Comparative Anatomists are
not so numerous now, as hereafter they assuredly must become; when
their services shall be in greater request; when, at the last, last
day of all, millions of noble and ignoble spirits will loudly clamor
for lost skeletons; when contending claimants shall start up for one
poor, carious spine; and, dog-like, we shall quarrel over our own
bones."

Then entered dwarf-stewards, and major-domos; aloft bearing twisted
antlers; all hollowed out in goblets, grouped; announcing dinner.

Loving not, however, to dine with misshapen Mardians, King Media was
loth to move. But Babbalanja, quoting the old proverb--"Strike me in
the face, but refuse not my yams," induced him to sacrifice his
fastidiousness.

So, under a flourish of ram-horn bugles, court and company proceeded
to the banquet.

Central was a long, dislocated trunk of a wild Banian; like a huge
centipede crawling on its hundred branches, sawn of even lengths for
legs. This table was set out with wry-necked gourds; deformities of
calabashes; and shapeless trenchers, dug out of knotty woods.

The first course was shrimp-soup, served in great clamp-shells; the
second, lobsters, cuttle-fish, crabs, cockles, cray-fish; the third,
hunchbacked roots of the Taro-plant--plantains, perversely curling at
the end, like the inveterate tails of pertinacious pigs; and for
dessert, ill-shaped melons, huge as idiots' heads, plainly suffering
from water in the brain.

Now these viands were commended to the favorable notice of all guests;
not only for their delicacy of flavor, but for their symmetry.

And in the intervals of the courses, we were bored with hints to
admire numerous objects of vertu: bow-legged stools of mangrove wood;
zig-zag rapiers of bone; armlets of grampus-vertebrae; outlandish
tureens of the callipees of terrapin; and cannakins of the skulls of
baboons.

The banquet over, with many congees, we withdrew.

Returning to the water-side, we passed a field, where dwarfs were
laboring in beds of yams, heaping the soil around the roots, by
scratching it backward; as a dog.

All things in readiness, Yoky's valet, a tri-armed dwarf, treated us
to a glorious start, by giving each canoe a vigorous triple-push,
crying, "away with ye, monsters!"

Nor must it be omitted that just previous to embarking, Vee-Vee,
spying a curious looking stone, turned it over, and found a snake.

CHAPTER LXXI
A Book From The "Ponderings Of Old Bardianna"