gedy than a comedy punctuated with deaths, but beyond that
you had nothing to do with it."

"I side with Shakespeare," put in Emerson. "I've seen his autographs,
and no sane person would employ a man who wrote such a villanously bad
hand as an amanuensis. It's no use, Bacon, we know a thing or two. I'm
a New-Englander, I am."

"Well," said Bacon, shrugging his shoulders as though the results of the
controversy were immaterial to him, "have it so if you please. There
isn't any money in Shakespeare these days, so what's the use of
quarrelling? I wrote _Hamlet_, and Shakespeare knows it. Others know
it. Ah, here comes Sir Walter Raleigh. We'll leave it to him. He was
cognizant of the whole affair."

"I leave it to nobody," said Shakespeare, sulkily.

"What's the trouble?" asked Raleigh, sauntering up and taking a chair
under the cue-rack. "Talking politics?"

"Not we," said Bacon. "It's the old question about the authorship of
_Hamlet_. Will, as usual, claims it for himself. He'll be saying he
wrote Genesis next."

"Well, what if he does?" laughed Raleigh. "We all know Will and his
droll ways."

"No doubt," put in Nero. "But the question of _Hamlet_ always excites
him so that we'd like to have it settled once and for all as to who wrote
it. Bacon says you know."

"I do," said Raleigh.

"Then settle it once and for all," said Bacon. "I'm rather tired of the
discussion myself."

"Shall I tell 'em, Shakespeare?" asked Raleigh.

"It's immaterial to me," said Shakespeare, airily. "If you wish--only
tell the truth."

"Very well," said Raleigh, lighting a cigar. "I'm not ashamed of it. I
wrote the thing myself."

There was a roar of laughter which, when it subsided, found Shakespeare
rapidly disappearing through the door, while all the others in the room
ordered various beverages at the expense of Lord Bacon.

CHAPTER III: WASHINGTON GIVES A DINNER

It was Washington's Birthday, and the gentleman who had the pleasure of
being Father of his Country decided to celebrate it at the Associated
Shades' floating palace on the Styx, as the Elysium _Weekly Gossip_, "a
Journal of Society," called it, by giving a dinner to a select number of
friends. Among the invited guests were Baron Munchausen, Doctor Johnson,
Confucius, Napoleon Bonaparte, Diogenes, and Ptolemy. Boswell was also
present, but not as a guest. He had a table off to one side all to
himself, and upon it there were no china p