Through Hell with Hiprah Hunt: A Series of Pictures and Notes of Travel Illustrating the Adventures of a Modern Dante in the Infernal Regions; Also Other Pictures of the Same Subterranean World — Dante Alighieri — John Shaqi
Through Hell with Hiprah Hunt: A Series of Pictures and Notes of Travel Illustrating the Adventures of a Modern Dante in the Infernal Regions; Also Other Pictures of the Same Subterranean World
Dante Alighieri · en
The public spitter ” 60
A lively dance ” 61
Shooting the infernal chute ” 62
For chronic grumblers ” 63
The annual parade ” 64
The farewell banquet ” 65
NOTE.
This volume contains seventy sketches and a dozen full-page
pictures now printed for the first time. It also includes most of
the drawings originally published in “Hell-up-to-Date.” Others were
published in the “Cosmopolitan Magazine,” and a few were printed in
the New York “Evening Journal” and “Judge.” Acknowledgment is due
the Editors of the publications mentioned for permission to reprint
them in book form.
READ THIS FIRST.
The hero of this hazardous exploration through Hell is =Hiprah Hunt=, a
lecturer, reformer, ex-preacher, poet and president of a Dante Club.
=Hiprah Hunt has no tolerance for the modern philosophy that denies the
existence of Hell.= As a preacher he was what men of the present day call
a “back number.”
=Despite “higher criticism” he continually and earnestly advocates the
justice of future punishment=, and for this reason is known in the town
where he lives as “Hell-fire Hunt.”
Not unlikely his belief in a Demon-haunted Hell ruled over by a personal
Devil is in part due to atavism, for Mr. Hunt is a descendant of the
illustrious Hunts who lent their aid to the extermination of witches in
that part of New England where witchcraft once flourished.
As President of a Dante Club he collected many books on the subject of
future retribution. Among them (some 80 volumes) he chiefly prizes
Dante’s Inferno. Whenever he is given an opportunity he will deliver a
lecture on Dante and his work. In short, Hell books have so thoroughly
absorbed his mind that he becomes convinced that the under-world is as
much a reality as the upper one.
As a result of continual thinking on one subject, and that subject a hot
one, it was frequently hinted that Mr. Hunt’s brains were shrivelling
up. Whether that is true or not, =he became imbued with the idea that he
must find the Infernal Regions and prove to the world that the place is
not a myth=.
In the Fall of 1900 Mr. Hunt mysteriously disappeared from home. For six
weeks nothing was seen or heard of him. When he returned he set to work
immediately and wrote a poem consisting of sixty-eight cantos of blank
verse, curiously mixed with prose, quotations and numerous foot-notes.
=This poem, he declares, is the account of a six weeks’ journey through
Hell.=