When Alexander the Great cut with his sword the Gordian Knot, which had baffled all his efforts to untie with honest fingers, it goes without saying that his impudent performance received the applause of the onlookers.

As he stood there, his heavy sword still swaying from the impetus of the stroke and exclaimed with a challenging glare at those before him (and belike an apprehensive glance over his shoulder), “Did I or did I not untie that knot?”—whatever might—nay, must have been the unspoken comment that passed from eye to eye, the answer shouted in unison, was without a shadow of a doubt the Phrygian equivalent of “You sure did!”

For the Great God Bunk (whose worshipers are born at the rate of one a minute) is as old as the world itself; and since we have it on good authority that the world is a stage, even though we do not suspect him of a hand in its making, we know the old rogue assisted at the first dress rehearsal famous for all time for the smallness of the cast and the inexpensiveness of the costuming.

King Gordius, whose genius contrived the unpickable knot, is now comfortably forgotten, while Alexander who destroyed what he could not understand, still enjoys uneasy immortality; for what is immortality at best but the suspended sentence of Oblivion?

And the knot? The hempen hieroglyph that was never solved. When oblivion has overtaken Alexander and even the name of Gordius is forgotten, the world, which is surprisingly young for its age, will still babble wonderingly of the knot that never was and never will be untied.

Another high priest of the Great God Bunk was Christopher Columbus, and on how frail a foundation rests his immortal fame—nothing more than the fragile, calcareous container, (and fractured at that) of an unborn domestic fowl.

Unquestionably the fame of Columbus rests upon his impudent pretense of balancing an egg by crushing it violently upon the table. To be sure, Columbus also discovered America, but in that he was only one of a multitude. At that moment in the world’s history the discovering of America was, like golf, something between a sport and an obsession, everybody was discovering America. So common was it, that only a few of the discoverers are remembered by name, and had it not been for his famous egg-balancing fraud the name of Christopher Columbus would surely be among the forgotten ones.

To balance an egg on its apex—though not impossible, is a tedious and dispiriting task; and even if Columbus had accomplished it honestly without fracturing the shell, so far from adding to his laurels he might have lost them altogether. Queen Isabella would never have had the patience to sit through so long and boresome a performance, and when the Queen leaves, you know the performance is over.

Indeed, it is quite thinkable that it was the dread of just such an ending to his audience and the resultant stage fright reacting upon an excitable sea-faring nature that caused Columbus to break the egg.

The question now asks itself: Has Christopher Columbus, posing as a clever impostor when in reality only a stage-frightened bungler, obtained his fame under false pretenses? In unmasking his clandestine honesty do we but prove him the greater fraud? Bunk only knows!

Queen Dido of Carthage, on the other hand, came by her dishonesty quite honestly—she inherited it from her royal father’s sister Jezebel.

Yes, Jezebel, the patron sinner of half a world of womankind, was Queen Dido’s aunt. Good or bad, what was her Aunt Jezebel’s was also Dido’s by right of inheritance. And none of all the prophets of the Great God Bunk was greater than this prophetess.

Did she not for certain moneys receive the title to so much land as might be compassed by the bigness of a bull’s hide.

She did.

Did she not then carve said bull’s hide into fine strips and therewith enclose enough real estate for the foundation of the city of Carthage?

She did.