“There’s something wrong with that pig,” said the cook as he prepared dinner for Eustinkides.
“There’s something deuced wrong with these chops,” remarked Eustinkides as he worked his way slowly through them. However, he felt sure that he was doing the right thing, and carrying out the commands of Zeus, so he did not much mind at the time.
A quarter of an hour afterwards he staggered into a Chemist’s. “Give us two-pennyworth of any quick sort of death, will you?” he gasped faintly.
“What are you suffering from?”
“Cursed pork,” he murmured.
That was precisely it. The pig from which those chops had been taken was the very pig which the gods had such a spite against. Eustinkides was carried home to fulfil his destiny. His last words were: “Apple sauce!”
So the front end of the curse run into the hinder end, and that smashed the thing up. Wherefore let us all reverence the name of Eustinkides, and refrain from soap and sin.
Melpomene fainted, and squirmed on the floor. I cannot say that I was surprised. They picked her up, and gave her a little more blood-and-seltzer, and she recovered gradually.
“Tragedy does take it out of one,” she explained.