And as he perturbedly inspected these old books, one of the fifty mummies which were installed in this Academy of Starch and Fetters, with a hundred lackeys to attend them, spoke vexedly to Horvendile, saying, as it was the custom of these mummies to say, before this could be said to them, “I never heard of you before.”

“Ah, sir, it is not that which is troubling me,” then answered Horvendile:  “but rather, I am troubled because the book of my journeying has been suspected of encroachment upon gastronomy.  Now I notice your most sacred volume here begins with a very remarkable myth about the fruit of a tree in the middle of a garden, and goes on to speak of the supper which Lot shared with two angels and with his daughters also, and of the cakes which Tamar served to Amnon, and to speak over and over again of eating—­”

“Of course,” replies the mummy, yawning, because he had heard this silly sort of talking before.

“I notice that your most honored poet, here where the dust is thickest, from the moment he began by writing about certain painted berries which mocked the appetite of Dame Venus, and about a repast from which luxurious Tarquin retired like a full-fed hound or a gorged hawk, speaks continually of eating.  And I notice that everybody, but particularly the young person, is encouraged to read these books, and other ancient books which speak very explicitly indeed of eating—­”

“Of course,” again replies the mummy (who had been for many years an exponent of dormitive literacy)—­“of 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.”