ing that resembled an impossibly
large pie. They, placed it carefully in the center of the table. The
negro chorus swelled louder and louder--"Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked
in a Pie."

The diners, startled into curiosity and then into interest, began to poke
their noses against this gigantic creation of the baker. In it they
detected a movement not unlike a chick's feeble pecking against the shell
of an egg. A quicker movement and the crust ruptured at the top.

A flash of black gauze and delicate flesh showed within. A cloud of
frightened yellow canaries flew out and perched on the picture frames and
even on the heads and shoulders of the guests.

But the lodestone which drew and held the eyes of all the revellers was
an exquisitely slender, girlish figure amid the broken crust of the pie.
The figure was draped with spangled black gauze, through which the girl's
marble white limbs gleamed like ivory seen through gauze of gossamer
transparency. She rose from her crouching posture like a wood nymph
startled by a satyr, glanced from one side to the other, and stepped
timidly forth to the table.

CHAPTER 56. Contumelia--Contus and Melon (malum).

All translators have rendered "contus" by "pole," notwithstanding the
fact that the word is used in a very different sense in Priapeia, x, 3:
"traiectus conto sic extendere pedali," and contrary to the tradition
which lay behind the gift of an apple or the acceptance of one. The
truth of this may be established by many passages in the ancient writers.

In the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, Just Discourse, in prescribing the rules
and proprieties which should in govern the education and conduct of the
healthy young man says:

"You shall rise up from your seat upon your elders' approach; you shall
never be pert to your parents or do any other unseemly act under the
pretence of remodelling the image of Modesty. You will not rush off to
the dancing-girl's house, lest while you gaze upon her charms, some whore
should pelt you with an apple and ruin your reputation."

"This were gracious to me as in the story old to the maiden fleet of foot
was the apple golden fashioned which unloosed her girdle long-time girt."
Catullus ii.

"I send thee these verses recast from Battiades, lest thou shouldst
credit thy words by chance have slipped from my mind, given o'er to the
wandering winds, as it was with that apple, sent as furtive love token by
the wooer, which out-leaped