Flaxius Author:Charles Godfrey Leland Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FLAXIUS AND ROOSEVELDT When Julius Cesar gave the deputies From Gaul their rights and treated them as men, All Rome roared out in rage, because in Rome ... more » All foreigners were held as vile and low : And thus it was that Ccesar showed himself Most perfectly the bravest of mankind, And fittest man of all to rule the state." Comment by Miss Winifrede Orr, on the following chapter. ' And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying: This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.—St. Luke, xv. 2. The wise and great Flaxius in his steps from century to century did much to endear himself to the men of the present, who take a pride in their northern ancestry. For when no elegant Roman scholar would have given a rusty denarius to know what was going on in the whole world, north of Italy, our sage made himself intimate with Odin and Thor, not to mention the God Frey (whose name is yet borne by descendants of the old stock), had been favoured by Freya, had read the first edition of the Edda scraped in runes on birch-bark, had suggested emendations in it, and so on. He was a great friend of Olaf Tryggvason, whose true history, and it is a marvellous one, yet remains to be written. And here-and-thereing about, it happened that he came into the Netherlands, where he made acquaintance with King Gambrinus the inventor of beer. But, in fact, it was Flaxius who, having in India learned from Vishnu the art of brewing Soma, whichis now generally agreed to have been India pale ale, taught him the secret. And not to digress, I would here note that Bass has his name from Bassaro, a place in Lydia, where Bacchus had a temple, which name is supposed to be derived from the Hebrew Bassar, to gather in a vintage, because in those days beer was regarded as a sort of wine, an idea s...« less