“Magnificent!” cried Boswell, with such enthusiasm that I feared he
would smash the machine. “I'll devote a whole page of my Sunday issue to
the prospectus--but, to return to the woman question, we ought really
to have something to announce for them. Hades hath no fury like a woman
scorned, and I can't afford to scorn the sex. You needn't have anything
to do with them if you don't want to--only tell me something I can
announce, and I'll make Henry the Eighth solid again by putting that
branch of the enterprise in his wives' hands. In that way I'll kill two
birds with one stone.”
“That's all very well, Boswell, but I'm afraid I can't,” said I. “It's
hard enough to know how to please a mortal woman without attempting to
get up a series of picnics for the rather miscellaneous assortment of
ladies who form your social structure below. All men are alike, and
man's pleasures in all times have been generally the same, but every
woman is unique. I never knew two who were alike, and if it's all the
same to you I'd rather you left me out of your ladies' tours altogether.
Of course I know that even the Queen of Sheba would enjoy a visit to a
Monday sale at one of our big department stores, and I am quite as well
aware that nine out of ten women in Hades or out of it would enjoy
the millinery exhibition at the opera matinee--and if these two ideas
impress you at all you are welcome to them--but beyond this I have
nothing to suggest.”
“Well, I'm sure those two ideas are worth a great deal,” returned
Boswell, making a note of them; “I shall announce four trips to Monday
sales--”
“Call 'em 'To Bargaindale and Back: The Great Marked-down Tour,' and be
sure you add, 'For Able-bodied Women Only. No Tickets Issued Except on
Recommendation of your Family Physician.' This is especially important,
for next to a war or a football match there's nothing that I know of
that is quite so dangerous to the participants as a bargain day.”
“I'll bear what you say in mind,” quoth Boswell, and he made a note of
my injunction. “And immediately upon my return to Hades I will request
an audience with Henry's queens, and ask them to devise a number of
other tours likely to prove profitable and popular.”
Shortly after my visitor departed and I retired. The next day my family
deserted me and went to the mountains, and all my fears as to the
inordinate sense of loneliness which was to be my lot were realized.
Even Boswell neglected me apparently for a week. I went to my desk
daily and returned at night hoping that my type-writer would bring forth
something of an interesting nature, but naught other than disappointment
awaited me. For a whole blessed week I was thrown back upon the society
of my neighbors for diversion. The type-writer gave no sign of being.
Little did I guess that Boswell was busy working up my scheme in his
Stygian home!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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