"

"Now, look here," said the Monarch, "if you're going to stay here at all,
you must please to remember that this isn't a University. I simply won't
have idlers loafing round wasting their own time and demoralizing society
with their lazy habits. Pardon my abruptness" (he continued, more
mildly), "but with all the exclusiveness in the world I can't prevent our
getting a little mixed now and then, and if people come here with
academic ideas I really couldn't be responsible for order and morality.
We should be as Anglo-Indian as Olympus in no time."

"Very true! very true!" said the Shade. "I quite see. Satan finds some
mischief still--eh? as I used to say when I was a Dean. Since you really
insist on it, I suppose there _had_ better be some trifling torture by
way of occupation. Only look here--it mustn't be any of the things I
used to do up above. Quite absurd, you know, to go on reading the same
books you did at school--no, I mean, to be made to continue on the same
old lines I followed before I came up--down, I should say. It's so
monotonous, and it isn't improving."

"Well," said Pluto, "we'll see what can be done, on that assumption. It
does rather limit possibilities, though, doesn't it? You see I have to
confess that, considering it's the nineteenth century, we are a little
behind the times--no great variety in the matter of punishments."

"Why don't you bring them up to date?" asked the visitor.

"Practically," he replied, "it's a question of expense. With funds, I
could do much more. Roasting over a slow fire, for instance, is good:
they have that in another place: but just think of the coal bill! Then
viva-voceing and vivisecting without anaesthetics are of course
admirable; but the cost of expert labour involved would be ruinous.
Result is, that nearly all my penalties are self-acting and consequently
simple in design; and, on the whole, except in the case of _blases_
people who come here with a too varied experience, they answer tolerably
well."

"All right," said the Tutor, "suggest an occupation."

"Let me see," said the Ruler of the Shades, and he pondered a few
moments. "How would it be, now, if you were to take a turn with our
friend Sisyphus? He rolls a big stone up a hill, and just as he thinks
it's going to get to the top, down it comes again--most disappointing.
Quite inexpensive, and very healthy, _I_ should say, and really, as an
object-lesson in the force of gravity, not uni