“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; a land whose people never allow the voice of conscience to speak louder than the bell of the cash register.” “Despite his century of banishment, Benedict Arnold is still a traitor to his country,” I observed. “Not at all,” answered Washington. “Why, he doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘traitor’ when separated from its Websterian environment. His so-called betrayal of his country was but an incident to his winning a woman, and where there’s a woman, man will make a way. Before the organization of the Asbestos Society of Sinners, the historians conspired with Pluto to fry us in our own fat, but now, immune in our asbestos attire, it’s Siberia for Satan, and there’s always something doing in the Douma of the Dead. 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. It was not until the car shot out of the darkness that the letter dropped from my hand. I gasped in astonishment. “The Battery! 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. Whether it was the liquor or the water I had swallowed I know not, but my surroundings seemed those of the Twenty-third Street water front, west, rather than of the Battery. Was I being rescued from the sinking of a ferry boat or from Noah’s Ark? Had my trip to Hades consumed only the flash of the grain of sand in Time’s hour-glass which had seen me sink to the bottom of the river and rise again, or had I been the guest of the shades of the Styx for a day, a month, a year? A man who had taken a whiskey straight might have solved the problem, but to a man whose brain was befuddled by mixed drinks, coherent thought was impossible. I fell asleep, content to drift and drift and dream—of devils. THE END. THE LAND OF FULFILLED DESIRE. EPILOGUE. The Land of Fulfilled Desire. MY DEAR MR. BANGS: