Lost trumpet

THE LOST TRUMPET
It was my turn to make interpolation. “But I
understood that, even if the Bible story were authen¬
ticated, what caused the overthrow of the good
Jericho walls were the not unheavy tramplings of
the marching cohorts about them.”
“And I always understood it was the Faith, not
the Feet, of the said cohorts.”
This was Adrian, eyes half-closed to the sun-
dazzle, head brightly cocked, making ironic play on
the capital letters. Huebsch considered both of us,
kindly, detailedly, massively.
“Well, it wasn’t the feet. The walls would have
fallen quite differently if it had been. We’re a bit
beyond the age which believed most things of anti¬
quity could be explained by the shoddy rationalism
of the nineteenth century.”
Marrot brought down his chair-legs with a bang.
“So they can.”
The immense Huebsch made a rather weary and
deprecating gesture. “We’ll leave Karl Marx out of
it. He was a Jew, anyway, and would probably have
agreed with me. ... To get back : if the walls
of Jericho were overthrown in any dramatic fashion
at all—as they were—all the evidence points to it
having been done simply through the agency of the
rams’ horns employed—or, according to this
Samarcand manuscript, through the agency of only
one of these rams’ horns, the magic Lost Trumpet
of Joshua.”
Nor was it apparently only the ancient and
gullible scribe of the manuscript who believed this.