off on one
of Boswell's tours. "Show the value and beauties of your plan to the
influential men of Hades first, my dear Boswell," I added, "and then if
they choose they can come again and bring their wives with them on their
own responsibility."

"I fancy that is the best plan, but we ought to have some variety in
these tours," he replied. "A trolley-party, however successful, would
not make a great season for an entertainment bureau, would it?"

"No, indeed," said I. "You are perfectly right about that. What you
want is one function a week during the summer season. Open with the
trolley-party as No. 1 of your first series. Follow this with 'An
Evening of Vaudeville: The Grand Tour of the Roof Gardens.' After that
have a 'Sunday at the Sea-side--Surf Bathing, Summer Girls and Sand.'
That would make a mighty attractive line for your advertisement."

"Magnificent. I don't see why you don't give up poetry and magazine
work and get a position as poster-writer for a circus. You are only a
mediocre magazinist, but in the poster business you'd be a genius."

This was tapped off with such manifest sincerity that I could not take
offence, so I thanked him and resumed.

"The grand finale of your first series might be 'A Tandem Scorch: A
Century Run on a Bicycle Built for Two Hundred!'"

"Magnificent!" cried Boswell, with such enthusiasm that I feared he
would smash the machine. "I'll devote a whole page of my Sunday issue to
the prospectus--but, to return to the woman question, we ought really
to have something to announce for them. Hades hath no fury like a woman
scorned, and I can't afford to scorn the sex. You needn't have anything
to do with them if you don't want to--only tell me something I can
announce, and I'll make Henry the Eighth solid again by putting that
branch of the enterprise in his wives' hands. In that way I'll kill two
birds with one stone."

"That's all very well, Boswell, but I'm afraid I can't," said I. "It's
hard enough to know how to please a mortal woman without attempting to
get up a series of picnics for the rather miscellaneous assortment of
ladies who form your social structure below. All men are alike, and
man's pleasures in all times have been generally the same, but every
woman is unique. I never knew two who were alike, and if it's all the
same to you I'd rather you left me out of your ladies' tours altogether.
Of course I know that even the Queen of Sheba would enjoy a visit to a
Monday