"
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.
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