. The idea of sacrifice was not
contemplated, and the position of the table, as well as the name given to
it, was an instance of the way in which the Erewhonians had caught names
and practices from my father, without understanding what they either were
or meant. So, again, when Professor Hanky had spoken of canonries, he
had none but the vaguest idea of what a canonry is.

I may add further that as a boy my father had had his Bible well drilled
into him, and never forgot it. Hence biblical passages and expressions
had been often in his mouth, as the effect of mere unconscious
cerebration. The Erewhonians had caught many of these, sometimes
corrupting them so that they were hardly recognizable. Things that he
remembered having said were continually meeting him during the few days
of his second visit, and it shocked him deeply to meet some gross
travesty of his own words, or of words more sacred than his own, and yet
to be unable to correct it. "I wonder," he said to me, "that no one has
ever hit on this as a punishment for the damned in Hades."

Let me now return to Professor Hanky, whom I fear that I have left too
long.

"And of course," he continued, "I shall say all sorts of pretty things
about the Mayoress--for I suppose we must not even think of her as Yram
now."

"The Mayoress," replied Panky, "is a very dangerous woman; see how she
stood out about the way in which the Sunchild had worn his clothes before
they gave him the then Erewhonian dress. Besides, she is a sceptic at
heart, and so is that precious son of hers."

"She was quite right," said Hanky, with something of a snort. "She
brought him his dinner while he was still wearing the clothes he came in,
and if men do not notice how a man wears his clothes, women do. Besides,
there are many living who saw him wear them."

"Perhaps," said Panky, "but we should never have talked the King over if
we had not humoured him on this point. Yram nearly wrecked us by her
obstinacy. If we had not frightened her, and if your study, Hanky, had
not happened to have been burned . . . "

"Come, come, Panky, no more of that."

"Of course I do not doubt that it was an accident; nevertheless if your
study had not been accidentally burned, on the very night the clothes
were entrusted to you for earnest, patient, careful, scientific
investigation--and Yram very nearly burned too--we should never have
carried it through. See what work we had to get the King to al