The Asbestos Society of Sinners: detailing the diversions of Dives and others on the playground of Pluto, with some broken threads of drop-stitch history, picked up by a newspaper man in Hades and woven into a Stygian nights' entertainmentFogg, Lawrence Daniel
General
The Asbestos Society of Sinners: detailing the diversions of Dives and others on the playground of Pluto, with some broken threads of drop-stitch history, picked up by a newspaper man in Hades and woven into a Stygian nights' entertainment
Fogg, Lawrence Daniel
Hell -- Fiction; Humorous stories
“And the merry morn tagged the shadows of night and became ‘it’. The
number of the evening hours was eleven and of the day was twelve.
Eleven and twelve make twenty-three—that’s the sum that spells
‘skidoo’. And the night departed in haste.
“And in the time when it seemed good to him, Darwin awoke and made
two great lights, the greater arc to rule the day and the lesser
incandescent to rule the night. And Darwin was the greater and
Professor Huxley was the lesser; he made Herbert Spencer also.
“And behold! the man, because he had within him all other men, spoke
Henry James English in all its simplicity from his birth up. Mother
Earth sang lullabies to him, but the man was sore vexed at his
_mater’s_ nonsense verses and comic opera lyrics; he swore a Saxon
oath. That being the first word he had uttered, the man was called
Adam. And all in the world there was none other like him.
“Now when the evening and the morning were the fifth day, Darwin began
to sit up and take notice. He took a leaf from Adam’s birth record
and by soaking it in alcohol over night, words became visible and he
read that in the primordial epoch when in the transition period Adam
was a kangaroo, a woman started to sprout from the seed of truth, but
the coming man thought she had better lie a little longer, and so
he stunted her truth-telling for all time by thrusting her into the
tobacco pouch of his kangaroo hide, knowing that there is no stunt like
tobacco.
“Eve was content to come after man for three reasons; first, she knew
it was fashionable to arrive late; second, she was timid and wanted
Mr. Adam to see how the land lay now that the waters had been divided;
third, she was having some clothes made for her debut and even with the
assistance of Prof. Huxley, Tailor Darwin had not been able to get them
ready on time.
“Though eternal despairs deepened their nights about him, Adam was in
a jolly mood and he said: ‘Let us make light of it’—and there was light!
“And when Eden was effulgent Darwin could see the man he had made and
he saw that it was good. He was positive of that but was comparatively
sure he could do better, so he hypnotized Adam by telling him he
had appendicitis and that an operation was necessary for his future
well-being as a man, now that he had ceased to be a monkey. Dad had
never studied physiology—though he made up for it later by dissecting
Eve every chance he got,—and so he did not wonder how it came about
that the only portion of his anatomy for which he no longer had a use,
having given up climbing trees as being too undignified a diversion,
had gotten so far up as to tickle him in the ribs. He remembered that
saying about man being fearfully and wonderfully made, and being
assured by Dr. Darwin that the operation for the removal of ‘a rag and
a bone and a hank of hair’ was as safe as an Hom pill, he quietly fell
asleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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