IF you should ask me why I went to Hell, I do not know that I could answer you. I only know that I have often wanted to go there. I have more than once envied Swedenborg, who could go in a jiffy where he pleased, and the rat who lived in a well, and when he died went——you know where. If you do not know, I can tell you that the place rhymes with well.

I only know that I went there and came back safe and unsinged, and with no smell of fire in my garments, although I saw and talked with him who is never mentioned in polite company, strange to say, considering that he is the politest person that I ever met.

It may have been owing to the fact that, just before I went to sleep, I was thinking of these coming fall days; of the maple boughs which will soon be blazing with the red and scarlet flames of the frost; of the smoky haze which will soon hide the hill-sides; of the sumachs and vines which will soon sheet the road-sides with flame. It may have been this smoke and fire which sent me there, for the most of us form no other idea of that place, under the heavens, except in the light of brimstone, sulphur, anthracite coal, lava, molten iron, and other pleasant compounds, into which we are to be immersed forever and a day, to roast, boil, and bake, and yet never get cooked.

But, as I said before, I have been to Hell and got back safely, and I should be unfaithful to my post as a public benefactor, and my duties as a journalistic chronicler, did I not tell you what I saw.

You may remember that some months ago I told you of my trip to Heaven. My route to the other place was partially the same. I passed through our system of stars and planets, dodged the comets as before, found that the Man in the Moon was ill from the effects of the recent eclipse, saw the Archer-road milkmen still running from the stump-tail cows in the Milky Way, passed from planet to planet, and from galaxy to galaxy into other systems, and at last reached the sea of golden light, of which I told you before—the sea of Immortality. Between this and the crystal sea above it, however, I diverged, and my way led through rifts of dark leaden clouds, across blank moors, which were illumined by a lurid light which seemed to come from no source. There were strange whisperings in the air. Dark-winged birds now and then flitted by me, and ever and anon I could hear a sullen roar in the distance, which seemed to come from the flow of a river. Thus, on over the blank moors, until my way led to a hill-side, at the foot of which I was stopped by one of Lucifer's officials, who briefly examined me, and then said I was qualified to proceed.

I proceeded up the hill, and at the top I looked down to a river—the River of Lethe—flowing sluggishly along through a valley. Across this river I could see a country of vast extent, which was very thickly peopled. I went down the hill-side, and came to the river, and there I found an old ferryman and his boat waiting to convey me over the dark flood. He asked me for the obolus with which to pay toll across the river, but, unfortunately, I hadn't a cent with me. He then asked, rather impatiently, if my friends were so poor when I died that they couldn't afford to put an obolus in the coffin with me. I smilingly replied that I wasn't aware I had ever died, whereat he answered, very seriously, that he had carried a great many dead men across, but never any dead-heads. I tried to coax the old man into giving me a ride gratis, but he obstinately refused, saying that only the disembodied were allowed to cross, and that if he took me over he would catch the——

"Just the man I want to see," said I. "If I cannot go to him, except as a blessed defunct, will you have the goodness to hand my card to him, and say that I come from Chicago?"

The old man took the card, and, after taking on board two or three people whom I used to know, and supposed were saints, he paddled across and soon returned, saying that the Devil had sent his compliments and was willing to see me. He also sent word that he was desirous of sending back by me his thanks to Chicago, which was just now conferring a great favor upon him in the way of business.

I accordingly jumped into the boat. The old man had to work very hard in getting me over. The spirits which he was accustomed to carry weigh nothing and pack close, but I was quite substantial.

In my passage across the river I observed that it was full of robes, mitres, crosiers, censers, creeds, canons, and other articles floating along, and I asked the old man the cause of it. He simply replied that he didn't know what they were. He believed they were some sort of stuff which some people brought along with them and had to throw away because nobody used them here or in the other place. When we had reached the other shore I landed, and the old man informed me I was in Hell, and would find the Devil a short distance away. I found him without difficulty. As soon as he had settled a little dispute between some Board of Trade men who had been getting up a corner,—which he declared was too disgraceful even for his country,—he turned to me and bade me welcome.

I must acknowledge that I was disappointed in his appearance. He was a very polite, affable person, and, apparently, a perfect gentleman. There were certainly no claws upon his fingers. His feet were not cloven. There were no horns upon his head. Neither did I, after a rather secret and anxious scrutiny, discover any indications of a tail. He greeted me as if he knew me well, and at once put me at ease with himself. I made bold to congratulate him upon his personal appearance, whereat he smiled and said: "Yes, the old story—horns, hoofs and tail, I suppose. I know it is the custom for you people on that little planet, which is called, I think, the Earth, when you wish to represent anything infamous or abominable, to paint the Devil, and you generally paint him very black. Now we know a thing or two here, and we always return the compliment, for when we wish to represent anything infamous or abominable we paint Man in his natural colors. I assure you sir, I am not so black as they paint me. Why, sir, I have been obliged to blush more than once at the crimes which some men have committed who come here for cleansing."

I acknowledged the justness of his remarks and then, anxious to settle a suspicion which had been troubling me, I asked him where the fire was. He smiled again, and said:

"Fire? It is all round you. Hell-fire is by no means a falsehood. Look at these people. They have brought all their passions with them. We cannot manufacture a fire which can burn and consume like the fires of passion in man's breast. We know of no hell so terrible as the hell in a man's bosom. Let me tell you there isn't a man or woman on your Earth without a tiger chained in his breast. Let him but once unloose the beast and hell has broken loose in himself. These tides of passion never ebb. They are resistless in their flow, and they burn and kill, as they flow, like a stream of molten lava running down the side of the volcano into the fertile plains. That man there, who killed his brother is none the less a murderer now, only that his passion to kill is intensified without the means of its gratification; and you will notice that he carries the skeleton of that brother tied to him, from which he cannot escape. Do you think fire would be any such punishment to him? That miser, who was eaten up with avarice in his mortal life, is doubly the miser now, only the gains which he hoards are forever swept from him. So with them all. They bring their passions with them here only to have them intensified, to have their capacities for passion correspondingly increased, and never to have the opportunities of gratifying them. That is the kind of hell-fire we have here, and it burns until the victim is burnt out, and purified, and regenerated, and rendered capable of receiving pure enjoyment. We who are placed in charge of them have no sympathy with them, for we have no passions. We have living brains, but dead hearts.

"And yet," I remarked, "many of these people seem to be very quiet and calm. They do not look as if they were troubled at all by passions."

"There is where you make a great mistake," the Devil replied. "Appearances are as deceitful here as they are on Earth. Outward quietness is no sign of inward peace. The ocean, which is in continual war with the elements, lashing its surface into ungovernable fury, is secret and silent in its depth, while some hidden lake in the mountains, or some pool in the valleys, which never feels the ocean storm blowing over its surface, yet mirrors every storm-cloud in its breast and is disturbed in its depths by violent currents. Appearances are deceitful, even here, you see."

The Devil then offered to show me about his dominions, and we trudged along together. I was surprised to find so many people there I had known on Earth and supposed were saints; men whom I had known with serene faces, and upturned eyes, and saintly expressions, who were all the time deprecating the sinfulness of Earth; who held up their hands in holy horror at pleasures and snuffed evil in every wind that blew; and among them some whose names had been blown abroad loud and long, and who had mounted upon the top of popular opinion by means of the step-ladders of piety. The Devil noticed my surprise and said: "Yes! we have a good many of that sort. They are all entered on the books as hypocrites. One of our choicest vintages, which we serve on State occasions, is their tears bottled up. They are much superior in flavor to the tears of the crocodile."

He took me further on and showed me the men who had been cruel to animals, each of whom was tormented by the animals he had tormented in life. Brutal cartmen, who had lashed their horses to death, were in harness, and the horses were lashing them. In one place, there was an entire horse-railroad company drawing overloaded cars. A man who was cruel to his dog was pursued and constantly bitten by a howling pack of them. Another, who had wantonly killed a little bird, was chained to a rock, like Prometheus, and vultures were forever pecking at him. Nero, who took delight in killing flies, was forever stung by swarms of insects. This one, who had been cruel to his ox, was harnessed to a plow, and the ox was goading him along. That one, who had been unnecessarily cruel to a fish, was forever swimming in bottomless waters, pursued by sharks. Thus each was punished in kind, and cruelty to the dumb beast brought its own compensation. Whereat I rejoiced, and quietly pressed the hand of the Devil in token of satisfaction.

And he said to me: "Even we devils, bad as we are supposed to be, hardly know a crime so wicked as the crime of cruelty to the animal, from man down to the insect. We have no worse punishments than that for violations of the law of kindness, which is the law of love."

We wandered on, and found several other classes of persons, each of whom was punished in some unique manner. There were pot-house politicians by the multitude, who were chasing after offices which constantly eluded their grasp just as they thought they had them. There was an army of street-corner organ-grinders condemned to wander for a term of years and never to cease grinding "Captain Jinks," while the man who wrote "Captain Jinks" was condemned to follow them and listen to it as long as they played it. There was a large multitude of people from Cincinnati, condemned to sit for a thousand years upon a bank of a river and read the daily papers of Chicago. There was a crowd of tradesmen, who cheated with false weights, condemned to trudge for centuries with their weights hung about their necks; and others, who mixed sand with sugar, and turmeric with butter, and sold other villainous compounds for the genuine article, who were forced to eat their own abominable adulterations incessantly. And thus we went on until we came to a spot where there was a fearful chattering and screaming. The Devil stopped his ears as we approached, and I immediately discovered a crowd of able-bodied, stout-armed women chasing a piece of paper which was fluttering through the air. Every time that they were on the point of seizing it, a puff of wind would blow it away again. And on the paper was written the single word "Ballot." I smiled as I recognized some of them.

Thus we went on, but it was everywhere the same story. Those who had bad passions on Earth brought their bad passions along with them, and made their own hells. Those who were foolish on Earth were foolish here, and everyone was punished in kind. Each person had his crime fastened upon him, and whatever chalice he had forced others to drink was now commended to his own lips.

And as we retraced our steps, I asked the Devil if there was no cessation from these punishments, and he answered: "Love will finally triumph at last, for it is the law of laws, both on the Earth and in the Heavens."

We again reached the River Lethe, and I asked him what word he wished to send to Earth. He smiled, as he answered: "Nothing special. My business is doing well there, and I have no fault to find with your representation. The supply quite exceeds the demand."

He paused a minute, and said: "And yet I think I might send some advice by you. A great many good souls upon Earth are troubled about the meaning of life. There was one poor fool named Dr. Faust, who once sold himself to me, in order to get at the meaning of the riddle. Tell them that any one who can appreciate the littleness of life and not lose his own dignity has come near enough to solving the problem. Tell them, also, to realize, if they can, that their condition is human, and that, whenever they try to ape the divine, they are opposing the eternal fitness of things. The best happiness, and glory, and virtue they can reach is in being men, and loving their fellow-men. If they become angels on Earth, they have nothing left to do when they get up there. That old poet whom you are accustomed to style a heathen was just right when he said: 'I am human, and I deem nothing human a stranger to me.'"

I promised the Devil I would take his message to Earth, and then said: "I have but one more question to ask."

"What is that?" he replied.

"Do editors come here often?"

"No! they have quite enough of this place where they are."

I thanked him from my heart of hearts, and bade him good-bye as one not utterly bereft of comfort and consolation.

As the old ferryman landed I noticed that his boat was full of stock speculators, and that the Devil looked utterly disgusted when they stepped into his dominions.

We passed over the river in silence. I climbed the hill and crossed the blank moors, passed through the golden sea again, and then on through the systems until I reached Earth and awaked.

It may be barely possible that a quarter section of hot mince pie had something to do with this visit.

September 19, 1869.