course he supposed it. How could there be a statue to him if he
didn't? We all supposed it. It wasn't until His Excellency began to
prepare the speech he was to make that we found out the truth. He wrote
to the British Museum and to the Librarian at the Bodleian----"

"I'm sorry he took all that trouble. We didn't expect anything of the
sort."

"What did you expect?"

"Oh, I don't know. A few words about the elevating nature of great works
of art--particularly statues. You know the sort of thing I mean. How the
English nation occupies the great position it does very largely because
it flocks to the Royal Academy regularly every year. How the people of
Ballymoy are opening up a new era for Ireland. But I needn't go on. You
must have heard him making speeches scores of times. That was all we
wanted, and if we'd had the slightest idea that he was taking a lot
of trouble to prepare a learned lecture we'd have told him that he
needn't."

"But how could he make any speech about a General who never existed?"

"My dear Lord Alfred! What has the General got to do with it? We didn't
want a speech about him. We wanted one about his statue."

"But it isn't his statue. If there was no General there can't be a
statue to him."

"There is," said Dr. O'Grady. "There's no use flying in the face of
facts. The statue's under that sheet."

"It's not. I mean to say that there may be a statue there, but it's not
to General John Regan. How can there be a statue to him when there was
no such person?"

"Was there ever such a person as Venus?" said Dr. O'Grady. "There
wasn't. And yet every museum in Europe is half full of statues of her.
Was there ever such a person as the Dying Gladiator? Was there ever a
man called Laocoon, who strangled sea serpents? You know perfectly well
that there weren't any such people, and yet some of the most famous
statues in the world are erected in memory of them."

"But His Excellency naturally thought----"

"Look here," said Dr. O'Grady, "if we'd asked him to unveil a statue of
Hercules in Ballymoy, would he have gone round consulting the librarians
of London and Oxford to find out whether there was such a person as
Hercules or not? Would he have said he was insulted? Would he have sent
you here to ask for an apology? You know perfectly well he wouldn't."

Lord Alfred seemed slightly puzzled. Dr. O'Grady's line of argument was
quite new to him. He felt sure that a fallacy underlay it somewhere, but