THE APOSTLE IN PERDITION.

A DAY WITH THE DEVIL.

66
"I WISH I were in Hell!"

Of course the Apostle did not mean it-was only blowing off steam, as St. Paul was wont to do when the ladies laughed at his funny little bald head and semilunar legs. It is said that his wife left him because he couldn't stop a calf without building a picket fence between his knees, and so uncompromisingly homely that whenever he came near the family molasses barrel it fermented. Ethnic writers contend that it was this hymeneal contretemps that made him look askance at marriagetransformed him into an ill-natured misogynist and filled him with the pea-green envy of a eunuch. But I digress. "I wish I were in Hell! "

The words were as heavy-laden with soulful yearning as those which Juliet spills over the balcony into the dewy garden, unconscious that her "mash" has evaded the family bulldog and is panting beneath her balcony like a mallard with a case of lead-poisoning. It was a sultry summer afternoon in the City of Saints, called Wayco by the common herd, but pronounced Wackoh by those who have sold their cotton. The licensed saloons were hermetically sealed by order of Emperors Constantine and Cranfill; but here and there could be seen a Good Samaritan seeking to save life-for a consideration-by steering the thirsty pilgrim against a black bottle of Prohibition booze. Everybody who could borrow a dollar had excurted to other cities, possessing less sanctification but more common sense, and the solemn stillness was broken only by the drowsy hum of a few perspiring pulpiteers who were making a feeble effort to earn their salaries by dealing damnation round on those who presumed to differ

from their doxies. Not a leaf stirred, lest it be indicted for Sabbath desecration. The grass had stopped growing and the tawny Brazos quit running at twelve o'clock Saturday night, and the town cow gone outside the corporation to chew her cud. The dogs refrained from scratching the fleas lest they cause their bipedal brethren to offend, and even the industrious jaw of Wherein Riggins was at rest. The Little Giant hazarded his reputation as a political acrobat by suffering his financial views to remain in statu quo for four-and-twenty hours, and physic administered on the Sabbath day refused to work. Everybody was full of ennui as a tariff editorial, slightly tempered by a faint hope of finding an excuse for committing a homicide. It was like being consigned alive to a second-hand sepulchre and sodded down with crocodile tears beneath a lying epitaph; hence the involuntary and almost profane exclamation of the monitor of the Texas ministers:

"I wish I were in Hell!"

He really meant Houston, famed in song and story as the abiding place of the frail but ravishingly fair Rebecca Merlindy Johnson, the Trilby of sunny Texas. He longed to wander with her, hand in hand down the banks of the babbling Bayou, and crown her with garlands of hexapetalous pigweed and blue forget-me-nots. He yearned to rescue her from the hypnotic spell of Svengali Hill and remove her from the lyric stage, where she now warbles the pathetic ballad of "Ben Bolt" as in a dream; and the more so because he has long suspected that she is none other than "Sweet Alice with hair so brown" disguised in a plug-hat and a pair of bloomers. Ah me! the indigestible sweetness of those

"Kisses by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others."

Before the Apostle could amend his motion a party resembling Lewis Morrison's Mephistopheles drifted into the sanctum.

"I am Lucifer," he remarked confidentially, as he sat down on a corner of the exchange table and glanced eagerly through the columns of Dr. Hayden's Holy Fake.

"The Devil you are!"

"Exactly. You observed just now that you wanted to go to Hell. I have come to escort you."

The Apostle hesitated. He thought in paragraphs while his knees made an effort to circle round each other. Could Hell be worse than Sunday in a town dominated by sniveling hypocrites and blatant humbugs; a place that points with pride to Baylor University, where school-girls are debauched-actually glories in its crown of infamy? He reached for his hat.

"Is it very far?"

"No; Sam Jones is my civil engineer and has located a 'mouth of hell' just one mile from every American city for the accommodation of my guests. There is nothing like making a place easily accessible. You will pardon me for blindfolding you. Should you learn the exact location of the Waco entrance to my dominions you might sneak out some morning with Dr. Parks and Bill Edmonds and block it up. A bandage is unnecessary. Just imagine yourself a sectarian minister, and in two minutes you will be blind as a mole."

He made a few hypnotic passes with his hands and the Apostle began to yearn for yaller-legged poultry and female society. He wanted to discuss forms of baptism and take up a collection. He saw in fancy two roads: One narrow and steep as an Alpine path; the other broad with smooth down grade. The first led to Heaven and was traversed by a handful of tearful saints who attended to

everybody's business but their own; the latter to Hell, and was crowded with peoples of all ages and sexes, kinds and conditions. Here grand old men who had made Reason a lamp to their feet and carried the whole human race in their hearts; there unbaptized babes in their swaddling clothes-all plunging in endless procession over a steep precipice into a bottomless pit, from which arose, as incense to God's eternal throne, the fumes of sulphur and the cries of tortured innocents.

"Here we are,” remarked the Devil cheerfully as he broke the hypnotic spell and relieved his visitor of the theological delirium-tremens. "If you don't see what you want just notify the head clerk."

"You are awfully kind. I say, a mint-julep wouldn't go bad at this stage of the game, d'you think? Or a bottle of wine, if you've got some you brought with you from the other place, might

"My dear sir, Hell is the only place where Prohibition actually prohibits. If you have not neglected your theology you will remember that liquor is the luxury of gods, not of devils. If you want to fill the beaker to the brim, or words to that effect, you must go to Valhalla or Olympus. It was Noah, the beloved of God, not I who laid the foundation of the present jag-cure joints. I sowed a few tares, but never engaged in vine culture. It was Christ who turned water into wine. I have been suspected of a good many bad habits, but there is not one word in Holy Writ to show that I was ever a boozer. Intoxicants have been employed in almost every worship known to the world except devil worship. Wine mellows the heart and promotes good fellowship. Bacchus is Cupid's armor-bearer and the twin brother of Joy. He is the perfect antithesis of yours truly. It took me three thousand years to perfect a plan for the abolition of that

good cheer brought into the world by Bacchus. Whenever I can persuade a people to lay a heavy tax upon intoxicants I have mine enemy on the hip. A saloonist will then buy ten gallons of eau de vie and sell a hundred of murder-breeding booze. Old Tommy Jefferson was shrewd enough to catch on to my game and, while president, blocked it; but wisdom died with him and America is mine. I have even improved on the original plan by adding Prohibition and filling the people with Peruna, Hostetter's Bitters and other rot-gut compounds when they want cold beer. I tell you, I'm in this fight to win, and I make every edge cut. When St. John called me the father of lies, the pride of my heart, the Prohibition falsehood had not been born."

We were in a vast and gloomy room, half lit by chandeliers, the lamps of which were human skulls. The walls were festooned with serpents and the ceiling frescoed with portraits of that mighty throng who have assumed the livery of the Lord in which the better to serve the Devil. Here and there fountains played, but instead of pure spring water they spouted boiling oil. A upas tree stood in a tub made of the ribs of those mailed marauders, Joshua and Alexander, Attila and Napoleon, while cacti and night-shade, thorns and thistles struggled up through cracks in a floor paved with the kneecaps of men who had bowed in fashionable churches to promote their pecuniary or political fortunes. In the center of the room stood a massive throne of black marble, at the foot of which a hyena crouched, devouring the heart of a hypocrite, while a monster vampire spread its leathery wings above for canopy. The air was chill and damp, and in the shadows owls hooted in response to the mournful plaint of a black cat and the discord of a young demon who was learning to play the trombone, while three-headed Cerberus howled