Lexiphanes (6-10)

When it was dinner-time, we took tt reclining, both chairs and couches standing ready. A joint-stock meal it was, and the contributions many and various. Pigs’ pettitoes, ribs of beef, paunch and pregnant womb of sow, fried liver lobe, garlic paste, sauce piquante, mayonnaise, and so on; pastry, ramequins, and honeycakes. In the aquatic line, much of the cartilaginous, of the testaceous much; many a salt slice, basket-hawked, eels of Copae, fotols of the barn-door, a cock past crowing-days, and fish to keep him company; add to these a sheep, roast whole, and ox’s rump of toothless eld. The loaves were firsts, no common stuff, and therewithal remainders from the new moon; vegetables both radical and excrescent. For the wine, ’twas of no standing, but came from the skin; tts sweetness was gone, but its roughness remained.

On the dolphin-foot table stood divers store of cups; the eyeshutter, the ladle, slender-handled, genuine Mentor; crane-neck and gurgling bombyl; and many an earth-born child of Thericlean furnace, the wide-mouthed, the kindly-lipped; Phocaean, Cnidian work, but all light as air, and thin as eggshell; bowls and panntkins and posied cups; ob, ’twas a well-stocked sideboard.

But the kettle boiled over, and sent the ashes flying about our beads. It was bumpers and no heeltaps, and we were full to the throat. Then to the nard; and enter to us guitar and light fantastic toe. Thereafter, one shinned up the ladder, on postprandial japery intent, another beat the devil’s tattoo, a third writhed cachinnatory.

At this moment broke in upon us from the bath, all uninvited, Megalonymus the attorney, Chaereas the goldsmith, striped back and all, and the bruiser Eudemus. I asked them what they were about to come so late. Quoth Chaereas: ‘I was working a locket and ear-rings and bangles for my daughter; that is why 1 come after the fair? ‘I was otherwise engaged,’ said Megalonymus; Go gle

'The first I met were a torch-bearer, a hierophant, and others of the initiated, baling Dinias before the judge, and protesting that be had called them by their names, though he well knew that, from the time of their sanctification, they were nameless, and no more to be named but by hallowed names; so then he appealed to me. ‘Dinias?' I put in; ‘Who is Dinias?' ‘Oh, he’s a dance-for-your-supper carry-your-luggage rattle-your-patter gaming-house sort of man; eschews the barber, and takes care of bis poor chest and toes.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘paid he the penalty in some wise, or showed a clean pair of heels?’ ‘Our delicate goer is now fast bound. The governor, regardless of his retiring disposition, slipped him on a pair of bracelets and a necklace, and brought him acquainted with stocks and boot. The poor worm quaked for fear, and could not contain himself, and offered money, if so he might save bis soul alive.’