Mr. Hunt takes his way down a long declivity up which the blinding steam hurries “as a blizzard sweeps up a prairie slope.” Here he looks out over the vast territory where the professional tramps are made miserable. They are compelled to submit to everlasting baths in vats of boiling water. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE PROFESSIONAL TRAMPS.] _CANTO XXIII._ Remounting by the same path which led to the department spoken of in the preceding Canto, the explorer now passes over into the sixth section. His guide book tells him that here the bores are punished. He takes note of the penalty that follows the man who continually talks about himself, and others of the bore species; then, showing his passport, he steps into a descending elevator, with instructions to be put off at the next station. [Illustration] [Illustration: BORING A BORE.] _CANTO XXIV._ Alighting from the elevator Mr. Hunt makes his way to the district where he sees the conscience-thumping machines at work, an illustration of which is in his guide book. A manufacturer who has taken the invention of a poor man and made a fortune out of it, without compensating the inventor, is found bound to the platform of one of these machines underneath a trip-hammer that plays an eternal tattoo on his sinful old head. [Illustration] [Illustration: HE STOLE AN INVENTION.] _CANTO XXV._ Still in the same department he sees many more souls who walked over the rights of others in an excess of sordid ambition. High up over a narrow rushing river, his body stretched and fastened from bank to bank, he finds one of these culprits serving as a footbridge over which the Demons walk. * * * * * This department also contains the obnoxious photographers, who, ignoring all rights of privacy, practiced “snap-shooting” on whomsoever they pleased. [Illustration] [Illustration: HE WALKED OVER OTHERS.] _CANTO XXVI._ On a shelf of the rugged slope our explorer now sees a malefactor whose fate after all seems hardly adequate to his fault. He is the man who eats in defiance of all laws of decency. The days when he spaded pie into his mouth or drew soup through his mustache with a sound like a leaking hydrant, are now but a hideous memory. [Illustration] [Illustration: HE ATE LIKE A PIG.] _CANTO XXVII._ Mr. Hunt now proceeds onward to the bridge that crosses the ninth chasm. In this region he finds the lawyers, every one of whom is gagged. The explorer reflects on the necessity of this penalty and passes on. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE DEPARTMENT FOR LAWYERS.] _CANTO XXVIII._ Just across the River Lethe there lies a small territory where the explorer finds the caricaturists who ridiculed public men for money--not principle. He describes their punishment, which is to look forever at pictures of themselves made after they have been rolled, kneaded, pulled and twisted out of all semblance to their former selves.