dly two feet high. They were eating their evening-meal,
consisting of a roasted antelope, and large flat cakes of bread. Slaves
waited on them, and filled their earthen beakers with yellow beer. The
steward cut up the great roast on the table, offered the intendant of
the gardens a piece of antelope-leg, and said:

[The Greeks and Romans report that the Egyptians were so addicted to
satire and pungent witticisms that they would hazard property and
life to gratify their love of mockery. The scandalous pictures in
the so-called kiosk of Medinet Habu, the caricatures in an
indescribable papyrus at Turin, confirm these statements. There is
a noteworthy passage in Flavius Vopiscus, that compares the
Egyptians to the French.]

"My arms ache; the mob of slaves get more and more dirty and
refractory."

"I notice it in the palm-trees," said the gardener, "you want so many
cudgels that their crowns will soon be as bare as a moulting bird."

"We should do as the master does," said the head-groom, "and get sticks
of ebony--they last a hundred years."

"At any rate longer than men's bones," laughed the chief neat-herd, who
had come in to town from the pioneer's country estate, bringing with him
animals for sacrifices, butter and cheese. "If we were all to follow the
master's example, we should soon have none but cripples in the servant's
house."

"Out there lies the lad whose collar-bone he broke yesterday," said the
steward, "it is a pity, for he was a clever mat-platter. The old lord
hit softer."

"You ought to know!" cried a small voice, that sounded mockingly behind
the feasters.

They looked and laughed when they recognized the strange guest, who had
approached them unobserved.

The new comer was a deformed little man about as big as a five-year-old
boy, with a big head and oldish but uncommonly sharply-cut features.

The noblest Egyptians kept house-dwarfs for sport, and this little wight
served the wife of Mena in this capacity. He was called Nemu, or "the
dwarf," and his sharp tongue made him much feared, though he was
a favorite, for he passed for a very clever fellow and was a good
tale-teller.

"Make room for me, my lords," said the little man. "I take very little
room, and your beer and roast is in little danger from me, for my maw is
no bigger than a fly's head."

"But your gall is as big as that of a Nile-horse," cried the cook.

"It grows," said the dwarf laughing, "when a turn-sp