atement as
that. I don't know very much, but I know something about Mercury, and
when you say he puts other people's money into his pockets, I am in a
position to prove otherwise. From five years of age up to the present
time I have been brought up in a home where a bronze statue of
Mercury, said to be the most perfect resemblance in all the statuary
of the world, classic or otherwise, has been the most conspicuous
ornament. At ten I could reproduce on paper with my pencil every line,
every shade, every curve, every movement of the effigy in so far as
my artistic talent would permit, and I know that Mercury not only had
no pocket, but wore no garments in which even so little as a change
pocket could have been concealed. Wherefore there must be some mistake
about your charge."

Hippopopolis laughed.

"Humph!" he said. "It is very evident that you people over the sea
have very superficial notions of things here. When Mercury posed for
that statue, like most of you people who have your photographs taken,
he posed in full evening dress. That is why there is so little of it
in evidence. But in his business suit, Mercury is a very different
sort of a person. Even in Olympus he'd have been ruled off the stock
exchange if he'd ventured to appear there as scantily attired as he is
in most of his statuary appearances. You certainly are not so green as
to suppose that that suit he wears in his statues is the whole extent
of his wardrobe?"

"I had supposed so," I confessed. "It's a trifle unconventional; but,
then, he's one of the gods, and, I presumed, could dress as he
pleased. Your gods are independent, I should imagine, of the mere
decrees of fashion."

"The more exalted one's position, the greater the sartorial
obligation," retorted Hippopopolis, who, for a Greek and a guide, had,
as will be seen, a vocabulary of most remarkable range. "Just as it
happens that our King here, like H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, has to
be provided with seven hundred and sixty-eight suits of clothes so as
to be properly clad at the variety of functions he is required to
grace, so does a god have to be provided with a wardrobe of rare
quality and extent. For drawing-room tables, mantel-pieces, and
pedestals, otherwise for statuary, Mercury can go about clad in just
about half as much stuff as it would require to cover a fairly sized
sofa-cushion and not arouse drastic criticism; but when he goes to
business he is as well provided with pockets