hitaker. He had the statue
carted over to the marble-yard, where he sought an interview with
Mr. Mix, the owner. He told Mix that he wanted that statue "fixed up
somehow so that 'twould represent one of the heathen gods." He had an
idea that Mix might chip the clothes off of Penn and put a lyre in his
hand, "so that he might pass muster as Apollo or Hercules."

But Mix said he thought the difficulty would be in wrestling with
William's hat. It was a marble hat, with a rim almost big enough for a
race-course; and Mix said that although he didn't profess to know much
about heathen mythology as a general thing, still it struck him
that Hercules in a broad-brimmed hat would attract attention by his
singularity, and might be open to criticism.

Mr. Whitaker said that what he really wanted with that statue, when he
bought it, was to turn it into Venus, and he thought perhaps the hat
might be chiseled up into some kind of a halo around her head.

But Mix said that he didn't exactly see how he could do that when the
rim was so curly at the sides. A halo that was curly was just no
halo at all. But, anyway, how was he going to manage about Penn's
waistcoat? It reached almost to his knees, and to attempt to get out
a bare-legged Venus with a halo on her head and four cubic feet of
waistcoat around her middle would ruin his business. It would make the
whole human race smile.

Then Whitaker said Neptune was a god he always liked, and perhaps Mix
could fix the tails of Penn's coat somehow so that it would look as
if the figure was riding on a dolphin; then the hat might be made to
represent seaweed, and a fish-spear could be put in the statue's hand.

Mix, however, urged that a white marble hat of those dimensions, when
cut into seaweed, would be more apt to look as if Neptune was coming
home with a load of hay upon his head; and he said that although art
had made gigantic strides during the past century, and evidently had
a brilliant future before it, it had not yet discovered a method by
which a swallow-tail coat with flaps to the pockets could be turned
into anything that would look like a dolphin.

Then Mr. Whitaker wanted to know if Pan wasn't the god that had horns
and split hoofs, with a shaggy look to his legs; for if he was, he
would be willing to have the statue made into Pan, if it could be done
without too much expense.

And Mr. Mix said that while nothing would please him more than to
produce such a figure of Pan