‘The very man! I had forgotten him!’ cried the Poet, and ran off to find the Mayor.
The Mayor accepted the gift very reluctantly, and tried to get rid of it, but it clung to him persistently, as dreams do. It was a good dream, a dream of the white neck of a queen who died four thousand years ago, but the Mayor did not want it.
As time went on, it weighed upon him more and more, and when he should have been attending to Municipal Affairs or Opening a Bazaar, he found his mind wandering, and he was for ever brooding on the dead queen.
Until one day, when the Council was discussing a new Byelaw to prevent Children from playing in the Public Parks, he was asked to speak, and, full of the dream, he burst into song, to the great astonishment of all present. He was then asked to resign, which he did.
And now, hardly anyone ever calls or even leaves a card.
THE HUMILIATING EXPERIENCE OF A FORGOTTEN GOD
THE great Babylonian god, Marduk, revisiting the earth in the guise of a young man, fell in love with a girl in the silk Department of the Universal Stores. Her name was Lena.
‘O moon-faced one! O white flower of the world! I adore thee,’ Marduk whispered. ‘Thou hast the look of Sarpanitum, the leopard-eyed goddess, in days of old when the stars were young and kind!’
‘Well, well,’ cried Lena, ‘what will you do to please me?’
‘I will rebuild Babylon in an hour for thee,’ shouted the god, and away he sped to the great, silent plain, where he laboured mightily. In a short space of time he returned and wafted her away to the scene of his labouring.