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32 parodies on this favourite enigmatical literature. Here is one which Cleon produces:—

Demus shakes his head with an air of puzzled wisdom; he cannot make it out at all. "What has Erectheus to do with a whelp?""That's me," says Cleon; "I watch and bark for you. I'm Tear'em, and you must make much of me" "Not at all," says his rival; "the whelp has been eating some of that oracle, as he does everything else. It's a defective copy; I've got the complete text here:"—

"That's much more intelligible," remarks the master. Cleon produces another, about a lion, who is to be carefully preserved "with a wooden wall and iron fortifications:"—"and I'm the lion.""I can give the interpretation of that," says the other; "the wood and iron are the stocks that you are to put this fellow in.""That part of the oracle," says Demus,