be expected always to work well? And how can you
hope to find, even in the most enslaved or routine-ridden community,
entire obedience to the will of the monarch and his satellites?
Unfortunately for the cause of order and quiet, there will always be
found certain tough lumps, in the shape of rebellious or non-conformist
men, which refuse to be melted in the strong solvents or ground up
in the swift mills of Absolutism. Government must look after these
impediments. If they are positively dangerous, they must be destroyed or
removed. If only suspected, or known to be powerless or inactive, they
must at least be watched.

And here, again, the machine of government shows a remarkable ingenuity
of organization.

For instance, it is said that there are pipes laid all along the
streets, like hose, leading from a central reservoir. Nobody knows
exactly what they are for; but if any one steps upon them, up spirts
something like a stream of gas, and takes the form of a _gendarme_,--and
the unlucky street-walker must pay dear for his carelessness. Telegraph
wires radiate like cobwebs from the chamber of the main-spring, and
carry intelligence of all that is going on in the houses and streets.
Man-traps are laid under the pavements,--sometimes they are secretly
introduced under your very table or bed,--and if anything is said
against that piece of machinery called the main-spring, or against the
head engineer, the trap will nab you and fly away with you, like the
spider that carried off Margery Mopp. If a number of people get together
to discuss the meaning of and the reasons for the existence of the
main-spring, or any of the big wheels immediately connected therewith,
the ground under them will sometimes give way, and they will suddenly
find themselves in unfurnished apartments not to their liking. And if
any one should be so rash as to put his hand on the wheels, he is cut to
pieces or strangled by the silent, incessant, fatal whirl of the engine.

The head engineer keeps his machine, and the city on which it acts, as
much in the dark as possible. He has a special horror of sunshine.
He seems to think that the sky is one great burning lens, and his
machine-rooms and the city a vast powder-magazine.

There are certain articles thought to be especially dangerous.
Newspapers are strictly forbidden,--unless first steeped in a tincture
of asbestos of a very dull color, expressly manufactured and supplied
by the Governing Machine