for the immigrants of this age! Really this Styx River is losing a
great deal of its charm. Sir Walter and I were upset, while out
rowing one day last summer, by the waves kicked up by one of Charon's
excursion steamers going up the river with a party of picnickers from
the city--the Greater Gehenna Chowder Club, I believe it was--on
board of her. One might just as well live in the midst of the
turmoil of a great city as try to get uninterrupted quiet here in the
suburbs in these days. Charon isn't content to get rich slowly; he
must make money by the barrelful, if he has to sacrifice all the
comfort of everybody living on this river. Anybody'd think he was an
American, the way he goes on; and everybody else here is the same
way. The Erebeans are getting to be a race of shopkeepers."

"I think myself," sighed Cleopatra, "that Hades is being spoiled by
the introduction of American ideas--it is getting by far too
democratic for my tastes; and if it isn't stopped, it's my belief
that the best people will stop coming here. Take Madame Recamier's
salon as it is now and compare it with what it used to be! In the
early days, after her arrival here, everybody went because it was the
swell thing, and you'd be sure of meeting the intellectually elect.
On the one hand you'd find Sophocles; on the other, Cicero; across
the room would be Horace chatting gayly with some such person as
myself. Great warriors, from Alexander to Bonaparte, were there, and
glad of the opportunity to be there, too; statesmen like
Macchiavelli; artists like Cellini or Tintoretto. You couldn't move
without stepping on the toes of genius. But now all is different.
The money-getting instinct has been aroused within them all, with the
result that when I invited Mozart to meet a few friends at dinner at
my place last autumn, he sent me a card stating his terms for
dinners. Let me see, I think I have it with me; I've kept it by me