course, young persons ought to read them: for all these books are classics, and

   we who were more obviously the heirs of the ages, and the inheritors of European culture, used frequently to discuss these books in Paff's beer-cellar."

   "Well, but does the indecency of this word 'eating' evaporate out of it as the years pass, so that the word is hurtful only when very freshly written!"

   The mummy blinked so wisely that you would never have guessed that the brains and viscera of all these mummies had been removed when the embalmers, Time and Conformity, were preparing these fifty for the Academy of Starch and Fetters. "Young man, I doubt if the majority of us here in the academy are deeply interested in this question of eating, for reasons unnecessary to specify. But before estimating your literary pretensions, I must ask if you ever frequented Paff's beer-cellar?"

   Horvendile said, "No."

   Now this mummy was an amiable and cultured old relic, unshakably made sure of his high name for scholarship by the fact that he had written dozens of books which nobody else had even read. So he said, friendlily enough: "Then that would seem to settle your pretensions. To have talked twaddle in Paff's beer-cellar is the one real proof of literary merit, no matter what sort of twaddle you may have written in your book, or in many books, as I am here in this academy to attest.

   Moreover, I am old enough to remember when cookery-books were sold openly upon the newsstands, and in consequence I am very grateful to the garbage-man, who, in common with all other intelligent persons, has never dreamed of meddling with anything I wrote."

   "But, sir," says Horvendile, "do you esteem a scavenger, who does not pretend to specialize in anything save filth, to be the best possible judge of books?"

   "He may be an excellent critic if only he indeed belongs to the forthputting Philistine stock: that proviso is most important, though, for, as I recently declared, we have very dangerous standards domiciled in the midst of us, that are only too quickly raised—"

   Says Horvendile, with a shudder: "You speak ambiguously. But still, in criticizing books—"

   "Plainly, young man, you do not appreciate that the essential qualifications for a critic of Philistine literature are," said this mummy 

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