John Smith’s minuscule play about a conversation between two gentlemen over tea as one’s wife and the other’s niece gossip is prefaced with a quote from Horace, “Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculous mus.”  translating roughly to “the mountains are in labor, an absurd mouse will be born” (Smith 9.) This quote comes from a letter written by Horace regarding The Art of Poetry, the quote is him mocking the way some poet’s open their work with a flowery explanation of what they will later be lamenting about in their poem, accusing the poet’s of never being able to live up to the expectations they set up themselves for the audience. The line itself is an allusion to an Aesop’s Fable regarding a mountain that was believed to be going into labor, exciting all the people who expected a grand thing to be produced from this event, but in the end everyone was let down when the mountain all gave birth to a mouse. It’s a tale about not living up to expectations and empty threats, a great set-up for A Little Teatable Chitchat. The satirical piece relays the consequences of inflation from the point of view of those benefitting from the depreciation of the dollar during the Revolution. Mr. Sharp, a farmer, brags nonchalantly about his new social power that came from his inflation, each statement getting a bit more ridiculous than the last until the end when he tells Mr. Pendulum that the assembly plans on “abolishing christianity” and then says that once the ministers are removed “you may kill half the town, and yourself into the bargain and nobody will care” (Smith 10.) These statements are juxtaposed with the lively tone of conversation and the setting of it being a casual tea table conversation between two men who had just met. It’s just two seemingly normal men casually discussing abolishing a religion, appearing to not be threats at all yet discussing quite a threat against society.