negro chorus swelled louder and louder--"Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked
in a Pie."

The diners, startled into curiosity and then into interest, began to poke
their noses against this gigantic creation of the baker. In it they
detected a movement not unlike a chick's feeble pecking against the shell
of an egg. A quicker movement and the crust ruptured at the top.

A flash of black gauze and delicate flesh showed within. A cloud of
frightened yellow canaries flew out and perched on the picture frames and
even on the heads and shoulders of the guests.

But the lodestone which drew and held the eyes of all the revellers was
an exquisitely slender, girlish figure amid the broken crust of the pie.
The figure was draped with spangled black gauze, through which the girl's
marble white limbs gleamed like ivory seen through gauze of gossamer
transparency. She rose from her crouching posture like a wood nymph
startled by a satyr, glanced from one side to the other, and stepped
timidly forth to the table.




CHAPTER 56. Contumelia--Contus and Melon (malum).

All translators have rendered "contus" by "pole," notwithstanding the
fact that the word is used in a very different sense in Priapeia, x, 3:
"traiectus conto sic extendere pedali," and contrary to the tradition
which lay behind the gift of an apple or the acceptance of one. The
truth of this may be established by many passages in the ancient writers.