"Well, they chose to give that name to the paper," answered the teacher. He had never thought about it himself.
"I want to know," began Hansgeorge: "did the Greecelanders believe in more gods than one?"
"Of course," replied the College Chap. "One of 'em manured and the other sowed, one rained and the other thundered: they had a particular god or goddess for every particular job. The Greeks even allowed their gods to marry."
"I guess they were saints or angels," said Wendel the mason, "or tutelaries; but they must have had some sort of a captain over them, or it would be a carnival stupid enough to split your sides with laughing."
"You weren't by when they built the tower of Babel, neither, mason," said the College Chap. "Of course they had a captain, and a trump card he was: he had a jealous wife, though, and she gave him lots of trouble. Now, I'll leave it to the teacher whether all this isn't as true as gospel."
Suppressing a sigh, the teacher gave the company a cursory sketch of the Grecian mythology. Some of the wonders included in it created much sensation. It occurred to him, also, how strange it was that he should be expounding the Hellenic sages in a smoky bar-room of the Black Forest. All this was the doing of the Suabian Mercury.
It was almost impossible to persuade the farmers that the Greeks were not "jackasses." He told them of the wise and good Socrates, and of his martyrdom.
"Why, that was almost as bad as the way they treated our Savior," said Kilian of the Frog Alley.
"Certainly," replied the teacher. "Whoever undertakes to teach a new and wholesome truth by its right name and without circumlocution must take a cross for his pains." He sighed as he said this; for it seemed to have some bearing upon his own case: the task he had undertaken was not an easy one.
As they went away, the men said to each other, "We've had a fine evening for once: you get a little wiser, and time passes round before you know it."