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."

"Right, my lord," said Babbalanja, "for Fame is not always so honest.
Not seldom to be famous, is to be widely known for what you are not,
says Alla-Malolla. Whence it comes, as old Bardianna has it, that for
years a man may move unnoticed among his fellows; but all at once, by
some chance attitude, foreign to his habit, become a trumpet-full for
fools; though, in himself, the same as ever. Nor has he shown himself
yet; for the entire merit of a man can never be made known; nor the
sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names;
as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.

"So with the commonalty of us Mardians. How then with those beings who