“Well, young man,” said he, rising, with a queer grin on his face, “what are you sent here for?”
“For using tobacco,” I replied.
“Ho!” shouted he in a jolly manner, peculiar to devils, “that's what most of 'em are sent here for now.”
Without more ado, he called four lesser imps, who ushered me within. What a dreadful plain lay before me! There was a vast city laid out in regular streets, but there were no houses. Along the streets were places of torment and torture exceedingly ingenious and disagreeable. For miles and miles, it seemed, I followed my conductors through these horrors, Here was a deep vat of burning tar. Here were rows of fiery ovens. I noticed several immense caldron kettles of boiling oil, upon the rims of which little devils sat, with pitchforks in hand, and poked down the helpless victims who floundered in the liquid. But I forbear to go into unseemly details. The whole scene is as vivid in my mind as any earthly landscape.
After an hour's walk my tormentors halted before the mouth of an oven,—a furnace heated seven times, and now roaring with flames. They grasped me, one hold of each hand and foot. Standing before the blazing mouth, they, with a swing, and a “one, two, THREE....”
I again assure the reader that in this narrative I have set down nothing that was not actually dreamed, and much, very much of this wonderful vision I have been obliged to omit.
Haec fabula docet: It is dangerous for a young man to leave off the use of tobacco.
