"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.
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