Olympian Nights

of the Pala

ancy a bake-shop built of solid gold nuggets, its large plate windows composed each of one huge, flashing diamond; imagine an exquisitely wrought golden drug-store, whose colored jars in the windows are made of rubies, emeralds, and sapphires; conjure up in your mind's eye a sequence of city blocks whose sides are lined by massive and exquisitely proportioned buildings, every inch of whose fa?ade was fashioned, not by stone-cutters and sculptors, but by goldsmiths, whose genius a C

ees were golden, and the leaves rustling in the breeze, catching and reflecting the light of the sun, were blinding. The soft greenness of the earthly grass was superseded by the glistening yellow of golden spears, and here and there, where a drop of dew would have fallen, w

what I had seen that, as my feet touched the ground, I staggered like a drunken man, and then I heard my name sounded and passed from one flunky to another up the magnificent staircase into the blue h

not ill," he wh

flabbergasted by all this magnificence

opian who stood close at hand, he observed, quietly, "Rhadamus, run over to the Argus

ne pair will be enough. It may strain my nose to hold the

ordinary bit of splendor could not have been discerned through their opaque depths, any more than Thisbe could have been seen by her doting lover, Pyramus, through the wall that separated them, but nothing kno

yal family played whenever they lacked the energy or the disposition to seek out that on Mars. There were high bunkers, the copse of which was covered with richest silk plush, stuffed, I was told, with spun silk, while, in place of sand, tons of powdered sugar and grated nutmegs filled the bunkers themselves. The eighteen holes were laid out so that no two of them crossed, and, inasmuch as the turf was constructed of rubber instead of grass and soil, neither a bad lie nor

of troubles until he woke up again, if he ever did. Here Jupiter sported every variety of pleasure craft, and, by an ingenious system of funnels arranged about its sixty-square-mile area, could at a moment's notice produce any variety of breeze he chanced to w

d, as the Major Domo explained the pecu

rtook to swim on a wager from Chambertin Inlet to Glenlivet Bay, but he had to give up before he got as far as Pommery Point. It took hi

e place to fall overb

said the Major Domo, "and my ob

hrough the door that opened upon Jupiter's yachting parl

I understand that his Majesty contemplates taking you for a s

"The lost island

rth, so Jupiter had it transported to his own private yachting po

ent over the Major Domo's announcemen

e of sending a star team. When you have an eleven made up of Hannibal and Julius C?sar and Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and Achilles and other fellows like that you can't expect any team-play. Each man is thinking about himself all the time. Hercules could walk right through 'em, and, when they begin to pose, it's mere child's play for him. The only chap that put up any game against us at all was Samson, and I tell you, now that his hair's grown again, he's a demon on the gridiron. But we divided up our force to

ould have apologized

ecovers consciousness,

al Arena and its recent game t

ayer before," I said, "but it is easy to see

pack you back to earth quicker than a wink. He brooks only one champion of anything here, and that's himself. Hercules threw him in a wr

e ceiling seemed to reach into infinity, and on either side were huge recesses and alcoves of almost unfathomable depth, lit

ier of teeming shelves, upon which stood a wonderful array

s with the gran

," said I. "Ho

y mortals, but in round, immort

aid I. "How many is th

the guide. "It is the infinity of millions, and

"you can have

e parts. On the right-hand side are all the books that ever have been written; here to the left you see all the books tha

even thought of as yet. How easy it would be for me, I thought, to write my future books if Jupiter would only let me loose

said. "It would throw the

ee why," I

a sensible man, observing beforehand how futile and trivial they are to be, some of them, you wouldn't write them, and so you would be

of this precaution, and

most there. That gorgeous door directly ahead of you is the entrance to Jupiter's recept

at, pray, is his functio

none of his guests, invited or otherwise, could afford, even with the riches of Cr?sus, to purchase the apparel which he demands. Hence he keeps Midas here to sup

it," said I. "But how long wil

an a hen's egg; next we place a jewelled staff of ebony in your hand; a golden helmet, having at either side the burnished wings of the imperial eagles of Jove, and bearing upon its crest an opal that glistens like the sun through the slight haze of a translucent c

n I get back home?" I gasped, a vision of

he Major Domo, with a sly wink at one of the

c hand and turned to glittering gold, rested upon my shoulders. It was pretty heavy, but I bore up under it; the helmet and the necklace, the shoes and the girdle wer

gles," whispere

ied. "I shall

"Off with them," and he flic

backward, awed and afraid; but one glance was reassuring, for truly a wonderful sight confronted