"Moreover," now declared another mummy (this was a Moor, called P.E.M., or the Peach,

    [5]

   who through some oversight had not been embalmed, but only pickled in vinegar, to the detriment of his disposition),—"moreover, I am not at all in sympathy with any protest whatever against the scavenger, for it might be taken as an excuse for what they are pleased to call art."

      [5]

    Codman annotates this: "Synonyms, since P.E.M. is obviously

     Persicum Esculentum Malum

    —that is, the peach; 'which,' says Macrobius, 'although it rather belongs to the tribe of apples, Sævius reckons as a species of nut.'"

   All groaned at this abominable word. And then another lackey cried, "You are a prosperous and affected pseudo-littérateur!" and all the mummies spoke sepulchrally the word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee": and many said also, "The scavenger has never meddled with us, and we never heard of you," and there was much other incoherent foolishness.

   But Horvendile had fled, bewildered by the ways of Philistia's adepts in starch and fetters, and bewildered in particular to note that a mummy, so generally esteemed a kindly and well-meaning fossil, appeared quite honestly to believe that all

   literature came out of the beer-cellar of Paff, or Pfaff, or had some similarly Teutonic sponsor; and that handball was the best training for literary criticism; and that the cookery-books of fifty years ago had something to do with Horvendile's account of his journeying, from he did not know where toward a goal which he could not divine, now being in the garbage pile. It troubled Horvendile because so many persons seemed to regard the old fellow half seriously.

   Still, Horvendile was not quite routed by these heaped follies. "For, after all," says Horvendile, in his own folly, "it is for the normal human being that books are made, and not for mummies and men of law and scavengers."

   So Horvendile went through a many streets that were thronged with persons travelling by compulsion from they did not know where toward a goal which they could not divine, and were not especially bothering about. And it was evening, and to this side and to that side the men and women of Philistia were dining. Everywhere maids were passing hot 

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