aped follies. "For,
after all," says Horvendile, in his own folly, "it is for the normal
human being that books are made, and not for mummies and men of law
and scavengers."

So Horvendile went through a many streets that were thronged with
persons travelling by compulsion from they did not know where toward a
goal which they could not divine, and were not especially bothering
about. And it was evening, and to this side and to that side the men
and women of Philistia were dining. Everywhere maids were passing hot
dishes, and forks were being thrust into these dishes, and each was
eating according to his ability and condition. No matter how
poverty-stricken the household, the housewife was serving her poor
best to the goodman. For with luncheon so long past, all the really
virile men of Philistia were famished, and stood ready to eat the
moment, they had a dish uncovered.

So it befell that Horvendile encountered a representative citizen, who
was coming out of a representative restaurant with a representative
wife.

And the sight of this representative citizen was to Horvendile a tonic
joy and a warming of the heart. For this man, and each of the
thousands like him, as Horvendile reflected, had been within this hour
sedately dining with his wife,--neither of them eating with the zest
and vigor of their first youth, perhaps, but sharing amicably the more
moderate refreshment which middle-age requires,--without being at any
particular pains to conceal the fact from anybody. Here was then,
after all, the strong and sure salvation of Philistia, in this quiet,
unassuming common-sense, which dealt with the facts of life as facts,
the while that the foolish laws, and the academical and stercoricolous
nonsense of Philistia, reverberated as remotely and as unheeded as
harmless summer thunder.

"Sir," says elated Horvendile, "I perceive that you two have just been
eating, and that emboldens me to ask you--"

But at this point Horvendile found he had been knocked down, because
the parents of the representative citizen had taught him from his
earliest youth that any mention of eating was highly indecent in the
presence of gentlewomen. And for Horvendile, recumbent upon the
pavement, it was bewildering to note the glow of honest indignation in
the face of the representative citizen, who waited there, in front of
the restaurant he usually patronized....

COLOPHON

Here, rather vexatiously, the old manuscript breaks o