night? That's
the author's reward. If it wasn't for the first-night business, though,
all would be plain sailing."

"Then why don't you begin it the second night?" drawled Ward.

"How the deuce could you?" put in Carlyle.

"A most extraordinary proposition," sneered Johnson.

"Yes," said Ward; "but wait a week--you'll see the point then."

"There isn't any doubt in my mind," said Shakespeare, reverting to his
original proposition, "that the only perfectly satisfactory life is under
a system not yet adopted in either world--the one we have quitted or
this. There we had hard work in which our mortal limitations hampered us
grievously; here we have the freedom of the immortal with no hard work;
in other words, now that we feel like fighting-cocks, there isn't any
fighting to be done. The great life in my estimation, would be to return
to earth and battle with mortal problems, but equipped mentally and
physically with immortal weapons."

"Some people don't know when they are well off," said Beau Brummel. "This
strikes me as being an ideal life. There are no tailors bills to pay--we
are ourselves nothing but memories, and a memory can clothe himself in
the shadow of his former grandeur--I clothe myself in the remembrance of
my departed clothes, and as my memory is good I flatter myself I'm the
best-dressed man here. The fact that there are ghosts of departed unpaid
bills haunting my bedside at night doesn't bother me in the least,
because the bailiffs that in the old life lent terror to an overdue
account, thanks to our beneficent system here, are kept in the less
agreeable sections of Hades. I used to regret that bailiffs were such
low people, but now I rejoice at it. If they had been of a different
order they might have proven unpleasant here."

"You are right, my dear Brummel," interposed Munchausen. "This life is
far preferable to that in the other sphere. Any of you gentlemen who
happen to have had the pleasure of reading my memoirs must have been
struck with the tremendous difficulties that encumbered my progress. If
I wished for a rare liqueur for my luncheon, a liqueur served only at the
table of an Oriental potentate, more jealous of it than of his one
thousand queens, I had to raise armies, charter ships, and wage warfare
in which feats of incredible valor had to be performed by myself alone
and unaided to secure the desired thimbleful. I have destroyed empires
for a bon-bon at great expense of