"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 Iflatter 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.Iused 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 nervous energy.""That's very likely true,"said Carlyle."I should think your feats of strength would have wrecked your imagination in time.""Not so,"said Munchausen."On the contrary,continuous exercise served only to make it stronger.But,as I was going to say,in this life we have none of these fearful obstacles--it is a life of leisure;and if I want a bird and a cold bottle at any time,instead of placing my life in peril and jeopardizing the peace of all mankind to get it,I have only to summon before me the memory of some previous bird and cold bottle,dine thereon like a well-ordered citizen,and smoke the spirit of the best cigar my imagination can conjure up.""You miss my point,"said Shakespeare."I don't say this life is worse or better than the other we used to live.What I do say is that a combination of both would suit me.In short,I'd like to live here and go to the other world every day to business,like a suburban resident who sleeps in the country and makes his living in the city.
For instance,why shouldn't I dwell here and go to London every day,hire an office there,and put out a sign something like this:
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
DRAMATIST
Plays written while you wait I guess I'd find plenty to do.""Guess again,"said Tennyson."My dear boy,you forget one thing.
YOU ARE OUT OF DATE.People don't go to the theatres to hear YOU,they go to see the people who DO you.""That is true,"said Ward."And they do do you,my beloved William.
