Punch (54.1868)

T71VERYB0DY knows how hot it was that June Wednesday, and that the thermometer stood at 84° in the
* refrigerator, but everybody does not know—assuredly Me. Punch does not—how many times he had replenished
with iced Hock-cup—and emptied—that big silver tankard which was brought unto him from America by Horatius
Ponnius, the Hermit of the Haymarket. Somehow, Mr. Punch subsided upon the grass by the river side, and burying
his grand nose in a mole-hill, dreamed. He dreamed that he was Cadmus. Perhaps he had been looking at Charles
Keene’s sketch, above.

“ I know I am Cadmus,” to himself; “ but why am I Cadmus, and what put Cadmus into my mind ? And
it you come to that, which Cadmus am I,—the son of Agenor, or the son of Pandion, or the executioner mentioned
by the other Horatius—aut tradere Cadmo ? I ought to know that, you know, but I don’t. Perhaps I am all three,
like Orion—no, I mean Cerberus, or at least Diana. It’s very unpleasant not to know who you are. Who am T,

you mole,—you old mole in the cellarage ? Can’t you speak, you blind old fool ? You can’t see, but decent people

don’t speak with their eyes, except young ladies. What do you say ?—I am to run after a cow till she stops, and then
1 am to call the place Boeotia'? But suppose the cow runs after me, who’d be the Boeotian then, do you think ?
Ha ! have I got you on the horns of a cow—I mean a dilemma, but the moral’s the same ? I am so thirsty. Then
a dragon will eat up all my servants—well, I see no particular objection to that, and the dragon is the child of Ares,
and that is why he is partial to servants, who are also children of areas—-tell you what, mole, you ’ve been reading
Lempriere’s Lies and not Dr. William Smith’s Well-authenticated Statements—I shan’t talk to you. I shall kill that
dragon, and extract his teeth, and sow them, and then I shall have a crop of letters, and the double teeth will make
double letters. I am so thirsty. And the men in brass are to be called Sparti, or the Sown. But men in brass,
—I didn’t say anything about men in brass—I think you are all drunk. When the letters have fought and all killed
one another they are to be the ancestors of the Thebans. 0, decidedly you are all drunk. Next I am to marry a

beautiful maiden called Harmonia. Well, that’s all right, only mind that Judy don’t hear of it, or the harmony of

this meeting might be disturbed. I am to give her a necklace and a peplus ? Anything to oblige, but what’s a peplus ?