ollows:-

"All else is useless. If you wish to be a social success, make
yourself a good listener. There is no short cut to this. A would-be
listener must learn the rudiments of his art and go through the mill
like other people. If he would develop a power of suffering fools
gladly, he must begin by suffering them without the gladness.
Professor Proser, ex-straightener, certificated bore, pragmatic or
coruscating, with or without anecdotes, attends pupils at their own
houses. Terms moderate.

"Mrs. Proser, whose success as a professional mind-dresser is so well-
known that lengthened advertisement is unnecessary, prepares ladies or
gentlemen with appropriate remarks to be made at dinner-parties or at-
homes. Mrs. P. keeps herself well up to date with all the latest
scandals."

"Poor, poor, straighteners!" said my father to himself. "Alas! that it
should have been my fate to ruin you--for I suppose your occupation is
gone."

Tearing himself away from the College of Spiritual Athletics and its
affiliated shop, he passed on a few doors, only to find himself looking
in at what was neither more nor less than a chemist's shop. In the
window there were advertisements which showed that the practice of
medicine was now legal, but my father could not stay to copy a single one
of the fantastic announcements that a hurried glance revealed to him.

It was also plain here, as from the shop already more fully described,
that the edicts against machines had been repealed, for there were
physical try-your-strengths, as in the other shop there had been moral
ones, and such machines under the old law would not have been tolerated
for a moment.

My father made his purchases just as the last shops were closing. He
noticed that almost all of them were full of articles labelled
"Dedication." There was Dedication gingerbread, stamped with a moulded
representation of the new temple; there were Dedication syrups,
Dedication pocket-handkerchiefs, also shewing the temple, and in one
corner giving a highly idealised portrait of my father himself. The
chariot and the horses figured largely, and in the confectioners' shops
there were models of the newly discovered relic--made, so my father
thought, with a little heap of cherries or strawberries, smothered in
chocolate. Outside one tailor's shop he saw a flaring advertisement
which can only be translated, "Try our Dedication trousers, price ten