losing
anything of the majesty. It describes, I may say, the Directors of the
American Industrial Stocks rushing into the Balkan War Cloud.--

Then there came rushing to the shock of war
Mr. McNicoll of the C. P. R.
He wore suspenders and about his throat
High rose the collar of a sealskin coat.
He had on gaiters and he wore a tie,
He had his trousers buttoned good and high;
About his waist a woollen undervest
Bought from a sad-eyed farmer of the West.
(And every time he clips a sheep he sees
Some bloated plutocrat who ought to freeze),
Thus in the Stock Exchange he burst to view,
Leaped to the post, and shouted, "Ninety-two!"

There! That's Homer, the real thing! Just as it sounded to the rude
crowd of Greek peasants who sat in a ring and guffawed at the rhymes
and watched the minstrel stamp it out into "feet" as he recited it!

Or let me take another example from the so-called Catalogue of the Ships
that fills up nearly an entire book of Homer. This famous passage names
all the ships, one by one, and names the chiefs who sailed on them, and
names the particular town or hill or valley that they came from. It has
been much admired. It has that same majesty of style that has been
brought to an even loftier pitch in the New York Business Directory and
the City Telephone Book. It runs along, as I recall it, something like
this,--

"And first, indeed, oh yes, was the ship of Homistogetes the Spartan,
long and swift, having both its masts covered with cowhide and two rows of
oars. And he, Homistogetes, was born of Hermogenes and Ophthalmia and was
at home in Syncope beside the fast flowing Paresis. And after him came
the ship of Preposterus the Eurasian, son of Oasis and Hyteria," . . .
and so on endlessly.

Instead of this I substitute, with the permission of the New York
Central Railway, the official catalogue of their locomotives taken
almost word for word from the list compiled by their superintendent of
works. I admit that he wrote in hot weather. Part of it runs:--

Out in the yard and steaming in the sun
Stands locomotive engine number forty-one;
Seated beside the windows of the cab
Are Pat McGaw and Peter James McNab.
Pat comes from Troy and Peter from Cohoes,
And when they pull the throttle off she goes;
And as she vanishes there comes to view
Ste