tile army or a band of marauding
Indians on the shortest possible notice: in brief, a distinctly able
man, with talents, so far as we could judge, immensely above the
majority. I trust he is a bishop by this time,--he had all the necessary
qualifications, as we knew.

These strange folk had visitors sometimes,--stiff and colourless
Olympians like themselves, equally without vital interests and
intelligent pursuits: emerging out of the clouds, and passing away again
to drag on an aimless existence somewhere out of our ken. Then brute
force was pitilessly applied. We were captured, washed, and forced into
clean collars: silently submitting, as was our wont, with more
contempt than anger. Anon, with unctuous hair and faces stiffened in
a conventional grin, we sat and listened to the usual platitudes. How
could reasonable people spend their precious time so? That was ever our
wonder as we bounded forth at last--to the old clay-pit to make pots, or
to hunt bears among the hazels.

It was incessant matter for amazement how these Olympians would talk
over our heads--during meals, for instance--of this or the other social
or political inanity, under the delusion that these pale phantasms
of reality were among the importances of life. We illuminati, eating
silently, our heads full of plans and conspiracies, could have told them
what real life was. We had just left it outside, and were all on fire
to get back to it. Of course we didn't waste the revelation on them;
the futility of imparting our ideas had long been demonstrated. One in
thought and purpose, linked by the necessity of combating one hostile
fate, a power antagonistic ever,--a power we lived to evade,--we had
no confidants save ourselves. This strange anaemic order of beings was
further removed from us, in fact, than the kindly beasts who shared
our natural existence in the sun. The estrangement was fortified by an
abiding sense of injustice, arising from the refusal of the Olympians
ever to defend, retract, or admit themselves in the wrong, or to accept
similar concessions on our part. For instance, when I flung the cat out
of an upper window (though I did it from no ill-feeling, and it didn't
hurt the cat), I was ready, after a moment's reflection, to own I was
wrong, as a gentleman should. But was the matter allowed to end there?
I trow not. Again, when Harold was locked up in his room all day, for
assault and battery upon a neighbour's pig,--an action he would ha