safely back to Hades. When the humorist leaves the earth it will be jumping out of the frying pan of a vivid imagination into a very hot fire of reality.” [Pg 21] [Pg 21] “And Marie Corelli? I thought her ‘Sorrows of Satan’—” “That’s just it. Through all the centuries Lucifer lacked a champion until Marie Corelli sat in judgment on the world and gave it fits after reading ‘Paradise Lost’ and losing her heart as well as her head—as many another girl has done—to the angel who ‘fell, never to rise again.’ Lucifer would have had no attraction for most women if he had not fallen. Milton made him a hero, many persons have embraced him, but no one ever fully understood him except Marie, and great shall be her reward.” “How can there be rewards in Hades?” “Oh, we have our society here just as in the upper region, only the world asks who a man is; here the Smart Set asks who he was. Caste is as strong here as in your Four Million and in our upper Ten Thousand.” “But even yet I do not understand how the champion of His Satanic Majesty is to be rewarded.” “Lucifer has long wanted a wife. Marie Corelli alone pleases his fancy, besides possessing the necessary qualifications for the position. Here she will be supreme; she will rule even the arch fiend himself. To her kings will bow and princes kneel. Won’t she make it hot for some of the reviewers who ‘roasted’ her on earth! There is only one place where reviews live—in[Pg 22] Hell. There is a torridness of climate here which agrees with them. After all, Hades is no more than a caricature of your world and the doings of men. [Pg 22] “Your society is but vanity; what, then, shall be said of the festivities of Hades? We dine, and our Barmecide feast leaves a nauseating feeling of emptiness. Here amusement is the lash of correction. All is illusion; nothing is real. The fashions of all the centuries flourish here at one time, for every fashion which has had its day straightway goes to Hell. I sometimes think that is the principal reason why women are dissatisfied here; they had to follow the fashion in vogue while they were on the earth and when a late comer appears in a new style hat or dress the other women suffer torments worse than any Satan could devise, especially on Easter Sunday. “The twilight of Hades forms a sort of X-ray which
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