The Equinox (Volume I, Number VIII)

THE EQUINOX Looking-Glass; but he was in any case not there, being busy in working out by applied mathematics the problem as to which public man was worthiest of a biography in his columns next week. The words " blasphemous orgie ” altogether fail to give any idea of what occurred. “Twenty-eight naked demi-mondaines now brimmed the buckets with satyrion," hardly describes it. “These loathsome and abominable creatures next aban— doned themselves to frenzied scenes unparalleled in Degenerate Rome,” conveys an altogether false impression. Only my own pen can describe it accurately; and I sup- pose the printer will refuse to set it up, and very likely telephone the Public Prosecutor. However, I shall try and sneak it through in Ciceronian Latin. Crowleius dixit: Quid circa—(what on earth’s the Latin for “tea”?)? Omnes biberunt. (There must be some concealed horror in these words. It aþþaïmtly means “ Crowley said—what about tea? They all drank." With this reservation we prepare to fly to Ostend, but print it. Printer.) The good news ran through London like wildfire, doing every hundred yards in even time. Ralph Shirley, stirring uneasily in his office chair, stroked his pet rhinoceros, and murmured “ Piles 0’ money”; Leopold Rothschild asked if the zebra could indeed change his stripes; and although ninety and nine just persons that needed no repentance had that very minute been presented to the angels in heaven, the subject was completely forgotten in the exuberance of the higher joy. 24o