Daniel was a very wretched man.
As he sat with his head bowed upon his desk that
evening he made up his mind that his life had been
a failure. “I have labored long and diligently,”
said he to himself, “and although I am known
throughout the city as an industrious and shrewd business
man, I am still a poor man, and shall probably continue
so to the end of my days unless-unless-”
Here Daniel stopped and shivered.
For a week or more he had been brooding over his
unhappy lot. There seemed to be but one way out
of his trouble, yet his soul revolted from taking
that step. That was why he stopped and shivered.
“But,” he argued, “I
must do something! My nine children are
growing up into big boys and girls. They must
have those advantages which my limited means will
not admit of! All my life so far has been pure,
circumspect, and rigid; poverty has at last broken
my spirit. I give up the fight,-I
am ready to sell my soul to the Devil!”
“The determination is a wise
one,” said a voice at Daniel’s elbow.
Daniel looked up and beheld a grim-visaged stranger
in the chair beside him. The stranger was arrayed
all in black, and he exhaled a distinct odor of sulphur.
“Am I to understand,”
asked the stranger, “that you are prepared to
enter into a league with the Devil?”
“Yes,” said Daniel, firmly;
and he set his teeth together after the fashion of
a man who is not to be moved from his purpose.
“Then I am ready to treat with you,” said
the stranger.
“Are you the Devil?” asked Daniel, eying
the stranger critically.
“No, but I am authorized to
enter into contracts for him,” explained the
stranger. “My name is Beelzebub, and I
am my master’s most trusted agent.”
“Sir,” said Daniel, “you
must pardon me (for I am loath to wound your feelings),
but one of the rules governing my career as a business
man has been to deal directly with principals, and
never to trust to the offices of middle-men.
The affair now in hand is one concerning the Devil
and myself, and between us two and by us two only
can the preliminaries be adjusted.”
“As it so happens,” explained
Beelzebub, “this is Friday,-commonly
called hangman’s day,-and that is
as busy a time in our particular locality as a Monday
is in a laundry, or as the first of every month is
at a book-keeper’s desk. You can understand,
perhaps, that this is the Devil’s busy day;
therefore be content to make this deal with me, and
you will find that my master will cheerfully accept
any contract I may enter into as his agent and in
his behalf.”
But no,-Daniel would not
agree to this; with the Devil himself, and only the
Devil himself, would he treat. So he bade Beelzebub
go to the Devil and make known his wishes. Beelzebub
departed, much chagrined. Presently back came
the Devil, and surely it was the Devil this
time,-there could be no mistake about it;
for he wore a scarlet cloak, and had cloven feet,
and carried about with him as many suffocating smells
as there are kinds of brimstone, sulphur, and assafoetida.
The two talked over all Daniel’s
miseries; the Devil sympathized with Daniel, and ever
and anon a malodorous, gummy tear would trickle down
the Devil’s sinister nose and drop off on the
carpet.
“What you want is money,”
said the Devil. “That will give you the
comfort and the contentment you crave.”
“Yes,” said Daniel; “it
will give me every opportunity to do good.”
“To do good!” repeated
the Devil. “To do good, indeed! Yes,
it’s many a good time we shall have together,
friend Daniel! Ha, ha, ha!” And the Devil
laughed uproariously. Nothing seemed more humorous
than the prospect of “doing good” with
the Devil’s money! But Daniel failed to
see what the Devil was so jolly about. Daniel
was not a humorist; he was, as we have indicated,
a plain business man.
It was finally agreed that Daniel
should sell his soul to the Devil upon condition that
for the space of twenty-four years the Devil should
serve Daniel faithfully, should provide him with riches,
and should do whatsoever he was commanded to do; then,
at the end of the twenty-fourth year, Daniel’s
soul was to pass into the possession of the Devil,
and was to remain there forever, without recourse
or benefit of clergy. Surely a more horrible
contract was never entered into!
“You will have to sign your
name to this contract,” said the Devil, producing
a sheet of asbestos paper upon which all the terms
of the diabolical treaty were set forth exactly.
“Certainly,” replied Daniel.
“I have been a business man long enough to
know the propriety and necessity of written contracts.
And as for you, you must of course give a bond for
the faithful execution of your part of this business.”
“That is something I have never
done before,” suggested the Devil.
“I shall insist upon it,”
said Daniel, firmly. “This is no affair
of sentiment; it is strictly and coldly business:
you are to do certain service, and are to receive
certain rewards therefor-”
“Yes, your soul!” cried
the Devil, gleefully rubbing his callous hands together.
“Your soul in twenty-four years!”
“Yes,” said Daniel.
“Now, no contract is good unless there is a
quid pro quo.”
“That’s so,” said
the Devil, “so let’s get a lawyer to draw
up the paper for me to sign.”
“Why a lawyer?” queried
Daniel. “A contract is a simple instrument;
I, as a business man, can frame one sufficiently binding.”
“But I prefer to have a lawyer do it,”
urged the Devil.
“And I prefer to do it myself,”
said Daniel.
When a business man once gets his
mind set, not even an Archimedean lever could stir
it. So Daniel drew up the bond for the Devil
to sign, and this bond specified that in case the
Devil failed at any time during the next twenty-four
years to do whatso Daniel commanded him, then should
the bond which the Devil held against Daniel become
null and void, and upon that same day should a thousand
and one souls be released forever from the Devil’s
dominion. The Devil winced; he hated to sign
this agreement, but he had to. An awful clap
of thunder ratified the abominable treaty, and every
black cat within a radius of a hundred leagues straightway
fell to frothing and to yowling grotesquely.
Presently Daniel began to prosper;
the Devil was a faithful slave, and he served Daniel
so artfully that no person on earth suspected that
Daniel had leagued with the evil one. Daniel
had the finest house in the city, his wife dressed
magnificently, and his children enjoyed every luxury
wealth could provide. Still, Daniel was content
to be known as a business man; he deported himself
modestly and kindly; he pursued with all his old-time
diligence the trade which in earlier days he had found
so unproductive of riches. His indifference to
the pleasures which money put within his reach was
passing strange, and it caused the Devil vast uneasiness.
“Daniel,” said the Devil,
one day, “you’re not getting out of this
thing all the fun there is in it. You go poking
along in the same old rut with never a suspicion that
you have it in your power to enjoy every pleasure
of human life. Why don’t you break away
from the old restraints? Why don’t you
avail yourself of the advantages at your command?”
“I know what you ’re driving
at,” said Daniel, shrewdly, “Politics!”
“No, not at all,” remonstrated
the Devil. “What I mean is fun,-gayety.
Why not have a good time, Daniel?”
“But I am having a good time,”
said Daniel. “My business is going along
all right, I am rich. I ’ve got a
lovely home; my wife is happy; my children are healthy
and contented; I am respected,-what more
could I ask? What better time could I demand?”
“You don’t understand
me,” explained the Devil. “What I
mean by a good time is that which makes the heart
merry and keeps the soul youthful and buoyant,-wine,
Daniel! Wine and the theatre and pretty girls
and fast horses and all that sort of happy, joyful
life!”
“Tut, tut, tut!” cried
Daniel; “no more of that, sir! I sowed
my wild oats in college. What right have I to
think of such silly follies,-I, at forty
years of age, and a business man too?”
So not even the Devil himself could
persuade Daniel into a life of dissipation.
All you who have made a study of the business man will
agree that of all human beings he is the hardest to
swerve from conservative methods. The Devil
groaned and began to wonder why he had ever tied up
to a man like Daniel,-a business man.
Pretty soon Daniel developed an ambition.
He wanted reputation, and he told the Devil so.
The Devil’s eyes sparkled. “At last,”
murmured the Devil, with a sigh of relief,-“at
last.”
“Yes,” said Daniel, “I
want to be known far and wide. You must build
a church for me.”
“What!” shrieked the Devil.
And the Devil’s tail stiffened up like a sore
thumb.
“Yes,” said Daniel, calmly;
“you must build a church for me, and it must
be the largest and the handsomest church in the city.
The sittings shall be free, and you shall provide
the funds for its support forever.”
The Devil frothed at his mouth, and
blue fire issued from his ears and nostrils.
He was the maddest devil ever seen on earth.
“I won’t do it!”
roared the Devil. “Do you suppose I’m
going to spend my time building churches and stultifying
myself just for the sake of gratifying your idle whims?
I won’t do it,-never!”
“Then the bond I gave is null and void,”
said Daniel.
“Take your old bond,” said the Devil,
petulantly.
“But the bond you gave is operative,”
continued Daniel. “So release the thousand
and one souls you owe me when you refuse to obey me.”
“Oh, Daniel!” whimpered
the Devil, “how can you treat me so? Have
n’t I always been good to you? Have n’t
I given you riches and prosperity? Does no sentiment
of friendship-”
“Hush,” said Daniel, interrupting
him. “I have already told you a thousand
times that our relations were simply those of one business
man with another. It now behooves you to fulfil
your part of our compact; eventually I shall fulfil
mine. Come, now, to business! Will you
or will you not keep your word and save your bond?”
The Devil was sorely put to his trumps.
But when it came to releasing a thousand and one
souls from hell,-ah, that staggered him!
He had to build the church, and a noble one it was
too. Then he endowed the church, and finally
he built a parsonage; altogether it was a stupendous
work, and Daniel got all the credit for it. The
preacher whom Daniel installed in this magnificent
temple was severely orthodox, and one of the first
things he did was to preach a series of sermons upon
the personality of the Devil, wherein he inveighed
most bitterly against that person and his work.
By and by Daniel made the Devil endow
and build a number of hospitals, charity schools,
free baths, libraries, and other institutions of similar
character. Then he made him secure the election
of honest men to office and of upright judges to the
bench. It almost broke the Devil’s heart
to do it, but the Devil was prepared to do almost
anything else than forfeit his bond and give up those
one thousand and one souls. By this time Daniel
came to be known far and wide for his philanthropy
and his piety. This gratified him of course;
but most of all he gloried in the circumstance that
he was a business man.
“Have you anything for me to
do today?” asked the Devil, one morning.
He had grown to be a very meek and courteous devil;
steady employment in righteous causes had chastened
him to a degree and purged away somewhat of the violence
of his nature. On this particular morning he
looked haggard and ill,-yes, and he looked,
too, as blue as a whetstone.
“I am not feeling robust,”
explained the Devil. “To tell the truth,
I am somewhat ill.”
“I am sorry to hear it,”
said Daniel; “but as I am not conducting a sanitarium,
I can do nothing further than express my regret that
you are ailing. Of course our business relations
do not contemplate any interchange of sympathies;
still I’ll go easy with you to-day. You
may go up to the house and look after the children;
see that they don’t smoke cigarettes, or quarrel,
or tease the cat, or do anything out of the way.”
Now that was fine business for the
Devil to be in; but how could the Devil help himself?
He was wholly at Daniel’s mercy. He went
groaning about the humiliating task.
The crash came at last. It was
when the Devil informed Daniel one day that he was
n’t going to work for him any more.
“You have ruined my business,”
said the Devil, wearily. “A committee of
imps waited upon me last night and told me that unless
I severed my connection with you a permanent suspension
of my interests down yonder would be necessitated.
While I have been running around doing your insane
errands my personal business has gone to the dogs-I
would n’t be at all surprised if I were to have
to get a new plant altogether. Meanwhile my reputation
has suffered; I am no longer respected, and the number
of my recruits is daily becoming smaller. I give
up,-I can make no further sacrifice.”
“Then you are prepared to forfeit
your bond?” asked Daniel.
“Not by any means,” replied
the Devil. “I propose to throw the matter
into the courts.”
“That will hardly be to your
interest,” said Daniel, “since, as you
well know, we have recently elected honest men to
the bench, and, as I recollect, most of our judges
are members in good standing of the church we built
some years ago!”
The Devil howled with rage.
Then, presently, he began to whimper.
“For the last time,” expostulated
Daniel, “let me remind you that sentiment does
not enter into this affair at all. We are simply
two business parties cooeperating in a business scheme.
Our respective duties are exactly defined in the
bonds we hold. You keep your contract and I’ll
keep mine. Let me see, I still have a margin
of thirteen years.”
The Devil groaned and writhed.
“They call me a dude,” whimpered the Devil.
“Who do?” asked Daniel.
“Beelzebub and the rest,”
said the Devil. “I have been trotting around
doing pious errands so long that I ’ve lost
all my sulphur-and-brimstone flavor, and now I smell
like spikenard and myrrh.”
“Pooh!” said Daniel.
“Well, I do,” insisted
the Devil. “You’ve humiliated me
so that I hain’t got any more ambition.
Yes, Daniel, you’ve worked me shamefully hard!”
“Well,” said Daniel, “I
have a very distinct suspicion that when, thirteen
years hence, I fall into your hands I shall not enjoy
what might be called a sedentary life.”
The Devil plucked up at this suggestion.
“Indeed you shall not,” he muttered.
“I’ll make it hot for you!”
“But come, we waste time,”
said Daniel. “I am a man of business, and
I cannot fritter away the precious moments parleying
with you. I have important work for you.
Tomorrow is Sunday; you are to see that all the saloons
are kept closed.”
“I sha’n’t-I won’t!”
yelled the Devil.
“But you must,” said Daniel, firmly.
“Do you really expect me to
do that?” roared the Devil. “Do
you fancy that I am so arrant a fool as to shut off
the very feeders whereby my hungry hell is supplied?
That would be suicidal!”
“I don’t know anything
about that,” said Daniel; “I am a business
man, and by this business arrangement of ours it is
explicitly stipulated-”
“I don’t care what the
stipulations are!” shrieked the Devil.
“I’m through with you, and may I be consumed
by my own fires if ever again I have anything to do
with a business man!”
The upshot of it all was that the
Devil forfeited his bond, and by this act Daniel was
released from every obligation unto the Devil, and
one thousand and one souls were ransomed from the
torture of the infernal fires.