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THE PAGAN OLYMPUS.
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proportion. Besides, look at the art and the workmanship,—so correct, though on such an immense scale.

Merc. What's to be done, Jupiter? It's a very hard question for me to decide. If I look at his material, he's only brass; but if I calculate how many talents' weight of brass he has in him, he's worth the most money of them all.

Jup. (testily). What the deuce does he want here at all—dwarfing all the rest of us into insignificance, as he does, and blocking up the meeting besides? (Aloud to Colossus.) Hark ye, good cousin of Rhodes, though you may be worth more than all these golden gods, how can you possibly take the highest seat, unless they all get up and you sit down by yourself? Why, one of your thighs would take up all the seats in the Pnyx! You'd better stand up, if you please,—and you can stoop your head a little towards the company.

Merc. Here's another difficulty, again. Here are two, both of brass, and of the same workmanship, both from the hands of Lysippus, and, more than all, equal in point of birth, both being sons of Jupiter—Bacchus, here, and Hercules. Which of them is to sit first? They're quarrelling over it, as you see.

Jup. We're wasting time, Mercury, when we ought to have begun business long ago. So let them sit down anyhow now, as they please. We will have another meeting hereafter about this question, and then I shall know better what regulations to make about precedence.

Merc. But, good heavens! what a row they all