f his affairs; but after
the bicycle night I had to withdraw from the combination to save my
reputation. The fact upon which I had not counted was that my neighbors
began to think me insane. I had failed to remember that none of these
visiting spirits was visible to us in this material world, and while
my fellow-townsmen were disposed to lay up my hiring of a special
trolley-car for my own private and particular use against the
eccentricity of genius, they marvelled greatly that I should purchase
twenty of the best seats at a vaudeville show seemingly for my own
exclusive use. When, besides this, they saw me start off apparently
alone on one tandem bicycle, followed by twenty-eight other empty
wheels, which they could not know were manipulated by some of the most
famous legs in the history of the world, from Noah's down to those
of Henry Fielding the novelist, they began to regard me as something
uncanny.

Nor can I blame them. It seems to me that if I saw one man scorching
along a road alone on a tandem bicycle chatting to an empty front-seat,
I should think him queer, but if following in his wake I perceived
twenty-eight other wheels, scorching up hill and down dale without any
visible motive power, I should regard him as one who was in league with
the devil himself.

Nevertheless, I judge from what Boswell has told me that I am regarded
in Hades as a great benefactor of the people there, for having
established a series of excursions from that world into this, a service
which has done much to convince the Stygians that after all, if only by
contrast, the life below has its redeeming features.

VII. AN IMPORTANT DECISION

For some time after the organization of the Pleasure Tours, the
Enchanted Type-Writer appeared to be deserted. Night after night I
watched over it with great care lest I should lose any item of interest
that might come to me from below, but, much to my sorrow, things in
Hades appeared to be dull--so dull that the machine was not called
into requisition at all. I little guessed what important matters were
transpiring in that wonderful country. Had I done so, I doubt I should
have waited so patiently, although my only method of getting there
was suicide, for which diversion I have very little liking. On the
twenty-fourth night of waiting, however, the welcome sound of the bell
dragged me forth from my comfortable couch, whither, expecting nothing,
I had retired early.

"Glad to hear your