life I knew how a telegram feels when it travels from New York
to San Francisco, and gets there apparently three hours before it is
sent by the clock.

XII

I am Dismissed

It was a very interesting programme for my further entertainment that
Jupiter mapped out on our way back from the links, and I deeply regret
that an untoward incident that followed later, for which I was
unintentionally responsible, prevented its being carried out. I was to
have been taken off on a cruise on the inland sea, to where the lost
island of Atlantis was to be found; a special tournament at ping-pong
was to be held in my honor, in which minor planets were to be used
instead of balls, and the players were to be drawn from among the
Titans, who were retained to perform feats of valor, skill, and
strength for Jupiter. The forge of Vulcan was to be visited, and many
of the mysteries of the centre of the earth were to be revealed, and,
best of all, Jupiter himself had promised to give me an exhibition of
his own skill as a marksman in the hurling of thunder-bolts, and _I
was to select the objects to be hit!_ Think of it! What a chance lay
here for a man to be rid of certain things on earth that he did not
like! What a vast amount of ugly American architecture one could be
rid of in the twinkling of an eye! What a lot of enemies and eyesores
it was now in my power to have removed by an electrical process
availed of in the guise of sport! I spent an hour on that list of
targets, and if only I had been allowed to prolong my stay in the home
of the gods, the world itself would have benefited, for I was not
altogether personal in my selection of things for Jupiter to aim at.
There was Tammany Hall, for instance, and the Boxers of China--these
led my list. There were four or five sunlight-destroying, sky-scraping
office buildings in New York and elsewhere; nuisances of every kind
that I could think of were put down--the headquarters of the Beef
Trust and a few of its sponsors; the editorial offices of the peevish
and bilious newspapers, which deny principles and right motives to all
save themselves; a regiment of alleged humorists who make jokes about
the mother-in-law and other sacred relations of life; an opera-box
full of the people who hum every number of Wagner and Verdi through,
and keep other people from hearing the singers; row after row of
theatre-goers who come in late and trample over the virtuous folk who
have arrived punctual