propose a
toast. Here's to the Butter Sculptors. May their butter never give
out."

The toast was drained to the dregs, and Phidias went home feeling a
little better.

CHAPTER X: STORY-TELLERS' NIGHT

It was Story-tellers' Night at the house-boat, and the best talkers of
Hades were impressed into the service. Doctor Johnson was made chairman
of the evening.

"Put him in the chair," said Raleigh. "That's the only way to keep him
from telling a story himself. If he starts in on a tale he'll make it a
serial sure as fate, but if you make him the medium through which other
story-tellers are introduced to the club he'll be finely epigrammatic. He
can be very short and sharp when he's talking about somebody else.
Personality is his forte."

"Great scheme," said Diogenes, who was chairman of the entertainment
committee. "The nights over here are long, but if Johnson started on a
story they'd have to reach twice around eternity and halfway back to give
him time to finish all he had to say."

"He's not very witty, in my judgment," said Carlyle, who since his
arrival in the other world has manifested some jealousy of Solomon and
Doctor Johnson.

"That's true enough," said Raleigh; "but he's strong, and he's bound to
say something that will put the audience in sympathy with the man that he
introduces, and that's half the success of a Story-tellers' Night. I've
told stories myself. If your audience doesn't sympathize with you you'd
be better off at home putting the baby to bed."

And so it happened. Doctor Johnson was made chairman, and the evening
came. The Doctor was in great form. A list of the story-tellers had
been sent him in advance, and he was prepared. The audience was about as
select a one as can be found in Hades. The doors were thrown open to the
friends of the members, and the smoke-furnace had been filled with a very
superior quality of Arcadian mixture which Scott had brought back from a
haunting-trip to the home of "The Little Minister," at Thrums.

"Friends and fellow-spooks," the Doctor began, when all were seated on
the visionary camp-stools--which, by the way, are far superior to those
in use in a world of realities, because they do not creak in the midst of
a fine point demanding absolute silence for appreciation--"I do not know
why I have been chosen to preside over this gathering of phantoms; it is
the province of the presiding officer on occasions of this sort to say
pleasan