There is nothing new about the Derby horses. I believe they are mostly in training, but I reserve my opinion until I see what the addle-pates who own them mean to do.
"A self-made Man," said Mrs. R., thoughtfully, "is the artichoke of his own fortunes."
THE MODERN HERCULES AND THE PYGMIES.
(Extracts from the Diary of an Explorer in the Society Islands.)
From the bears, apes, and foxes with which the thickets of the great forest of Societas abounded, it is but a step to the Pygmy tribes whom we found inhabiting the tract of country between the Uperten and the Suburban rivers. The Pygmies are as old as Swelldom, as ubiquitous as Boredom, the two secular pests of the earth. You will remember that Hercules once fell asleep in the deserts of Africa, after his conquest of Antæus, and was disturbed in his well-earned rest by an attack of a large army of these troublesome Lilliputians, who, it is recorded, "discharged their arrows with great fury upon his arms and legs." The hero, it is added, "pleased with their courage, wrapped a great number of them in the skin of the Nemean lion, and carried them to Eurystheus."
I was not "pleased with their courage," but plagued with their importunities. Herodotus described the capture of five young explorers from Naasamoves while they were examining some curious trees in the Niger basin, and tells how the little men took them to their villages and showed them about to their fellow Pygmies. So, in a sense, the Pygmies of Societas "captured" me, and showed me about to their fellow denizens of this Land of Lilliput. They "discharged their arrows" (which they called "In-Vites," and each of which was branded with the mystic letters, R.S.V.P.) at me in swarms, and though they rather tickled than hurt, yet after a time their minute but multiplied prickings became no end of a nuisance.