ll reward you as I rewarded your fathers before you."

Sometimes he even seemed to see the faces of the speakers. Common Sense
looked so easy, genial, and serene, so frank and fearless, that do what
he might he could not mistrust her; but as he was on the point of
following her, he would be checked by the austere face of Duty, so grave,
but yet so kindly; and it cut him to the heart that from time to time he
should see her turn pitying away from him as he followed after her rival.

The poor boy continually thought of the better class of his
fellow-students, and tried to model his conduct on what he thought was
theirs. "They," he said to himself, "eat a beefsteak? Never." But they
most of them ate one now and again, unless it was a mutton chop that
tempted them. And they used him for a model much as he did them. "He,"
they would say to themselves, "eat a mutton chop? Never." One night,
however, he was followed by one of the authorities, who was always
prowling about in search of law-breakers, and was caught coming out of
the den with half a shoulder of mutton concealed about his person. On
this, even though he had not been put in prison, he would have been sent
away with his prospects in life irretrievably ruined; he therefore hanged
himself as soon as he got home.

CHAPTER XXVII: THE VIEWS OF AN EREWHONIAN PHILOSOPHER CONCERNING THE
RIGHTS OF VEGETABLES

Let me leave this unhappy story, and return to the course of events among
the Erewhonians at large. No matter how many laws they passed increasing
the severity of the punishments inflicted on those who ate meat in
secret, the people found means of setting them aside as fast as they were
made. At times, indeed, they would become almost obsolete, but when they
were on the point of being repealed, some national disaster or the
preaching of some fanatic would reawaken the conscience of the nation,
and people were imprisoned by the thousand for illicitly selling and
buying animal food.

About six or seven hundred years, however, after the death of the old
prophet, a philosopher appeared, who, though he did not claim to have any
communication with an unseen power, laid down the law with as much
confidence as if such a power had inspired him. Many think that this
philosopher did not believe his own teaching, and, being in secret a
great meat-eater, had no other end in view than reducing the prohibition
against eating animal food to an absurdity, greater