e
coldest. When they were not dying by hundreds from sunstroke they were
dying by thousands from frost. But these heroic and devoted people
struggled on, believing that they were becoming acclimated faster than the
climate was becoming insupportable. Those called away on business were
even afflicted with nostalgia, and with a fatal infatuation returned to
grill or freeze, according to the season of their arrival. Finally there
was no summer at all, though the last flash of heat slew several millions
and set most of their cities afire, and winter reigned eternal.

"The Smugwumps were now keenly sensible of the perils environing them,
and, abandoning their homes, endeavored to reach their kindred, the
Californians, on the western side of the continent in what is now your
Majesty's ever-blessed realm. But it was too late: the snow growing deeper
and deeper day by day, besieged them in their towns and dwellings, and
they were unable to escape. The last one of them perished about the year
1943, and may God have mercy on his fool soul!"

To this dispatch the Ahkoond replied that it was the royal opinion that
the Smugwumps were served very well right.

Some weeks later I reported thus:

"_Sire:_ The country which your Majesty's munificence is enabling your
devoted servant to explore extends southward and southwestward from
Smugwumpia many hundreds of _prastams_, its eastern and southern borders
being the Wintry Sea and the Fiery Gulf, respectively. The population in
ancient times was composed of Whites and Blacks in about equal numbers and
of about equal moral worth--at least that is the record on the dial of my
ethnograph when set for the twentieth century and given a southern
exposure. The Whites were called Crackers and the Blacks known as Coons.

"I find here none of the barrenness and desolation characterizing the land
of the ancient Pukes, and the climate is not so rigorous and thrilling as
that of the country of the late Smugwumps. It is, indeed, rather agreeable
in point of temperature, and the soil being fertile exceedingly, the whole
land is covered with a dense and rank vegetation. I have yet to find a
square _smig_ of it that is open ground, or one that is not the lair of
some savage beast, the haunt of some venomous reptile, or the roost of
some offensive bird. Crackers and Coons alike are long extinct, and these
are their successors.

"Nothing could be more forbidding and unwholesome than these interminable