Art

“Once when I was walking in a certain street of the city of Babylon not far from our house, I saw on a large building which I had already many times passed, what is called an ‘Ookazemotra,’ or, as it is now called, on the Earth, a ‘signboard’ which had been just put up and which announced that a club for foreign learned beings, the ‘Adherents-of-Legominism,’ had been newly opened in that building. Over the door hung a notice to the effect that the enrollment of members of the club was still going on, and that all reports and scientific discussions would be conducted only in the local and Hellenic languages.

“This interested me very much, and I thought at once whether it would not be possible for me to make use of this newly opened club for my practice in the Hellenic speech.

“I then inquired of certain beings who were going in or coming out of that building, about the details concerning the club; and, when, thanks to the explanation of one learned being, with whom, as I chanced to find out, I was already acquainted, I had made it all more or less clear to myself, I then and there decided to become also a member of that club.

“Without thinking long about it, I entered the building and passing myself off as a foreign learned being, I requested, as an adherent of Legominism, to be enrolled as a member of the club; I managed to do this very easily, owing to that old acquaintance whom I had met by chance and who, like the others, took me for a learned being like himself.

“Well then, my boy, having thus become what is called a ‘full member’ of that club, I used afterwards to go there regularly and to talk there chiefly with those learned members who were familiar with the Hellenic speech which I needed.

“As regards the second fact, this proceeded from the following Babylonian events.

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