of time taken a wider application and is
now freely used as an insidious thrust at one who may be suspected of
contrariness of character, of confusing issues, or of acting in a vain
or illogical manner. I had already preserved the saying among other
instances of foreign thought and expression which I am collecting for
your dignified amusement, as it is very characteristic of the wisdom and
humour of these Outer Lands. The imagination is essentially barbaric. A
horse--doubtless well-groomed, richly-caparisoned, and as intellectual
as the circumstances will permit, but inevitably an animal of degraded
attributes and untraceable ancestry--a horse reclining before a lavishly
set-out table and considering well of what dish it shall next partake!
Could anything, it appears, be more diverting! Truly to our more refined
outlook the analogy is lacking both in delicacy of wit and in exactitude
of balance, but to the grosser barbarian conception of what is
gravity-removing it is irresistible.

I am, however, reminded of the saying by perceiving that I was on the
point of recording certain details of recent occurrence without first
unrolling to your mind the incidents from which it has arisen that the
person who is now communicating with you is no longer reposing in the
Capital, but spending a period profitably in observing the habits of
those who dwell in the more secluded recesses on the outskirts of the
Island. This reversal of the proper sequence of affairs would doubtless
strike those around as an instance of setting the banquet before the
horse. Without delay, then, to pursue the allusion to its appropriate
end, I will return, as it may be said, to my nosebag.

At various points about the streets of the Capital there are certain
caverns artificially let into the bowels of the earth, to which any
person may betake himself upon purchasing a printed sign which he must
display to the guardian of the gate. Once within the underneathmost
parts he is free to be carried from place to place by means of the
trains of carriages which I have already described to you, until he
would return to the outer surface, when he must again display his
talisman before he is permitted to pass forth. Nor is this an empty
form, for upon an occasion this person himself witnessed a very bitter
contention between a keeper of the barrier and one whose token had
through some cause lost its potency.

In the company of the experienced I had previously gone