A House-Boat on the Styx by John Kendrick Bangs (the reading list TXT) 📕

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"You were a little hard on him, Doctor," said Henry VIII. "He was a valuable man to you. He had a great eye for your greatness."

"Yes. If there's any feature of Boswell that's greater than his nose and ears, it's his great I," said the Doctor.

"You'd rather have him change his I to a U, I presume," said Napoleon, quietly.

The Doctor waved his hand impatiently. "Let's drop him," he said. "Dropping one's biographer isn't without precedent. As soon as any man ever got to know Napoleon well enough to write him up he sent him to the front, where he could get a little lead in his system."

"I wish I had had a Boswell all the same," said Shakespeare. "Then the world would have known the truth about me."

"It wouldn't if he'd relied on your word for it," retorted the Doctor. "Hullo! here's Hamlet."

As the Doctor spoke, in very truth the melancholy Dane appeared in the doorway, more melancholy of aspect than ever.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Cicero, addressing the new-comer. "Haven't you got that poison out of your system yet?"

"Not entirely," said Hamlet, with a sigh; "but it isn't that that's bothering me. It's Fate."

"We'll get out an injunction against Fate if you like," said Blackstone. "Is it persecution, or have you deserved it?"

"I think it's persecution," said Hamlet. "I never wronged Fate in my life, and why she should pursue me like a demon through all eternity is a thing I can't understand."

"Maybe Ophelia is back of it," suggested Doctor Johnson. "These women have a great deal of sympathy for each other, and, candidly, I think you behaved pretty rudely to Ophelia. It's a poor way to show your love for a young woman, running a sword through her father every night for pay, and driving the girl to suicide with equal frequency, just to show theatre-goers what a smart little Dane you can be if you try."

"'Tisn't me does all that," returned Hamlet. "I only did it once, and even then it wasn't as bad as Shakespeare made it out to be."

"I put it down just as it was," said Shakespeare, hotly, "and you can't dispute it."

"Yes, he can," said Yorick. "You made him tell Horatio he knew me well, and he never met me in his life."

"I never told Horatio anything of the sort," said Hamlet. "I never entered the graveyard even, and I can prove an alibi."

"And, what's more, he couldn't have made the remark the way Shakespeare has it, anyhow," said Yorick, "and for a very good reason. I wasn't buried in that graveyard, and Hamlet and I can prove an alibi for the skull, too."

"It was a good play, just the same," said Cicero.

"Very," put in Doctor Johnson. "It cured me of insomnia."

"Well, if you don't talk in your sleep, the play did a Christian service to the world," retorted Shakespeare. "But, really, Hamlet, I thought I did the square thing by you in that play. I meant to, anyhow; and if it has made you unhappy, I'm honestly sorry."

"Spoken like a man," said Yorick.

"I don't mind the play so much," said Hamlet, "but the way I'm represented by these fellows who play it is the thing that rubs me the wrong way. Why, I even hear that there's a troupe out in the western part of the United States that puts the thing on with three Hamlets, two ghosts, and a pair of blood-hounds. It's called the Uncle-Tom-Hamlet Combination, and instead of my falling in love with one crazy Ophelia, I am made to woo three dusky maniacs named Topsy on a canvas ice-floe, while the blood-hounds bark behind the scenes. What sort of treatment is that for a man of royal lineage?"

"It's pretty rough," said Napoleon. "As the poet ought to have said, 'Oh, Hamlet, Hamlet, what crimes are committed in thy name!'"

"I feel as badly about the play as Hamlet does," said Shakespeare, after a moment of silent thought. "I don't bother much about this wild Western business, though, because I think the introduction of the bloodhounds and the Topsies makes us both more popular in that region than we should be otherwise. What I object to is the way we are treated by these so-called first-class intellectual actors in London and other great cities. I've seen Hamlet done before a highly cultivated audience, and, by Jove, it made me blush."

"Me too," sighed Hamlet. "I have seen a man who had a walk on him that suggested spring-halt and locomotor ataxia combined impersonating my graceful self in a manner that drove me almost crazy. I've heard my 'To be or not to be' soliloquy uttered by a famous tragedian in tones that would make a graveyard yawn at mid-day, and if there was any way in which I could get even with that man I'd do it."

"It seems to me," said Blackstone, assuming for the moment a highly judicial manner--"it seems to me that Shakespeare, having got you into this trouble, ought to get you out of it."

"But how?" said Shakespeare, earnestly. "That's the point. Heaven knows I'm willing enough."

Hamlet's face suddenly brightened as though illuminated with an idea. Then he began to dance about the room with an expression of glee that annoyed Doctor Johnson exceedingly.

"I wish Darwin could see you now," the Doctor growled. "A kodak picture of you would prove his arguments conclusively."

"Rail on, O philosopher!" retorted Hamlet. "Rail on! I mind your railings not, for I the germ of an idea have got."

"Well, go quarantine yourself," said the Doctor. "I'd hate to have one of your idea microbes get hold of me."

"What's the scheme?" asked Shakespeare.

"You can write a play for _me_!" cried Hamlet. "Make it a farce-tragedy. Take the modern player for your hero, and let _me_ play _him_. I'll bait him through four acts. I'll imitate his walk. I'll cultivate his voice. We'll have the first act a tank act, and drop the hero into the tank. The second act can be in a saw-mill, and we can cut his hair off on a buzz- saw. The third act can introduce a spile-driver with which to drive his hat over his eyes and knock his brains down into his lungs. The fourth act can be at Niagara Falls, and we'll send him over the falls; and for a grand climax we can have him guillotined just after he has swallowed a quart of prussic acid and a spoonful of powdered glass. Do that for me, William, and you are forgiven. I'll play it for six hundred nights in London, for two years in New York, and round up with a one-night stand in Boston."

"It sounds like a good scheme," said Shakespeare, meditatively. "What shall we call it?"

"Call it _Irving_," said Eugene Aram, who had entered. "I too have suffered."

"And let me be Hamlet's understudy," said Charles the First, earnestly.

"Done!" said Shakespeare, calling for a pad and pencil.

And as the sun rose upon the Styx the next morning the Bard of Avon was to be seen writing a comic chorus to be sung over the moribund tragedian by the shades of Charles, Aram, and other eminent deceased heroes of the stage, with which his new play of _Irving_ was to be brought to an appropriate close.

This play has not as yet found its way upon the boards, but any enterprising manager who desires to consider it may address

_Hamlet_, _The House-Boat_, _Hades-on-the-Styx_.

He is sure to get a reply by return mail, unless Mephistopheles interferes, which is not unlikely, since Mephistopheles is said to have been much pleased with the manner in which the eminent tragedian has put him before the British and American public.


CHAPTER V: THE HOUSE COMMITTEE DISCUSS THE POETS

"There's one thing this house-boat needs," wrote Homer in the complaint- book that adorned the centre-table in the reading-room, "and that is a Poets' Corner. There are smoking-rooms for those who smoke, billiard- rooms for those who play billiards, and a card-room for those who play cards. I do not smoke, I can't play billiards, and I do not know a trey of diamonds from a silver salver. All I can do is write poetry. Why discriminate against me? By all means let us have a Poets' Corner, where a man can be inspired in peace."

For four days this entry lay in the book apparently unnoticed. On the fifth day the following lines, signed by Samson, appeared:

"I approve of Homer's suggestion. There should be a Poets' Corner here. Then the rest of us could have some comfort. While playing _vingt-et-un_ with Diogenes in the card-room on Friday evening a poetic member of this club was taken with a most violent fancy, and it required the combined efforts of Diogenes and myself, assisted by the janitor, to remove the frenzied and objectionable member from the room. The habit some of our poets have acquired of giving way to their inspirations all over the club- house should be stopped, and I know of no better way to accomplish this desirable end than by the adoption of Homer's suggestion. Therefore I second the motion."

Of course the suggestion of two members so prominent as Homer and Samson could not well he ignored by the house committee, and it reluctantly took the subject in hand at an early meeting.

"I find here," said Demosthenes to the chairman, as the committee gathered, "a suggestion from Homer and Samson that this house-boat be provided with a Poets' Corner. I do not know that I approve of the suggestion myself, but in order to bring it before the committee for debate I am willing to make a motion that the request be granted."

"Excuse me," put in Doctor Johnson, "but where do you find that suggestion? 'Here' is not very definite. Where _is_ 'here'?"

"In the complaint-book, which I hold in my hand," returned Demosthenes, putting a pebble in his mouth so that he might enunciate more clearly.

A frown ruffled the serenity of Doctor Johnson's brow.

"In the complaint-book, eh?" he said, slowly. "I thought house committees were not expected to pay any attention to complaints in complaint-books. I never heard of its being done before."

"Well, I can't say that I have either," replied Demosthenes, chewing thoughtfully on the pebble, "but I suppose complaint-books are the places for complaints. You don't expect people to write serial stories or dialect poems in them, do you?"

"That isn't the point, as the man said to the assassin who tried to stab him with the hilt of his dagger," retorted Doctor Johnson, with some asperity. "Of course, complaint-books are for the reception of complaints--nobody disputes that. What I want to have determined is whether it is necessary or proper for the complaints to go further."

"I fancy we have a legal right to take the matter up," said Blackstone, wearily; "though I don't know of any precedent for such action. In all the clubs I have known the house committees have invariably taken the ground that the complaint-book was established to guard