8 - At The Zoo

We had not travelled far from the office of Aesculapius when my little
carriers turned from the broad and beautiful corridor into a narrow
passage, through which they proceeded with some difficulty until we
reached the other side of this strangely constructed home of the gods.
As we emerged into the light of day, the view that presented itself
was indescribably beautiful. I have looked from our own hills at home
upon many a scene of grandeur. From the mountain peaks of New
Hampshire, with the sun streaming down upon me, I have looked upon
the valleys beneath through rifts in clouds that had not ventured so
high, and were drenching the glorious green below with refreshing
rains, and have stood awed in the presence of one of the simplest
moods of nature. But the sight that greeted my eyes as I passed along
that exterior road of Olympus, under the genial auspices of those
wonderful gods, appealed to something in my soul which had never
before been awakened, and which I shall never be able adequately to
describe. The mere act of seeing seemed to be uplifting, and, from the
moment I looked downward upon the beloved earth, I ceased to wonder
that gods were godlike--indeed, my real wonder was that they were not
more so. It seemed difficult to believe that there was anything
earthly about earth. The world was idealized even to myself, who had
never held it to be a bad sort of place. There were rich pastures,
green to the most soul-satisfying degree, upon which cattle fed and
lived their lives of content; here and there were the great cities of
earth seen through a haze that softened all their roughness; nothing
sordid appeared; only the fair side of life was visible.

And I began to see how it came about that these Olympian gods had lost
control over man. If the world, with all its joys and all its
miseries, presents to the controlling power merely its joyous side,
what sympathy can one look for in one's deity? There was Paris and
Notre Dame in the sunlight. But the Morgue at the back of Notre
Dame--in the shadow of its sunlit towers--that was not visible to the
eye of the casual god who drove his blackamoors along that entrancing
roadway. There was London and the inspiring pile of Westminster
showing up its majestic top, lit by the wondrous light of the sun--but
still undiscovered of the gods there rolled on its farther side the
Thames, dark as the Styx, a very grave of ambition, yet the last
solace of many a despairing soul. London Bridge may tell the gods of
much that may not be seen from that glorious driveway along the
exterior of Olympus.

I found myself growing maudlin, and I pulled myself together.

"Magnificent view, Sammy," said I.

"Yassir," he replied, trotting