And the sight of this representative citizen was to Horvendile a tonic joy and a warming of the heart. For this man, and each of the thousands like him, as Horvendile reflected, had been within this hour sedately dining with his wife,--neither of them eating with the zest and vigor of their first youth, perhaps, but sharing amicably the more moderate refreshment which middle-age requires,--without being at any particular pains to conceal the fact from anybody. Here was then, after all, the strong and sure salvation of Philistia, in this quiet, unassuming common-sense, which dealt with the facts of life as facts, the while that the foolish laws, and the academical and stercoricolous nonsense of Philistia, reverberated as remotely and as unheeded as harmless summer thunder. "Sir," says elated Horvendile, "I perceive that you two have just been eating, and that emboldens me to ask you--" But at this point Horvendile found he had been knocked down, because the parents of the representative citizen had taught him from his earliest youth that any mention of eating was highly indecent in the presence of gentlewomen. And for Horvendile, recumbent upon the pavement, it was bewildering to note the glow of honest indignation in the face of the representative citizen, who waited there, in front of the restaurant he usually patronized.... COLOPHON Here, rather vexatiously, the old manuscript breaks off. But what survives and has been cited of this fragment amply shows you, I think, that even in remote Philistia, whenever this question of "indecency" arose, everybody (including the accused) was apt to act very foolishly. It has attested too, I hope, the readiness with which you may read ambiguities into the most respectable of authors; as well as the readiness with which a fanatical training may lead you to imagine some underlying impropriety in all writing about any natural function, even though it be a function so time-hallowed and general as that to which this curious Dirghic legend refers. A POSTSCRIPT (_French of C.J.P. Garnier_) The swine that died in Gadara two thousand years ago Went mad in lofty places, with results that all men know-- Went mad in lofty places through long rooting in the dirt, Which (even for swine) begets at last soul-satisfying hurt. The swine in lofty places now are matter for no song By any prudent singer, but--_how long, O Lord, how long?_ _EXPLICIT_ BOOKS _by_ MR. CABELL _Biography_: BEYOND LIFE FIGURES OF EARTH DOMNEI CHIVALRY JURGEN TABOO THE LINE OF LOVE GALLANTRY THE CERTAIN HOUR THE CORDS OF VANITY FROM THE HIDDEN WAY THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK THE EAGLE'S SHADOW THE CREAM OF THE JEST _Genealogy_: BRANCH OF ABINGDON BRANCHIANA THE MAJORS AND THEIR MARRIAGES