Page 222 - YB1903
P. 222
"Pat Ireland is the John Wanamaker of Hell. He is so far ahead of all his competitors that he con- siders himself the only business man of the place. There was not much money circulating in Hell, but somehow or other Pat succeeded in getting a good deal or it together and started his business. He is buying up all the winter underclothes and overcoats, storm shoes and rubber boots at a bargain. After getting things pretty well started he opened a branch store in Purgatory where he unloads all his pl1r- chases. Wben Lleft him he was doing his best to get a consignment of ice from the Kennebec river, and had also been trying for some time to import palm-leaf fans. He succeeded in getting two large barrels of liquid air. But the Prince of Darkness came in his store one day and sat clown on one of the barrels, and after he had got up he had a violent chill, so that he had to be taken to one of the hottest fires and warmed up. FI'OI11that time on he was a little angry with Pat, and, in order to vent his anger in a quiet way, he and Beelzebubgot the council together and passed a law that no 1110reliquid air should be sold in Hell. This was a heavy loss to Pat, but he still continued in the other departments of his work." Alter reflecting for a moment I inquired: "How about Davis; as he was a fellow who always tried to clo right, I suppose yo u have not met him in the lower world?" "Dh, yes," replied the skeleton, "you know he sometimes used to slip down town at night without the knowledge of his friends up at school. The result was that he put in his appearance here a lew months ago with his suitcase full of dean laundry and a big chrysanthemum in his button-hole. He had not been here long before he began to favor a select audience with a few of his favorite tales. It was soon found that they were a little too rank for Hell, and he was put outside the gatc with his baggage and a return ticket to Wilmington. "Edwards was sojourning in Hell when 1 left, and will be there for about three hundred years, I think. He still has that bad habit of telling originat jokesj i). He was busy telling Shakespeare and Mil- ton one of his jokes (these three, by the way, are vcry good friends), when Methuselah, Adam and Noah were walking by and stopped to listen, thinking they would hear something new from the United States. Edwards had gone but half way when Methuselah turned up his nose and walked away in disgust, tell- ing Noah that his nurse had told him that when he was a little boy." vMcst; of our faculty are dead now, are they not?" I asked my bony chum. "Arc any or them in Hell, or have they all passed on to Heaven to receivethe reward which they paid for so dearly when on earth ?" - - 212