off into a better neighborhood, and it never lost value through the deterioration of its location. I never had to pay taxes on it, and no burglar was ever so hard up that he thought of breaking into my habitation to rob me. So why should I be jealous of the brownstone- house dwellers? I am a philosopher, gentlemen. I tell you, philosophy is the thief of jealousy, and I had the good-luck to find it out early in life."
"There is much in what you say," said Confucius. "But there's another side to the matter. If a man is an aristocrat by nature, as I was, his neighborhood never could run down. Wherever he lived would be the swell section, so that really your last argument isn't worth a stewed icicle."
"Stewed icicles are pretty good, though," said Baron Munchausen, with an ecstatic smack of his lips. "I've eaten them many a time in the polar regions."
"I have no doubt of it," put in Doctor Johnson. "You've eaten fried pyramids in Africa, too, haven't you?"
"Only once," said the Baron, calmly. "And I can't say I enjoyed them. They are rather heavy for the digestion."
"That's so," said Ptolemy. "I've had experience with pyramids myself."
"You never ate one, did you, Ptolemy?" queried Bonaparte.
"Not raw," said Ptolemy, with a chuckle. "Though I've been tempted many a time to call for a second joint of the Sphinx."
There was a laugh at this, in which all but Baron Munchausen joined.
"I think it is too bad," said the Baron, as the laughter subsided--"I think it is very much too bad that you shades have brought mundane prejudice with you into this sphere. Just because some people with finite minds profess to disbelieve my stories, you think it well to be sceptical yourselves. I don't care, however, whether you believe me or not. The fact remains that I have eaten one fried pyramid and countless stewed icicles, and the stewed icicles were finer than any diamond-back rat Confucius ever had served at a state banquet."
"Where's Shakespeare to-night?" asked Confucius, seeing that the Baron was beginning to lose his temper, and wishing to avoid trouble by changing the subject. "Wasn't he invited, General?"
"Yes," said Washington, "he was invited, but he couldn't come. He had to go over the river to consult with an autograph syndicate they've formed in New York. You know, his autographs sell for about one thousand dollars apiece, and they're trying to get up a scheme whereby he shall contribute an autograph a week to the syndicate, to be sold to the public. It seems like a rich scheme, but there's one thing in the way. Posthumous autographs haven't very much of a market, because the mortals can't be made to believe that they are genuine; but the syndicate has got a man at work trying to get over that. These Yankees are a mighty inventive lot, and they think perhaps the scheme can be worked. The Yankee IS an inventive genius."
"It was a Yankee invented that tale about your not being able to prevaricate, wasn't it, George?" asked Diogenes.
Washington smiled acquiescence, and Doctor Johnson returned to Shakespeare.
"I'd rather have a morning-glory vine than one of Shakespeare's autographs," said he. "They are far prettier, and quite as legible."
"Mortals wouldn't," said Bonaparte.
"What fools they be!" chuckled Johnson.
At this point the canvas-back ducks were served, one whole shade