5
So be it; but take care not to make the height too great for the width; or down we shall come, ladder and all, and pay our footing in the Homeric school of architecture with a cracked crown apiece.
5
No fear; all will be safe enough. Pass Oeta along. Now trundle Parnassus up. There; I'll go up again. ... That’s better! A fine view. You can come now.
5
Give me a hand up, Hermes. This is an erection, and no mistake!
5
Well, you know, you would see everything. Safety is one thing, my friend, and sight-seeing is another. Here is my hand; hang on, and keep clear of the slippery bits. There, now you are up. Let us sit down; here are two peaks, one for each of us. Now take a general look round at the prospect.
6
I see a vast stretch of land, and a huge lake surrounding it, and mountains, and rivers bigger than Cocytus and Pyriphlegethon; and men, tiny little things! and I suppose their dens.
6
Dens? Those are cities!
6
I tell you what it is, Hermes; all this is no use. Here have we been shifting about Parnassus (Castalia and all complete), and Oeta, and these others, and we might have spared ouiselves the trouble!
6
How so?
6
Why, I can make nothing out up here. These cities and mountains look for all the world like a map. It is men that I am after; I want to see what they do, and hear what they say. That is what I was laughing about just now, when first you met me, and asked me what the joke was. I had heard something that tickled me hugely.
6
And what might that be?
6
One of them had been asked by a friend to dinner, I think it was, the next day. ‘Depend on it,’ says he, ‘I'll be with you.’ And before the words were out of his mouth, down came a tile—started somehow from the roof—and he was a dead man! Ha, ha, thought I, that promise will never be kept.— So I think I shall go down again; I want to see and hear.
