sandwiches.

MR. MAC QUEDY. Nay, sir; the modern Athenians know better than
that. A literary supper in sweet Edinbro' would cure you of the
prejudice you seem to cherish against us.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Well, sir, well; there is cogency in a good
supper; a good supper in these degenerate days bespeaks a good man;
but much more is wanted to make up an Athenian. Athenians, indeed!
where is your theatre? who among you has written a comedy? where is
your Attic salt? which of you can tell who was Jupiter's great-
grandfather? or what metres will successively remain, if you take
off the three first syllables, one by one, from a pure antispastic
acatalectic tetrameter? Now, sir, there are three questions for
you: theatrical, mythological, and metrical; to every one of which
an Athenian would give an answer that would lay me prostrate in my
own nothingness.

MR. MAC QUEDY. Well, sir, as to your metre and your mythology,
they may e'en wait a wee. For your comedy there is the "Gentle
Shepherd" of the divine Allan Ramsay.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. The "Gentle Shepherd"! It is just as much a
comedy as the Book of Job.

MR. MAC QUEDY. Well, sir, if none of us have written a comedy, I
cannot see that it is any such great matter, any more than I can
conjecture what business a man can have at this time of day with
Jupiter's great-grandfather.