o offence, that he
simply must have live, up-to-date copy or nothing at all. He proposed a
popular article on art, and wondered if I could write something about
the Dutch masters, with special reference to the recent notable
exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. I was obliged to confess that I
had missed the exhibition by two weeks. "Well," he said, patiently,
"there is opera. You might do something about the singers. You have
heard Mary Garden, of course?" I told him no. Only the other day I had
irrevocably decided to hear Mary Garden in "Thais" next season; and the
next morning I learned that Mr. Hammerstein had gone out of business.

He continued to be patient with me. "There's 'Chantecler,' to be sure,
although that is ancient history by this time. Have you read the play?"
I had not, but just here an inspiration came. "You sneered at Homer just
now," I said. "Well, there was another Greek who wrote a bird play 2,300
years before Rostand. I mean Aristophanes----" The editor leaped from
his chair. "Great, great!" he cried. "We'll call it 'Chantecler 400
B.C.'" I caught the infection of his enthusiasm. "And Aristophanes had
another play on woman's rights," I told him. "You might call it 'An
Athenian Suffragette.'" "Splendid!" he cried; "splendid; we can make a
whole series, and Goulden will do the pictures in colours. It's the most
novel thing I have heard of for a long time. It will beat the others by
a mile." And he sent me away happy.

XXIV

PUBLIC LIARS

There are three things that puzzle me; yes, four things that I cannot
explain: Why street clocks never show the right time; why thermometers
hanging outside of drug stores never indicate the right temperature; why
slot machines on a railway platform never give the right weight; and why
weather-vanes always point in the wrong direction. At bottom, I imagine,
these are really not four things, but one. For it must be the same
mysterious and malicious principle that takes each of these
contrivances, set up to be a public guide to truth, and turns it into an
instrument for the dissemination of error.

What makes me think that there is some animate principle behind such
clocks is that they are so like a good many people one meets. There are
persons who are packed with the most curiously inaccurate information on
the most abstruse subjects, and they insist on imparting it to you. I
have no ground to complain if I ask Jones what is the capital of
Illinois an