[Footnote 4:  Saevius Nicanor does not record the wonder-working surnames employed to produce this ancient, ante-Aristotlean [Greek:  katharsis], and they are not certainly known.  But, quite unaided, I believe, by old Nicanor’s hint, Dr. Stuart Pratt Sherman (the accomplished editor of divers contributions to literature, and the author of several books) has discovered, through a series of interesting experiments in vivisection, that the one needful endowment for a critic of American letters is the power to induce within himself “a profound murmur of ancestral voices, and to experience a mysterious inflowing of national experience, in meditating on the names of Mark Twain, Whitman, Thoreau, Lincoln, Emerson, Franklin, and Bradford.”  Compare “Is There Anything To Be Said for Literary Tradition,” in The Bookman for October, 1920.  Any candid consideration of Dr. Sherman’s phraseology, here as elsewhere, cannot fail to suggest that he has happily re-discovered the long-lost critical abracadabra of Philistia.]

“But I,” says Horvendile feebly, “am not a German Jew.”

“Oh, yes, you are, and so is everybody else whose literary likings are not my likings.  I repeat, then, that I have turned wearily from your book.  Whether or not it treats of eating, its implication is clearly that the Philistia which has developed Bradford and six other appellations perfectly adapted to produce murmurings and inflowings in properly constituted persons,—­and which Philistia, as I have elsewhere asserted, is to-day as always a revolting country whenever it condemns,—­has had no civilised cultural atmosphere worth mentioning.  So your book fails to connect itself vitally with our great tradition as to our literature, and I find nowhere in your book any ascending sun heralded by the lookouts.”

“No more do I,” said Horvendile; “but I would have imagined you were more interested in lunar phenomena, and even so—­”

“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.”

[Footnote 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, Saevius reckons as a species of nut.’”]

All groaned at this abominable word.  And then another lackey cried, “You are a prosperous and affected pseudo-litterateur!” 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.