"Grand!" said the ring-master.
"Grand" cried back The Moses, The Napoleon, The Wellington, The Washington, The Roosevelt, The Pathfinder, The Man With the Hoe, The Babes in the Woods, The Doves, The Dieman, on the walls.
"Grand!" echoed Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Shakespeare, Milton, Poe, Irving, Longfellow, Emerson, standing about in corners and alcoves in their statuary dumbness.
"Grand!" pealed the Giant Grand resting on four legs, like an exhibition slab of mahogany, in a corner.
"Grand!" laughed the settees, the tete-a-tetes, the rockers, the cushions, the chairs, as if they were ready to jump up and slap the visitors on the back and seat them down.
"Grand!" shouted the king. "Well, I should eat a bedbug, if you can surpass it in this old town for dazzle." And everything hung its head in mortification.
"Grand!" they all said, as the king entered the dining room, with its glitter and its glimmer and its splendor and its grandeur. "Here is where I eat," he remarked, after seeing his friends dumfounded and speechless.
Dumfounded? Why, of course!
Speechless? Why, to be sure!
Shucks! Who said the average man isn't a pompous idiot?