“What mermaid is this?” cried Mohi.
Sang Yoomy:—
Her foot, a falling sound,
That all day long might bound.
Over the beach,
The soft sand beach,
And none would find
A trace behind.
“And why not?” demanded Media, “why could no trace be found?”
Said Braid-Beard, “Perhaps owing, my lord, to the flatness of the mermaid’s foot. But no; that can not be; for mermaids are all vertebrae below the waist.”
“Your fragment is pretty good, I dare say, Yoomy,” observed Media, “but as Braid-Beard hints, rather flat.”
“Flat as the foot of a man with his mind made up,” cried Braid-Beard. “Yoomy, did you sup on flounders last night?”
But Yoomy vouchsafed no reply, he was ten thousand leagues off in a reverie: somewhere in the Hyades perhaps.
Conversation proceeding, Braid-Beard happened to make allusion to one Rotato, a portly personage, who, though a sagacious philosopher, and very ambitious to be celebrated as such, was only famous in Mardi as the fattest man of his tribe.
Said Media, “Then, Mohi, Rotato could not pick a quarrel with Fame, since she did not belie him. Fat he was, and fat she published him.”