r. By day, therefore, it is inadvisable to go forth
and encounter human beings, while none but the shallow-headed would risk
a meeting with the countless demons and vampires which move by night. To
one who has spent many moons among these foreign apparitions the absence
of drains, roads, illustrated message-parchments, maidens whose voices
may be heard protesting upon ringing a wire, loaves of conflicting
dimensions, persons who strive to put their faces upon every
advertisement, pens which emit fountains when carried in the pocket,
a profusion of make-strong foods, and an Encyclopaedia Mongolia, may
undoubtedly be mentioned as constituting a material deficiency. Affairs
are not being altogether reputably conducted during the crisis; it can
never be quite definitely asserted what the next action of the versatile
and high-spirited Dowager Empress will be; and here it is freely
contended that the Pure and Immortal Empire is incapable of remaining
in one piece for much longer. These, and other inconveniences of a like
nature, which the fastidious might distort into actual hardships, have
never been denied, yet at no period of the nine thousand years of our
civilisation has it been the custom to lure out the unwary, on the plea
of an agreeable entertainment, and then to abandon him into the society
of eleven club-bearing adversaries, one of whom may be depicted as in
the act of imparting an unnecessary polish to the edge of his already
preternaturally acute weapon, while those of his own band offer no
protection, and three tiers of very richly-dressed maidens encourage him
to his fate by refined gestures of approval.

Doubtless this person had unconsciously allowed his inner meditations
to carry him away, as it may be expressed, for when he emerged from this
strain of reverie it was to discover himself in the chariot-road and--so
incongruously may be the actions when the controlling intelligence is
withdrawn--even proceeding at a somewhat undignified pace in a direction
immediately opposed to an encounter with the brown locusts. From
this mortifying position he was happily saved by emerging from these
thought-dreams before it was too late to return, and, also, if the
detail is not too insignificant to be related, by the fact that certain
chosen runners from his own company had reached a point in the road
before him, and now stood joining their outstretched arms across the
passage and raising gravity-dispelling cries. Smiling