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trappings of the other—if you take my meaning.
    â€˜Funny, though! I knew my way round that little old burg, all right; yes, Sirr, an’ seein’ it was cocktail time, I recollected the date I had with that priestess kid—so I hit the trail for the street of the Melon Sellers.
    â€˜Well, I hadn’t gone more than a couple of blocks when I saw a real interesting example of what Carthaginian culture could be; trussed up away over against a row of columns was a line of Roman soldiers—prisoners of war, I guess, and in front was a hoary old bud, dishing out arrows at three the quarter to a bunch of women and kids. Merry as a New York holiday crowd on Coney Island, they were; an’ every one that bit a Roman got another arrow free—but if they killed him it was a dollar fine. I figured it to be the original of the Aunt Sally game.
    â€˜D’you know, folks, such a real powerful thing is the business instinct that I darn near put up a proposition to that bird ‘bout making a corner in the arrow market; then I came to again, thought of wiring the League of Nations about it as a gross infringement of international law, but there weren’t none, and I recollected I’d be late for my date if I didn’t hustle.
    â€˜I found the little bit of soft goods, all right; she was some baby, and no mistake. This Carthaginian business didn’t seem so bad, somehow, when she was around, and she let on that it was part of her religious duties to entertain a stranger to the town. We beat it hand-in-hand to the Temple of Astoroth—it seemed she hall-roomed there, and she gave me the pass right in.
    â€˜Well, I’ll say it was some dive, that Temple. There were lots more cuties just like mine, and all the swell boys of that ancient village seemed to have happened along.
    â€˜It was a cross between a cathedral on Christmas day and a gala night at the Ziegfeld Follies, if you get my meaning; lots of incense and chanting—they had religion bad—but thedancers! They were some good-lookers, all right. You certainly didn’t have to ask why little Fanny left home, either, when you saw those Carthaginian dandy boys standing treat right and left. We’ve got nothing to touch it in little old Noo York, and that’s goin’ some.
    â€˜Well, the Mother Superior came and handed us her blessing—in return for which same piece of politeness I begged her to accept a contribution to the Temple funds, and the moon-faced cutie took me along to her hall-room.
    â€˜Now, people, I’d just hate you to get any wrong ideas of Benjamin P. Hooker—I’m pretty highly thought of in my home town, and I’m a banner-bearer in the Brothers of the Spread the Word and Lift the People Movement, but this thing was different. I was living two hundred and fifty years before the Christian era—see? So there weren’t no word to spread—anyhow, I’m tellin’ you the facts just as they happened to me.
    â€˜There was only one fly in my ointment that night—she asked me what I’d take to drink, and I got stuck. I wanted to say, “Dry Martini.” I tried that hard I thought I’d burst something, but would you believe it, there ain’t no word for dry Martini in the Punic tongue. I had to make do with some sweet muck instead—like orangeade gone alcoholic.
    â€˜But to get along, I hadn’t been more than maybe a couple of hours sayin’ how-de-do to the candy kid when the curtain was pulled aside—they hadn’t got no doors. A great big burly, hook-nosed guy, all tricked out in clinky plates of gold, comes in—say, he certainly was some swell—I figured out that he must be some big noise in the sacred Legion gang; it seemed I’d got his pet girl.
    â€˜ “Get out o’ here,” he said to me. “Come on, you mutt—beat it.” I tell you he handed me the frozen mitt, all right. But I wasn’t