“I think so,” said the new-comer, wearily; “at any rate, it’s all that’s left of me.”

“Come over here and lunch with us,” said Homer.  “You know Burns, don’t you?”

“Haven’t the pleasure,” said Phidias.

The poet and the sculptor were introduced, after which Phidias seated himself at Homer’s side.

“Are you any relation to Burns the poet?” the former asked, addressing the Scotchman.

“I am Burns the poet,” replied the other.

“You don’t look much like your statues,” said Phidias, scanning his face critically.

“No, thank the Fates!” said Burns, warmly.  “If I did, I’d commit suicide.”

“Why don’t you sue the sculptors for libel?” asked Phidias.

“You speak with a great deal of feeling, Phidias,” said Homer, gravely.  “Have they done anything to hurt you?”

“They have,” said Phidias.  “I have just returned from a tour of the world.  I have seen the things they call sculpture in these degenerate days, and I must confess—­who shouldn’t, perhaps—­that I could have done better work with a baseball-bat for a chisel and putty for the raw material.”

“I think I could do good work with a baseball-bat too,” said Burns; “but as for the raw material, give me the heads of the men who have sculped me to work on.  I’d leave them so that they’d look like some of your Parthenon frieze figures with the noses gone.”

“You are a vindictive creature,” said Homer.  “These men you criticise, and whose heads you wish to sculp with a baseball-bat, have done more for you than you ever did for them.  Every statue of you these men have made is a standing advertisement of your books, and it hasn’t cost you a penny.  There isn’t a doubt in my mind that if it were not for those statues countless people would go to their graves supposing that the great Scottish Burns were little rivulets, and not a poet.  What difference does it make to you if they haven’t made an Adonis of you?  You never set them an example by making one of yourself.  If there’s deception anywhere, it isn’t you that is deceived; it is the mortals.  And who cares about them or their opinions?”

“I never thought of it in that way,” said Burns.  “I hate caricatures—­that is, caricatures of myself.  I enjoy caricatures of other people, but—­”

“You have a great deal of the mortal left in you, considering that you pose as an immortal,” said Homer, interrupting the speaker.

“Well, so have I,” said Phidias, resolved to stand by Burns in the argument, “and I’m sorry for the man who hasn’t.  I was a mortal once, and I’m glad of it.  I had a good time, and I don’t care who knows it.  When I look about me and see Jupiter, the arch-snob of creation, and Mars, a little tin warrior who couldn’t have fought a soldier like Napoleon, with all his alleged divinity, I thank the Fates that they enabled me to achieve immortality through mortal effort.  Hang hereditary greatness, I say.  These men were born immortals.  You and I worked for it and got it.  We know what it cost.  It was ours because we earned it, and not because we were born to it.  Eh, Burns?”