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DUKE 
 ^ UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Treasure %oom 
 
 UiuFIA 
 
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 Rec'd ^^^a^t^-./ij-i-^-i.^f---. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 MARRIAGE AND RACE DEATH «1.10 
 
 THE MONARCH BILLIONAIRE 110 
 
 IMPERIALISM AND LIBERTY 1.50 
 
 HUMAN SUBMISSION 28 
 
 OUR RIGHT TO ROB ROBBERS .28 
 
 THE AMERICAN HOUSE OF LORDS: SUPREME COURT USURPA- 
 TION 06 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 1-12 
 
 Sent post-paid at the above prices 
 
 The Liberty Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 
 
THE HORROBOOS 
 
 BY 
 
 MORRISON I. SWIFT 
 
 t/ 
 
 THE LIBERTY PRESS 
 BOSTON, 1911 
 
To M. 
 
 Copyright igii, by Morrison I. Swift 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 IJX'u 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 1. Colonel Fessendkn Brady 
 
 2. The Rinyos .... 
 
 3. King Milto 
 
 4. The Treasdre is Divided 
 
 5. A Magnificent Carnage . 
 
 6. The Position of The King's Feet in the Fabric of State 
 
 7. The Trainers in Licking 
 
 8. My Two Miracles . 
 
 9. The King and I Sit in a Tree . 
 
 10. The Long Poles. I am Condemned to Death 
 
 11. I Begin to Civilize the Rinyos 
 
 12. The White Caravan 
 
 13. Rebellion .... 
 
 14. I Pay Wages and Restore Happiness 
 
 15. Some Superfluous Rinyos 
 
 16. The Terror .... 
 
 17. Better Than Bullets 
 
 18. Rinyo Marriage 
 
 19. Astounding Institutions of the Horroboos 
 
 20. Griffelak Uncovers the Foundations of Human Society 
 
 21. The Terrible Potentate Teaches me Political Economy 
 
 22. The Origin of Horroboo Grandeur . 
 
 23. Horroboo Spinsters ..... 
 
 24. Griffelak the Great ..... 
 
 25. The Chief Eaters and their Advanced Anatomy 
 
 26. Horroboo Equality ..... 
 
 27. I Meet the Fat ...... 
 
 28. The Food Inclosures ..... 
 
 29. Pillars of the Horroboo State 
 
 30. Horroboo Religion ..... 
 
 31. The National Harem ..... 
 
 32. Budding Angels. The Beautiful Empress 
 
 33. The Glories of Horroboo Science 
 
 34. We Stumble upon the Fountain of Human Happiness 
 
 35. I Prepare to Depart, the Richest Man in the World. My 
 
 Last Miracle ...... 
 
 36. The Sign of the Nose ...... 
 
 37. Millions of JL^d Cannibals. The Hand of Providence 
 
 38. The African Prince ...... 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/horroboosOOswif 
 
THE HORROBOOS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Colonel Fessenden Brady 
 
 It was the last night of the century and a number of us 
 had gathered to witness the closing heart-beat of a hundred 
 years. To while away the time until the ancient patient's 
 demise we began to tell stories, drawing on our imaginations 
 so vigorously that in some cases it seemed that the faculty 
 might never be quite elastic again. There was among us one 
 who did not yield himself to our sprightly vein, who indeed, 
 if we were to speak from his reveried air, hardly felt the 
 bracing sallies of mirth which gathered into spirited gales 
 in their passage from mind to mind. At length we bantered 
 him on his taciturnity, voting that he too must lay a story 
 upon the altar of laughter. "Greyson ! Greyson !" cried 
 several, whereupon we all shuffled our chairs making him 
 the center. 
 
 I am not a person of flaming fancy, began the gentleman 
 thus importuned, and if you demand improvisation I shall 
 humbly vacate the office of amusement to which you have 
 elected me. Moreover, upon this of all nights of my life 
 I am chilled with sombre memories which hold my mind 
 in their unrelenting grasp. What I shall tell you is true — 
 would it were not! — true even to the indelible language I 
 shall repeat, and occurred ten years ago at this very hour. 
 Although never have I spoken of it to a living being, not a 
 day has passed when I have not earnestly meditated upon 
 my part in it ; it has weighed too heavily on my mind ; with 
 
4 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 the new century I am resolved to throw its shadowy incubus 
 off and be again a free gay-hearted man. 
 
 I was returning from Europe on one of the great liners. 
 We had reached mid-ocean on the last day of the year and 
 were plowing through storming seas which kept the major- 
 ity in bed ; but seven or eight of us, all men of course, who 
 had formed an agreeable companionship by talking most 
 of the time together in the smoking room, whetting our 
 appetites for stories, smoke, and genial ocean follies by 
 transitory conflicts with the sleety blasts on deck, conspired 
 to make a midnight of it, to co-operate with the first rock- 
 ing of the new year in the cradle of the sea. Finding the 
 smoking-room pretty much deserted before nine o'clock, 
 we took possession of our favorite corner and began to 
 yam. Rather more champagne than usual having been 
 drunk in honor of the great proceeding of nature, our 
 narratives took on a vividly human, personal, and autobio- 
 graphical character. It must have been the feeling of old 
 and confidential friendship engendered by wine and boreal 
 song that moved Colonel Fessenden Brady, a highly enter- 
 taining gentleman, but one in the lambent ether of whose 
 nature could be discerned the haughty cleavages of dignity 
 and reserve, to give us a singular chapter from his own 
 life. Brady was a world-nobleman before whose stateliness 
 I wondered at the audacity of nature to storm, — handsome, 
 polished, majestical, magnificently dressed, oracular, per- 
 fect, and aureoled in the spiritual majesty of fabulous 
 wealth. This was his story. 
 
 A few years ago I went out to Africa for the first time 
 as a missionary. 
 
 As a missionary! we ejaculated, and all joined in a cour- 
 teous laugh at this cheerful thrust. Attracted by the word 
 missionary, or Africa, or by our restrained hilariousness, 
 a dark young splendid looking person, garbed in surpass- 
 ing elegance, with a fortune of gold and two of diamonds 
 
COLONEL FESSENDEN BRADY 5 
 
 visible on his dazzling exterior, lounged toward us and sat 
 condescendingly down. Colonel Brady continued. 
 
 I expected you to smile, but it is the glittering truth; I 
 went out there as a missionary, which I don't think you find 
 harder to believe of me than I do of myself. This was the 
 manner of it: I was looking about New York for a way 
 to become a multimillionaire in two years at farthest, as 
 all well-born and true-hearted American youths will, and 
 I wasn't finding it very fast, when the idea possessed me 
 that the smoothest road to my deserved estate lay through 
 a new country, undesecrated by greed. Shunning books 
 of travel and other beaten tracks through the wilderness, 
 I haunted the water front, sailors' homes and boarding 
 houses, and the little religious camps in the maritime desert, 
 leeching myself on to every human oddity whose corroded 
 exterior indicated foreign adventure, with whom I put 
 myself on terms of brotherly familiarity. Fortune was 
 certainly enamored of me, for I came upon a friendless 
 wretch in the last stages of poverty and consumption who 
 changed the destinies of my life. I helped him with small 
 sums, always being repaid at sight with compound affec- 
 tion, and was soon gratified to perceive that for novel expe- 
 rience concerning wild tribes, unknown localities, dark deeds 
 and suppressed information he was a noble gem out-shining 
 -all competitors, into whose deeps I cautiously probed for 
 the great secret of which such a character could not be 
 destitute. 
 
 I wooed his confidence with gruel and credulity, where 
 his dying memory flagged I stimulated it with draughts of 
 my own sparkling fancy, and often I talked obliquely, as 
 if he had already told me everything, to surprise him into 
 some fertile hints. But I never caught him that way, for 
 he was a shrewd quill; it was my indefatigable kindness, 
 not my wit, and the plain pounding of death on his ribs 
 within that conquered. A few days before dying he com- 
 
6 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 municated what I sought. With two dare-devil companions 
 he had forced his way some distance inland from the 
 African coast by untried routes until they had ascended to 
 a small tribe occupying a rich and protected basin among 
 the hills. These savages, who called themselves Rinyos, 
 and were a twin half of the great Horroboo nation, as I 
 later learned, altho cannibals and tumultuously warlike, 
 were nevertheless highly intelligent for their kind, if not 
 too openly abused were agreeably tame, and were mild and 
 lovable in their domestic relations when their wives were 
 obedient. Their most engaging attribute was the gold that 
 stocked their country and of which they were abjectly, I 
 may say sinfully, ignorant. After a brief visit the adven- 
 turers had departed uninjured, determined either to sell 
 their secret for a huge sum or to return with suitable sup- 
 port to exploit the treasure. On their journey coastward 
 they became mutually suspicious, which distemper, fed by 
 unsanitary climatal influences, grew rapidly into a madness, 
 so that none of them dared to sleep for fear of treachery. 
 Nor would they trust one another to separate, each believ- 
 ing that whoever emerged from the brush first would fore- 
 stall the others and reap the entire harvest. Of course this 
 could not last long: two of them one day fell foul of each 
 other, and as they fought my acquaintance dispatched both 
 as security for his own life and clean title to the Horroboo 
 section of Africa. 
 
 From the dying man I obtained a minute description of 
 the parts he had traversed ; I faithfully tended him to the 
 last, that he might not in his final agony chatter of his 
 peregrinations to strangers, and when his latest breath was 
 drawn I hurriedly turned him over to the city for burial, 
 and addressed myself to weightier affairs. I can assure you 
 I lost no time in planning to gather in these revealed truths, 
 as I called them from evangelical habit, — for what after 
 all 13 doctrinally truer in this world than dollars ? — nor was 
 
COLONEL FESSENDEN BRADY 7 
 
 it long before a thousand infallible schemes crowded my 
 consciousness, lacking only the fell essential of funds for 
 their execution. Here I was in deep distress; my little 
 savings from theological prizes, scholarships and small gifts 
 intended for the Lord from pious rich women, were fast 
 gliding away, while, pessimistic of the virtues of mankind, 
 the idea of taking some capitalist into partnership to lie 
 on his couch and absorb the spoils garnered by my brain, 
 muscle and sacrifices, was, I must say, intolerably repul- 
 sive. Drooping in this sorry state for many days, I hap- 
 pened to receive an invitation to preach in a small town, 
 and in the twinkling of an eye my worries vanished. I 
 resolved to go to the African tribe as a missionary. As 
 such my passage out would be paid and I could find myself 
 in money from the Church or benevolent individuals to 
 supply the materials which my plan involved. 
 
 You are probably wondering why I was invited to preach. 
 In the middle of my college course my father met with 
 reverses which would have terminated my education had 
 not a wealthy trustee whose specialty was recruiting the 
 ministry offered funds for the balance of my studies if I 
 would then equip for the church. Joyfully I accepted, with 
 very little intention as you may imagine of ever preaching. 
 I saw however that under the wing of this wealthy citizen 
 I should be brought into favorable relation with affluent 
 men of influence, the controllers of worldly openings ; so 
 having passed through college and the seminary — the latter 
 by an excellent head for theology cutting down to two years 
 — I found myself distressed with doctrinal scruples which 
 prevented the examining board from confirming the privi- 
 lege to preach. This honorably excused me from a taste- 
 less and impecunious profession, somewhat diluted in moral 
 stamina, I fear, and I had my four years of education free. 
 As the new call to preach arose from a more liberal body, 
 I should have been constrained to widen the range of my 
 
8 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 conscience to other perplexities, had it not given me the 
 glorious opening into the missionary arena. Laying my 
 plan before the denomination's foreign board, which was 
 that I should proceed alone into this dangerous field, I 
 became in an hour their religious lion, and the needful 
 money was poured into my pockets while blessings streamed 
 upon my head at an equal rate. To be frank, as it was 
 generally expected that I would be summarily eaten, the 
 virtue of my martyrdom was expected to be diffused among 
 my senders; and anticipating this rich and speedy return 
 for their acts, the good people felt eager to do handsomely 
 toward my comfort by liberal preparation for the few 
 months that I had to live. 
 
 My equipment was not just what they imagined it to be, 
 and I did not publicly advertise its character. That severe 
 array of strong well-braced boxes was supposed by them 
 to encase bibles, medicines, surgical instruments, antitoxins, 
 soaps, mosquito nets, photographs of American cities, and 
 of the Board of Foreign Missions that fathered my self- 
 sacrifice, a few volumes of Shakespeare and Browning, and 
 proper clothing for Christian heathen, of course more in 
 the nature of samples from the religious firms than of com- 
 plete outfits for the whole tribe. The trusty packing-cases 
 in reality concealed every describable novelty of trinket, 
 gewgaw and bead, all the garish wonders of bizarre in- 
 vention, and a quite incomparable selection of peculiar fire- 
 crackers and candies. There were ten of these chests, each 
 with a marvelous treasure peculiarly its own, but number 
 ten had one difference from the otliers, hereafter to be de- 
 scribed — it was the pivot of my plan, the conception in 
 which my genius burst into full-orbed radiance. All were 
 lined with rubber to defend them against rain and damp. 
 Finally, one receptacle bore my private traps, an evening 
 suit vowed to planetary culture, a few books on which I 
 specially doted, including Plato, St. Augustine, Whitman, 
 
COLONEL FESSENDEN BRADY 9 
 
 Thomas a Kempis, Zola, Emerson, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Haeckel, 
 Milton, Nietzsche, and a handful of conscientious modem 
 radicals not so well known, for these sustain the soul to 
 great enterprises — I am a true child of our ideal American 
 Republic and absorb everything without believing much of 
 anything — firearms, a diamond ring, my silk hat and over- 
 alls. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Rinyos 
 
 Having reached the borderland of the Rinyo state with 
 aboriginal attendants collected in transit, I dismissed them 
 all with generous benedictions and made my journey for- 
 ward alone, instructing them to return for me in a year to 
 receive their pay, which they tearfully consented to do. The 
 poor fellows indeed exhibited signs of the deepest sorrow, 
 never expecting to see me alive or dead again. I entered 
 the enemies' country in the night and after traveling some 
 distance toward the seat of the King, began the execution 
 of my plan. I buried one of the chests with marks to in- 
 dicate its hiding-place; and so proceeded, always by night, 
 making a circuit of the royal village and from time to time 
 interring another box. By day I recruited and slept, keep- 
 ing my animals out of sight in dense groves. I was grateful 
 to have the long journey over, for the size and weight of 
 the chests had obliged the strapping of three animals to- 
 gether to sustain each burden. The heavy boxes lying 
 across their backs and the disruption of their ordinary 
 habits — for they were not broken to move in triplets — often 
 chafed them and caused a panic, to my great apprehension, 
 especially when there was no moon. Besides, a number of 
 the mountain paths on which I ventured were intended for 
 
lO THE HORROBOOS 
 
 only one beast and it required great ingenuity and intrepid- 
 ity on my part to guide them tiiree abreast to the number 
 of over thirty. When all the boxes were dispersed under 
 the sod I therefore cheerfully turned the animals loose, with 
 the precaution of secreting their trappings in a covered 
 crevice of rock, and advanced toward the ruler's village 
 with only the one that bore my personal comforts and pro- 
 fessional articles. 
 
 I was received with gratifying cordiality and enthusiasm, 
 but was at once cast into prison, which on reflection I con- 
 sidered a good sign ; for they might have torn me limb from 
 limb, or sportively thrown me from a high rock, or trans- 
 fixed me with the evening spit; but their leniency for the 
 time prevailed. I had not been long immured before I was 
 of the opinion that their prison system needed reforming. 
 It was quite too simple and ascetic to suit the expansive 
 standards of modern life of even the criminal, still less of 
 the cultivated missionary. They placed me against a rock 
 and heaped fragments of granite against my surface until 
 only my head was visible, nor did they even set a covering 
 of any sort above me for protection against the torrid blaze 
 of the sun. How they expected me to eat in this situation 
 unless they fed me I have never been able to imagine, and 
 the boulders pressed against my thorax with such acri- 
 mony that I doubt if I could have swallowed unaided. They 
 seemed to be making ready to cast their javelins at my head 
 for target practice, having, I suppose they imagined, amply 
 protected my important parts. 
 
 In this awkward posture of affairs I signified my desire 
 to see their King, a privilege which, being graciously ac- 
 corded, led me into new difficulties. I informed his maj- 
 esty, as well as I could with motions of the head and face, 
 and expressive sounds, that I possessed secrets that would 
 make him the most dreadful of living monarchs, thereby 
 ardently inflaming his ambition and causing him to listen 
 
THE RINYOS II 
 
 willingly to sanitary overtures to enlarge my quarters and 
 give me facilities for expeditiously learning his language. 
 He appointed his Family Poet, the Chief Prophet of their 
 Idols, and the head of their Medical Faculty, who, by royal 
 decree were considered at that time the greatest intellects 
 of the realm, my instructors, promising that none of the 
 citizens should devour me except under such penalties as 
 made my existence for the time moderately secure. 
 
 I was taken out of my cage and presented with a domicile 
 hewn by nature in the rock, containing a very low entrance 
 which obliged me to creep in and out on my hands and 
 knees, and against which an enormous bulk of granite was 
 rolled by four huge savages when I was within. The King 
 informed me by signs that this precaution was taken as 
 much to preserve me from accidents incident to strangers 
 in their midst, as to prevent my escape. Twice a day the 
 stone was pushed aside so that I might promenade in public 
 with my four guards, and I confess I felt much safer at 
 home than abroad. Goaded by the fear that some native's 
 appetite might outrun his theories of happiness, I spent all 
 my time talking to one or other of my preceptors, even con- 
 straining the Chief of Idols to go upon my walks with me, 
 and thus I made such prodigious headway in grammar that 
 the King conceived me to be a great wit and proposed to 
 make me his court fool. Then, as often thereafter, I was 
 obliged to decline honors that were thrust upon me un- 
 sought, for it transpired that their rule was to kill most of 
 those whom they turned out of office to make room for 
 another. They had found that, having held office, a man 
 was never happy till he had eeled into another, that he was 
 never after lat ease with his fellow savages, but kept him- 
 self apart from them with a contemptuous and often mur- 
 derous disposition, and that the anxiety of the populace to 
 get a place was so strenuous that some became mad. And 
 they had discovered that killing the retired officials not only 
 
12 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 made them happier but to some extent mollified the national 
 fever of others to succeed them. In one or two instances 
 there proved to be a singularly fruitful exception to this 
 sanguinary maxim. 
 
 The King was not offended by my refusal to serve offi- 
 cially las his fool. If anything he was rather more drawn 
 to me by my abnegation, considering me a gap in the con- 
 tinuity of nature as he had experienced it. He said as 
 much in his childlike way. I think this was the origin of 
 his suspecting me to be a god, a harmless fancy which I 
 encouraged. From this moment, at least, dated our un- 
 common affection. He would sit on my rock for hours to- 
 gether teaching me language, while I lay on my back inside 
 my den, for I could not sit upright. He was a man of 
 exceeding sternness of character toward his wives and ene- 
 mies, but trusting and devoted as a camel to those who won 
 his confidence. 
 
 As soon as I could trust my powers of speech in the ver- 
 nacular I carried out an important and daring design that 
 had formed in my brain. I invited His Highness to con- 
 duct me to the most solemn place in his dominion, saying 
 that I had weighty matters on which to converse with him 
 in the deepest privacy. Thereupon at his orders a huge 
 leathern gong was rung in the central part of the metropolis, 
 which caused all the inhabitants to gather about two trees 
 of colossal hight, connected near their tops by what ap- 
 peared from the distance of the earth to be a rope. I had 
 often noticed the natives display a curious ceremony at the 
 foot of these monstrous growths, for which I could divine 
 no natural reason. At the base of each and circling it was 
 a trench two feet wide and equally deep, filled with ordin-ary 
 dust. Into this once each day every inhabitant plunged his 
 head down to the shoulders and held it there vertically for 
 some time, with the dust gathered about him so that nothing 
 of his head or neck was visible. When he could no longer 
 
THE RINYOS 
 
 13 
 
 endure the situation, dirty, pallid, snorting and nearly dead 
 for want of breath, he emerged. This, I subsequently 
 learned, was one of their pro^oundest religious ceremonies. 
 It was an act of spiritual purification secured through in- 
 timate veneration of the sacred trees. The dust was never 
 changed, since its potency was believed to increase with the 
 number of purifications accomplished in it. 
 
 This dust, as I later learned, was symbolic of ashes, which 
 they thought to be man's spirit, because ashes remained 
 when the body was burned. They imagined these ashes to 
 be all-powerful, and always carried those of their ancestors 
 in a bag about their necks ; and a pinch of them was their 
 chief medicine when sick. They kept the ashes of their 
 divers forbears separate in little bags, and when they needed 
 the virtue that had distinguished one of the de^d they se- 
 lected it from the appropriate ash bag — as when one was 
 about to make la speech he swallowed a few grains of some 
 departed orator in his family. When a man had consumed 
 all the ashes of his deceased kin,, it had been formerly the 
 rule for him to offer himself for death as being drained of 
 virtue, but this practice happily gave place to using dust 
 symbolically as they advanced in enlightenment. The King 
 had granted a monopoly of dust to the masters of the idols, 
 who magically converted the dust into the ashes or spirits 
 of the deceased as desired, and sold them to the people for 
 a great revenue. 
 
 The connection of trees with this remarkable rite was at 
 first obscure, but I learned that as trees grew out of dust 
 and were reduced to ashes by fire, they seemed to the native 
 to doubly possess the essence of men. It was believed that 
 all whose bones were not burned entered into the trees and 
 were concealed there, wherefore they worshipped the large 
 trees as containing the greatest number of their friends. 
 The growth of trees, according to them, was due to the 
 death of human beings, so that when they wished their 
 
14 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 trees to grow they went out and slew some of the neighbor- 
 ing tribes. The bones of the slain were left unburned. They 
 were more enlightened than I expected to find them on one 
 point, for they regarded all the dead as equally friendly to 
 them, whether of their own people or of a hostile race. A 
 very important reason came later to light why these warlike 
 excursions were necessarily very frequent and pious, con- 
 stituting in fact the first principle of their religion. As 
 some of the tribes thereabouts believed neither in dust nor 
 ashes and even had an atheistical leaning toward water, it 
 appeared to the Rinyos that the surest way to convert them 
 was to burn the members of a few of their prominent fam- 
 ilies. But the common multitude of the conquered were not 
 given to the fire after their slaughter; their flesh was 
 stripped off and dried, which then made the regular staple 
 of the Rinyo eating while it lasted. And as often as the 
 food became precarious, so often was there a revival of re- 
 ligion among the Rinyos, and they went out to spread it 
 among their neighbors. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 King Milto 
 
 When the people were assembled the King led me to the 
 slimmer of the two trees. It was of such girth that my arms, 
 being extended to embrace it, were almost straight. Point- 
 ing upward he explained that we were to ascend 'and trans- 
 fer ourselves, hanging by our hands, across the vine rope 
 to the second tree, in whose soaring branches I perceived 
 a curious basin-shaped structure resembling a huge um- 
 brella opened with the concave upwards about the trunk. 
 
 "There," beamed the King, "is the sacred spot you desire 
 to visit." 
 
 As I gazed limply into the air he graciously remarked that 
 
KING MILTO 
 
 15 
 
 none but warriors in whose royal arteries flowed the divine 
 blood of many kings had ever succeeded in making the as- 
 cension. I saw that I must follow him aloft tranquilly or 
 grace the public sideboard of the nation that evening, and 
 I signaled him to lead on, designing to notice how he did it 
 and snatch a second for meditation. He mounted with 
 evident struggle in spite of his wealth of massive steel-knit 
 sinews. When he was about half way up I called out that 
 he had neglected a matter of vital moment and requested 
 him to descend for its kingly consideration. Upon his doing 
 so I discreetly intimated that it was unbecoming in a person 
 of his quality to betray the preposterous strain he had 
 exhibited before the jealous eyes of his people, and desired 
 him to command the inhabitants to prostrate themselves 
 with their faces in the earth. Being impressed by my 
 words and having issued the order he mounted again, but 
 with greatly abated vigor. When he had arrived at nearly 
 the previous altitude I once more hailed him, announcing 
 that I had forgotten some necessary elements of our con- 
 ference which must be carried to the sacred fane. Having 
 redescended, by this time badly winded and heaving vio- 
 lently, I told him that I should need two stones of certain 
 dimensions for the lucid communication of my thought, and 
 while he puffed I sought out two rocks of great solidity 
 weighing about fifty pounds each, for the purpose of bind- 
 ing them about us for transit to the umbrageous shrine. 
 Wilted and dripping with sweat as he was, he looked rue- 
 fully at the heavy mass I appointed to him, but submitted 
 meekly while I fastened it in a large skin to his back, and 
 accepted my orders to clamber first. 
 
 After gaining the lofty observatory he was to throw 
 down the pelt for my use. 
 
 The poor monarch began the task once more, but, from 
 fatigue and the ponderous weight swung on his neck, was 
 this time unable to rise more than a quarter of the journey. 
 
l6 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 when he came slipping back scarlet with shame, confusion 
 and rage over his weakness. It was well for him that the 
 tribe could not witness his humiliation or they might have 
 resented his failure as a manifest exhaustion of kingly 
 abilities and clamored for a competent chief. I rather re- 
 gretted that I had plunged their noses into the public do- 
 main, for they might have elected me king. But one can- 
 not foresee everything when trembling under death's auc- 
 tion hammer. And what if, after the vote, they had 
 demanded a fulfilment of my election pledges by calling 
 upon me to prove my kingly powers by achieving this very 
 spectacular climb ? Where every citizen is worth his weight 
 in melenite it is best to tread softly and aspire lowly. If I 
 am to practise tyranny I object to so many explosives in 
 my worshippers. I rather they would have more clay and 
 less enterprise in their composition, and I would sooner any 
 day be the absolute president of ninety million civilized lead 
 men than run a unanimous despotism over nine thousand 
 cases of primitive hysteria. It calls for a supreme hysteric 
 to govern this field of originality, and only a supreme 
 dimension of human lead in the other. I concluded to let 
 Milto reign a while longer. He seemed convinced that it 
 would be an artless frolic for me to accomplish the feat 
 that had balked him, whence his respect for me expanded 
 amazingly. Calling him a girl and displaying such pity and 
 contempt as the occasion demanded to invigorate his awe 
 of my attributes, I informed him that the next less sacred 
 place he had would do for our meeting, provided it was on 
 the ground. This he interpreted as a further scathing re- 
 buke and he led the way, with head hanging, to a grotto in 
 the mountain side, leaving the community forgotten, flat 
 on their bellies and foreheads. The spacious cavern to 
 which he brought me contained an aggregation of seats of 
 sundry shapes, nicely constructed of human bones ; and on 
 one of these pleasant memories my companion hospitably 
 
KING MILTO J- 
 
 motioned me to sit, which I did with a certain tinge of 
 loathing. I then declared my message, beginning with these 
 words as nearly as I can remember : 
 
 "Oh,^ King, awful depository of posthumous astonish- 
 ments," for I was a devout evolutionist. I then explained 
 that I was the ambassador from a new deity named Buzz- 
 rack, to reveal gifts that this god had secreted in various 
 places in the Rinyo territory, one of which was to be brought 
 to light every moon with the assistance of the two stones. 
 I found that these articles operated forcibly on the great 
 potentate's superstition. In return for the celestial presents, 
 upon whose wonders I expatiated glowingly, I informed 
 His Majesty that Buzzrack desired some yellow sand that 
 was scattered about his domain, and which at the end of 
 twelve moons I was to carry home to the god. 
 
 King Milto listened rapturously to these allurements, as 
 I had expected he would, promising volubly to convert' all 
 his people to this generous divinity and entreating me to 
 bring forth the first treasure without loss of time. " 
 
 "There is one matter I had nearly forgotten," said I 
 speaking of course in his language. "If anything should 
 happen to me while I am in your midst you will lose these 
 wonderful presents, because I alone know where they are. 
 The wrath of Buzzrack will give your tribe no peace after- 
 wards and he will cause you to be exterminated by your 
 enemies." 
 
 I know not whether the great Milto was more agitated by 
 cupidity or by his pious fears, but he instantly promulgated 
 the decrees I desired. He went so far as to proclaim that 
 I was a blood relation of the god I represented, or his pri- 
 vate secretary, or some fearful functionary or other from 
 the clouds. He declared that if any brother did me the 
 slightest harm his whole family should be baked alive for 
 a public breakfast and the perpetrator himself reduced to 
 a vegetarian for one year before death, a penalty most 
 
i8 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 dreaded by these pampered pagans. Feeling now reason- 
 ably secure I notified the terrible monarch that on the mor- 
 row the first box of riches would be revealed. 
 
 The King immediately dispatched numerous heralds to 
 summon his people from all parts, and at ten in the morning 
 his whole tribe, having assembled, set forth in grand pro- 
 cession. Two superb young giants, bearing the stones that 
 had saved my life the day before, marched in front under 
 my directions toward the corner of the empire where I had 
 made the first interment. From time to time with great 
 ceremony I ordered them to deposit the stones on the 
 ground a little distance apart and placing my head between 
 them so that one ear rested against each, listened for some 
 minutes with an impressive display of awe. I was pleased 
 to observe that this solemn maneuver had the effect of con- 
 vincing them of the truth of the new religion I intended 
 them to espouse. 
 
 At length I brought the multitude to a halt and an- 
 nounced that we were within the sacred circle where my 
 deity had concealed the treasure, and that only myself, the 
 King and the three great men already mentioned might ap- 
 proach the holiest ground without certain death. The five 
 of us advanced, I bearing a peculiar rod in my hand as a 
 conductor of magic. "Dig," I articulated in cavernous 
 liturgical tones at the right place, taking my seat in a com- 
 manding posture upon the sacred stones. They did so 
 trembling and the great box was soon uncovered, to the 
 unspeakable exultation of their four dignities, who pro- 
 jected themselves about it in a series of dances and contor- 
 tions wonderful and terrifying to see. Their excitement 
 became so violent that I was in mortal terror lest they 
 should utterly lose their self-control and attack me in the 
 exuberance of their religious ecstasy, but it appears that this 
 is their usual manner of showing devotion to whatever they 
 like and that they forget it all the next minute. 
 
KING MILTO 19 
 
 When the frenzy had subsided — and in a twinkling no 
 traces of it were left, so that I doubted if I had not been 
 the subject of an optical illusion — they drew the precious 
 article out of the earth and deposited the sacred stones on 
 the spot where it had lain, upon which at the bottom of the 
 hole I stood for a few minutes with my arms stretched into 
 the air and an indescribable expression upon my face. Then 
 I ordered them to shout at the top of their lungs that the 
 deity might hear, and afterwards to lift out the precious 
 stones and fill up the hole. They raised the box on their 
 shoulders, though from the effects of their prostrating im- 
 patience hardly able to carry it, and returned to the multi- 
 tude. I requested King Milto to cause a stentorian cry to 
 issue from the entire congregation, to rend space and notify 
 the god that the gift was received and appreciated, since 
 their four voices might not have penetrated the eternal 
 mind. After this declaration of gratitude the opulent bulk 
 was shouldered by ten colossi and the whole nation headed 
 for its capital. 
 
 In the vast public field, where on great occasions the en- 
 tire tribe congregated, the festival of opening the box was 
 now begun. I had fastened on the lid firmly with screws, 
 intending to preserve the packing-case for deporting gold, 
 and producing a screw-driver I soon had the cover off. The 
 behavior of all the leading men of the commonwealth at 
 this point fascinated my attention. Their greed for the 
 screws was so keen and their conduct so turbulent that I 
 was forced to appeal to the majesty of the throne to re- 
 strain them from secreting these necessary articles about 
 their persons. Even the King was burying the screw-driver 
 in his hair when I ordered him to desist, assuring him that 
 he should have no more supernal delicacies if he dared to 
 rob me. 
 
 It would require a genius of Homeric brilliance and Dan- 
 tean accuracy to depict the hideous scene which now enacted 
 
20 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 itself, and as the ancient delineators of greed and ghastliness 
 are dead I will leave it to your imaginations to intensify 
 every sentence that I now utter, with befitting emotions ot 
 horror. When I drew forth the first glass necklace and held 
 it above my head to the astonished gaze of all, the people 
 were wrought up into a bellowing excitement more like a 
 raging tempest at sea viewed from an oarless skifiF than any- 
 thing else I have experienced. They roared and foamed, 
 they swayed back and forth like a lofty edifice about to fall 
 before a hurricane; all the passions of the infernal world 
 screamed through their dazzling savage teeth, bursting 
 forth in outrageous inhuman sounds which seethed, sput- 
 tered and exploded with a ponderous din, furiously batter- 
 ing the shrinking ear with their horrible hectoring clangor. 
 In my judgment, at the time, all the gold in Africa would 
 not compensate a man for gazing five seconds into that 
 awful human abyss. I never again could believe that my 
 fellowmen were anything but exaggerated apes. 
 
 The scene had the curious eflFect of touching my religious 
 susceptibilities. I asked myself what I could do to elevate 
 such persons morally, wishing to leave them better than I 
 had found them, to sow some seeds of spiritual good in 
 their shaly souls. It must not surprise you that my re- 
 ligious emotions flourished luxuriantly in their proper 
 sphere of my nature, removed from the chilling realities of 
 the world. Yet how was it possible to implant a sense of 
 the true God in the sordid jelly of avarice composing this 
 nation? Just picture it! A handful of gaudy glass made 
 them fiends ! Dignity, decorum, patriotism, morality, 
 religion, family affection, were all alas chased helter-skelter 
 out of their immortal souls by a miserable string of yellow 
 shams. If the beads had cost something I could have un- 
 derstood it. I was justified in despairing of their virtue 
 and I doubted if civilization or prayer could soften such 
 cupidity. Perhaps if I could have shown them something 
 
KING MILTO 21 
 
 of real value, a dollar in gold or an American lady's ideals, 
 they would have relapsed into pure impersonal protoplasm, 
 which if you think of it is nothing but unorganized greed, 
 but I had taken care to bring nothing so incendiary with me. 
 These reflections came in their full force later. At that 
 vivid moment I was cursing the lot of a missionary with 
 my whole theology and preparing to die. I renounced 
 riches and swore to live a consecrated life in the slums of 
 a city if my life was spared. I vowed to God I would spend 
 my days in reasoning affectionately with the rich on the sin 
 of luxury and foible of robbing the poor, whenever they 
 did me the honor to invite me to their homes. Yet I felt 
 reconciled to my Creator, and deliriously prepared for an 
 immediate encounter with Him if that was to be my fate. 
 In short I was rather beside myself, as the bravest man 
 might be in such a mess, standing there the lust and goal 
 of forty thousand wild beasts. I don't know exactly what 
 I did, I yelled, that I remember, from infection, I suppose, 
 not fear, and stamped, and contrived by unconscious cere- 
 bration and writhing to tear every garment on me more or 
 less, and then, in a wild frenzy of cowardice, leaped upon 
 the shoulders of the King to get away from the lunatic 
 mob, where I clasped my two hands, still holding the abom- 
 inable trinket, into His Highness' hair for balance and 
 steadying — and that unprecedented, unpremeditated, reflex, 
 hysterical act saved the dynasty and me. For the fools 
 thought I was crowning their King with some new and 
 exalted ceremony from the celestials who had made me 
 their ambassador, the tempest of their savage cupidity was 
 for a moment lulled, and that instant restored the wits of 
 the King. He was now equal to the emergency. With me 
 still on his head, forgotten, he tore up and down the crowd 
 like a Medusa, an absolute madman, knocking down what- 
 ever came in his way, whether giants or girls, so that in a 
 twinkling all the inhabitants of the kingdom, in a panic of 
 
22 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 fright, were fleeing toward the horizon while he drove and 
 beat them much as a bull tosses lambs. Having quieted 
 the tribe, His Highness' wrath subsided as suddenly as it 
 had flamed up. As we strolled back to the box he frequently 
 struck his regal chest in exultation, giving forth a deafen- 
 ing snort. 
 
 "It is the only way to keep order in a kingdom of ac- 
 cursed dogs and blighted heathen," he blustered. "Cloven 
 heads are a specific for cloven hoofs. My children are a 
 people with rancorous passions and venomous aspirations ; 
 all of them want everything they see; they're a bilious 
 crew, devoid of reason or generosity; avarice is their 
 crowning emotion and murder their pastime. I have a 
 higher religion, but it is too pure for them. I try to 
 teach them unselfishness by taking the best of everything 
 for myself, that they may learn not to covet. But the swine 
 are not spiritual and they can't understand. I don't think 
 they'd recognize their own spirits if they met them on the 
 street. Ingratitude consumes them and they despise edu- 
 cation, I sometimes think I'll resign and live quietly the 
 rest of my days on a pension in an oasis, leaving them to 
 tear each other's bowels out in peace. Brute force alone 
 sanctifies them, nothing else, and thank God I have that 
 gift of grace, also." 
 
 "You ought to thank me and God for saving you this 
 time," exclaimed I with considerable heat, "for I saw how 
 it was going and jumped on your head purposely to sup- 
 press the riot. I pity your brute force if I hadn't done so. 
 Religion and reason are above brute force always, or were 
 this time at any rate. The herd recognize superior beings 
 instinctively when they are on top." 
 
 To this he answered nothing, but continued to heave out 
 his breast and beat it. 
 
KING MILTO 
 
 CHAPTEJR IV 
 
 The Treasure Is Divided 
 
 To be beforehand of another insurrection when the next 
 beads appeared, Milto ordered the population to form in 
 concentric circles about us and to stand on one leg. Who- 
 ever disobeyed this rescript even for the fraction of a 
 second was to lose his share of the gifts. Statecraft thus 
 prevailed, reminding me of the ways of the cunning rulers 
 of enlightened republics. Humility now fawned upon the 
 heels of diabolical disobedience, and the multitude became 
 like fawns, their will engulfed in the majestic conceit of 
 one genius. When they could no longer endure the strain 
 upon one leg they hopped into the air and came down on 
 the other. The King meanwhile sent his body guard 
 through the ranks to spy out the fractious. He kept his 
 subjects in this attitude before rescinding his order until 
 they were reduced to such exhaustion that they could hard- 
 ly stand, still less sulk, but so intense was the ardor of all 
 for the lovely wonders in waiting that none of them yielded 
 to the temptation to rest on both feet or sit down, not even 
 the women or children. Upon my hinting surprise at this 
 m a low tone at the ear of Royalty, he answered whispering 
 that all of them would sooner die than show the white 
 feather in this ordeal ; that it was in fact one of their great 
 periodic examinations of character and knowledge, which 
 those aspiring to respect, as well as those pining for office 
 either about his person or that of the idols, were obliged 
 to frequently endure. Those who failed were lost, for they 
 died of shame if they were not taken off secretly by their 
 peers before they had time to do so. Their system of edu- 
 cation rested on these examinations, which incited them to 
 perseverance. There was no part of their educational 
 scheme that equally encouraged the higher qualities. 
 
24 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 While the nation was thus improving itself, the King 
 called his select advisers about him, all of whom were men 
 of such advanced age that they were unable to stand up- 
 right, but were obliged to creep. It was one of the excel- 
 lent customs of the tribe to reverence these helpless 
 ancients, whose minds were even more decayed than their 
 bodies, as superior beings, and implicitly to obey whatever 
 the Crown decreed after counselling with them. I was much 
 edified by their aspect. Several were stone blind, others 
 stone deaf, still others so stricken with paralysis of the 
 brain that they could remember not more than two words 
 of their language and were obliged to repeat these over 
 monotonously to express such ideas as they had, of course 
 conveying no meaning or sense to anyone. I counted the 
 number of times that one of them in a speech repeated the 
 word meaning in their language money, and found it to be 
 nine hundred and forty. This was the only syllable the 
 poor old fellow could recall. In truth among the whole lot 
 of these monuments of antiquity, some of whom were at 
 least two hundred years old, owing to the salubriousness 
 of the climate, the simplicity of their later years, and a 
 peculiar article of diet, none that I could perceive had more 
 than one of his original five senses left and quite a number 
 were not even so gifted as to have retained one. 
 
 This grave assemblage now went into solemn counsel with 
 the King as to the just disposition of the contents of the 
 box, as they lay spread about in full view. The will and 
 wisdom of the tribe were supposed to express themselves 
 through these experienced patriarchs. He who proved to 
 be the most eloquent orator rose upon his hands and knees 
 from the reclining posture and delivered the remarkable 
 address to which I have already referred out of the word 
 money. He was listened to with profound silence and re- 
 spect by all who could hear. His speech ended only when 
 
THE TREASURE IS DIVIDED 25 
 
 he sank into a complete swoon lasting an hour, which in 
 that tribe passed for divine approbation of the sentiments 
 uttered. Nor was anything done to restore the weary sage 
 to animation, for he was supposed to be holding a secluded 
 and intimate communion with the gods. He was followed 
 by one who could neither see, hear, feel nor utter a sound, 
 but who, in a sitting position propped against a stump, beat 
 the earth in front of him most vindictively with a stick for 
 some time. All those in whose memory survived the words 
 necessary to do so then gave an account of their younger 
 days, which had made the sitting interminable had they 
 not all spoken at once, most of them supposing they were 
 the only ones addressing the meeting. While this tran- 
 spired a venerable statesman, shrunken till in many places 
 the bones had worked out of their skinny sheath and eco- 
 nomical nature had withdrawn the kindly cuticle of which 
 they had no further need, but crowned with a reverend 
 head several spaces larger than those of our greatest civ- 
 ilized governors and savants, which gave him an aspect of 
 intellectual grandeur quite startling and horrible, although 
 powerless to lift this monstrous cranium from the soil, 
 crawled forward feet foremost dragging his head behind 
 to the seat of His Majesty and there scrawled in the earth 
 the extraordinary figures meaning "sons," "sons-in-law," 
 "grandsons," "great-grandsons," "nephews," all with very 
 large heads, which, by the supplicating motions of his gums 
 and eyelids, occurring in rhythm, was plainly a request for 
 these individuals to be rewarded by the King suitably to 
 their scintillating merits. The faculties of the rest of the 
 Senate being past use they had now all been heard from 
 and the King arose. 
 
 "These sages have decided," said he, "that as father and 
 representative of my people I shall receive half of the loving 
 god's gift. The half that I take is really a gift to your- 
 selves, since as head of the State I am your personification 
 
26 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 and essence. I will not thank you for what you present to 
 yourselves." 
 
 "Yes ! Yes ! " cried such of the old chancellors as were 
 able to speak, and the orator called out ''Money." 
 
 "Very good," said the King, "then it is a vote." 
 
 He proceeded to select everything that according to his 
 taste was the handsomest of the lot, until he had far ex- 
 ceeded the half. His people being now sufficiently worn 
 out and subdued from standing on one leg, were permitted 
 to resume a natural posture, whereon most of them col- 
 lapsed at full length upon the ground in utter prostration. 
 He then repeated in a loud voice that he had obeyed the 
 commands of the old men concerning the divine gift, to 
 which they all assented with acclamatory salvos. 
 
 Turning brazenly to me he requested me to swear an 
 oath that such had been the heavenly giver's commands, 
 and to test the rascal's impudence I replied that he like all 
 truly sublime potentates and politicians was able to read 
 and do the will of Heaven by perusing his own self-interest. 
 It astonished me that such craven popular docility followed 
 upon the people's tempestuous graspingness of a little while 
 before. It seemed a case of despotism conducted by as- 
 sassination from the throne — a very antique state of dark- 
 ness, which had been altered in later countries to assassina- 
 tion of the throne. Being a born conservative, it is better, 
 said I to myself, that half a nation should die of assassina- 
 tion conducted by the ruler and his satellites, than that one 
 king or rich man should perish to save them, and in no 
 country do a score million of citizens equal in value one 
 king or plutocrat. 
 
 Shaking off these reflections I edged up to the Royal 
 Grandeur to ask him the meaning of his behavior. 
 
 "Why," he explained, "if these brilliants were passed 
 around to everybody they would make no show and the 
 people would not feel grand, rich, proud, sublime, luxurious 
 
THE TREASURE IS DIVIDED 27 
 
 and pampered ; but if I take the best and keep them in one 
 mass as my own, to enjoy them on myself, they create a 
 magnificent display, every poor devil in the tribe feels that 
 he owns them personally through me, because I am his 
 monarch, he struts and purrs like a true slave when he sees 
 me wearing them, and learns to feel as if they were on him, 
 who never owned the picture of a jewel's shadow ; his mind 
 gives him more bright palpitations than all these realities 
 distributed could, though he would then have his proper 
 share; he is happier than a bird all wings or a Rinyo all 
 stomach; he is not jealous of the glories that beautify his 
 Prince, but would perish of grief, or slaughter his peers 
 from malice if one of them had two beads to his one. In 
 a word, I benevolently take these things to save my be- 
 loved children from themselves. I am a moderator between 
 their hates, which is the true function of a great and mag- 
 nanimous sovereign who is above earthly passions and 
 foibles; I arbitrate between their little furies, their trivial 
 bedlams, their creature avarices, their carnal animosities, 
 their factional eruptions, their truculent rebellions ; I let 
 them wear out their deadly propensities on each other, and 
 step in at the funeral of the fiercest with kindly com- 
 promises in time to deter the survivors from renewing the 
 combat and destroying the Fabric of State. I am inter- 
 ested in that fabric above everything and am placed here 
 on earth to preserve it. They must have something to fight, 
 and if they did not have one another they would fight me, 
 than which for the welfare of Africa I would rather any- 
 thing else should happen and that all my subjects should per- 
 ish. A country without a people may survive, but one with- 
 out a State has but a short time to live. Government is 
 deeply interested in everything which, even through the me- 
 dium of some temporary uneasiness like the slaughter of the 
 population, may tend finally to compose the minds of the 
 subjects and to conciliate their affections. 
 
28 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "I also perform the function of sitting like a heavenly 
 orb in their sky and radiating ideas of goodness, self- 
 sacrifice, mercy and contempt of all things vile and mer- 
 cenary into them, ideals which could never germinate spon- 
 taneously in the flinty plasm of their sodden souls. For 
 them I am Goodness, Justice, Power, Poison, Punishment 
 and Love, compounded into one human form, which they 
 must see with their eyes of flesh for inspiration, and I 
 don't know what would become of their morals if they 
 hadn't me for an example." 
 
 Before completing his remarks he paused to finish adjust- 
 ing the tinsel ornaments upon his glistening ebony frame, 
 a work in which he had been ardently engaged while speak- 
 ing. He drew necklace after necklace over his sceptred 
 head, until his great neck was encircled with a volume of 
 beaded glass more than a foot thick, reaching out from his 
 ears toward his distant shoulder-tips ; the leglets and anklets 
 he strung on so thick and effectively from hip to heel that 
 he looked as if he were clad in a pair of dense brass trous- 
 ers, while he made his bracelets rattle clear up to the arm- 
 pits ; the earrings which were of all lengths from one to 
 ten inches he fastened to his waistband and I showed him 
 how to connect the breast-pins to these short clothes; for 
 the attachment of tin crowns his crisp voluminously tufted 
 hair gave excellent space, so that without crowding he 
 fastened on nine of them, obtaining something of the ven- 
 erable aspect which our best sculptors have imparted to the 
 head of Jove ; and having scrutinized himself for some time 
 with no feigned or temperate admiration in a looking-glass 
 from the box, the first arrival of reflection in that part of 
 the world, and tantalizingly postured on the foppish emi- 
 nence of the backs of four Rinyos whom he made to kneel 
 under him, he took up his cogitations where he had left 
 them and said : 
 
 "The ideas I have been giving you are the judgment of 
 
THE TREASURE IS DIVIDED 
 
 29 
 
 my old men, arrived at in grand conclave after a sleep of 
 thirty-six hours; I applied the vote without v^aking them 
 up and they v^ere unanimous. Their opinion is known to 
 be the will of Heaven, and if any person makes light of 
 that he becomes an outcast and forfeits the protection of 
 our tribe; we express the situation by calling him a wild 
 beast, for it is the duty and privilege of whoever can catch 
 him to eat him. It is a long time since the edict of the 
 aged was questioned by a heretic, as long ago as my Grand- 
 father's death and my Father's coronation, when a sedi- 
 tious faction of the tribe refused to recognize the former 
 as dead, albeit the old men had pronounced him so in spite 
 of his arguments to the contrary. My Grandfather then 
 sided with the inflammatory mob and declared himself alive, 
 a great mistake of his because it countenanced lawlessness, 
 for when the law said he was dead, he was dead, but 
 Father upheld the righteous authority of the primeval 
 patriarchs, taking his stand on the incontestable principle 
 that if their decree was doubted once there would never 
 again be an infallible supreme court. They took up arms 
 and fought for some years, and Grandfather fell by Father's 
 hand, and thus ended his dangerous attempt to establish 
 an impious and unruly innovation. When the Ancients 
 now say that a person is dead he is the first to agree with 
 them. About the glorious holiday and festive hunt we have 
 for him when some gay prattling youth questions the utter- 
 ance of these immortal sages, I was going to say — ^but I'll 
 tell you the rest some other time." 
 
 He broke off because of what I shall now relate. 
 
30 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 A Magnificent Carnage 
 
 About two-fifths of the articles remained to be divided, 
 whose disposition interested me deeply. Casting my eyes 
 around I saw a group of about forty men standing apart 
 in a prominent place and displaying much more eagerness 
 and expectancy than the rest. Having by this time become 
 somewhat adept in the internal characteristics of the popu- 
 lation I quickly recognized this body as the foremost per- 
 sonages of the realm, after the King himself. There were 
 the Chief Priest of the Idols and the Chief Medicine Man, 
 another functionary was the Preserver of Bones, while a 
 fourth was already known to me as the High Polisher of 
 Skulls ; the two principal Cooks to His Majesty were also 
 present, one being Cook Extraordinary of Foreigners, the 
 other of Home Products, for various culinary arts were 
 applied to the preparation of their own species which were 
 not accorded to remains of strange extraction. A singular 
 peculiarity of their cooking was their performance of it 
 without the aid of fire, to their stomachs a most economical 
 and palatable omission. 
 
 About ten of the group were high dignitaries of this kind, 
 of one other of whom I must not omit special mention, 
 the most consequential and influential of all, he being called 
 the Servant of the King's Feet. His function was to wash 
 these extremities of his royal master, which he did by lick- 
 ing them over with his tongue, water being regarded by 
 this tribe as unholy. He had been appointed to this dignity 
 because of the enormous fluency of his tongue, which made 
 the operation very speedy, and this liquid oratory was the 
 chief symptom of statesmanship and title to power in that 
 liberal democracy. Next to him in place and authority stood 
 one who was called the King's Ear, because he was expected 
 
A MAGNIFICENT CARNAGE 31 
 
 to hear and convey to His Sovereignty vi^hatever desires or 
 dangerous discontents the people entertained. This man, 
 who was a most trusted adviser to the King, was required 
 to transact his business with great punctuaHty, Every 
 night after the King had fallen asleep he was to relate 
 the desires of the people, while the dangerous discontents 
 if he heard of any were to be conveyed at once to the 
 Domestic Cook, who gave immediate attention to the dis- 
 order by serving up the dissatisfied to the King at his next 
 meal. Thus a marvelous degree of internal contentment 
 was preserved by this great leader of men, with little visible 
 friction to the realm and no carking disturbance of his 
 own peace. 
 
 Besides the ten most high officials there were thirty in 
 the company who were called Guardians of the Food. One 
 was overlord of each species of animal hunted, raised, or 
 trapped by the nation, including foreign and domestic 
 human flesh, and one presided over each family of vege- 
 tables and herbs on which they fed. These celebrated men 
 were the safety-valves or balance-wheels of the food supply, 
 keeping the market steady. When a citizen brought home 
 game from the hunt or killed a domestic fowl he was 
 obliged to carry it first to the guardian of its species for 
 judgment defining the portion of the carcass the slayer was 
 entitled to retain without endangering the public equilib- 
 rium. Likewise if a citizen dug a root out of the earth he 
 must convey it to its guardian for an honest division. The 
 custom was for the guardian to allow not less than one- 
 tenth of a beast to its catcher, altho precedent was here 
 loose and elastic, and he might be made to do with a twen- 
 tieth and was sometimes compelled to go and catch a second 
 beast for the privilege of having caught the first, and deliver 
 them both ; — the amount varied with a mass of circum- 
 stances and considerations which the guardians had in their 
 memory and the rest could not pry into without crime. 
 
32 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 If they questioned the acts of the guardians they were 
 hanged as anarchists. The nine-tenths, or whatever the 
 great economic law of the guardian's appetite specified, 
 that dignitary retained for his own family and his favorites. 
 
 The arrangement had been infinitely satisfying to every- 
 body : the tribesmen were kept in a perpetual motion pro- 
 ductive of soothing prostration, as constrained to be ten 
 times more active in order to live, while the great, likewise 
 enjoying ten times more food than they would naturally 
 have had except for this wise convention, were enabled to 
 be ten times greater. Their splendor also co-operated with 
 that of the King to dilate the feeling of reflected personal 
 magnificence in the most despicable and needy. 
 
 Such was the constitution of the collection of men who 
 were holding themselves apart from the rest with a bearing 
 of uncommon poise and grandeur. The King convoked 
 his decrepit philosophers a second time, which consisted 
 of sending his pages around to wake them by rapping their 
 heads with a stick, and without going through the previous 
 preliminary of stating the matter to them he announced 
 their conclusion as follows: 
 
 "It is the divination of this most honorable congress on 
 earth that the bountiful giver of these gifts intended our 
 great men to receive half of what remains, that the dignity 
 and glory of the kingdom may be upheld and the sublime 
 services of the great to the common people partially recom- 
 pensed." 
 
 The pages, who were doing their best to keep the ancients 
 awake by pounding them on the head with thin sticks 
 anointed by the King for that use, and succeeding very 
 badly, themselves cried "yes" to this decree of the King's, 
 but their words were hardly audible, for the forty illus- 
 trious gentlemen did not await the capping of the ceremony 
 but rushed forward in fierce confusion, tearing, scratching 
 and kicking right and left as they ran, each trying to strike 
 
A MAGNIFICENT CARNAGE 
 
 33 
 
 his neighbor or trip him down, and succeeding so well that 
 in a moment the entire band of eminent social lights was 
 piled up in a ferocious howling heap, reminding one of a 
 foot-ball rout conducted by professional prize fighters 
 intensified and complicated by college culture. They 
 writhed indeed like a mass of huge passionate snakes in 
 fiery death agony, from which I thought none could emerge 
 with enough of himself in one place to make life worth 
 living. 
 
 I confess that I tingled slightly at this spectacle, and 
 looked askance at the Many-Crowned King expecting him 
 to interfere to save the lives of his sweetest subjects, but 
 to my consternation he was gazing on the gory scene with 
 stolid placidity, engorging the dripping tragedy, as it seemed, 
 with the voluptuous urbanity of an insatiable connoisseur. 
 A sense of his greatness impregnated me as I stared at 
 him. He had the right stuff in him for a clergyman or a 
 convict. He was a jocular high priest of this bloody gladi- 
 atorial world; and he could tolerate brutality, the first 
 attribute of pure culture. His sympathy extended to all, 
 to the murdered as well as to the murderers, so that he 
 was modern and scientifically chic to the bone. He would 
 have made a respectable president if our professors could 
 have had him to file off the edge of his shrieks, wash him 
 and round him out. Even without their scrubbing he shone 
 like a bright placid lonesome frozen star in the lifted 
 infinite remoteness of indifference. He had the learned 
 man's broad liberality to deeply venerate Whatever Is, and 
 to spend his whole power venerating it. We need more 
 such. The forty thousand American professors are too 
 few for the work. They cannot venerate as much as 
 Whatever Is deserves. More are needed to venerate Decay 
 at its full worth. 
 
 But I am merely human; I have the sensibilities of my 
 kind. I am not built to observe forty men butchering one 
 
34 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 another in a heat over no higher object than a few pahry 
 trinkets, without some feehng, besides the rehgion I have 
 in me, and I was moved by humanity to expostulate with 
 the stony ruler. 
 
 "It will be a great loss to your realm if those lordly 
 luminaries die?" I suggested with a rising inflection of the 
 voice, in order not to seem impudent. "Could you find any 
 to take their places? Genius is rare, talent painful to 
 mould, considerable economic outlay is required to raise up 
 men to large affairs, African trade is slack, and money 
 scarce." 
 
 I thought I would drive home the sharpest darts at once, 
 and goad his sensibilities into action in time to redeem a 
 few of his first people, but that only showed how little I 
 yet knew of savage souls and civics. He simply looked 
 queerer than I had ever seen him and pursed out his luxur- 
 iant lips a prodigious distance from his shimmering teeth 
 while his eyes had the astounding effect of glaring and 
 revolving in opposite directions violently. 
 
 "What are you doing with your lips?" I asked with dig- 
 nity, for I will not bear everything even when I am in a 
 minority. 
 
 "Praying," said he, "that the ones who ought to conquer 
 may do so." 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Position of the King's Feet in the Fabric 
 OF State- 
 
 Then he relaxed and came and sat down on one corner 
 of the box in a brotherly fashion, beckoning me to occupy 
 ingly and conversed amiably, never taking his eyes off the 
 another, while he threw his arm over my shoulder caress- 
 ghastly encounter. 
 
THE KING'S FEET 
 
 35 
 
 "Anybody in the nation could do what these men do," 
 he said in a confidential tone, "but that is not generally 
 understood. For example the entire tribe suppose that 
 the licking of my feet is a very mysterious and difficult 
 business only to be learned with vast assiduity and whose 
 virtue lies in doing it a certain way, and for the matter of 
 that the washer of my feet believes so himself and plumes 
 himself as a most recondite and scarce phenomenon. But 
 indeed it makes no difference at all how it is done. The 
 intricacy was invented to muddle and awe the populace. 
 For that purpose the mazy art was slowly grown by my 
 forefathers through many glorious Kings. The feet are 
 mapped out into a multitude of spaces: the officer is re- 
 quired to lick a certain number of times in a certain direc- 
 tion on a certain part, then to alter the course until all 
 the varieties of liquefaction have been applied; for each 
 space has its peculiar set of directions and particular num- 
 ber of licks. I only remember a few of the laws myself, 
 such as the west quarter of the end of the little toe on the 
 right foot, which must be licked thirty and a half times 
 from side to side, while the end of the other little toe 
 receives forty-seven and a third strokes in the same field 
 up and down. There are several other very elaborate 
 passes on both of these sections which I do not recollect. 
 Each foot has a treatment in every respect diverse from 
 the other, whence the processes are excessively toilsome 
 to master. Of the right foot the licker is permitted to take 
 only the big toe completely into his mouth, whereas if he 
 should neglect to take in all five toes of the left, the penalty 
 is death. There is also a special punishment belonging to 
 every kind of failure in this office, although the death 
 sentence applies to several of them. Should he touch the 
 tip of his tongue to the wrong ankle his tongue is cut out." 
 
 "If you don't know the rules yourself how do you know 
 when he goes wrong?" I demanded. "It seems to me you 
 are likely to take an innocent life." 
 
36 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "We have a Trainer to inspect the Feet Washer," an- 
 swered King Milto with much satisfaction, "and he stands 
 by whenever the ceremony is performed. These two men 
 are dreadful enemies, as well as their families to the dis- 
 tance of fifth cousins. The feud cuts into the very flesh 
 of the tribe, and the principals think each other congenital 
 imbeciles. I don't understand this for I can see no differ- 
 ence in them. When the trainer says the licker has blun- 
 dered the licker denies it and denounces the trainer as a 
 hopelessly corrupt noodle and knave. They compose the 
 delicate dispute by fighting, when to the defeated one is 
 administered the penalty. If neither whips I decide it any 
 way that comes into my head and they think I'm infallible. 
 If I say the great toe nail has been licked seventeen times 
 to the right from the earliest antiquity, altho it was only 
 seven times, they lawfully believe me against their own 
 certainty." 
 
 "You must dispose of a good many leading citizens in 
 the course of a lustrum." 
 
 "We generally average four 'King's Feet,' as we briefly 
 call the washers, and the same number of trainers every 
 moon. It is part of our living and it keeps down the popu- 
 lation." 
 
 'T should think you would find it pretty hard to induce 
 anyone to serve in the position," I exclaimed, grievously 
 shocked. 
 
 The King laughed all over, causing the shell bracelets 
 about his knees and elbows to jingle like sleighbells. 
 
 "Hook! Hook! Hook!" chucked His Majesty, when 
 the convulsions of his system had abated, "every man and 
 child in the kingdom is in training for it and would give 
 his head just to hold the place one day so that it could be 
 said in his family after he was dead that he had been 
 officer of the feet. If I didn't hinder by making learning 
 the rules of licking so prodigiously hard every grown per- 
 
THE KING'S FEET 
 
 son in the nation would come forward and beg for the 
 honor, tho he knew he was to die for it in twenty-four 
 hours. The country would be depopulated." 
 ^^_^'They must be uncommon fools; how do you prevent 
 
 "We make them learn the table of rules perfectly from 
 begmnmg to end and backwards before they can apply 
 our exammations are days of inimitable pleasure on the 
 crimson canvass of average existence here." 
 _ "Do you mean to say that everybody in the tribe is study- 
 ing to learn how to lick your feet according to your ridicu- 
 lous made-up system, which you admit amounts to nothin- 
 anyhow?' I sneered incredulously, quite forgettino- the 
 respect due his Illustrious Essence. 
 
 "Precisely; why not? You wouldn't have people grow 
 up uneducated and idle would you?" 
 
 Stunned and staggered I could simply say that I had 
 thought domg useless things the worst kind of idleness, 
 and ask what he meant, which he blandly elucidated, with 
 irrelevant flourishes of his fists in my vicinity with barbaric 
 gusto. 
 
 "You see the office of licking m.y feet being the highest 
 withm reach of my people, it is the just and lofty ambition 
 of everyone, down even to the sewer-cleaners, bankers and 
 tramps, to attam to it before he dies. Having arrived at 
 his dizzy summit there is nothing left for him to Ion- or 
 live for, the goal is reached, his solid fame is immortal 
 and secure. Nor does he gather brighter luster by holding 
 It two months than by wearing it one day: the glory resided 
 m the office, by no means in the period or conduct of any 
 one therein^ I make it so. Were I to announce that I 
 had elevated my Flesh-Scraper (the lowest and most de- 
 spised outcast in the realm, because he is relegated to the 
 performance of the most useful service) into Grand Vizier 
 Of my Toes, and were then to kill him instantly, having 
 
38 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 suffered him to apply his fleeting tongue to my pedal 
 extremities only once, he would be revered as highly, as 
 long remembered, and as passionately sung of as those 
 who have transacted the business a hundred times accurately 
 in the midst of domestic assassins and foreign complications, 
 and who have repeatedly rescued my Functions of State 
 from contamination. It brings out a child's moral char- 
 acter to fix his eye early on great things, does it not? 
 I fix the nation's eyes on my Feet. I think it is this cer- 
 tainty that anyone with a flowing tongue, polymorphous 
 memory, pickpocket's luck, and plush principles may lick 
 my feet sometime if he lives, that keeps alive the conscience 
 of the race and makes us spare the children of our con- 
 quered foes to grow up and be conquered and eaten later. 
 I don't allow any of them to hang on to the high place 
 longer than two moons. The labor of licking is very try- 
 ing to the weak, they grow slim and are ugly to look upon 
 afterwards ; the strong wax so tough with the exercise 
 and ecstasy that they are not fit to eat and hence never 
 assimilate properly with their countrymen again; and all 
 get the feet-licking habit so firmly rooted that thenceforth 
 they go about in the street with their tongues out going 
 through the motions, and in fact licking everything they 
 come to, from the newspaper editors to the lampposts. I 
 dislike this because it vulgarizes sacred things. 
 
 "One day, I may remark in confidence, would satisfy 
 the majority, for there is no pleasure in the office itself 
 I can tell you. I get about half my fun out of those fellows. 
 While one is licking my heel I jab my toe into his eye or 
 knock his teeth down his throat according as I happen to 
 feel at the time; they never issue from their term of office 
 with any hair, for I take care to pull it out ; you noticed 
 that a number of these antiquated members of my Cabinet 
 had no eyes in their sockets, I presume — well, I playfully 
 gouged them out. The Council is entirely composed of 
 
THE KING'S FEET 39 
 
 survivors of attendance on my feet, and those antediluvian 
 relics are not all of them so ancient as they look. Do you 
 see that gibbering dignitary who seems to be a hundred and 
 ninety? He's only in his forty-seventh year, he was stal- 
 wart and hale when he ascended to the trust of Licking 
 two years ago, in two months he was in about the condition 
 you now see, and I retired him. I don't think he has aged 
 much since, I'm very proud of him, I expect he'll keep a 
 few years longer and look four hundred in his latter days. 
 He is one of the wisest in the pack too, for he is completely 
 mad. I go by his opinion when I daren't trust some of the 
 livelier sparks." 
 
 "Is that what your education culminates in?" I asked 
 with a fervid inclination to try the treatment of knocking 
 him down. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I was telling you something about that, wasn't 
 I? Well, in order to prevent them from being ready for 
 the eminent station of licking all at the same time, which 
 of course they are all fitted for by nature and predilection 
 without study if I chose to divulge it, entrance thereinto is 
 made famously complicated that it may take about thirty 
 years to master its tangled singularities, and a man has to 
 have a first-class mind to do it in that time. As this is the 
 crowning glory of a human career and the aim universal 
 in my realm, preparation for it makes men ready for every 
 inferior duty in the tribe, so that we never have difficulty 
 in selecting those best suited for our multifarious posts." 
 
 "Do you pick your chief cooks and head hunters and 
 generals in that way?" 
 
 "Yes, and our guardians of the food also. We find those 
 who have taken the longest course in the licking science 
 to be superlatively prepared for all public service. Con- 
 scientious fidelity to the highest ideal is the parent of all 
 kinds of aptitude. These gentlemen that you see there 
 tumbling over and tearing one another up into morbid 
 
40 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 anatomy are those who have mastered all the intricacies of 
 licking, taken the highest degree, you might say, and are 
 chafing for the present incumbent to die. Training in the 
 twelve thousand motions of the tongue and the twelve 
 thousand acts of memory, the accordant postures of the 
 neck, backbone and knees, and the versatile condition of 
 mind, has been found to shape a man for success in every- 
 thing that has to be done in a commonwealth. You saw 
 a party of our young braves climbing after nuts the other 
 day : that is one of our skilled industries, and the climbers 
 are appointed on the same principle, only from the lower 
 grades, not yet having qualified in the advanced lubrications 
 and oratories of state-craft. They can climb trees which 
 the uneducated can't touch. Their backs are supple and 
 their knees twine around everywhere, while for hanging 
 on to whatever they get hold of they simply excel monkeys. 
 We find too that the constant use of the tongue is making 
 that member grow longer and more useful every year, and 
 we believe it is to become a sixth sense and a third arm 
 to supply the lack of the tail which man through some 
 accident has lost." 
 
 "By George !" cried I, "I had noticed how long the tongues 
 of your tribe are without suspecting the reason of it, and 
 I had mentally named you The Long-Tongues." 
 
 "Very good," answered Milto, pleased, "if you remain 
 with us a year you will see a still greater outcrop of that 
 instrument, and can supply a full report of the science of 
 Feet-Licking to your Master, which may enlighten him. 
 You have struck the keynote of our existence. We have 
 an ideal toward which we faithfully strive and when our 
 tongues are a foot long we shall begin to realize it: we 
 desire to live exactly as we please and to believe that we 
 are living entirely as we ought. Our philosophers by look- 
 ing steadily at the heavens with their empty sockets have 
 made the prodigious discovery that the higher civilization 
 
THE KING'S FEET 
 
 41 
 
 from certain inhabited stars passes from thence to us, and 
 the pith of the great celestial doctrine they have caught 
 and interpreted is that if men can believe right they are 
 right, tho they do wrong. Mere doing is nothing, but feel- 
 ing and believing are the whole matter. For instance, we 
 have a moral prejudice against eating our mothers, but we 
 find this fallacy is corrected by cultivating the opinion 
 that we are not eating them when we are doing so. Noth- 
 ing assists us to eradicate such errors more than a colleague 
 with a great tongue standing in the hall during the meal 
 and repeating rapidly and loudly while swinging his arms 
 and making faces that we are not eating our mothers. 
 After a few performances the new opinion is fixed and we 
 can let him apply his tongue to the correction of our other 
 faults. We sometimes stain the speaker's tongue black 
 and paint his skin fiery red to convince the people that he 
 is inspired, — a great aid to conscience and digestion, you 
 can relish your parents a third more. Of course if the 
 tongue were two or three feet long it would wield irre- 
 sistible persuasion and a number of them swung in unison 
 and falling upon the ears of the people would be excellent 
 weapons of conviction. Incomparable invention! To 
 achieve this mighty force all the energies of our tribe are 
 centered in licking. In the sublime future every desire of 
 our hearts will be satisfied through the perfection of this 
 function, and we shall glory in our conquest of ignorance. 
 If I should lose my feet and retard the practice of licking 
 we should have some terribly dark ages." 
 
 He was radiant and I mused. 
 
 "All is clear, save one thing," I said. "I have no doubt 
 the philosophers can see what goes on in the stars, but can 
 they hear the orators?" 
 
 "Easily," Milto rejoined, with the motion of rolling up 
 his bracelets for serious consideration. "They first break 
 their ear-drums,— the stone deaf not needing to do so— 
 
42 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 then they listen: being disembarrassed of outward confu- 
 sions the subtler impressions from the universe are regis- 
 tered within, they can plainly hear the stellar orators and 
 a great number of other infinite processes concealed from 
 common sense. They claim they can hear the Almighty 
 think, and why not if they first void their minds of all 
 feelings and thoughts? Our chief search aims to penetrate 
 the Almighty's thinking, and all our licking has no ultimate 
 purpose but understanding that. There is piety in all 
 things if they are looked at with extracted eyes." 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 The Trainers of Licking 
 
 I profess I was coming to feel a quiet reverence for the 
 common sense and quaint goodness of this people whom 
 I had formerly looked on as a mere agglomeration of 
 iniquitous savages, and for some minutes I was silent, gaz- 
 ing dreamily at the horrible mutilations of the battle going 
 on a few yards ofif, with the dawning conviction that there 
 was more in mankind than I had previously discerned. 
 
 "By the way," I finally ventured, "do you individually 
 teach this licking science to the whole nation?" 
 
 I saw at once that this was a very foolish question, for 
 had he not admitted that he knew nothing whatever about 
 the rules and made up a new one when his authority was 
 solicited? But he took my blunder leniently. 
 
 "By no means," he beamed with another rattle of his 
 shells. "About a fourth of the nation are set apart to 
 instruct the rest; the women are most serviceable in it. 
 All practise on the feet of the teachers, understanding that 
 this is only preparation; as they become more advanced 
 they are allowed to lap on the feet of the grandees, a special 
 
THE TRAINERS OF LICKING 43 
 
 and select preliminary to performing the act upon mine; 
 but the highest post which a trainer can affect is oversee- 
 ing the liquid maneuver on my feet and grooming the 
 members of one who grooms mine, — he can never himself 
 directly lick mine. Neither are the women admitted to 
 this ineffable shekinah. The trainer is more sincere and 
 reverential in his teaching from being barred out of its 
 sweetest rewards; he garners his glory vicariously and can 
 aspire only to the minor pinnacle of having it said of him 
 in future ages that he was the teacher of a great licker. 
 This contents him very well, for we choose the trainers 
 from those deprecating meek obsequities who feel as much 
 honored by a kick from a great man as they would by a 
 country estate from a common clod-hopper. It is most 
 interesting to see how their dutiful humility toward us 
 grows on them with years. I have succeeded in detach- 
 ing my shadow which I send through the streets on four 
 crosspoles for the edification of the teachers, who fly for- 
 ward from everywhere, prostrate themselves on the earth 
 and lick the feet of the slaves who carry it. I sometimes 
 secrete myself in the vicinity to observe them, for it gives 
 me great complacence to be ocularly assured of their loy- 
 alty. A State can never fall where the educators have 
 humble and steadfast faith in the right thing. They have 
 succeeded in proving to the people in some manner I have 
 not troubled to inquire into, because the first three lengths* 
 of it wore me nearly to death, that all food, life, sunlight, 
 and strength come out of that shadow, and are formed 
 inside of it. according to an ingenious axiom which they 
 have established, that everything is where it is not. Altho 
 I don't agree with them or understand it, I believe they 
 are right and compel my subjects to learn their ninety-six 
 lengths on the subject by heart, and if any be so ignorant 
 
 *A length was a five hours' harangue without taking a fresh breath. 
 Not all the trainers could perform a length. 
 
44 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 as not to comprehend the reasoning, or at least not to 
 believe in it, I degrade them into slaves." 
 
 "The trainers seem to be the very pillars of your noble 
 savagery," said I, "and I should think you would be tender 
 of them." 
 
 "Sir, I treat them with great gentleness and honor. They 
 have the same privileges of punishment and death as the 
 holder of the royal office of the feet; through my affec- 
 tionate demonstrations upon their persons they may be- 
 come Chancellors ; and they are permitted to lick the feet 
 of the great, which is their dream of happiness. These 
 liberties are enough : it is a universal quality of the human 
 bat to revere what is withheld. I should mention that the 
 teachers are profoundly graded and are restricted to vari- 
 ous parts of the foot to prevent their brains from growing 
 too monotonously rich and even ; the children are advanced 
 through all the grades till they know as much as their 
 numerous trainers combined, except the highest ; they are 
 then thirty-three years old, for they begin to study at three, 
 but this is only the brightest, and some are seventy. Out 
 of these bright children the advanced trainer for the great 
 is chosen, after having approved his tenacious strength of 
 principles by standing on one leg for seven days." 
 
 "I still fail to comprehend their state of mind. Sire," I 
 pursued, "for on my way here from the Divinity I passed 
 through a country where the teachers are surpassingly 
 enlightened and gloriously independent leaders, and licking 
 the feet of the great would be considered inadequate emolu- 
 ment for their conspicuous services and sacrifices, for they 
 too save us from change and are regarded with much secret 
 contempt by the mighty whom they sustain. This sentiment 
 however is most scrupulously tempered in public, altho 
 universally known to exist, for there is an unverified tradi- 
 tion with us that if the teachers should ever acquire a little 
 intelligence and come into opposition to the rulers and 
 
THE TRAINERS OF LICKING 45 
 
 owners of general finiteness everything old and rotten would 
 vanish in a sudden conflagration. Therefore we feed them 
 with cerebral pap and permit them to wear very honorable 
 and ugly clothes so that they never mutiny. We came to 
 this knowledge of teachers by some deep researches into 
 monkeys and babies. These charming animals are very 
 imitative and impressionable to exterior shows, and by 
 similar experiments on professors we arrived at the con- 
 founding discovery that they belong to the same group. 
 By making them think they are somebody they will repeat 
 what we want them to say with great contentment like par- 
 rots and will chatter off our doctrines like monkeys. To 
 make them think they are of consequence we only have to 
 dress them in a certain ridiculous fashion. We place some 
 cylinders of black cloth resembling flexible stove-pipes 
 around their legs, and upon their backs and breasts a pre- 
 posterous white article very stiff and uncomfortable in 
 front, but we apply the greatest torture to their necks. 
 These we confine in a rigid band, almost of the texture of 
 steel, of which they can never relieve themselves in public 
 without absolute loss of caste. The effect of this band, 
 and of the polished flexible stove-pipes on their legs, is 
 miraculous. The circulation of the blood through the 
 neck is impeded so that the head, which can hardly move 
 in its rigid casing, gets but little blood, and thus the thoughts 
 are weak and watery just as we desire them to be. These 
 puny thoughts can naturally grasp nothing large, and they 
 dwell for the most part on the form and nature of the 
 stove-pipes on their legs, their substance, creases, wrinkles, 
 and other intricate problems of their essence. Such is their 
 absorption in these profound monkey metaphysics that they 
 often remain quite oblivious to hunger while we starve 
 them to death, thinking of nothing but what they have on 
 their necks and legs." 
 
 At these words of mine the King looked somewhat hurt. 
 
46 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "We are not stingy in our payments," said he; "did I not 
 say that the children lick their trainers' feet for practice? 
 This has a wonderfully softening spiritual effect upon the 
 trainers, besides being held to be so flattering a boon that 
 they accept it in lieu of half their pay. Its utility for 
 State purposes must be as great as your civilized mind-pap 
 and magic clothes, for while the children are thus practis- 
 ing the rite on their trainers' feet the latter are permitted 
 to imagine that they are the great, which brings the train- 
 ers and the great into the most incredible sympathy and 
 understanding. After this miraculous blending of soul with 
 their masters our trainers never head a revolt." 
 
 While thus exchanging ideas with the King and closely 
 attending the carnage of the aristocracy, some peculiar 
 actions on the part of the people struck me, whose import 
 was bewildering. The natives even down to the women 
 and infants in arms broke up into cliques, each championing 
 some particular great man in the heap, alive or dead, and 
 shouting his name in unison, mingled with marrow-piercing 
 whoops and an infernal siren whistle which seemed to start 
 with a mild hiss far up in the air, then wailingly descending, 
 to sweep about in riotous spirals, curves and vortices of 
 sound, passing through the hearer like a wild scream of 
 the tortured damned, and finally to reascend into itself on 
 high, quavering and groaning its life out like a spent sky- 
 rocket, a wasted volcano, or the quenched cry of a perish- 
 ing steamer at sea. Each group was bursting its vitals to 
 outscream the others and inspire its select knight, believing 
 that a great volume of noise in the form of his name im- 
 parted physical strength. As they danced around the mass 
 of red maggots their sympathy was metamorphosed into 
 hate of one another, and I saw that these rival bands would 
 soon take up the cause of their superiors on each others' 
 heads and bring the whole tribe into the redolent plight of 
 the forty. It was not the King's plan to have this happen 
 
THE TRAINERS OF LICKING 47 
 
 that day. With the menacing aspect of an Egyptian god 
 as these deities are seen in the museums, and one of the 
 boards of my box-cover for a weapon, he charged them with 
 the fury of an avalanche, surging majestically from side 
 to side in his royal wrath, a glorious specimen of super- 
 human grandeur, and soon had them chilled below fighting 
 heat. They nevertheless continued their wicked bellow- 
 ings, shaking their fists in each others' eyes and actually 
 cutting pieces of flesh out of their own bodies in their 
 uncontrollable rage, and doing themselves other execrable 
 injuries in their chivalrous loyalty to the august guardians 
 of the food and other monopolized privileges. 
 
 "What is the meaning of this, King?" I demanded when 
 the pandemonium lulled for breath. 
 
 "It is out tribal equality," shouted Milto back in my ear. 
 "The lowly identify themselves in sentiment and cheers with 
 some great man and in that way become a metaphorical part 
 of him, his equal. It is the leveling bond of sympathy, and 
 it levels the common and vulgar up. See how they all at 
 once become great by attaching themselves in spirit to the 
 cause of some glorious renowned individual ! It is due to 
 the magic of love. They love and revere the virtues of 
 the illustrious notable whom they have adopted as the 
 patron of their imaginations ; they live in his atmosphere, 
 his blood circulates theoretically through them, the oneness 
 is absolute, for them there is no lower or higher (which 
 is reserved for the high), no invidious gaps, heartburns, 
 or degradations, only a blur of joyous vacancy in their 
 mental parts. It is an ideal state and it is caused by 
 equality." 
 
 "Unspeakably charming!" I cried. "Poor naked savages 
 that you are, without capital or universities, Moses, gospel, 
 Greek, God, Trusts, Trousers, or lawyers, you have solved 
 the problem of the modern world. I suppose these great 
 men share everything they have with their devoted sup- 
 
48 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 porters and live with them on terms of the sweetest inti- 
 macy." 
 
 "Bless you, no, that would be most degrading and unjust 
 to the common people. So far as the great are concerned 
 I can assure you they would Hke nothing better, but it 
 would upset the equilibrium of the small ; their heads would 
 be turned by familiarity ; they have to be kept on very short 
 food-rations as a means of spiritual cultivation, so that it 
 would not do to share anything with them; and the ten- 
 derest, loveliest, most delicate and precious traits of human 
 character result from this humble state of affectionate men- 
 tal dependence of the mean upon the magnificent. These 
 people would all die for their favorite great man and would 
 despise him as a poor-spirited impostor if he treated them 
 kindly. It is the most beautiful exhibition of love in Africa. 
 From time to time I let the fractious have it out among 
 themselves : it cools their passions and quells the turbulent 
 spirits, who generally kill each other. The contests occur 
 in the fall when we are getting in our winter supplies of 
 meat. We jerk the bodies and if the festivities have been 
 spirited we are saved from going to war." 
 
 I pondered. Another lull came, and making my hands 
 into a trumpet I yelled, "Do these great men ever do any- 
 thing for the rest?" 
 
 He looked at me as a big boy does upon a small one 
 when contemplating mischief. "They let them lick their 
 feet," he said. 
 
 CHAPTER Vni. 
 
 My Two Miracles 
 
 The battle began to wane and I turned my mind wholly 
 to examining the physical condition of the combatants. 
 
MY TWO MIRACLES 49 
 
 Bleeding from head to foot and minus many of the ordi- 
 nary signs of humanity, a stranger could not safely have 
 said they were the remnants of human beings but only of 
 some unclassified form of jellied biped. Several were lying 
 dead, others with arms and legs broken or torn from the 
 body and vital internal mishaps were writhing upon the 
 ground emitting despairing cries. A favorite weapon had 
 been the teeth, for nearly all were viciously lacerated in 
 numerous parts as if masticated by wild beasts. The splen- 
 dor of their incisors, the formidable prognathous structure 
 of their jaws, and their nude exposure above and below the 
 hip-circlet gave fearful severity to this mode of warfare. 
 
 Those who could move, about twenty in number, now 
 stumbled forward to the baubles, and, regardless of the 
 King's mandate that they were to take only half, incon- 
 tinently seized everything that was left, each grabbing for 
 the whole and snatching what he could get out of his neigh- 
 bors' hands, until I thought the fragile stuff would be totally 
 demolished. In this struggle the poor human scraps most 
 depleted of blood got nothing. At this astounding appro- 
 priation there was heard a faint low respectful murmur 
 of remonstrance from the people, entirely mild, spiritless 
 and supplicatory, whereupon the King rose in stately fath- 
 erliness and commanded the first citizens to adjourn blood- 
 shed and listen to him. He ordered the fighters to restore 
 some of their plunder, that the people might have their 
 natural share of the gift, at which a deafening shout glori- 
 fying their noble ruler as protector of the common people, 
 as saint, Providence, equal arbiter and God, shivered the 
 air from the multitude, who began to dance, caper and per- 
 form wonderfully, some of the specially agile climbing 
 on to each others' shoulders four or five high, twining them- 
 selves stiffly together, and in this position turning complete 
 somersaults, as if a lofty ladder were to do so — a feat I 
 had not seen elsewhere and which was very fascinating. 
 
50 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 I had much sympathy for the people whom the great 
 had concocted to rob so shamelessly and was glad justice 
 was to be done them, so I looked to see what share they 
 were to receive. In the melee some of the necklaces had 
 been broken, scattering the beads about, and these the great 
 men were now busily picking up and throwing into a tray 
 from the box, together with a number of pebbles of the 
 same size. These, as it soon appeared, were for the people. 
 The unimpaired necklaces, brass rings, bracelets, anklets, 
 eardrops, nose-rings, tin rattles, whistles, and everything 
 else of value, they retained for themselves. When they 
 had gathered up all the beads they could find, including 
 many that were trampled and broken, all told less than a 
 fiftieth of the total contents of the box, the gawded mon- 
 arch benignly called his ordinary children about him, and 
 with royal impressiveness as if he were endowing each 
 with a kingdom, presented their portions of the largess 
 from heaven to all, amounting to two beads apiece inclusive 
 of the broken ones and the little stones. The populace, 
 nevertheless, were transcendently and pathetically delighted, 
 especially when informed from the impromptu throne of 
 my box endwise, on which His Highness squatted, tho it 
 wobbled much, that the heavenly sender had not stipulated 
 that a single bead or even a stone should go to the rabble, 
 but had deferred entirely to his royal wisdom and gen- 
 erosity to do as he pleased. By this time, having forgotten 
 all previous sentiments of Providence, they lifted up another 
 shout of glory to the King and turned more of their human- 
 ladder gyrations. With diaphanous complaisance the satis- 
 fied King permitted his shadow to be brought in and all 
 the commonalty to kiss the sole of its foot once. 
 
 In a voice that boomed over the assemblage Milto called 
 for the customary thanks to the divinity, which immediately 
 issued with terrific energy from the gratefully swelling 
 bosoms of the two-beaded multitude. He then selected 
 
MY TWO MIRACLES 51 
 
 from his throat a magnificent necklace of greenish blue for 
 his offering to deity and deposited it on a tray to encourage 
 other givers, whereupon, for the god's use, each of the 
 great ones drew from his stock whatever he prized least,, 
 a tin rooster, a glass marble with a spider inside, a bottle- 
 stopper, et cetera, and joined it to the King's oblation. In 
 their turn the common people each and all gave one of 
 their two beads, massing them in a separate heap. Then 
 the King, the Chief Idol-tamer, and the surviving grandees 
 consecrated the two piles by a rite original to that land, 
 performed by each one going through the ranks of the low- 
 born with a receptacle of dust which stood by for the pur- 
 pose and placing a handful in every native's eyes. Singu- 
 lar to say they all threw back their heads to receive into 
 their open orbs and retain there the full delivery, tho the 
 pain must have been racking. After this ceremony and 
 the mumbling of some cabalistic noises, King Milto com- 
 posedly transferred the consecrated costlier pile of his own 
 and the great men's making to his private heap, while the 
 great followed suit by fastening their clutches upon the 
 rabble's consignment to the god and portioning it out among 
 themselves. The blue-bloods fell into a minor contention 
 over the box, which they all grossly coveted, but I firmly 
 informed the mighty quarrel-queller that there would be 
 no more cargoes from aloft if that vehicle were confiscated, 
 which quickly educed from him some sparkling paradoxes, 
 that struck a dozen of the grasping patricians wittily be- 
 tween the eyes and sent them rolling a distance. 
 
 Mounting again on Majesty's back, which seemed to 
 have a cataleptic effect on the mob, I declared from this 
 rostrum that the day's adventures would close with a couple 
 of original miracles. Tipping the box on its end that all 
 might see the empty interior I called them to witness that 
 there was nothing within. Directing the King and his depu- 
 ties to apply the dust to the public optics as before, this 
 
52 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 time not omitting their own eyes, I removed a false bot- 
 tom, beneath which was stowed a quantity of candy drops, 
 very hard, powerfully flavored, and colored and shaped like 
 beads ; then ordering the people to wipe out the dust I 
 displayed my creation to their tearfully astonished sight. 
 The great men were about to rush in for a sweeping con- 
 solidation of it, according to law and order and custom, 
 but I waved them off with authority born of the miracle, 
 which had wrought a deep impression. 
 
 "Now for the second miracle," said I. "These beads 
 shall be changed into a very delightful food which you can 
 all eat." I lifted my right leg into the air three times and 
 when it was at right angles to my body waved the foot on 
 its axis six times and touched the sole with my little finger ; 
 I then directed King Milto, who, on account of his elevated 
 intelligence through which he could see farther into the 
 occult than most, was more amazed by these marvels than 
 the rest, to distribute the enchanted articles to the people. 
 
 "And," I said emphatically, "by god's will, with no 
 meddling of earthly charity associated or otherwise, every 
 man, woman and child from Your Highness down to that 
 six-legged dwarf is to have the same number of them." 
 
 I had a mysterious purpose in this which will appear in 
 the sequel. It was the first time they had tasted American 
 sweets and their faces shone with a happiness I never expect 
 to see again in this world. 
 
 Having sent the box to the King's private cave for safe 
 storage, attention was paid to the twenty great characters 
 who since the terrible battle had been left unnoticed where 
 they fell. Four were dead ; the others, among them the 
 'King's Feet' and the Cook of Natives, were so shattered 
 inside and out that the King ordered them to be dispatched 
 and a public repast of the bodies proclaimed in honor of 
 all gods who possess things that men want to get. At the 
 end of the feast the finger- and toe-nails of the departed 
 
THE KING SITS IN A TREE 
 
 53 
 
 were presented as a special contribution to the non-gift- 
 giving gods. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The King and I Sit in a Tree 
 
 My position was now established as only second to that 
 of the monarch himself, and on the following day Milto 
 announced with a thousand marks of affection and con- 
 fidence that the office of the Feet was vacant for me if I 
 would be so good as to accept it, signifying also that I 
 should be promoted as speedily as possible to the Council 
 of the Ancients. The proposition filled me with untold 
 anxieties as to what they might now expect of me, having 
 seen my miraculous powers verified. It was plain enough 
 that the King had warmly set his heart on having me lick 
 his basic elements; yet I doubted if this was entirely dis- 
 interested, for he could not but perceive how vastly my 
 prestige was expanding. 
 
 "Your Lambent Sagacity overlooks the danger to the 
 peace and regularity of the realm in this new precedent," 
 I expostulated; "I have had no training for such a load of 
 duty, and if you advanced me to that dizzy honor without 
 a thirty years' course, every Tom, Jim and Jake you have 
 would think the same preference belonged to him and your 
 institutions would soon be nourishing the worms. Let me 
 graduate first, for precedent is paramount in licking as it 
 is in other matters of State and tribunals of Justice." 
 
 This presentment put him off for the time being, but I 
 saw trouble ahead. I therefore resolved to forestall him. 
 
 The next day we were seated together in the branches 
 of a tree commanding his domain, chatting amiably over 
 a plan of his to capture a white caravan that was beating 
 its course toward the interior. 
 
54 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "By the way," said I, "this morning I had a letter from 
 the Origin of that box of gifts." 
 
 "Um, you did? Anything new in the universe?" 
 
 "He sent sharp orders. He's getting the next exhibit 
 ready, but He says you must go to work on your part of 
 the contract." 
 
 "Go ahead," said the monarch with forced composure, 
 "what are we to do?" 
 
 "You are to make me Improver of the Earth." 
 
 "I can soon do that," he exploded, relieved, "it will help 
 us; what else?" 
 
 "Wait till you know the qualities of Improver of the 
 Earth before you exult," I admonished, "and appoint me 
 now." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "It's a higher position than officer of your feet," I said, 
 to deal a hard blow. 
 
 He winced visibly, then asked, "Who is this meddlesome 
 god that demands so much of me?" 
 
 "The one that gives you so much. Among the celestials 
 he goes by the name 'Eternal Order of Things.' " 
 
 "I like the sound of that," Milto ruminated; "it doesn't 
 seem that one with so good a name could do anything 
 improper." 
 
 "Even to speak of such a possibility of 'Eternal Order' 
 is to blaspheme," I frowned, and he cowered. 
 
 "I appoint you Improver of the Earth; impart what the 
 god wants of me next." 
 
 "I'm going to perform another miracle, and show you 
 how to obtain beautiful yellow grains called 'gold' out of 
 common dirt. Then your whole tribe, under your leading, 
 may amuse yourselves executing this miracle every day 
 for the sake of your god and me." 
 
 "Am I to have some of this divine substance?" 
 
 "You truly call it divine. Without it there could be no 
 
THE KING SITS IN A TREE 55 
 
 heaven that men would desire; gods would be vulgar ob- 
 jects if they could not show their superiority by parading 
 themselves in gold and diamonds, and as soon as men 
 acquire sufficient gold they become possessed of every essen- 
 tial attribute of gods. If you are gentle, loving and obedi- 
 ent to my will, I may hereafter grant you a portion of this 
 elixir of divinity, as a condescension tho not as a right, 
 but you must carefully refrain from all avarice to own it, 
 since that is forbidden by religion. Religion is so made 
 that we must not crave the thing for which the illustrious 
 gods are chiefly celebrated, for they cannot part with their 
 essence without loss, and men must console themselves with 
 copying the divinities in the minor things — their virtues. 
 You are aware also that you have made me developer of 
 your earth, and if I permit you to live in your country 
 after that it is uncommonly generous on my part, without 
 my giving you a share of the gold it contains. You are 
 to dig that in return for the privilege of staying where you 
 are, as you will fully understand when you have thoroughly 
 studied the character of your Bountiful Providence, the 
 Eternal Order of Things, the One Buzzrack, to whom I 
 have just introduced you. It is my design to exhibit ele- 
 ments of his nature to you in sermons when you are too 
 weary to work, for I am accurately instructed in it, and 
 if you ever feel inclined to complain of your lot you will 
 learn from my preaching that it is a sin to resist the 
 heavenly will as it is revealed by those who love you and 
 understand heaven best. Being robbed by your betters on 
 earth is the straight and narrow path to paradise, where 
 I haven't any doubt you will be allowed to scrub the floors 
 for the better angels." 
 
 This was so reasonable that the King readily consented 
 and promised to interpret my generosity to his countrymen, 
 which I exhorted him to do very explicitly in the simplest 
 Rinyoese that there might not arise a misunderstanding as 
 to the ownership of things. 
 
56 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 We crawled down from the tree, in which I was feeling 
 rather stiff, and I suggested a promenade through the realm. 
 Some of the customs of the tribe had seemed very novel 
 to me, but my mind up to this time having been much occu- 
 pied with my own safety I had not delved into them. 
 Feeling now more secure I could look about with a careless 
 and interested eye as we ambled along. 
 
 "Why do so many of your people wear those long and 
 heavy poles of different lengths fastened horizontally across 
 the small of their backs ? Not a few of them, I notice, can 
 scarcely walk under the load." 
 
 "That is our visible emblem of learning, lineage, and 
 dignity. The longer and heavier it is, the greater you may 
 know is the bearer of it : that is to say, the farther advanced 
 in the knowledge of the great Science of My Feet, Respec- 
 tability." 
 
 "It must be very inconvenient, people cannot come any- 
 where near each other with those remarkable appurtenances 
 on. 
 
 "That is the design. It prevents the low and ignorant 
 from contact with the learned and high, for of course they 
 have to walk around each other by the distance of the poles 
 they wear." 
 
 "Doesn't it keep equals apart also? I should think they 
 would be lonesome without closer companionship than these 
 poles suffer." 
 
 "That is a necessary precaution for preserving life. The 
 equally great and learned are bitterly jealous of one an- 
 other, if permitted to come together they froth, and if not 
 separated they bite and murder." 
 
 He explained further that in wars the poles were only 
 worn by the officers, who could not be defiled by coming 
 into contact with the enemy as they might be obliged to 
 do if the poles were discarded. 
 
CONDEMNED TO DEATH 57 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 The Long Poles. I Am Condemned to Death 
 
 The gold digging began very auspiciously, except for 
 the fact that the poles were much in the way and impeded 
 work. Not less than nine-tenths of the productive energy 
 of the tribe was lost, since not only did the weight of them 
 hinder motion, frequently causing their wearers to fall 
 forward in a helpless heap, whence they could only be got 
 upright again by the aid of those who had not yet fallen 
 down, when it would be a wonder if the would-be rescuers 
 did not measure themselves out on top of the others, con- 
 suming nearly all the time not in getting gold but in falling 
 down and getting up, but in addition to this there could 
 be but little helpful assistance in labor rendered by one 
 to another, since unless one were stretched out useless on 
 the earth none could approach him to co-operate or even 
 to pass by with a load. With things in this plight, although 
 the whole population including the King, his wives and 
 concubines and the principal men endeavored to work from 
 the moment the sun assumed the scepter of day until he 
 laid it down at night for repose, mighty little gold was 
 realized. Upon my pointing this out to His Majesty and 
 suggesting that the poles be laid aside during working hours, 
 he assured me that there would certainly be a terrible revo- 
 lution if the attempt were made, in the course of which 
 he would be deposed and devoured with me in a side dish, 
 and that they would then be sure to select a King who 
 would double the length of the poles for the sake of popu- 
 larity. 
 
 So we labored along for a week Avith a flickering zest on 
 the part of the tribe, I myself sitting on a shaded eminence 
 and directing maneuvers, yet with no practical results to 
 speak of. The ground was teeming with gold, but at this 
 
58 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 rate it would take four generations to get out the quantity 
 needed to make a small millionaire. 
 
 "Your licking custom is a great crime," I declared to the 
 King with choler when Saturday night came and we had 
 ^11 laid aside our tools until Monday morning in order to 
 attend the church which I had established. "Between Hck- 
 ing and the long poles it is the silliest foolery practised 
 by honest men in the circle of our solar system ; but I 
 would care nothing for that : so long as it didn't interfere 
 with the progress of civilization you might lick and be 
 hanged, or carry pine trees on your backs and sprint, never 
 would I oppose the genius of your institutions ; but when 
 you block the advancement of liberal ideas with your poles, 
 and hinder the spread of perfection over the globe by your 
 licking, it is time for righteousness to be bold. However 
 necessary these instrumentalities may be for the culture 
 of the privileged or restraint of the natural selfishness 
 and inborn brutality of your masses, for the sake of the 
 world they must be cast aside. I came here unselfishly 
 to collect gold for the purpose of promoting the Kingdom 
 of Good in the United States by greasing the wheels of 
 greed. But look at this little basketful of the yellow god- 
 stufif: it doesn't amount to a thousand dollars, which 
 wouldn't gild a god's little finger tip, and that's the only 
 result of a hard week's toil. If you are afraid to abolish 
 pole-wearing alone, how would it do to brush away the 
 whole licking ceremony and fly into the van of human 
 development at one bound?" 
 
 I think if His Majesty had not been physically lame and 
 mentally limp from his unusual week's usefulness there 
 would have been trouble between us. He choked down his 
 irritation and replied patiently. 
 
 "You do not know what you suggest; you would tear 
 down the free fabric of our commonwealth ; without the 
 study and practice of licking, without these poles to pub- 
 
CONDEMNED TO DEATH 59 
 
 licly herald the progress of each in this noble work, with- 
 out the honorable names formed from the number of rins' 
 length these poles contain, what object would my people 
 have in life? They would renounce all obligations and 
 obedience, abandon themselves to ghastly infamy, embrace 
 abominable license, devote their powers to self-destruction 
 in nameless orgies, for that is the law of human nature 
 when it gets loose from its serious institutions. The keen- 
 est pleasure my people have is that of comparing the length 
 of their poles and finding some longer than others; nor 
 without these visible emblems of exaltation to struggle for 
 do I know of a single potent stimulus to effort. All human 
 initiative springs from them ; bereft of their magic impetus 
 we should starve, because there would be no incentive to 
 work. The beasts of the forest would cease to envy and 
 emulate us." 
 
 Even in my vexation I could not forbear asking what 
 connection rins had with names, and was richly rewarded 
 for my curiosity when I heard the following: 
 
 A rin was their unit of measure, slightly more than our 
 foot. They estimated human greatness as spatial, and most 
 accurately measured by length ; as a man became greater 
 he naturally would become larger to display it, but here 
 nature defaulted, for the great did not grow larger, and 
 the poles were brought in to correct nature's defect. The 
 name followed the pole in length. If a man's pole was one 
 rin long his name was Rin; if five rins, it was Rin-Rin- 
 Rin-Rin-Rin ; if one hundred or a thousand rins, it was 
 Rin repeated as many times. Since there was no sound 
 in the entire vocabulary of names but rin, people were 
 distinguished from one another not by divers sounds as with 
 us, but by the number of these rins they were entitled to 
 be called, and their names changed and enlarged as they 
 grew greater. It was one of the strictest etiquets of the 
 land that when a great or big personage was addressed 
 
6o THE HORROBOOS 
 
 his full name was to be pronounced unless the bitterest 
 insolence were designed, tliat is to say, he could not be 
 spoken to as Thirty Rins, but as Rin pronounced separately 
 thirty times in succession. To omit one was equivalent to 
 stepping on his toes or spitting in his face. Thus familiar- 
 ity of intercourse from the low toward the high was dis- 
 couraged by the labor of approach; thus conversation be- 
 tween the great was rendered easy and affable, as they 
 spent most of their time in the dignified ceremony of ad- 
 dressing each other by name. Flatterers who wished to 
 ingratiate themselves with the great followed them about 
 enunciating their syllables, to keep them conscious of their 
 extent; and they had a machine which said Rin and could 
 be so adjusted as to recite a man's name, pause a moment 
 and begin again, by the musical self-adulation of which 
 the great were wont to sink to sleep. While an American 
 would be improving himself reading in his family news- 
 paper about the latest murders, the Rinyo would serenely 
 sit listening to his name in this machine. When a guest 
 visited an aristocrat the speaking machine was altered to 
 the number of his rins in welcome, and then made to alter- 
 nate the names of visitor and host, thus carrying on a glow- 
 ing conversation back and forth for any length of time 
 without exertion of the great men's intellects or vocal 
 organs. Titles learned and aristocratical were held in de- 
 rision there as opposed to the democratic simplicity of the 
 country; all were recognized as equal and alike because the 
 basis of the names of all was Rin. 
 
 It was trying. Here at my feet lay the princely material 
 for a thousand multi-millionaires, and I was prevented 
 from gathering it by a brace of mammoth farces which this 
 benighted anthropophagus called social institutions! I 
 could have trampled on him, in theory. A better plan sug- 
 gested itself. 
 
 "Why not," I proposed, "invent some useful practice to 
 
CONDEMNED TO DEATH 6l 
 
 take the place of these outrageous abortions, these hollow 
 distortionate follies for which there are no suitable words 
 in my mind, something that would represent real worth and 
 do the people's souls good in the performance?" 
 
 He replied : "Tell me, cloud-born ambassador, if you 
 know human weaknesses as well as one in your high office 
 should, what custom could be more perfectly suited to a 
 humanity composed of mud and murder than one which 
 fully accomplishes its end and leaves no restive surplus 
 energy or thought behind to trouble rulers? These mar- 
 velous habits of the tongue and pole are fitted to the soul 
 of man like skin to his flesh ; all the pulsing yearnings and 
 vasty attributes of his nature are satisfied ; in what he does 
 it is true there is no invasion of intelligence, but no intelli- 
 gence is there to invade; becheated to be sure through all 
 his bootless days, I acknowledge that he is forever kept 
 in the midnight zone of the quadrupedal brutes, but is not 
 his life filled and cloyed with his deeds of crazy foolish- 
 ness? And can you say more of any people? Are not his 
 brain and body busied to repletion? He makes no trouble, 
 and does not our political system flourish unimpaired for- 
 ever? If I can raise a towering, noble, proud, imposing 
 hierarchy on the grotesque glittering humbug of licking 
 my stainless feet, and elevate cringing licking into the grand- 
 est principle of human conduct, dignify it as a system and 
 saturate my kind with a reverential sense of its mystery 
 and majesty, if I can guilefully entice all creeping human 
 things to extinguish their strength in spurious education for 
 this fulsome licking, and fix a terrible pole upon their backs 
 to indicate and blazon their proficiency and drain off their 
 strength in blisters, and let them add seventy rins or more 
 together to construct their names, and they do not perceive 
 that they belong to the glorified kingdom of imbeciles, 
 asses and bats, than whom the born dead are more rational 
 because they do nothing, what more can you ask of a cus- 
 
62 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 torn? Have customs any other use? Were you ever in 
 a better regulated society? And is not that the summum 
 bonum of savagery? Do not our people work from the 
 first crowing of the eastern sun till it recalls its flock 
 of beams into the silent hennery of night, for the customary 
 stipend of emptiness, sickness, sorrow, poverty and death? 
 Do they not fulfil man's proper destiny? Do they know 
 what it is to think, hold up their heads without an irresist- 
 ible desire to fawn upon and lick a fellow cannibal, or 
 stretch their limbs and run at liberty without those deadly 
 poles to cover them with sores and break their backs ? No. 
 If they knew that they are fools, I do not see what would 
 become of society; government could not be carried on a 
 day ; humanity would fly apart into murderously discordant 
 atoms. And, truth is, they are all now as happy as can be : 
 while doing reasonable and sensible things would crush 
 them down in suicidal desolation." A look of real affection 
 came into the great Crowned Head's eyes as he spoke these 
 grand truths, and I loved him. 
 
 I spent Sunday considering how to meet the business 
 crisis, even refraining from going up in the afternoon to 
 hear the guardian of the idol Iztaph give a public disquisi- 
 tion on the beauty of that deity's face, which looked to me 
 like the battered front of a stove. He was the god of art, 
 I believe. They kindled a fire in the idol's mouth whenever 
 he was to be esthetically shown ofif. The pole of the guar- 
 dian of this wonderful object was so long that no one 
 could come within the sound of his voice, nevertheless all 
 the tribe were required to attend the exhibition or lose 
 their heads. Having cleared not so much as a thousand 
 dollars the previous week I was angry enough to take the 
 risk of decapitation. At about four o'clock — they always 
 had a late dinner on Sunday owing to the elongated elo- 
 quence of the Idol-Guard — King Milto came toward my 
 apartment with several athletes bearing the decapitation 
 
CONDEMNED TO DEATH 63 
 
 apparatus. He was in a famished mood and his native in- 
 stincts were choking down the Christian impulses I had 
 stowed away in him ; he was counting on me for the Sunday 
 roast. I took a desperate resolution as they approached on 
 the run. Drawing a dozen sulphurous and deadly cigars 
 from a pocket in the rock where I had them secreted, and 
 an innocent and delicious one from my case, I lighted the 
 latter and began to puff volcanically. 
 
 "Hold!" cried I as they thundered up, "I am commun- 
 ing with our deity : whoever enters my office without this 
 talisman in his mouth will be struck dead." 
 
 They were a superstitious crew to whom tobacco smok- 
 ing was still to be revealed, and they recoiled in dread at 
 my threat. 
 
 "I know your purpose," continued I. "and we shall see 
 if it meets with the favor of Omnipotent Nothing. Sample 
 this weed, and if it agrees with your stomachs the Eternally 
 Hidden is pleased, if not he is offended at your conspiracy 
 against my life, and you will have to take your chopping 
 machine home." 
 
 Lighting the cigars, which were saturated with pow- 
 erful ingredients, for one must never go as a missionary 
 without a few contrivances to wheedle destiny, I handed 
 them around and awaited results. They were not slow in 
 coming. While the awful monarch and his nobility lay on 
 my floor weltering in their indiscretion, I smoked on with 
 my usual pleasure in the sustaining fruit, verifying my 
 claim to a cloudy extraction. The African system in those 
 parts is sadly affected by drugs if they be choice and pow- 
 erful — almost as by deadly poisons. Seeing them so livid 
 and retched I dragged them out into the fresh peace of 
 the Sabbath afternoon and hurriedly sent for the national 
 rubbers to seduce their coagulating blood into circulation. 
 Terrified crowds came hurrying in great panic on learning 
 that their beloved King had fallen in a fit, nor had any the 
 
64 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 strength to rub, in their dread of his impending dissolu- 
 tion. They thought if he departed there would be a final 
 winding up of things, that the light would vanish and the 
 sun cease to blush in heaven, and that their food supply 
 would depart in company with his defunct essence. These 
 seem to be the religious tenets of warm countries, eradicable 
 I suspect only by killing a new king each day for many 
 years as a lesson. Taking advantage of their stupefaction 
 I explained that their royal earthly father was being chast- 
 ened by their heavenly one for offensive designs on my 
 life, and assured them that the same condign discipline 
 would overtake them all if the attempted profanation of 
 me recurred. I then gave His Majesty morphine and soon 
 had him comfortably snoring. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 I Begin to Civilize the Rinyos 
 
 Milto was able to sit up the next day but not to work, 
 so we made a holiday of it, I improving the idleness to 
 expatiate upon the decision I had formed, 
 
 "These poles," said I, "must come off during working 
 hours, I am resolved upon that. In working hours there is 
 equality of all before the employer. The Law of Work, 
 and the fact that you all work for me settle that. It is 
 an undisputed fact in the first theologies that if a number 
 of unequal persons love the same Being they are thereby 
 made equal among themselves by an invisible theological 
 equality. It doesn't affect life. So it is in Toil. If they 
 work for the same being they likewise become equal to each 
 other while they work. The law of work clearly enunciates 
 that whoever works for a master shall expend all his 
 strength — now the exertion put forth by all is thus equal. 
 
I CIVILIZE THE RINYOS 65 
 
 though they may not possess equal force, and by this doc- 
 trine of equal exertion all workers are brought to a level. 
 To enforce my decision and convince the people that my 
 authority is supreme, on the morrow you must lick my feet 
 in the presence of the host, for since I am Proprietor of 
 the Earth, I am lord of all that is upon it, yourself and your 
 tribe with the rest." 
 
 Milto could not seem to digest this caustic proposition; 
 I dreaded his balking at this stage. It is one of a missionary's 
 chief tribulations that a savage is wanting in mental back- 
 ground. I am convinced that there are no inborn ideas of 
 natural right, at least not in savages. (Those of natural 
 wrong are numerous.) If there were, Milto would have 
 seen that having ceded the development of the earth to me 
 he thenceforth dwelt upon it and breathed its air by my 
 merciful forbearance. I bore him no illwill, but I firmly 
 desired what was mine. Before I came into possession of 
 the earth his right to live on it was as good and free as 
 anyone's; now however that the control of the earth was 
 mine, he must earn his right to live ; he no longer possessed 
 anything inalienable but the right to earn, and not that 
 unless I supplied him with it. He was in no sense my slave, 
 he might wander forth into the desert with his tribe to 
 found some new realm, for my conscience was clear on 
 the point that he had not conveyed to me the whole of 
 Africa, nor his body. I was morally proud to inform him 
 that he was free. His body was still his own — not in con- 
 tinuity, which would have implied a right to something to 
 continue it on, but simply so long as it could persist with 
 the food and vital fire stored already inside it. To this 
 plain distinction, resting deep in the fiber of human pros- 
 perity, I invited Milto's prayerful reflection. I was sorry 
 he had no lawyers to reflect and pray with him. I showed 
 him that the sacred rights of human freedom, won chiefly 
 at Bunker Hill I believe, would allow him to wander through 
 
e/S THE HORROBOOS 
 
 the world along the sweet paths of his infancy, unmolested, 
 unshot, unimprisoned for theft, if he kept his hands off the 
 food that he had transferred to me as earth's proprietor. 
 "What more can you wish?" said I, — "nothing is more 
 perfect than perfect freedom. You have a free body, make 
 the most of it while it lasts, which will be from twenty to 
 forty days if you avoid exercise. There is a difference as 
 large as the decalogue between the freedom to saunter 
 across the world in any direction that you love, while the 
 food within you holds out, and the right to feed yourself 
 anew from food not in you, when you have made over the 
 earth to a more thrifty and deserving neighbor." 
 
 Still, if he had emigrated he would have done me a 
 ghastly injustice and I should have had a grudge against 
 him; his cession of the care of the earth was of limited 
 value if he did not stay to work upon it for me, which I 
 considered that he had tacitly pledged to do when he estab- 
 lished me as its master. A section of this lowly foot-stool 
 is of little worth if those on it are not of normal formation; 
 they must be powerfully attached to their birth-place, that 
 they may be willing to work for the new owner without 
 stipulating for profit if he magnanimously grants them the 
 occupancy of the spot where their free ancestors lived and 
 laughed and reveled and died. I conceive that when de- 
 scendants refuse to do this they very ungratefully if not 
 criminally attack property rights. I had accepted the posi- 
 tion of master of the Rinyo soil in good faith, in return 
 for it intending to give them the blessings of new ideas, 
 far away from home, at the sacrifice of my comfort and 
 pleasure, postponing marriage and a seat in the senate; 
 I was instructing them in the new duties which the higher 
 moral sphere upon which they had embarked entailed; I 
 was teaching them to know mine from thine, particularly 
 mine and not thine, if not for their use and advantage in 
 this world, at least that they might enter the society of civil- 
 
I CIVILIZE THE RINYOS 67 
 
 ized persons in the life to come without ignorance and em- 
 barrassment. I demanded common requital, all that they 
 had was enough, and that was legally mine; I resolved to 
 plant the incurable seeds of civilization in their substance 
 and leave Providence to do the watering, to make them 
 sprout into a race like the Americans, if He cared for anoth- 
 er of that brand. 
 
 The distinguished monarch broke the silence with an un- 
 certain voice: "I made you Developer of the Earth, did 
 I not? And if I created you to that position am I not 
 higher than you?" 
 
 "You were, but are so no longer, since you made me 
 higher; Developer of the Earth is the highest place there 
 can be; if you decline to consider me paramount, having 
 made me so, it refutes your paramountcy, it cuts a gash in 
 your absolute authority, all your acts and decrees will be 
 despised as impotent if this one is so. You elevated me 
 into the mastership of the earth and all the measureless 
 rights of that dignity; you must hereafter bow to, worship 
 and obey me, enforcing equal veneration on your subjects, 
 for it is clearly to be seen that is your authority unequal to 
 the exact extortion of your personal behests it is good for 
 nothing. Having lifted me to the loftiest promontory of 
 power you preserve lordship over me by obeying me, be- 
 cause you are then paying obedience to yourself; but, hav- 
 ing raised me up, if you fail in obedience you launch a 
 thrust at your perfect prestige ; for when, having placed 
 another's foot on your neck, you falter and fail to keep it 
 there, lo it is your own priceless predominance that you 
 impugn. So in order to maintain your supremacy you must 
 hold me principal and supreme over you, in all acts doing 
 faithful service and obedience to myself as your chief; and 
 in my despotic autocracy I shall be only supporting, illus- 
 trating and confirming your sovereignty, whicli made me 
 what I am. I shall see that you serve me faithfully and 
 
68 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 docilely, in doing so adding brighter luster to your superla- 
 tive self." 
 
 He was convicted by this unanswerable blending of poetry 
 and logic, as of course I knew he would be, since it has con- 
 quered shrewd civilized men thousands of times in the name 
 of the State, and on the morrow he walked feebly to the 
 works and declared himself my leal subject by licking my 
 feet before the devoted eyes of the concourse. In the 
 melodic Rinyoese I had framed for him he recited the royal 
 manifesto covenanting that as master of the earth I became 
 principal in power through the efficacy of his mighty high 
 inviolable edict, that unless I was super-lord over the earth 
 and everything in and on it including him, his subjects and 
 his expectations, he, my maker, would cease to be sovereign ; 
 and at my extempore instigation he also expounded how 
 he, as embodiment, essence, soul and life of the people, ac- 
 cording to proper theories of government, acted for them 
 all in this circumstance and carried their submission in his 
 deed. To make assurance secure I suggested that the 
 council of the superannuate sages be called in to ratify the 
 proceeding, which was done with the aid of wheelbarrows. 
 The tribe took the whole in good part, encouraging me by 
 their good humor to broach my clever design against the 
 poles. It was no less impolitic than inhuman to fly in the 
 face of their deeper instincts when a wise head could make 
 them pull together in the interest of civilization ; it was not 
 best to eradicate their impulse to lick, but to turn it into 
 one of the world's broad channels and extract the private 
 fortunes happily saturating it. The licking habit should 
 be made to dredge my gold. 
 
 I had triumphed over the King through the power of 
 conscience. I wrote a paragraph in my journal to show 
 that savages respond to intelligent arguments, they yield 
 to motives of duty if its finer shades are patiently disclosed, 
 by sheer force of character I had subjugated the brute 
 
I CIVILIZE THE RINYOS 69 
 
 propensities of this fierce King; high principle always sub- 
 dues low principle or unprinciple, thought I ; I remembered 
 that a successful American moralist of pleasing ability and 
 a power to see more sides of everything than it possessed, 
 had described character as of a stellar and undiminishable 
 greatness; he said of the man of character that 'his vic- 
 tories are by demonstration of superiority, and not by 
 crossing of bayonets — he conquers because his arrival alters 
 the face of affairs,' and this beautiful thought, I said, shall 
 be my light and guidance here. Thus inspired I addressed 
 the throng. 
 
 "In labor," said I in tones of euphonious persuasion, "all 
 men are equal; it is only in the attributes of idleness and 
 uselessness that they are unequal and superior one over an- 
 other; those who are idlest are always the greatest, and in 
 all times and places the most useless are those most highly 
 praised and reverenced and pampered by their fellows. 
 This is part of the perfect plan installed by the Promoter 
 of Creation, for had it not been so would this beautiful 
 custom always have prevailed over the earth? It is by this 
 argument that we prove God's existence, for when we con- 
 sider the terrible condition of mankind we understand that 
 the greatest being in the universe is also the idlest. And 
 the same principle establishes the sanctity of all the world's 
 rottenness. Being equal while you work, and all standing 
 upon the lowest level known to man or ape, you can lay 
 aside your poles, to compensate for which I will permit you 
 to wear them in your sleep, a time of conspicuous idleness 
 and greatness, and vouchsafe to you several other privi- 
 leges, while on your part you must steadfastly pursue your 
 education in licking to prepare yourselves to work for me 
 more ably and intelligently. Those who make the greatest 
 progress in licking shall do ever less of the work, until the 
 perfect in that discipline, the King's Feet and the Forty 
 Respectables, shall be altogether exempt from useful toil 
 
70 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 and do nothing but wear their poles and walk in the pres- 
 ence of the laborious multitude to create envy and stimulate 
 exertion." 
 
 I was here interrupted by a frenzied huzza, from which 
 it was evident that they fell in with the pregnant modern 
 idea that while successful licking is the best schooling for 
 all work, its proper reward is the privilege of doing noth- 
 ing and of rendering the toil of others as bitter as possible. 
 Having baited this several-pronged hook with more freshly 
 killed syllogisms I conceived that they would be as tame 
 as I could desire. 
 
 To complete the new social system I was founding on 
 the bulwarks of civilization, I increased the dimensions of 
 their poles four times, which caused them to nearly expire 
 with weight and happiness, and to experience the same 
 satisfaction from wearing them a little while that they had 
 formerly derived from doing so the entire day. This end 
 was further promoted by an ordinance I published permit- 
 ting them all to appear in a public place after supper and 
 the end of the day's work with their poles on their haunches. 
 Upon this terrace they strutted up and down at pole distance 
 from one another, dolefully dragged out in aspect, yet swag- 
 gering mightily, never exchanging a word, many of them so 
 weary with the day's gold-seeking and the gravity of the 
 poles that they could hardly stand up, enjoying the isolation 
 and relative superiority over those below them extremely. 
 Even the shortest-poled ones, the most spurned and meanest 
 of all, having no superiority over any one to brag about, 
 manifested a truculent pride in the superiority of their 
 inferiority. 
 
 They eagerly adopted the proposition of wearing their 
 poles to bed, although it was accompanied with some in- 
 conveniences. They could only sleep in one position, name- 
 ly upon their backs, for if they tried it on their stomachs 
 the poles' weight soon drove them again to their backs. 
 
I CIVILIZE THE RINYOS ^I 
 
 Even in the latter position it was quite painful to have so 
 considerable a hump in the small of their spinal column to 
 lie upon, as any of you may discover for himself by trying 
 it with a stick of wood. Naturally their rest was badly 
 broken, as I could see by their sunken eyes, haggard looks, 
 the distress to their health, but their happiness was touch- 
 ingly increased and I thought their working powers would 
 last till as much gold was mined as I could handle. 
 
 My decree upon second thought, that the best educated, 
 the Illustrious in fact, including the King, were not to work 
 at all, but should spend the days promenading forward and 
 backward on an eminence in the presence of the diggers, 
 that the latter might envy them and work with more spirit! 
 proved a most brilliant conception. They were to walk on 
 certain lines marked out for them, from which they could 
 not deviate without degradation ; their poles being the 
 largest of all were of such fearful pressure that merely to 
 lift them was a dangerous strain, but the grand characters 
 never faltered the whole day through, carrying them up 
 and down, streaming with perspiration and deadly faint 
 with fatigue, sustained by the consciousness of their exal- 
 tation and nerved by the excruciating duties of their fas- 
 tidious sphere. From time to time one died, only to leave 
 his place to be begged for by a hundred passionate appli- 
 cants. In fact, by my astute arrangement of the poles, the 
 grandees worked harder than the wretches who were claw- 
 ing out the gold, but since their efforts were connected 
 solely with honor, and producd no product but envy, they 
 were humbled and adulterated with none of the repugnant 
 attributes of labor. Once each day I had the King pub- 
 licly hck my feet to testify that our compact of my supre- 
 macy was inviolable. He had never worked or borne a 
 pole before and it wore on him; I figured that it would not 
 be many years before he could creditably join the council 
 of the centuries. 
 
72 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 With the gold, however, we made splendid speed under 
 the new regime, the second week bringing in a mighty pile 
 of riches. When you reflect that I paid the people nothing, 
 merely permitting them to collect their scraps of food at 
 odd times or to wheedle a small supply out of the women — 
 if they could ever be enticed away from a peculiar inexpli- 
 cable feminine occupation of theirs connected with leaves — 
 and to sleep on the earth, you may agree with me that I was 
 a good business man. An acre lot is a fine bed, sometimes 
 moist and springy, and this furniture was cheap and plenty. 
 The gradations of honor which I had affixed to them, and 
 the various ranks of jealousy portioned out with nice per- 
 ception, were ample tether to hold the race tramping round 
 the treadmill goal of duty. Lest the tropical abundance of 
 their passions and their unregenerate love of liberty should 
 impel them to error, I kept them well jaded with honest 
 toil and their evening recreation with the poles, so that 
 they hadn't a spark of fire for revolution or righteousness 
 even if they had known what these were. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 The White Caravan 
 
 The day was approaching when the caravan of white 
 prospectors was to pass near the King's realm on its way 
 to the deeper interior for gold. The King's scouts contin- 
 ually informed him of its progress and reported the minute 
 details of its composition. There were twenty white men 
 in the company, with twice as many native servants and 
 guides ; the whites, said our scouts, carried something re- 
 sembling their poles, but no longer than the shortest, which 
 sometimes made a terrible noise, and smoked as I had done 
 at the time of the King's disease, whence the spies con- 
 
THE WHITE CARAVAN 73 
 
 eluded that they were all gods like myself. These com- 
 mercial pilgrims, the first that had ever entered that coun- 
 try, for my design in coming was rather Biblical than mer- 
 cenary, were bearing fifty miles to the south of our na- 
 tion, ignorant of the gold which it sheltered. There was 
 nothing to be feared from them ; however it suited both the 
 King's plans and my own, for diverse reasons, that they 
 should be destroyed. He craved a supply of human meat 
 of some new variety and a holiday from the drudgery I was 
 imposing, as well as the camels and general plunder; I 
 coveted their picks and shovels and other gold-getting im- 
 plements, fearing also that they might survive to return our 
 way and confiscate the millions I was amassing. Neverthe- 
 less, for politic reasons I would not assume responsibility 
 for the attack, nor did I intend to be visible in the cam- 
 paign. If any of the immigrants fled back to the coast and 
 returned with an English host to exterminate the Rinyo 
 tribe for discipline and take their gold for indemnity, I 
 wished to be sincerely able to say that I was a prisoner there 
 working under the greed and constraint of a cruel nigger 
 Kmg. ^ At the same time I shrewdly planned the onslaught 
 for His Royal Highness so that none of his enemies might 
 escape. 
 
 When he came to me for permission to strike work for 
 several days to conduct this excursion— it was his custom 
 now to rely on me in the main in all matters— I assured him 
 the afifair of the caravan was in his hands, not mine, that 
 I was ignorant of the customs of his people in regard to 
 the treatment of caravans and could not interfere, that as a 
 missionary I wished to be governed as far as possible in 
 my conduct by their moral code, for I considered that what- 
 ever morality had naturally grown up in a region was 
 suited to and right for that region, and that if they came 
 to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as I hoped in time they 
 would from seeing my prosperity, details of moral action 
 
74 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 would not count at all on the Judgment Day, that I would 
 accompany them to the scene of crime disguised as a savage 
 and under his orders. 
 
 There was a small desert in the invaders' line of march, 
 with an oasis near the center; it was here that their guides 
 planned a camp for the night and here that by my sugges- 
 tion King Milto projected a thoroughly artistic slaughter. 
 I prompted him to throw forward a thousand of his trus- 
 tiest warriors, who should secrete themselves in the trees 
 immediately environing the spring of the oasis, whence 
 they could let themselves drop suddenly upon the newly 
 arrived company while they were drinking, catching them 
 off their guard and weary, with their arms laid aside. A 
 large body of troops was to encircle the entire green island 
 in careful seclusion, so that if a single fugitive, white or 
 black, escaped he might be expeditiously slain. With five 
 thousand infantry, part of whom were women, the flower 
 of his battalions, the King in person was to lie waiting in 
 the vicinity of the spring and all were to cry out ferociously 
 when their comrades leaped from the trees, to increase the 
 consternation. I deemed that it would be an exceedingly 
 well-balanced caravan to resist these engines of confusion, 
 and happily this one was not made for extraordinary 
 achievements. There were few heroes in it, for all suc- 
 cumbed shamefully to the first blow on the back ; every man 
 of it fell by the spear, or, if I am more literal, being already 
 fallen down to drink, the spear transfixed him to the earth, 
 and our army came off unscratched but for a few broken 
 bones acquired in falling from the trees. Through this 
 amazing exploit I approached nearer than ever in the be- 
 nighted minds of my adopted countrymen to absolute iden- 
 tity with the Infinite Ether. I held a praise meeting which 
 led to some spiritual results I am bound to believe ; at all 
 events it introduced a good custom and was the foundation 
 of religious revivals in that Principality. There was glor- 
 
THE WHITE CARAVAN 75 
 
 ious plunder, both in gold-digging and transportation ma- 
 terial of the kind I should need for moving my golden 
 masses, and in kickshaws such as the natives valued far 
 above the things of the spirit and all those of real import in 
 connection with human progress. As I witnessed them 
 transported with joy over their fabulous nothings, I almost 
 wished I might throw oflf the load of human responsibility 
 resting upon me and my race as advance agents of peace, 
 happiness, clothes, wages, school books, Christ, alcohol, tu- 
 berculosis and syphilis, to enjoy untrammeled the serene 
 primal sensation of simple living. 'Were it not for the 
 noble part my gold is to play in the enlightenment of the 
 world,' I reflected, 'giving employment and food to many 
 poor persons otherwise doomed to starve because the good 
 have taken their property, turning the wheels of large and 
 useful machines, calming the fiery avarice of my relatives 
 and thus bringing them into harmony with Eternal Love, 
 reproving those of my friends who doubted the utility of a 
 college education, restoring confidence in the ministry as a 
 practical avenue for intellect and heart, leading mankind 
 up through the enjoyment of marvelous riches to a better 
 appreciation of Heaven and a stronger desire to so live in 
 the practice of great functions on earth as to be worthy of 
 greater ones in Heaven, I verily believe I should lay aside 
 all to live in humble contentment, perhaps joining myself 
 to this flexible race for good and all and exerting my sym- 
 metrical talents to prune away their follies and preserve 
 and fecundate their sweet natural genius. But this I know 
 to be a moral weakness ; it is shirking the duty which one 
 owes to the cellular hypothesis. Fundamental black pro- 
 toplasm, just starting to creep toward self-discovery in the 
 tardy types of men, irrespective of its race or acquired pro- 
 clivities, is to be shoveled on to the car of civilization if it 
 is pliant, if not, it is to be ground under the wheels of 
 Christian love or stuflfed into the red-hot furnace of infinite 
 
'^e THE HORROBOOS 
 
 mercy to propel the mighty harmonious engines of good. 
 I am not here doing this work altogether because I desire 
 to, although this desire outweighs all my other moods ; I am 
 certainly directed by the will of Heaven ; I feel it ; no one 
 manufactures his own wishes, they are implanted in him 
 from above, for my blessed religion teaches that God thus 
 inwardly communicates with and guides his believing 
 children/ 
 
 You see, gentlemen, I am no pessimist and am a very 
 great philosopher. Man's true heavenly lord and guide is 
 his strongest passion ; theologians of an earlier age taught 
 the supremacy of a still small voice called conscience, but 
 I see no evidence in the dealings of my beloved Maker that 
 the weak things or voices are intended to control the loud 
 and strong; that sedate little dwarf appendix is meant only 
 for a momentary inhibition of action until we can decide 
 among our strong desires which is the strongest, and rest 
 assured that when we follow that we are sailing on the 
 bosom of God's will, steered by His Grace. My strongest 
 desire is for gold ; I prefer it before friends, or ease, or any 
 quality of soul that I have seen mentioned in the best sacred 
 or poetical works ; what then can be more evident than God's 
 intention to work out the good of the world through my 
 pursuit of gold? Did He not implant the thirst for this 
 superlative substance in me ? And did He do it by mistake ? 
 Was He ignorant of his business? Not at all. I am 
 delegated, like others with the same heaven-given in- 
 stinct, to transform the face of the earth; it is the next 
 stage of redemption in God's wise foresight to save the 
 world by infinitesimal degrees. The world will be saved 
 just before it ends. The passion for gold being placed in 
 the strongest men and in the largest number, will win, over 
 such feeble ardors as peace, good will, fraternity, duty, 
 humanity and love, showing that it is Jehovah's purpose to 
 steep the sog) of man in greed, cruelty and crime, prepar- 
 
REBELLION >j'j 
 
 atory to the eternal life of brotherly love in Heaven. 
 Heaven may bloom on earth when the world is a trifle su- 
 perannuated and mankind gibberingly senile, a few hundred 
 centuries down the whitening slope of time. But I do not 
 presume to fathom God, which is not a practical business 
 proposition, and is possibly insulting to His depth; I do 
 His will as manifested in the stoutest passions of my na- 
 ture, trusting His infinite grace to perfect my heart and the 
 souls of the men I destroy, through his holy inscrutable 
 ways. When I chat with Him at the throne He will explain 
 all. Even the sandbag may be an instrument of divine 
 glory in the right hands. The broken and contrite heart 
 and the battered and bleeding head are often paths to the 
 same perfection. Since God teaches us everything by sor- 
 row we ought not to hesitate to hammer happiness into the 
 weak by making them as miserable as we can. Pardon this 
 digression, it may be of service as the history proceeds. 
 
 CHAPTER XHI 
 Rebellion 
 
 Digging went on much faster than before in consequence 
 of the tools, so fast indeed that I estimated I should in a 
 few months have all the ripe riches I could carry from the 
 country with the national stock of camels and mules. The 
 wonders derived from the caravan somewhat eclipsed my 
 next galaxy of toys, unearthed and distributed with the 
 same ceremony as before, but it kept up the diversion, 
 greasing the machinery of things reasonably for about two 
 weeks, when there were new mutterings of rebellion. 
 
 "This must be nipped in the bud, King," I said sternly, 
 "it is a wanton outburst against your merciful rule, since 
 I am doing business under your appointment and guaran- 
 
78 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 tee. You conferred on me the privilege of making your 
 subjects work, and pledged that all movements, mobs, erup- 
 tions, aspirations and disorders should be put down. I call 
 on you to keep your promise, to save yourself from being 
 publicly despised by the conspirators as weak and soft. No 
 government can stand an instant which coddles conspira- 
 tors against itself. It is incumbent on you to resent this 
 indignity and quell the outbreak." 
 
 Although nearly absolute master of the King and hold- 
 ing him with a fascinating hypnotism of conscience in all 
 that concerned the people, I was sedulous to have the orders 
 apparently emanate from His Majesty, whom they obeyed 
 with organic instinct. Several incipient rebellions of the 
 most ominous description were stifled in this way, a number 
 of the frailer subjects requiring to be publicly hanged — for 
 I was scrupulous to introduce beneficent civilization in 
 healthy discipline as well as in daily delights — before they 
 gained an inkling of their duty to yield lawful obedience 
 to the mandates of the new State composed of me, yet de- 
 spite this the perilous outbreaks increased until I could not 
 sleep from fear that the following day would suffer from 
 my destruction. I did not fear death, but I felt I owed it 
 to Heaven, who had placed so much power for good in my 
 hands, to live. 
 
 Calling the multitude together one morning I declared 
 that in the magnitude of my benevolence it was my purpose 
 to confer with them and listen to their grievances, if they 
 had any, against me, their most faithful friend, me who 
 had the right to drive them into exile but who suffered 
 them to remain, and blessed them by dwelling in the same 
 land, teaching them many things. "Why are you discon- 
 tented? Why unhappy? The air is yours and the light; 
 I do not compel you to work in dungeons as I might by the 
 laws of God and sound political economy, nor underground ; 
 I keep you at work from daybreak to dark because of my 
 
REBELLION 
 
 79 
 
 loving solicitude for your morals ; while you are working 
 you cannot do wrong and your souls will be saved ; dig my 
 gold with a pure heart and take none of it, and I will bring 
 you up in the fear of the Lord — and if you take it, in the 
 fear of the Policeman; pray, when your hearts faint with 
 labor, when your backs break, when your woolly brains 
 throb with longing for the pastimes which to lead you into 
 the green pastures I have compelled you to renounce; pray 
 in fact all the time; when your stomachs are empty there 
 is nothing so light and cheap and stimulating as prayer and 
 you cannot overeat it ; take no thought for the morrow, for 
 if you work as hard as you should today there will be no 
 tomorrow for you. I have come mainly to teach you the 
 commercial possibilities of prayer: there is no grief in the 
 savage breast but prayer will assuage it after death; no 
 passion in the savage frame but prayer will extinguish it, 
 with the help of Christian bullets if necessary; nothing 
 which may be good for the savage but prayer will help you 
 to do without it, for be sure that what you do not get by 
 prayer you will not get in any other way. There is no 
 toiler's rheumatism that prayer will not heal, no pain of 
 body or spirit that prayer will not change into ravishing 
 bliss if assisted by strong drink. Man was created an in- 
 finite sufferer purely to learn the puissance of prayer. This 
 world is a sink of anguish from the cradle to the grave in 
 order to teach people God's infinite love for them. The 
 Devil, who will make man suffer a trifle more hereafter, 
 therefore loves man a trifle more than God does." 
 
 Being now fairly launched in the tremulous luxury of 
 preaching, in which I had been prophetically facile at the 
 seminary, equaled only by several unprincipled theological 
 scamps now in jail, and looking out upon the dusky throng 
 of my parishioners, I beheld them with the tender emotions 
 of a seer. 
 
 "What is misery? Whence is sorrow? Why do we feel 
 
8o THE HORROBOOS 
 
 pain, when a blessed redeemer sits near us in the triumphant 
 invisible, probably weeping? It is to learn that before the 
 breath of prayer misery, pain and sorrow fade away like 
 the light of a match in the blast of a storm. My hearers, if 
 I seem to be a stern taskmaster it is to remind you of your 
 father which is in heaven, if for your eternal good and the 
 austere obligations of civilization I deprive you of every 
 happiness you have known, faint not, be of good cheer, re- 
 member the enormous openings I make for you into the 
 hereafter. There you can sit in idleness forever and thank 
 God that you met me in time to learn the road to eternal 
 life; there you can evolve, passing cheerfully up from one 
 story of immaculate existence to another, never overwork- 
 ing, nor sweating, nor hungry, nor sick, nor betrayed, nor 
 robbed, as you are here, having no master but the eternal 
 God, and thrilling day and night, with the exquisite vibrancy 
 of holy passion and illimitable love. For there you will 
 never slumber or tire. Dearly beloved, I make you toil 
 with no remission now that your eternal rest may be 
 sweeter when you stumble home to the wormy grave; I 
 blunt your feelings and beclod your intellects here to 
 sharpen and polish them for the infinite feelings they are 
 to feel when this finite vesture is laid aside and sick mor- 
 tality fades into cured immortality ; I buffet you now that 
 the dear God may have many wounds to heal when you 
 climb into the haven of his bosom, so that you may speedily 
 learn his pitying fathomless tranquil grace and replenishing 
 compassion. Be thankful if I put you to torture, cause you 
 to work nights as well as days, mutilate you, tear mother 
 from child and virtue from maid and heap all manner of 
 blessed infamy upon you, in the name of our Heavenly 
 Lord, rejoice and be exceeding glad, for I am his instru- 
 ment appointed to break the manacles of flesh from your 
 souls by dreadful scourgings of your bodies ; I stop at noth- 
 ing because somewhere you must experience burning cos- 
 
REBELLION 8l 
 
 mic wrath before you can endure super-cosmic light; I 
 would like to append new faculties of tribulation to your 
 earthly organs in order that your impending transfiguration 
 might be more divine and my profits larger. And God for- 
 bid that you should resist, God forbid that you should be 
 your own stumbling-blocks to perfection, welcome all af- 
 flictions, be humble, be submissive, be poor of spirit, be- 
 seech the bountiful Giver of afflictions for more, and trust 
 my ingenuity to apply them in such a manner that you will 
 be lacerated to your full measure of woe." 
 
 I fain would have continued speaking in this vein for a 
 much longer time, for I felt myself wafted back to New 
 York and suffused with the most enlightened emotions that 
 a Christian can feel, but I perceived an insurrection brew- 
 ing among the common people. At one corner of the con- 
 gregation certain of the less worthy brethren were collect- 
 ing stones of convenient dimensions to heave, and the 
 malcontents seemed to be gaining converts to their nefarious 
 defection from duty faster than I to the sublime truths of 
 the noblest religion ever promulgated to the fallen, and 
 hastily saying amen I inquired of Milto if the people had 
 a complaint. Acting as their national spokesman the peer- 
 less chief arose and declared himself as follows : 
 
 "Preeminent Brain (which was the title they had con- 
 ferred upon me against the dictates of my modesty), we 
 are deeply sensible of the thousand blessings which you 
 have brought to us from the sky and elsewhere, and we 
 bow before the condescending sweetness of your virtues. 
 Not the least of these imperishable gifts is your godlike 
 eloquence, which we could listen to from the hour when 
 first the ruddy glow of the time-keeper of heaven speckles 
 our beautiful bodies until the flaming teeth of sacrificial 
 hunger redden them for the last time, were it not that no 
 god has yet endowed us with the angelic competence to live 
 on melody alone. You have permitted us to enjoy for a 
 
g2 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 season the homes of our forefathers; you preserved our 
 lives, for if you had forced us to wander from our native 
 land into the night we must have starved or fallen before 
 the iniquitous hunger of wild beasts, or been consumed by 
 the vengeful prowess of competing cannibals in the pathless 
 brush ; you have taught us industry, enabled us to sleep on 
 our poles, conferred upon us the adorable benefit of length- 
 ening them four times ; you have been a great and powerful 
 promoter of education in our midst; you have established 
 free libraries with wealth our toil created ; and you support 
 our lives by giving us work in the kindly vastitude of your 
 condescension — how was it that we ever lived before you 
 came? We do not speak of the presents, which are from 
 your sky-ruling brother-in-law* : but all these now seem as 
 nothing to us: we have observed your ravening fondness 
 for gold ; we do not know what it is good for, or why you 
 want it; but seeing a god like you care for it with all the 
 focused fevers of his infinite undying soul, we infer that it 
 must be good for something, and you can't blame us for 
 wanting part of it, too." 
 
 "That you shall certainly have," I cried, feeling as one 
 restored from the dead. "We will begin at once." 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 I Pay Wages and Restore Happiness 
 
 I divided the output of the previous week into three 
 equal parts, replacing two of them in my oaken safe for 
 myself; the third I split equally, giving half to the god, in 
 a box, and portioning the other half to the King, great men, 
 
 ♦This was a favorite Rlnyo idiom of flattery; the complemental curse 
 was "Brother-in-law of Lazuck," one of their Satans, in which they 
 were richer than ourselves by having several. 
 
I RESTORE HAPPINESS 83 
 
 and people, in the manner and proportion employed by His 
 Sceptred Justice in disbursing the brass roosters and beads. 
 This was marvelously satisfactory to all, who could hardly 
 believe their senses on seeing me part with so much. The 
 conventicle was breaking up when I motioned the King to 
 beat loudly on a gong, as the signal for them to resume 
 their seats. I then addressed them. 
 
 "Heretofore I have permitted you to use the picks and 
 shovels, pans and toothpicks taken from the caravan, with- 
 out charge, and also that new four-fifths part of the poles 
 which I affixed to their size. So long as our relation was 
 one of pure affection without strict business rules, as it has 
 been till now, my tender concern caused me to continue 
 this loving laxity. Then you needed nothing, we were as 
 one family, whatever was essential to your comfort and 
 piety I furnished freely out of a full heart; you were my 
 children; but now you have shown a revolting relish to 
 sever these sweet spontaneous ties, to stand alone, to dis- 
 card my throbbing solicitude ; now you are to have a stated 
 commercial share to gratify your foolish pride of independ- 
 ence, you have abrogated the reign of love, abjured the 
 fond fellowship of fatherhood, and I shall be obliged to re- 
 quire payment for the use of the shovels and poles, for 
 the scraps which your children and women collect for your 
 food, and rent for the ground on which you sleep, which 
 I find upon figuring will come to just the sum of gold that 
 each individual has received." 
 
 These children of twilight nature were a fair minded 
 people, not avidious of what was not their own, endowed 
 with a rough intuitive perception of right and wrong, al- 
 tho I had formerly thought otherwise. They saw that 
 I was right, and everyone of them without compulsion or 
 further persuasive eloquence, came forward and deposited 
 the gold I had paid him in my box. I fastened down the 
 lid of the receptacle of god's portion and my own with 
 
84 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 stout padlocks, and the meeting adjourned. It was the last 
 trouble of the kind I had with these excellent Africans, 
 true creatures of innate equity and light. It proved that 
 ideas of justice will grow even in the bog of barbarism, let 
 civilized psychologists say what they will. I had changed 
 iheir economic system with a little speech, and now their 
 happiness flowed on placidly again toward the silent ocean 
 of the boundless beauty of holiness. They were just where 
 they were before the economic change, so far as quantity 
 of material goods counted, but the length of the moral 
 stride they had compassed was prodigious. Before, they 
 were minion children of feudal barbarity without a dollar 
 in their pockets from week's end to end, now for a few 
 minutes every Saturday afternoon they felt the glow of 
 gold in their clothes, or, since they did not wear clothes, in 
 their handkerchiefs, which I had taught them to use for 
 cleanliness and culture. Charity had ceased, they now paid 
 as they went, and no bill of shovel-rent was mounting up 
 to mow at them in their dreams. 
 
 It was my rule to allow each one to hold his gold in the 
 palm of his hand for five minutes, within a few inches of 
 his eyes, looking steadily at it, before restoring it to my 
 box, to deeply inculcate into him the sense and virtues of 
 property. Holding it thus and knowing it to be his own, he 
 imbibed the sentiment of ownership, he planted the fiery- 
 instinct that would grow and consume all its associates ; it 
 would be a yoke to harness him to the car of human toil ; he 
 would become blind to the pleasures of life and absorbed in 
 its beautiful purpose, possession. This is making a savage 
 truly become as a little child, born under the star of a dol- 
 lar, feeding the nude little germ from the nursing-bottle 
 of pious greed, giving him a weekly peep at our civilization's 
 deadly grandeur through the sanctified lens of his personal 
 abstinence, seating him on the stool of blistering hope in 
 the torrid sun of a billionaire for the ratification of his own 
 
I RESTORE HAPPINESS 85 
 
 everlasting distress. Five minutes' weekly possession of a 
 little gold I found to be quite long enough to give the trans- 
 cendental motive of civilization firm root in the savage belly. 
 
 What an incredible folly it was, I often said to myself, 
 that drove our excellent grandfathers to make slaves of 
 their fellow beings in order to cudgel activity out of their 
 skins, when a few grains of gold placed before their noses 
 every week or month, and called theirs as long as you can 
 hold your breath, is a salient sorcerer to conjure out their 
 inward vitality in toil for the employing wizard who bap- 
 tizes their concupiscent palms with the instantly evaporating 
 magic. The heathen are as thirsty gulls as the Christian, the 
 savage is as cheaply bought as the civilized ; the will o' wisp 
 specter of the eternal Have beckons and compels saint and 
 sinner over the whole earth, if they have two legs, no tail, 
 and are men, to flit about bleeding away their souls until they 
 have poured the potent juices of their life into some magnet 
 owner's wallet-skin, and have and are nothing. To become 
 a rejected blood-sack for the accommodation of a repleted 
 blood-sucker is the common ardor and glory of man. God 
 be praised that he has given men this gentle proclivity. 
 Who would build our palaces and crowd our armies to 
 fight and die for the rich, without this far-sighted attribute 
 of the multitude? Mind- and muscle-spoiling toil would 
 not consecrate itself prostrate at the feet of cormorant 
 idleness but for the deep sweet godlike emotion the toiler 
 feels when he receives his weekly wages at six o'clock and 
 pays them out for his weekly bills at seven, an imaginary 
 lord of property one spangled hour. 
 
 So I mused, letting my mind run where it would without 
 much rudder or destination, and one day gave my darling 
 savages a little homily on the subject. It was at the noon 
 hour and they had finished the dinner which their women 
 brought to them in these days regularly on chips. 
 
 "Fellow manufacturers — for I must now call you by a 
 
86 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 name which recognizes the dignity and equality of labor — 
 I rejoice in the manifestations of spiritual life that are be- 
 ginning to advertise themselves on your persons. When I 
 came to your filthy hovels you were exceedingly gross and 
 fleshly and healthy, you are now hopefully thin and dis- 
 eased ; I like the appearance of those sores on your bodies, 
 which indicate that you are being chastened for divine ends ; 
 emaciation is an excellent remedy for the sins of Adam ; 
 while the body is luscious the mind seldom develops a proper 
 ethical system — at least one that will live after the author 
 is dead ; savage profligacy is a foe to all missionary move- 
 ments ; many have lost their lives in attempting to rear 
 families with a high standard of comfort while working 
 for the Master of the Vineyard under the direction of His 
 vice masters ; neglect your children and the Lord will take 
 them up; man should study the beasts, who die heroically 
 mute ; the fear of the Lord and the fat of the land are 
 never found in the same company ; if Blessed are the peace- 
 makers, more blessed are they who create strife, that the 
 peacemakers may have a job and obtain their reward ; the 
 rich man cannot go through the eye of a needle nor enter 
 the kingdom of heaven, therefore toil for your enemies to 
 make them rich and keep them out of heaven ; you will have 
 plenty Above if they remain Below, not otherwise ; — I am 
 willing to be regarded as an enemy of all mankind, if they 
 will try to keep me out of heaven. 
 
 "I have noticed some of you conning manuals of hygiene ; 
 put them aside, health is inimical to holiness; the healthy 
 man loves life, therefore go work in a factory and you will 
 soon see God; set not your affections on the things of this 
 world, for none of them belong to you ; give all that thou 
 hast to the rich, for if you do not they will soon take it 
 av/ay from you ; praise God for suffering and disease, those 
 beautiful possessions of the poor, out of which the worms 
 of saintly sorrow that refine and devour the soul grow; 
 
I RESTORE HAPPINESS 8/ 
 
 blessed are the seeds of consumption, for like our rich they 
 blossom into great monopolists of life ; if you would awaken 
 people to the conviction of sin and the melancholy certainty 
 of religion, destroy their health — though to call their child- 
 ren from the slums below to the palaces above may answer 
 in the poorest families; I shall apply these ideas with de- 
 votion to you. 
 
 "These are general remarks, preparatory to a few horta- 
 tory observations on the value of money. The value of 
 money consists in saving it. For five minutes every week 
 you are rich; hoard your possessions carefully during that 
 time, for the state of your mind is then no less exalted than 
 the billionaire's, who has more and keeps it longer ; it is the 
 quality of sentiment, not the quantity of money, that unites 
 men ; he whose quantity of profit is a cent a year may have 
 the same quality of sentiment as that brother whose annual 
 profit is a hundred millions, if he is a Christian Scientist. 
 Praised be God for the eruption of Christian Science and 
 Buddhism, for those whom sweet Christianity does not 
 make contented with misery and millionaries these opium- 
 theologies will; preserve the stench and horrors of this 
 world that the mind may increase in agility by denying 
 them; a steak in the millionaire's stomach and the million 
 dollars in his pocket are really in yours if you can piously 
 think so; but what of the millionaire's hunger and empty 
 pocket when you have thought his food and money out of 
 him into yourself? He must think them back; — in this wise 
 one million dollars and a single tenderloin steak may be 
 thought around the world through every pocket and 
 stomach, and all be rich and fed. This is the safest way 
 to steal, as well as enabling the rich by eating everything 
 there is to bless the poor. 
 
 "Both you and I are capitalists in our hearts, altho there 
 is a small discrepancy in the material amounts we have; 
 we both want more, and therefore our souls rattle together 
 
88 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 in the unison of speculative similitude. Remember the sac- 
 redness of property and be not envious of a fellow capitalist 
 because he has more than you ; if you save the memories 
 of the gold that you so fondly caress on pay-days and put 
 them in the savings bank you may sometime be as rich in 
 memories as I am in realities. By an inscrutable dispen- 
 sation of God which it were profane to inspect — since it was 
 invented and given to the human race by brutally ignorant 
 ancient savages and is therefore holy — a somewhat larger 
 share of gold falls to me than to you ; that is nothing so 
 long as you have sonic ; if you were wholly deprived, it 
 would be your pious duty to create a disturbance, and I 
 should lead you in an attack upon defunct tyrants, feudal 
 systems, and other dead things, to establish your inalien- 
 able right to a few substanceless ghosts of the good things 
 of this world. We should find the tyrants in the North 
 Pole and the feudal systems in the past ages, and should go 
 forth in a blithering fury, with flags and lurid patriotism 
 and a conquering shout, to exterminate both. (Most of 
 you would not come back. You would leave your patriot- 
 ism and yourselves to parch by the side of the prehistoric 
 mummies you had slaughtered.) But now you have all 
 the good things possible to a free people, and crusades and 
 purgative French Revolutions are needless, for gold inun- 
 dates your palms for five long thronging minutes a week. 
 "I discovered this darling substance, I molded the plan 
 which made these picks and shovels ours, and, you being 
 only physical instruments of my will in the transaction, all 
 we get becomes mine. God works in these peculiar ways, 
 perhaps to amuse himself, and certainly to bring us all to 
 a state of repentance : he makes us all repent that he exists. 
 Only the work of the scheming mind deserves reward. You 
 must see that God's will is done, for the bible shows that 
 He easily becomes ugly. Let nothing tempt you to take 
 my gold, to preserve which the ten commandments were 
 
SOME SUPERFLUOUS RINYOS 89 
 
 written; should you take it you would destroy your right 
 to possess your gold for five minutes, when you would have 
 nothing and would sink back into the abject misery where 
 I found you, without sores, God, the hope of an early death, 
 and an immortal life of unconsciousness. If you invade 
 my property right you invade your own. I charge you, 
 brethren, by your faith in the Most High, of whom I will 
 tell you more when business slackens, uphold the glorious 
 privilege of money which now for the first time in your 
 history blackens your horoscope." 
 
 My sweetly reasonable words sank deep into their dark 
 diaphrams. At the end of every week I delivered over 
 their share of their week's work, and to the King and the 
 great ones their manyfold larger share for doing nothing, 
 which with truthful honesty and blushing pleasure they all 
 returned to my strong box in payment for my generous loan 
 of the shovels and poles. I pointed out that my services 
 as director and overseer of the digging were of high com- 
 mercial value but that I threw them in as a free gift, and I 
 think this unexpected munificence brought me more pure 
 love from their guileless bosoms than even my sermon on 
 economic principles. Nevertheless I was cautious to an- 
 chor them with another fundamental impulse to the rock 
 of gain; I contracted that if they worked faithfully and 
 made no trouble I would raise their salaries by adding one 
 minute every three months to the time of their holding the 
 gold. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 Some Superfluous Rinyos 
 
 There w^ere unfortunately not enough picks, shovels and 
 other implements to supply all the men with tools, and this 
 
90 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 threw me into a distressing perplexity. Before I began to 
 pay wages I had no objection to the surplus individuals who 
 were without tools scratching around with their finger-nails 
 and getting out what gold they could. They obtained quite 
 enough to pay handsomely for their keep, and as I did not 
 allow them to use it for that purpose but appropriated it to 
 myself their toil supplied me with a respectable yield, tho 
 nothing for me to care much about compared with the rest. 
 However, I saw no reason, moral or material, why they 
 should not be permitted to keep at it, with the privilege of 
 eating the bits that their women collected for their food by 
 night. It was not that they had any right to live under 
 these circumstances, but as they cost me nothing, besides 
 being the source of considerable revenue in the aggregate, 
 my good nature and Christian theology ruled in their favor. 
 Let them potter along, reflected I magnanimously, they are 
 probably more cheerful alive than dead, and Africa is an 
 out-of-the-way place where the bad example of their limited 
 usefulness to me cannot demoralize the white man. 
 
 But this generously negligent attitude could not continue 
 after the short-sighted batrachians had begun to exact 
 wages of me. My duty to their brethren with the shovels 
 who were turning out the enormous profits I wanted would 
 not endure this. To pay equal wages to these two sets of 
 men when one of them produced so much and the other so 
 little, would be disgracefully unjust and had only to be 
 thought of to be rejected, as not only basely unfair to me 
 but wickedly so to those Rinyos whose use of shovels and 
 picks enabled them to be the large producers. 
 
 It was very easy with a little figuring to decide what just 
 wages for the toolless would be. To be strictly fair I 
 measured the sum of gold secured by a certain number of 
 the tool-workers, and by the same number destitute of the 
 implements, and found the former to be fifty times more a 
 day, so that by irreproachable economic and Christian 
 
SOME SUPERFLUOUS RINYOS 91 
 
 principles and arithmetic the wages of the toolless should 
 be a fiftieth part of those paid to the rest. 
 
 The tool-users' wages, as I explained before, just paid 
 for the use of the tools, for the rent of the holes in the 
 rocks in which they slept when it rained, for the rent of the 
 ground they slept on when it did not rain, and finally for the 
 fragments of food collected by their children and wives in 
 the night. A fiftieth part of these wages, to which the tool- 
 less by digging gold with their fingers and toes were en- 
 titled, would therefore pay for a hole one-fiftieth large 
 enough to sleep in, which would by no means cover one 
 of their feet, for only the same fraction of ground space for 
 them to lie down on, so that they would have to sleep stand- 
 ing up, and for only a fiftieth part of the food necessary 
 to sustain life. I was willing to pay them this amount of 
 wages, but what was the use ? Such wages would only yield 
 them a fiftieth of the strength after a few days, so that the 
 product of their work would drop to practically zero. Be- 
 sides, since, when earning no more than that, they would 
 soon die, it was better to cut the agony short and discharge 
 them at once and altogether, when death would sooner 
 overtake and tenderly release them. One can escape from 
 some things, but never from mathematics, so I arrived with 
 hopeless certainty at the afflicting conclusion that there was 
 no way for these superfluous people to live. 
 
 At this debilitating discovery, as I need not inform you, 
 my sensitive heart prompted me to shed streams of incon- 
 solable tears, and I turned the subject over in my mind a 
 thousand times in the longing to discern some way of evad- 
 ing the rigid decrees of structural cosmic righteousness by 
 which to prolong their lives. I reasoned thus in the vain 
 endeavor to find a solution : 
 
 Food for them to live on is plentiful and it costs me 
 nothing. I cannot eat it, nor can I permit the whole Rinyo 
 tribe to do so, to whom I already allow all that they earn. 
 
92 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 Since these toolless workers do not net me a large profit, 
 why should I not free them entirely from laboring for my 
 gain and give them liberty to spend their time gathering 
 their own food? 
 
 Against these propositions the whole integrity and an- 
 tiquity of my ape-engendered intellect, supported by the 
 laws of a still more antiquated Divine Reason by which I 
 was illumined, of course cried out. I feared also that the 
 unfortunates might see this point, too, and level it at me. 
 The answer ought assuredly to be very evident to an honest 
 pagan, or to one duly humiliated by religion. If, ran my 
 ruminations, I liberated the resources of life and allowed 
 these five hundred shovelless superfluities to collect their 
 food directly, exempted from toil for me, they would have 
 to work but a little of the time to gain more and better food 
 than the gold-gatherers enjoyed, who worked terrifically 
 the entire day. Any one can see the direful injustice of 
 this to the gatherers, who, "rather than less, deserved the 
 greater reward, because of their shining usefulness in in- 
 creasing my wealth. Apart from this unthinkable injustice 
 it would create a dangerous and explosive jealousy, for the 
 diggers with tools, seeing the others getting a very good 
 living without working for me, and working only very mod- 
 erately for themselves, would begin to ask why they should 
 work fearfully hard for my benefit, for the reward of an 
 exceedingly bad living. Being savages brilliantly endowed 
 with a stupid inability to grasp civilized perceptions, it 
 would be very hard to make them comprehend why. 
 
 Policy, no less than science and righteousness, demanded 
 therefore that the superfluous Rinyos should die. It did 
 cross my mind that I might suffer these needless wights 
 to take the place of some of the others part of the time, 
 during which they should use the shovels and picks while 
 the others were at rest, but I expelled the notion instantly 
 as dangerous to the morals of the workers. Idleness is the 
 
SOME SUPERFLUOUS RINYOS 93 
 
 worst foe of a working class. Workingmen rot morally if 
 permitted time to think. It also gives them an opportunity 
 to learn the pleasures of other things besides labor, which 
 they have no right to know, since it robs their employer of 
 some of their working strength. 
 
 I now prepared to convey my decision to the tribe as af- 
 fectionately as I could, and I called Milto to me to play 
 his part. 
 
 "Let us bring in the clergy," said I, "there is nothing that 
 can cause men to starve with such vivid satisfaction as re- 
 ligion." ♦ 
 
 King Milto thereupon ordered his First Official Hypo- 
 crite and all the subordinate Idol-Trainers into our pres- 
 ence, when he commanded them to employ their most beati- 
 fied and serpentine arguments to convert the superfluous 
 Rinyos to a conviction of the public necessity of their death, 
 and promised to raise the salaries of the clergymen if their 
 cunning prevailed. By my permission, in fact, he assured 
 them that a hundredth part of the food consumed by these 
 surplus persons should, if their religion did its duty, be 
 divided among the clergy after the surplus had ceased to 
 eat, were dead, and redeemed. 
 
 I think the promise of a thousandth would have sufficed, 
 for the clergy squirmed gleefully at the offer and began in- 
 venting nebulous reasons on the spot why the various gods 
 they did business with required the immediate presence in 
 Eternal Gladness of the wasted devils I wanted to dispatch. 
 When you remember that a strict Rinyo article of faith was 
 that all their gods were considered dead as a measure of 
 public safety, that these dead creatures should have exer- 
 cised a wish is quite African in its touching mysticism. 
 
 The formal discharge of the superfluous, into which I 
 infused some ceremony for general unction, was rather a 
 shock to the discharged, who knew it meant death, and they 
 had the impoliteness to come in a body and disturb a siesta 
 
94 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 that I was taking at home to recuperate from the sorrow 
 I felt for their fate. Their pleadings bored me, it was quite 
 improper of them to interrupt my rest when I had already- 
 wept and prayed for them ; but I let them jabber awhile 
 for the sake of free speech, and when I could waste no more 
 time with them I turned them out of doors forcibly but 
 without anger, advising them to go into the woods and eat 
 each other one by one, drawing lots who should go next, 
 as the pleasantest way to terminate their existence. 
 
 "And," said I in parting, "it will help you very much if 
 you accept Christianity. God is working out a great plan 
 which I have considered and approved, of which your com- 
 ing starvation through a dearth of shovels is a feature. 
 Note the nicety of universal intention ; the scarcity of 
 shovels in that caravan was a very vital item in the infinite 
 scheme. The plan of the universe may be rasping to creat- 
 ures of your degraded dimensions, whose principal func- 
 tion, like that of the worm, is to be trampled on by the plan 
 as it proceeds, yet I assure you that your being trampled 
 on is what provides the meaning and pleasure of the plan. 
 The Super-Power gave you capacity to feel for the pleas- 
 ure of seeing you suffer. But being walked on by the uni- 
 verse never hurts Christians, for they are trained to enjoy 
 it. They are grateful to the universe for crushing them. 
 Of course, tho, if you embrace Christianity you will never 
 see your ancestors again for they died in sin and are 
 damned." 
 
 I hoped I had seen the last of them, and it seemed that 
 such was the case. They disappeared and all was quiet for 
 some time. 
 
THE TERROR 95 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The Terror 
 
 Things went so well now that occasionally I appointed a 
 state holiday for the transaction of such public business by 
 the King as might have fallen into arrears through his assid- 
 uity in my service. He usually had a few subjects whom he 
 desired to execute and I did not feel it to be good statecraft 
 to have such punctual duties much delayed. 
 
 On one of these holidays about two months after the van- 
 ishment of the superfluous Rinyos I was sauntering over the 
 metropolis delighting in the curious sights, and happened 
 to be near the capitol building, when a disturbance in its 
 vicinity caused me to hasten my steps toward that stately 
 edifice, which was built of green mud. Something of 
 unusual and terrible import was stirring. Fully two thou- 
 sand of the hugest giants of the Kingdom, whom I recog- 
 nized as the State Police from a great circular piece of 
 bark stuck upon their breasts with gum as their official 
 badge, all armed with the massive truncheons of their trade, , 
 were collected in a threatening attitude before the State 
 entrance, while a mighty throng of spectators were assem- 
 bled at a respectful distance awaiting some event with the 
 deepest expectancy. 
 
 This was a remarkable proceeding, awakening in me the 
 gruesome suspicion that the King might have conceived 
 the pestilent project of rebelling against my yoke, in which 
 event there was no time to lose. Forcing my way through 
 the crowd of passive observers I advanced with stern out- 
 ward composure and quivering interior toward the heavy 
 cordon of guards at the palace portals. No sooner did they 
 see and recognize me advancing alone across the opening 
 than W'ith a splitting scream of delight every one of the 
 two thousand policemen fell down backwards with arms 
 
96 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 and legs rising parallel and perpendicular into the air, and 
 remained there stark and silent awaiting my orders. Much 
 relieved by this acclamation of allegiance, tho yet more 
 mystified, I commanded them to stand, after my passage, 
 and to resume their clubs, which they had dropped as they 
 gyrated themselves, and strode across their rigid forms 
 into the lofty vestibule, where I entered the royal tub and 
 was drawn up to the King's private reception room. 
 
 The effulgent monarch was at one of the front windows 
 of the executive chamber as I entered, peering down into 
 the park below from behind an enormous snake-skin cur- 
 tain which concealed him from view, and he was so gript 
 by terror that he would have collapsed if four royal eunuchs 
 had not supported him on each side, somewhat unsteadily 
 however, for they danced about hysterically, bumping their 
 demented heads now into each other and now into the 
 sacred substance of the King. 
 
 When Milto saw me he tried to speak but could scarcely 
 do so coherently. 
 
 "They come!" shuddered he, dropping the curtain and 
 covering his face with his hands. 
 
 "Who come?" queried I. "What is this deuced ruction 
 about ?" 
 
 The sublime King could not reply, because his tongue 
 refused to move; he could only point feebly out of the 
 window. 
 
 "The malcontents. Great Savior," whispered one of the 
 royal eunuchs. 
 
 At this I hastily tore the curtain aside and beheld a 
 sight that would have petrified the bravest heart, particu- 
 larly if clad in authority. A strange and terrifying object 
 was proceeding toward the stately entrance of woven 
 swamp-grass and sun-baked clay over which the two thou- 
 sand policemen stood guard. I could not at first distin- 
 guish its character, tho as it squirmed forward I concluded 
 
THE TERROR 97 
 
 it to be a savage monster of colossal magnitude and a 
 species unknown to me which the people dared not attack. 
 Just then Milto recovered himself sufficiently to issue a 
 hurry order to one of the eunuchs that the policemen below 
 should bellow violently to frighten the invader away. In 
 a few moments the building shook with the frightful roars 
 produced by the guard, who rendered the noise more hor- 
 rible by thumping on the resonant earth with their clubs. 
 
 All this din had no effect, for the leviathan came on 
 undismayed. A few more minutes of shattering suspense 
 followed, when it reached a point where I could decipher 
 its structure. It was a compact body of emaciated men, 
 who sustained themselves on their feet by leaning together 
 in a mass, the tottering weight of one side of the group 
 propping up the other side, as two men tipping with drink 
 support themselves by embracing each other when either 
 alone would fall. Not much but bones and facial expres- 
 sion remained of these wasted beings, while as to strength 
 they retained none, or barely enough to stagger slowly for- 
 ward. In number they were about four hundred and fifty 
 altogether. 
 
 "Have they smallpox, cholera, or what, that they frighten 
 everybody so?" I demanded, hoping the King might have 
 recovered the power of a few syllables from his general 
 paralysis. 
 
 "Far worse," twitched he, his sublime teeth masticating 
 themselves with the force of a mill, "it is Hunger! They 
 are the superfluous population that you cast out, returning 
 for vengeance." 
 
 I now saw there was much to fear, and I felt a sickening 
 dread of what might overtake me because these miserable 
 beasts did not acknowledge the principles of Wall Street 
 and God and die as directed. The peppery spectacle of 
 such shredded remains of men was liable to inflame the 
 whole population, except of course the great, who were 
 
98 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 above it. An African inflammation, lacking the cooling 
 aperient of culture, may forget its manners. A hungry 
 man in a sedentary city soaked in the slime of civilized law 
 may die on a park bench at 3 A. M., crustless, when an 
 active African surcharged with the glowing memoiies of 
 fight and slaughter may turn with contempt of court upon 
 his lawful starver and kill him. In that hour of solemn 
 crisis I would have given the Supreme Judges of the United 
 States ten percent of my plunder could I have had their 
 talented aid in ripening the illegal tissues of the children 
 of primal falsehood about me. As I looked into their simple 
 perceptions I saw down the v/indows of hell. I find I can 
 always tie up an evolved nature in the loose threads of its 
 own development, but the simple natures just born out of 
 the primordial are cruel obstacles. They see and cannot 
 think; the culture-coated think and cannot see. And they 
 hit back. I hate a simple nature that hits back. The 
 gaudiest triumph of civilization is that before a man can 
 hit back by law he is dead. Were I going to Africa for 
 gold again I should send $50,000,000 ahead to generate a 
 university to prepare the inky souls for my coming. They 
 would then starve with a scientific comprehension of their 
 duty to do so. 
 
 Now every chuckle-headed Rinyo in the diocese knew 
 that there was food in prodigious plenty all about, with no 
 reason comprehensible to common sense why these shrunken 
 starvelings should not eat it. The savage has no sense of 
 humor and that places the Christian, who conducts his deal- 
 ings with comical Christian cunning and playfulness, at a 
 great disadvantage when alone among savages. I had 
 several times noticed a savage tendency to take the Christian 
 joke of starvation too seriously and it worried me now. 
 
 The starvers had by this time reached the lower door so 
 that I had no time to meditate further. Milto was on his 
 knees begging me piteously to save him, his vast frame 
 
THE TERROR 99 
 
 cracking with tremors; the eight royal eunuchs, the King's 
 seven private secretaries, and his Chief of Pohce had been 
 lying on the floor ten minutes in a dead faint while the 
 above reflections were occupying my mind. The royal valor 
 was manifest over the cowardice of these caitifi's, for the 
 King did not faint and had sufficient presence of mind to 
 embrace my knees and repeatedly implore me convulsively 
 to save his life and throne, with a voice suffocating with 
 sobs. 
 
 "Now, Milto," I said, "do as I tell you and all will be 
 well" — tho I was not so sure of it. "Calm your fears, dry 
 your tears, receive these dying emaciants with the mien of 
 a sovereign, and try your best to hide from them and the 
 populace that you are in mortal fear for your life. Quake 
 as it were haughtily to deceive them." 
 
 "Oh ! Oh !" wailed His Sublimity, "go down and meet 
 them for me, you have the armor of a thousand theories 
 in your breast and I am naked." 
 
 "No, my dear boy," I answered, "we must use finesse. 
 The time has come for stratagem, and I will stand behind 
 you with all the theories named. Listen to my instruc- 
 tions. Receive them with deep sympathy, assure them that 
 you feel for them, promise all the help in your power, 
 declare with blinks of sorrow that you will carefully exam- 
 ine the laws on the subject of allowing surplus men to eat 
 surplus food, point out with gulps of woe that the Rinyo 
 Constitution stands in the way of your doing anything for 
 them that you do not want to do, and that our Congress 
 of Ancient Quacks prohibits everything else ; be solemn, 
 majestic and slippery : then come away and we will kill them 
 off one by one by delays. The imbecile multitude will think 
 we mean what we say, and if we can secretly tempt the 
 starvers to steal a few vacant bones or a pig's tail, or to 
 break into some butcher's cave, or put a stone through a 
 plate glass window, or to make a little noise, we can insti- 
 gate the common people to pounce on and slaughter them." 
 
100 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 This program acted magically on j\Iilto, and he hastened 
 to execute it by a conference with the skeletons, with the 
 wise foresight however of throwing over his head and body 
 a gigantic lion-skin with the teeth ominously exposed, and 
 by placing himself in the center of a human circle composed 
 of his bark-badged club-swingers fifty deep, who formed 
 a compact mass of protection around him so that he felt 
 partially safe. 
 
 I awaited the end of the conference with concern, know- 
 ing that my career was in the balance. If these scurvy 
 vagrants refused to die in an orderly and constitutional 
 manner, I should be at my wit's end to know what to do 
 about it. for the light of human experience shone no far- 
 ther. The civilized surplus always die when commanded 
 to do so to vindicate the perfection of human society — 
 what should I do if the sodden savage shied at the privi- 
 lege? 
 
 The King returned chapfallen and pallid, showing that 
 he had failed, and he brought me the dying men's ultima- 
 tum. They declared they would not stir from the public 
 place unless food were supplied ; they insisted on seeing me 
 immediately w-here they were ; and they required that I 
 should make them a provision of food for the future, either 
 with work or without it. 
 
 The memorial ended with these atrocious words : 
 
 "You told us that we were out of work because we were 
 not Christians, that if we believed on your god Christ he 
 would provide for us, that no true believer on him was 
 ever in want. So we went home and believed ; we became 
 Christians and implored his help ; we went on believing and 
 expecting with all the belief and expectation in us for two 
 months ; fifty of us died of that belief and the rest of us 
 have hardly body enough left for a belief to cling to ; no 
 help came, and we saw that all of us would die if we 
 continued to be Christians and that your Christianity was 
 
THE TERROR loi 
 
 a cheat; nearly dead tho we are, every one of us is com- 
 pletely cured of your Christ-God disease. We know by 
 trial that no god helps the needy, and we do not believe 
 there is a god. You have babbled of god to us to humbug 
 us into obedience." 
 
 Shocked and grieved at this flippant blasphemy I tore 
 this part of the document to pieces that it might not fall 
 into the hands of other heathen to endanger their salva- 
 tion. Christianity never failed to reconcile civilized work- 
 ingmen to starvation, and it wrung my heart to find it shaky 
 for doing as much for the savage. 
 
 Affairs in the street at this instant reached a very critical 
 stage indeed. Attracted by the unusual occurrence increas- 
 ing crowds had collected, among whom, aided by some 
 flashing Rinyoese profanity, the story of their comrades' 
 starvation caused by my refusal to give them work was 
 being bandied about. Their passions, too, were beginning 
 to sizzle to such a degree that unless I could soothe them 
 with a few precious insights I was likely soon to be tram- 
 pled into the pavement. 
 
 Sustained by truth I went out resolutely to face them. 
 They were abashed by my presence and the fierce shout 
 they tried to raise died away miserably on their quavering 
 lips, but the spokesman of the starvers, a very fiend in 
 appearance from long fasting and the recent ravages of 
 atheism, delivered himself thus, very curtly and uncouthly, 
 with none of the titles of admiration which, while thor- 
 oughly despising, I detected to have a euphonious lilt for 
 the ear: 
 
 "Allow us to use some of the shovels and picks part of 
 the time, thereby enabling us to earn food and giving the 
 relieved workers periods of rest to gather strength for 
 harder work when they resume their tools. Your income 
 can hardly be less from this plan, for both groups, being 
 fresher, will do more while they work. But if it is less, 
 
102 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 we live ; and we consider our lives more valuable than your 
 income." 
 
 "My pretty fellow," cried I, " — I hesitate to call you a 
 ghostly dunce for fear of wounding your emaciated sensi- 
 bilities — you are not the ones to decide what your life is 
 worth, it has long since been settled throughout the world 
 that that is the business of the man who hires you. You 
 positively seem to have no more comprehension of business 
 principles than an angel. I degrade business principles 
 by talking with you, but I will do so since you are only a 
 heathen African. Pray, why should I support two lots of 
 men when one lot can do the work? Wouldn't the food 
 of the second lot be a useless waste? What business is it 
 of mine what becomes of that second lot of workers? I 
 am only called on to support those I have work for." 
 
 "Glorified One," stammered he, humbled by my merciless 
 logic, "it is rumored that you are the supported one, sup- 
 ported by these workers. If they are willing to support you, 
 does it concern you how many of them join to do it? If 
 a thousand of them can sustain you more easily than five 
 hundred, and all the thousand get a living for themselves 
 too, are you not satisfied?" 
 
 "By no means," I roared, "for I can allow only that 
 number to support me from whom I can derive the best 
 support and extract the most wealth besides. This is the 
 Science of Being Supported, popularly called Political 
 Economy because politics are always used to economize 
 the food of the workers, and a supported person would be 
 a baboon indeed if he allowed his supporters to dissipate 
 on their own stomachs wealth he might have. Not only a 
 baboon but one quite ripe for a lunacy commission." 
 
 I felt his pulse and continued: 
 
 "Be honest with yourself a minute, for you will soon be 
 at the mercy of One Who Abominates Foolish Thinking 
 And Punishes Fools : if these micro-minded Rinyos were 
 
THE TERROR 
 
 103 
 
 suffered to connect the idea of rights to anything at all 
 with their own stomachs, where would it end? Wouldn't 
 every roaring rogue of them soon be saying that he had 
 a right to as much food and as much gold as I?" 
 
 Thereupon the cantankerous beast let himself out in the 
 following farrago : 
 
 "We claim the right to have work wherewith to earn our 
 food. Food is abundant. We declare the Law of Food to 
 be that every one has a just right to a share of food equal 
 to that of every other person, if he is zvilliiig to zvork, 
 whether you grant him work or not. Wherefore we have 
 made up our minds to take food from you or any one who 
 has it if you refuse us work." 
 
 I gasped as the dying man hysterically ejaculated this 
 nauseous drivel. "Bosh" was on the end of my tongue 
 but I retained it. The knave was ages ahead of his time, 
 and by blurting out the naked truth like that had certainly 
 lost the sympathy of the whole tribe ; while as for taking 
 food from anybody, his tottering tissues could not have 
 done so from a butterfly. 
 
 "You are an anarchist," said I in a very loud voice. 
 "You deserve nothing after venting such inflammatory 
 drool ; whether you receive anything shall be left to the 
 people," — whereupon I repeated his insolent speech to the 
 assemblage. 
 
 How could the situation have shaped itself more merrily 
 to my purpose? This man had proclaimed his right to take 
 food from us all : now it happened that all the people had 
 far less than enough, and if the smallest quantity were 
 taken from them they would suffer ; I, however, had a great 
 plethora and could feed the entire nation well without 
 depriving myself. But just here was the snare in which 
 I caught them: if the people admitted the starving man's 
 right to take food from me who would not miss it, they 
 seemed to admit also his right to seize food from them, 
 
I04 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 who would miss it frightfully — so they were all much 
 angered at the idea of his taking it from anyone, and were 
 fiercely incensed against the spokesman, at whom they cried, 
 "Down with the anarchist!" (without knowing what it 
 meant). "Death to him!" which neatly saved me. 
 
 So in excellent spirits I delivered the outwitted spokes- 
 man over to them, to be dragged off to a high eminence 
 and pitched down upon the jagged rocks below, to bleach 
 there until the centuries should catch up with him. It was 
 better for him to be dead, for, born so long ahead of his 
 time, no one could understand him, and loveless and mate- 
 less he was destined to wander the bleak world alone. I did 
 him a kindness to chuck him out of it. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 Better Than Bullets 
 
 After this little comedy it flashed into my mind how to 
 deal with the survivors. 
 
 "Work," observed I caressingly, waving the populace to 
 close about me in an open-mouthed human wall far-stretch- 
 ing and greedy for knowledge, "is no man's right, as the 
 departed fanatic who was just with us probably now sus- 
 pects. The proof of this virtuous universal law is Nature's 
 unfailing association of believers in the right to work, with 
 jagged rocks, police clubs, prison cells, guillotines, gibbets, 
 gatling guns and other visible manifestations of nature's 
 convictions. These things always follow an advanced man 
 as burns follow fire, revealing nature's design that we should 
 keep enlightened thoughts out of our heads, in which I 
 agree with nature. If every man had a right to work, 
 coupled with suitable pay for it, w^e should be unable to 
 hold the poor in their place; no man could get rich by 
 
BETTER THAN BULLETS 105 
 
 keeping others poor, for as no workers would be out of 
 work, no employer could force down general wages by 
 threatening to hire the workless in place of his workers 
 at less pay." 
 
 "Tremendous !" acclaimed the populace ; "there must be 
 men out of jobs, we see it now, dear Master; that's one of 
 the prices we pay for having you, and we know very well 
 that if you didn't pay us wages we should all die." 
 
 "That you would," echoed I, "speedily." 
 
 "But how are you going to satisfy the workless with their 
 situation?" asked they, "a situation so necessary to your 
 wealth and our lamentable want?" 
 
 "That's easy too," affirmed I, "with a little reasoning. 
 And now since your hearts are again juicy with love, and 
 your minds duly sensitive to the iniquity of justice, I will 
 tell you how. 
 
 "You knew not the true aim of life and had experienced 
 neither happiness nor virtue before I came. I taught you 
 that the noblest aim of being is to make some one else rich ; 
 here, I am the one ; it is by laboring for that sanctified end 
 that you become happy and virtuous. Otherwise your joy 
 is froth and your goodness crime, and I might say your 
 whole life is as vain as a boil. Is this clear?" 
 
 "And sparkling as wine," they boomed. 
 
 "Now there is one very common mistake made by men 
 in passing up into these alpine theories of rarified happiness 
 and I fear you arc making it. You seem to think, as many 
 uncultured people before you have thought, that life is 
 necessary to happiness — which is a chaotic error that some 
 workingmen are especially addicted to. Take my word for 
 it, you can be just as happy dead as alive, and happier if 
 your religion does not leak, for religion notifies us that the 
 best happiness is kept in a refrigerator in the sky awaiting 
 the arrival of our corpses. Dear souls, as a common man's 
 daily virtue consists in going without what he needs, his 
 
jo5 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 supreme virtue lies in going without life for his betters' 
 sake, which we often remind him of by taking it away from 
 him. We find that death trains him to enjoy being dead; 
 he develops an instinct for staying dead. These combina- 
 tions of bones that are clamoring for food there, are blind 
 to the happiness they enjoy in being permitted to die for a 
 great cause. As I remarked, I am that cause. 
 
 "Now let us scientifically examine the absurdity of their 
 rebelling against such a mission. The science of it, beloved 
 children, is as follows: 
 
 "When a system of society is changed, those who cannot 
 fit in ought to be very much disgusted with themselves to 
 go on living in everybody's way, selfish hindrances to the 
 happiness of the new system. 
 
 "There is science enunciated in ultimates. Reason here 
 reaches the philosophical union of oneness and circumfer- 
 ence ; science achieves the Absolute, skins it, stuffs it, and 
 rests in it forever. 
 
 "From the above mighty induction an inference no less 
 than this is deduced : Civilization joins with religion in 
 the transcendent postulate that a workingman's life is worth- 
 less, and its one redeeming action death, when it pleases 
 the rich." 
 
 In reverence for science I paused and mopped my brow ; 
 the shoals of Rinyos who had pursued my keen synthesis 
 with lurid delight trumpeted assent. 
 
 "However, I shall not insist on the happiness of these 
 murky-minded tramps who spurn the matchless pleasures 
 of death. It shall depend on you. I can give them no 
 work, because I will not be unjust to you. Were I to de- 
 prive you occasionally of the picks and shovels for their 
 use for a time, you could not earn enough to live in the 
 happy state of semi-starvation to which I have assigned 
 you. I can give them no food, for, whatever crimes may 
 gibber at my door, I refuse to commit that most execrable 
 one of pauperizing the paupers. 
 
BETTER THAN BULLETS 107 
 
 "But I will not force death on them. I grant you all 
 permission to give them a remnant of your lean victuals — 
 of which you already have far from enough — if you desire 
 to do so in defiance of the law I shall make that they must 
 not ask for it, disregarding which will entail a hundred 
 lashes and jail on the culprit." 
 
 I held up my hand to check the volcanic applause elicited 
 by this generosity and continued : "I do this to teach you 
 christian charity, your poverty of which appals me. The 
 foundation of christian charity is that you shall allow me 
 to take the larger part of everything in order to make a 
 handsome host of sufferers for you to help. If I did not 
 seize everything there would be no sufferers and no oppor- 
 tunity for charity, when Christianity would die of having 
 nothing to do, so that the existence of Christianity rests on 
 me. You see, I am a divine institution. It pleases Buzz- 
 rack to have sufferers helped, but not much helped, for 
 people think of Buzzrack only when they are suffering; 
 and thinking of Buzzrack is religion. If helped a little 
 they imagine that Buzzrack is the helper, and, pleading 
 for more help, they keep him in mind. Therefore the great- 
 est benefactor of mankind, and Buzzrack's best friend, is 
 he who creates sufferers. I came here largely for that 
 purpose. It would be wrong for me to assist these evanes- 
 cent human skin-sacks, for that would take away the privi- 
 lege of doing so from you : the blessing comes only when 
 those who have next to nothing help those who have noth- 
 ing. 
 
 "But here is a point that will be of service to the brighter 
 intellects : if any of you by the hypnotic action of eloquence 
 upon your neighbor's emotions, or by the promise that he 
 will receive a duplex heavenly reward, can induce him to 
 give these stalwart beggars twice his share, you need give 
 nothing yourself." 
 
 The crowd of potential rioters dispersed, engrossed in 
 
Io8 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 discussion of the new ideas I had given them, each trying 
 to induce the man at his elbow to present the surplus starv- 
 ers with a porcupine's neck, a chicken's bill, an eagle's 
 claw, or some other morsel of delicacy to eat, so that he 
 might not have to give anything himself, meanwhile leaving 
 the dying ghosts in the square quite unattended, with noth- 
 ing but a contribution of general human kindness cut in 
 thin slices to subsist on. Everybody looked upon these 
 evaporating paupers as persons to escape giving anything 
 to, while getting the credit on earth and in heaven of hav- 
 ing generously supplied their wants, which was the covert 
 design I had had in addressing them. 
 
 Several of the workless in fact now died on the ground 
 before my eyes, upon whose shadowy incarnations the police- 
 men swiftly jumped to eat the remains raw, but they could 
 find no vestige of flesh anywhere on the delinquent frames 
 to console their teeth. They would probably all have died, 
 being too weak to get home, if a new illumination had not 
 possessed me. I ordered a couple of cans of dishwater 
 and garbage from the nearest hotel and issued permission 
 to the sufferers to eat. 
 
 "The State is merciful," commented I, "and its bowels 
 of compassion cannot allow you to die yet. Come around 
 to the mines tomorrow and I think I can still make you 
 useful." 
 
 They came as ordered, their wives and children carry- 
 ing the weakest of them. Choosing a broad-topped boul- 
 der where the sun beat spitefully down, so large that they 
 could all group in a huddle on its crest, "Stand there,*' said 
 I, "before the eyes of the rest while they work : it will 
 show them what a privilege they enjoy in having work ; 
 for if I did not furnish them work they would be where 
 you are. You are an object-lesson of my sleepless kindness 
 to your companions, whom I graciously permit to toil and 
 make me a multi-billionaire. When they see your ghastly 
 
BETTER THAN BULLETS 109 
 
 plight they will adore me as the giver of their happiness, 
 and will toil harder lest I should take away their job and 
 reduce them to what you are." 
 
 The starvers thanked me with tears and happy cries for 
 making them useful again and giving them a cause to 
 exist, if only as mere skin, also inquiring, very decently, 
 how they were to live while they carried on this occupa- 
 tion. 
 
 "Let me consider," answered I, musing. "You may beg 
 what you can get of the workers if you will do it on the 
 sly. If you are seen begging I shall have to let you do time 
 in jail for six months and feed you on 'a common w^ingless 
 parasitic insect, with a flat body, and short legs furnished 
 with claws,' which you will be authorized to gather from 
 the jail walls and your own personalities. It will be an 
 appetizing contest to see which consumes the other first. 
 I inflict this punishment because if the workers are bitten 
 by the fancy that they can live well like you by begging 
 they will all drop work and turn beggars too, which, be- 
 tween you and me as honest men, I would do if I were in 
 their places rather than toil my head off for somebody else 
 as they are doing." 
 
 They agreed to this and cheerfully applied themselves 
 to their new profession, tho thinking their wage a little 
 slim. At this juncture I assembled the workers in a separate 
 place alone to give them a private tip to this efifect : 
 
 "^'These fellows," explained I, "who profess they cannot 
 get work and are certain to beg for your help, are really a 
 pack of lazy liars that do not want work and would not 
 do a stroke if they could get it; they would dodge a job 
 if they thought it liable to hit them; you can see this by 
 the size and rectitude of their exhibited bones, of which 
 I never saw finer living specimens uncovered. Work is 
 running after them all the time and they are running faster 
 to get away from it, in spite of the fact that their weak- 
 
no THE HORROBOOS 
 
 ness is such that they can just walk. When these merry 
 hoboes soHcit alms remember that most of them are impos- 
 tors and don't be taken in. As there may be a few deserv- 
 ing ones among them you can give a small dole here and 
 there, but with discrimination, first dissecting their stomachs 
 to corroborate their statements if possible." 
 
 I nevertheless made my hearers clearly comprehend that 
 there were many more workers than were needed, to hinder 
 them from demanding an enlargement of their pay. Nor 
 did I try to reconcile this assertion with the one that the 
 starving surplus were idle because they were lazy, and that 
 they could work if they wished — there was no need of 
 reconciling them. The barbaric black mind prefers its ideas 
 loose and roving, and is so roomy that mutually slaughter- 
 ing notions can swim around in it without finding each 
 other. The white mind is not like this. 
 
 I had now completely steeled the people against these 
 expiring wrecks, so that never again could there be danger 
 of a rising in their behalf. It is truly wonderful what our 
 Western charitable ideas will do when sagaciously stacked. 
 They coil about and prostrate the savage intellect like chlor- 
 oform. It is a mistake to suppose that whiskey and the 
 christian venereal diseases are the best means for exter- 
 minating savages : whiskey and christian charity adminis- 
 tered by upright minds are far more efficient. I can vouch 
 for this from my own success. I even got along perfectly 
 without the whiskey, but I have a better grasp of christian 
 ideas than most. To deal correctly with idolators the 
 choicest thoughts of our humanitarian thinkers are better 
 than the choicest soft-nosed bullets. Wherever bullets are 
 resorted to I consider that brains and christian principles 
 are wanting. But where brains and character are absent, 
 as they are from most civilizers, I advise the use of bullets 
 that spread as they go in. 'They have an impact ball and 
 small air chamber inserted in the point, making the expan- 
 
BETTER THAN BULLETS HI 
 
 sion positive. They are quite different from the usual 
 "soft-nosed" or mushrooming type of bullet. The ball acts 
 as a wedge with scientific accuracy and compels the metal 
 jacket to expand the instant it strikes a soft tissue. It tears 
 a large wound, which is sufficient to bring down the heathen 
 by blood loss alone.' But the moral objection to them is 
 that while they open ample holes for the soul to escape 
 they carry no attachment for saving that eternal entity on 
 its way out. A text of scripture might be packed in each 
 bullet but for the expense. These bullets act more con- 
 cisely than grog and I concede are nearly as infallible as 
 the christian harem diseases. Yet they are all very much 
 like combing the hair with a hayrake, compared with the 
 scientific transports I feel from watching my civilized doc- 
 trinal poisons extirpate the savages' various powers while 
 still permitting their desouled bodies to walk about alive. 
 
 My victory in the instance just cited was complete. At 
 the same time, for the purpose of soaking the superfluous 
 Rinyos with a reverence for the State embodied in me, I 
 had the garbage and dishwater hauled up to their rock 
 every third day. There was soon a vile epidemic among 
 them which carried off three hundred. I had now the 
 choice of saving the garbage to enrich the soil of Africa or 
 of creating another batch of superfluous appetities to take 
 their places, nor did I hesitate. I had learned that the 
 horrible presence of these unused men as an overhanging 
 threat to the rest made all the latter work as if the devil 
 were pronging them, from dread of getting there them- 
 selves ; so when the three hundred died I discharged three 
 hundred more into idleness, to go upon the loathsome rock 
 and take their turn with the plague, giving as a reason for 
 doing so that the picks and shovels were wearing out too 
 fast. 
 
 Tho the pest continued its distressing business on the 
 rock I had no fear of the contagion reaching me, since I 
 
112 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 lived well and maintained excellently virtuous habits. The 
 appearance of consumption in a very expeditious form 
 among the workers displeased me more, because a general 
 depopulation of the realm would shrivel my income. Con- 
 sumption is a well-known moral agency needing no word 
 of praise. It is the safest adjunct of Christianity for de- 
 populating the unnecessary poor, as our capable tenements 
 in my dear American fatherland show. 
 
 Prosperity was now incarnate. I found that ghastly 
 rock, the hideous perch of the rotting surplus workers, 
 more potent as a power for good than a thousand whipping 
 posts could ever have been for the purification of the slave. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 RiNYO JMarriage 
 
 As time sped the King and his subjects, besides their 
 interesting and instructive crop of new diseases which I 
 studied closely, taking voluminous notes for the benefit of 
 science, thinned notably, and the great chief was less jubi- 
 lant and talkative than of yore; so that I had almost to 
 drag him out of his palace on Sundays to get him to take 
 the air. 
 
 'T never could understand those sheets of leaves strung 
 about between the trees by your women and torn down 
 by the wind every time it blows, only to be repaired at 
 infinite trouble and hung up again. I notice your female 
 population does hardly anything but gather the leaves and 
 weave and reweave them." 
 
 "Oh," smiled Milto with something of his old fire, "that 
 is the natural occupation of women, it is what determines 
 a woman's quality, those who have the largest number of 
 leaves sewn together at any time rank highest amongst us. 
 
RINYO MARRIAGE II3 
 
 Rank or quality is thus founded upon the true principle 
 of the wind and changes with every storm. Some have 
 pieced together fifty thousand leaves between blows ; they 
 climb into the trees with the agility of monkeys and strip 
 them one after another, causing many to die, as you can 
 see, which we sadly regret but cannot prevent without de- 
 priving our womenkind of the magic of life." 
 
 "Are these leaves of any use?" I questioned curiously. 
 
 "Is it not of the greatest use to perform a task which 
 requires unspeakable labor and excels everybody else and 
 is universally admired? Besides, our men select their 
 wives on this principle. There is a famous rush to marry 
 the woman who has woven the broadest sheet of leaves. 
 If a storm comes tomorrow and reduces her to the lowest 
 insignificance by destroying her magnificent possession, it 
 is always remembered that at one time she had very excel- 
 lent blood in her veins ; contempt for her family decay is 
 mingled with a morsel of pity, and the best of it is she at 
 once goes diligently to work to repair her lineage by twin- 
 ing another patchwork of foliage. In this she is aided by 
 the husband, who beats her if she is idle and compels her 
 to sew while he sleeps, for it adds great luster to his person 
 to have a wife with a wide sheet. The husbands also con- 
 trive incantations which they use with great power tho 
 I know not with what effect against winds. When a storm 
 is approaching they repair to the trees where they place 
 themselves in front of their wives' handiwork on the windy 
 side and hurl their charms at the storm, each begging it to 
 strike his neighbors' property and spare his own." 
 
 "I have intended to study your marriage system when 
 trade should permit, and I infer that it is closely connected 
 with wind." 
 
 "That is its basis," said he, "and we regard the family 
 as the foundation of society. Wind is therefore the ulti- 
 mate rock of our national stability. There would be a ter- 
 
114 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 rible eruption of licentiousness if human passions were not 
 restrained by tlie wind." 
 
 "How is that?" I exclaimed, not quite crediting the vibra- 
 tions of my tympanum. 
 
 He replied : "A woman is supposed to be devoid of vir- 
 tue who does not own a fabric of leaves above a certain 
 size suspended in the trees, and whether married or not 
 she is then exposed to general insult, from which more- 
 over by our laws she cannot protect herself tho it be 
 most abhorrent; but when her leafy curtain again reaches 
 the dimensions required by virtue, her purity is restored 
 and all men observe a courtly and even cringing reverence 
 in their demeanor to her — so ennobling is the power of the 
 feminine when sustained by leaves. Storms are the dead- 
 liest enemy of womankind, for by these their virtue and 
 fortunes fall." 
 
 "What do you do if she breaks the law and repels the 
 solicitous ?" 
 
 "Put her on bread and water, gradually lessening the 
 bread and increasing the water, in which she is obliged to 
 stand, until she is induced to realize her dependence on 
 the sovereign scorn of men. Sm'guth ! if she will not yield 
 then we let her die, for we do not want that kind of women 
 in our tribe. They would be spreading their immorality." 
 "How does her husband take this?" asked I, feeling a 
 shrinkage of self-complacency over my previous ignorance 
 of the world. 
 
 "He assists in her punishment. In fact he is ashamed 
 of her and considers himself maritally liberated until she 
 restores her leaves to the proper standard." 
 
 "You must curse the storms and hate nature !" I groaned 
 sympathetically. "Oh ! embrace civilization, learn its better 
 way, where those who love once love forever and expect 
 to continue doing so when they are dead unless the pro- 
 prieties of heaven are opposed to it." 
 
RINYO MARRIAGE 1 15 
 
 Milto dashed his head violently against a stone three 
 times, which was equivalent in that tribe to crossing him- 
 self, and his eyes eddied wildly, turning their balls so far 
 inward that one imagined he was able to see into his own 
 mind. "Curse the storm!" he murmured, simulating a 
 swoon for a few seconds. "What have I done to cause you 
 to blaspheme in my presence and tempt the wrath of God 
 upon my stainless people? The storm is our preserver. 
 Except for the storm our men and women would be obliged 
 to remain together in nauseous wedlock, suffering the 
 pangs and tortures of mutual hate after their love had died. 
 The blessed wind comes and tears away the material struc- 
 ture of the leaves to which merit is hung, and society is 
 directly liquefied again, to recrystallize anew according to 
 the laws of true affinity and worth. We thus avoid the 
 shocking degeneracy that would follow if we established 
 a family on one achievement in leaves and made it lasting. 
 The wife must continue to struggle and grow ; every wind 
 is a new stimulus to her progress, to reproduce, preserve, 
 and increase what she has won. If this were not so and 
 a woman, having once placed herself in the front rank of 
 society, enriched her blood and elevated her character 
 through the great size of her umbrageous texture, could 
 retain her eminence and hand it down on a memory, she 
 would soon become a worthless jade, idle, fat and proud 
 of a bursted bubble, with a brood of lazy, detestable spawn 
 at her ankles, having transmitted nothing but a pulpy body 
 and soggy mind to these silly poodlets, who would shortly 
 bring the tribe to annihilation by neighbors with more 
 scientific marriage ideas. Do not curse the storms." He 
 ceased speaking and toyed with one of the bosky appur- 
 tenances of the higher life. 
 
 "It is a most delicate work," I admitted, examining it 
 with candor. "I notice that all the leaves are fitted with fine 
 precision in the same manner to the width of a hair. This 
 must also be designed." 
 
Ii6 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "It is, for in it lies the excellency of the art. Unless the 
 various parts of each leaf are joined to those of others in a 
 correct style it is not regarded as a screen and the hapless 
 artificer is still a nobody." 
 
 I went through a mental debate on the ethics of speak- 
 ing further to a wild African on the chaste subject of human 
 sex. I learned afterward that some tribes are more refined 
 and susceptible concerning the mention of this delicate dis- 
 tinction than are we ourselves ; that no difference between 
 men and women is recognized in their vocabularies from an 
 exalted native modesty transmitted from the orang, and that 
 the young are severely rebuked and punished by their 
 parents if they make an allusion to nature before they are 
 thirty years old. The subject of anatomy is never allowed 
 to enter the schools and doctors may not practise prior to 
 their eightieth year. I was delighted at this nicety and 
 thought these people might very well have moved in our 
 most cultured society. 
 
 "There is some correspondence between this art of leaves 
 and the science of licking, if my mind is clear," said I ; 
 "they both seem to be highly exact, each intricately com- 
 plicated, each the supreme object of the life of a sex, and 
 they are equally useless. Do I imagine this rightly?" 
 
 "You do," he assented rapturously. "These two objects 
 are the very quintessence of our tribal being, after eating 
 and killing. Our prominent lickers, those with the most 
 eminent poles, aspire to connect themselves in marriage 
 with the exalted ladies who possess the largest fortune in 
 leaves, and these high women proudly disdain inferior males. 
 So it is that our tribe's best blood ever mingles and we 
 continually produce new generations of more cunning lick- 
 ers and more artful weavers." 
 
ASTOUNDING INSTITUTIONS 117 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Astounding Institutions of the Horroboos 
 
 King Milto often spoke in terms of rapt affection of his 
 bosom friend Emperor Griffelak, one of his nearest neigh- 
 bors, commanding a kindred tribe one hundred miles away, 
 with whom he had been educated in the same university. 
 As his health grew delicate his mind became pensive and 
 these references to his friend more frequent. A change, 
 thought I, would do His Majesty good, for if I am not 
 careful of him he may not last out the gold season, and 
 the loss of the queen bee would disrupt my speculations ; 
 so I proposed that we should take an outing and pay a visit 
 to this great section of the Horroboo nation, toward whom 
 I also was drawn by his wonderful accounts of their ad- 
 vanced institutions. 
 
 "The Guardians of Food can take care of the works for 
 a short season," I said to him, "and while the people are 
 busy at their daily toil they will not get into mischief, tho 
 I and you are away. Do not worry about the mines, wages 
 are high and everyone is contented, and we have no base 
 social agitators in our midst daring enough to flood the 
 diggings." 
 
 Milto consented with blubbering alacrity, the color re- 
 turned to his cheeks and he looked quite regal once more. 
 So one day, mounting two dromedaries and taking on foot 
 a large retinue of women for purposes of state, we ad- 
 vanced toward the mighty emperor's domain. I omit sev- 
 eral strange incidents of the journey to plunge at once into 
 what hai)pened when we arrived. Milto and Grift'elak 
 carried on together like young kids. Having no equals in 
 their own realms they could indulge in none of the ordinary 
 and innocent pleasures of mankind unless some neighbor- 
 ing emperor came to spend the day at play with them 
 
Ii8 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 I had latterly declined all arch familiarities with Milto 
 since rising above his level, to keep him in his proper place. 
 The august potentates now relaxed; they rolled together 
 on the sod, raced, wrestled, shinned up trees, stood com- 
 petitively on their heads as a test of mental strength, and 
 vied with each other which could lift the larger number 
 of men with their teeth. To decide their valor two power- 
 ful barricades of timber were erected, from behind which 
 they hurled stones at each other for several hours, thereby 
 honorably proving themselves equal. A great hunt was 
 ordered for the afternoon of the first day. Two hundred 
 youths drove in a herd of wild and dangerous hogs from 
 the wilderness; these they rounded up and held together 
 with a fierce band of African dogs of a special Horroboo 
 breed more ferocious than tigers and nearly the size of 
 horses, while the intrepid monarchs fired arrows at them 
 from the limbs of a tree which were regally cushioned and 
 backed in Amboggan plush (the Horroboo make), until 
 the entire battalion of savage brutes was slain. It was 
 thrilling sport. All the court ladies were present in lower 
 trees. 
 
 The following day was passed inspecting the institutions. 
 The first to which I was introduced was the Institution 
 of Fat Men. of which the Emperor could not speak without 
 an outburst of vanity quite offensive to our Caucasian 
 reserve. 
 
 'T noticed that you have a number of spherical people," 
 said I, "but did not know they were an institution. I should 
 think from appearances that you would call them the Insti- 
 tution of Male and Female Globular Abominations." 
 
 "So we should," Emperor Griffelak replied, "if we did 
 not here consider it immodest to use the term 'female' ; 
 none but me and the Medical advisors of the realm are 
 permitted to speak that sound." 
 
 The imperial city was peculiarly laid out. It was a col- 
 
ASTOUNDING INSTITUTIONS 119 
 
 lection of circles, each one being the home of a special 
 class of society, numbering in all sixteen. The perfection 
 of the social formation is there attested not only by the 
 great number of classes which they enjoy but by their 
 extreme distinctness one from the other, and by another 
 circumstance which made me wonder how long civiliza- 
 tion would lag in the rear: for it is not permitted to those 
 of one order to pass over into the circle of any other, the 
 sense of distinction has been carried so high that the pub- 
 lic roads are divided into sixteen parallel parts within which 
 each class is rigidly confined in its perambulations. If they 
 transgress they are required to submit themselves to a 
 painful process of purification, of no less thoroughness than 
 a brief boiling, afterwards they are exposed to the sun and 
 wind while any remaining particles of pollution or impro- 
 priety are removed. There was one deviation called Fat 
 Men's Way, a remarkable avenue reserved exclusively for 
 the emperor and the highest class, surrounding the royal 
 palace of bamboo and palm-leaves which nestled, charm- 
 ingly hidden among trees, in the heart of the town. Just 
 outside of this was the circular abode of the far-famed fat 
 people, which dififered from the others in that it contained 
 the smaller circle at its center, wherein this imperial resi- 
 dence and its encompassing driveway were located. There 
 was a motive in this, tho it was not divulged till my famil- 
 iarity with the institutions authorized, which was to keep 
 the Emperor and his conduct under the sharp espial of the 
 Fat. The noble monarch possessed fifty-nine other palaces 
 which he never used, their purpose being to sustain the 
 dignity of the crown. 
 
 The Fat Men's Way, or Imperial Avenue, not less than 
 forty feet wide and well- traveled, was at the time of our 
 inspection crowded with an astonishing assortment of 
 human figures passing and repassing in either direction. 
 Upon platforms made of cross poles and resting on the 
 
I20 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 shoulders of natives were squatted, or reclined upon their 
 backs sleeping, the fat ponderables who seemed to be the 
 life of the town. These personages weighed from five to 
 eighteen hundred pounds each ; on some frames a man and 
 woman sat together, on others a single sex alone ; the small- 
 est number of carriers was twelve, and they ranged up- 
 ward to fifty who bore the weight of two vast specimens 
 of the higher life having exactly the appearance of immense 
 shining black sea animals and weighing together not a 
 grain less than thirty-six hundred pounds. Their clothing 
 was the customary fiber around the waist, but their jet 
 black bushy hair made amends for the absence of linens, 
 jewelry and silks. It was very thick, wiry and stiff, and 
 twined together by natural growth to stand out an aston- 
 ishing distance from the head in all directions and upward, 
 forming a canopy impenetrable to the rays of the sun or 
 to cloud-bursts, and useful in the recumbent posture not 
 only as a pillow but for a mattress under the upper part 
 of the body ; while in cold weather, when in a squat pos- 
 ture, the owners could nearly cover themselves with this 
 beautiful black fleece of nature. At the head of each was 
 a woman kneading and rubbing the scalp to make the hair 
 grow still more, while each head contained a conspicuous 
 bunch of feathers numbering accurately just the pounds of 
 the personage's social weight. Those who reclined, and 
 they were the majority, were in this position from inability 
 to sit up. 
 
 My feelings warmed toward these excellent savages, in 
 whom philanthropy and altruism had developed in this 
 wonderful manner, and I jotted down in my notebook what 
 I should say to my own countrymen to shame them into 
 more generous care of their indigent sufferers. 
 
 "This I suppose is your hospital, Griffelak," I said, touch- 
 ing my nose to his in approbation, their especial mark of 
 amity; 'T have never seen love carried so far as this on 
 
ASTOUNDING INSTITUTIONS 121 
 
 any part of the present planet or elsewhere, and you know 
 I have traveled extensively. It is only on my family estates 
 in the suburbs of Eternity that you will witness the strong 
 sacrificing themselves for the weak. There love is sweet 
 beyond earthly premonition ; the greatest lovers are the 
 grandest nabobs, because capacity to love is the measure 
 of magnificence ; and all are seeking new potencies of love, 
 since no better springs of happiness have been discovered 
 by the shrewdest investigators of delight. But here below 
 business operations take precedence and we have no leisure 
 to be happy in that wretchedly slow godlike way ; it would 
 be a loss of time and money, and we have to leave these 
 beautiful raptures to callow savages and celestial angels 
 whose time is cheap, who have neither stores nor steam, 
 and who do not yet realize the sacred obligations of com- 
 merce. Wc have the ecstacies of mercantile phrensy, which 
 would be quite a study for the gods and angels in their 
 present low stage of evolution. What rare nobility for 
 your good men — they are your clergymen I suppose — to 
 carry your poor invalids up and down on their shoulders 
 in the healing air. I could wxep at the sight. It is truly 
 heroic, for the wretched creatures I perceive are sufifering 
 from a contagious leprosy incident to tropical climates and 
 the overconsumption of their friends, of which I have read, 
 and I never saw such a sickening decomposition of human 
 corpulence upon partially living bones before. But allow 
 me one question : how can so many of your people afford 
 to devote their days to this affectionate tendance, how can 
 they secure their own livelihood while doing so? It must 
 be a nasty drain on the labor strength of the empire, and, 
 if I may say so courteously, a rather too exalted manifesta- 
 tion of love for the economic plane which your tribe has 
 reached. Or perchance these blessed ministers are your 
 millionaires who, having absorbed all there is, are now 
 devoting themselves to higher things." 
 
122 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 Griflfelak glittered from head to foot with incandescent 
 pride, and repHed with that impressive grandeur which 
 characterizes the least acts of the royal and great : "You 
 have a wonderful insight; love is indeed the chief substance 
 of our tribal nature; the strong delight to sacrifice them- 
 selves for the weak by permitting themselves to be carried 
 in this condescending manner ; there is truly a most ex- 
 panded feeling of love within them toward those who carry 
 them ; but, Divine Sir, this is not a hospital, the bearers of 
 these plump gentlemen and ladies are not ill nor are they 
 rich, they are not performing this menial service for their 
 health or to save their souls, — it is to earn a living. And 
 as to its being a tax on the labor power of the empire for 
 them to be so engaged, really, Esteemed Sky-dweller, it 
 is quite the opposite, if it were not for these fat benig- 
 nancies, to give the carriers occupation and nutriment, I 
 do not see how the poor devils would live." 
 
 "How is this?" I inqiiired. "Do you mean that these 
 disgusting fat monsters, who are so enormous that they 
 can hardly stir a leg, support all this retinue of able-bodied 
 attendants? How can they support others when they are 
 unable to support a fraction of themselves?" 
 
 "It could only occur where the system of justice is per- 
 fect," he replied. "I have traveled among all the tribes of 
 Africa and find none so advanced as ourselves. Listen and 
 I will teach you the doctrine of justice quickly. But first 
 sever your spirit from false modern logic, which is a trap 
 we have abolished ; we reason according to the eternal rules 
 of thought- vision, which objectively creates what it men- 
 tally sees, and sees what it wants to see; we have a mind 
 after our own hearts. These rules were anciently imparted 
 to us by our sacred rabbit, our blessed interpreter of the 
 mind of god to men." He settled himself and began. 
 
GRIFFELAK UNCOVERS SOCIETY 123 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Griffelak Uncovers the Foundations of Human 
 Society 
 
 "Our food you must know consists, in addition to casual 
 foreigners, of an earth-burrowing animal peculiar to these 
 parts, our mainstay, in whose capture half of the tribe is 
 regularly engaged. It is entirely owned by the fat powers 
 which you witness. But for their generosity the tribe would 
 starve, to say nothing of the helpless creatures who carry 
 them up and down and who would never obtain a crust if 
 this labor were not provided for them. The philanthropic 
 fat stretch love to the extreme of human nature to keep 
 their laborers alive; it is our religion; the doctrine was 
 taught us by our greatest lawgiver, who lived seven hun- 
 dred thousand years ago, knew water from land, and had 
 stolen his information from the gods when living as their 
 butler in a previous existence." 
 
 'Tt may be the very perfection of justice," said I, "and 
 one of your fundamental economic doctrines on which prob- 
 ably thousands of books have been written by your college 
 professors in a most deadly style, as I suspect from having 
 bored through hundreds of the same kind in my country, 
 but what is to prevent these attendants from going out to 
 catch food for themselves?" 
 
 ''That is a deep and matter and requires much learning," 
 replied his Imperial Grandeur. "The argument may seem 
 to you to leap here and there like a frog, but if you are 
 educated you will be able to quickly gather up the hops 
 and make a chain of thought. You must first know that 
 the regular food-catchers collect as many animals as we 
 need : food beyond that quantity is plainly valueless, for 
 no one can use it and you do not pay for unusable things. 
 That is self-evident, as well as being contained in our Book 
 
124 "^^^ HORROBOOS 
 
 of Unutterable Truth, wherein all wisdom is condensed. 
 Now since the Fat Super-Men own all the food, whatever 
 is caught must be submitted to them before anything is 
 done with it. If superfluous food, or more than they think 
 is needed, were fetched in, as it would have no value they 
 would give nothing to the capturers in return for its cap- 
 ture, and as it is their own property their duty would be 
 to take it from the catchers and hold it. The poor hungry 
 catchers having wasted their time in useless effort would 
 then have no food, and that is why they would be obliged 
 to perish of starvation if some other labor were not invented 
 to keep them alive. For that reason they are magnani- 
 mously engaged to carry The Fat, for which they are paid 
 enough food to keep their muscles from quick death. Could 
 a Super-God be kinder?'' 
 
 "Most correctly and profoundly reasoned, Pride of the 
 Universe," said I, "but tell me this also: If the food brought 
 in is useless to everyone else and would keep the getters 
 of it alive, I should think it a sensible reason for letting 
 those who have gone to the trouble of finding it keep it." 
 
 "Outrageous!" shuddered Griffelak, "a very upheaving 
 doctrine ! which would destroy our system of society by 
 knocking out the beams of speculation here and a pillar 
 of morals there ! But we might survive seeing our society 
 go if it were not overthrown by charity! Can't you see 
 how it would debauch these carriers if the game which they 
 might hunt and dig, being other people's game, were given 
 to them for the mere labor of digging or catching it? They 
 must pay some useful service to the owners to preserve 
 their self-respect from decay. But perhaps you think it 
 a small thing to destroy a system of society, perhaps you 
 think something could take the place of carrying fat men 
 as a foundation of things ; but you little know the de- 
 pravity of man if you believe it. Carrying the fat is the 
 hub of our tribal chariot, our whole theory of life revolves 
 
GRIFFELAK UNCOVERS SOCIETY 125 
 
 about it, it is the source of our food and the fountain 
 of our happiness, for to see our beloved fat prodigies 
 transported up and down the avenue is our grand national 
 pastime and pride : deny us that ennobling recreation and 
 we might as well live in the heart of a desert, or among 
 the slovenly pigmies without an empire to crow about. 
 Beware how you suggest the overthrow of institutions, 
 the solid laws of nature would crash malevolently upon 
 our heads if the fat ceased to be carried, men would refuse 
 to believe in the reality of a personal diet, they would jeer 
 at appetite, scout the immortality of the stomach, grow 
 pessimistic of recuperating sleep, turn skeptical of all reali- 
 ties but murder, bury themselves alive in the settled faith 
 of breathing better underground, all would be chaos again 
 and bewildered nature would grind its elements into star- 
 dust to give the universe a new start. Beware, I say, 
 beware." 
 
 It was my turn to experience terror before the brink 
 I had staggered upon. "Might not something worse hap- 
 pen?" I whispered. 
 
 "Yes," answered this mighty Caesar in a voice that 
 soughed and moaned through the internal horrors of my 
 imagination, "if these carriers were permitted to go game- 
 catching and to keep the game, they might even indulge 
 the monstrous dream that they own the animals themselves, 
 which would devastate the precincts of property, smash 
 morality to elemental atoms and wash my eternal empire 
 out of space." 
 
 All three of us now stood for a long time trembling, our 
 knees and teeth chattering an infernal chorus. When the 
 music died away I resumed the conversation by asking 
 what the Fat Feeders would do with the superfluous ani- 
 mals if such were brought in. 
 
 "Try to eat more than they usually do," answered he, 
 "and have the rest piled in an enclosure for decay." 
 
126 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "But how about those tribesmen who, you say, are regu- 
 larly engaged in digging out the animals," I insisted, re- 
 solved to follow this intricate custom down to its roots; 
 "do they not own and hold what food they collect by their 
 own hunting?" 
 
 Griffelak bathed me in his liquid blue eyes to assure 
 himself that I really had not mastered their economic 
 system yet, while his delicate features were chiseled with 
 patience. "No," he resumed, with his fascinating stately 
 gravity; "wouldn't that be subverting the imprescriptible 
 rights of the Fat in the very way I have shown ? Whether 
 they dig, or carry the eminent fat, is all the same; they 
 can have only so much of the game as the Fat who own it 
 give them, of course, and that depends exclusively on the 
 latters' emotion. The emotion of the fat immeasurables 
 plays an amazingly mighty role; it is the fourth founda- 
 tion of the empire: myself, my throne, my fat men, and 
 the emotion of the fat, as we call it, — that is the order of 
 the foundations of our social edifice." 
 
 "I should like to hear why the emotion connected with 
 fatness is so eminent a force." 
 
 "How can you ask? Is it not the first law of God that 
 the emotion of those who own the Food controls every- 
 thing? It decides the welfare of the tribe in grand and 
 minute things, determines the quantity of food to be doled 
 out to the populace, settles for what ends all men shall 
 be allowed to use their strength, and so ordains our fam- 
 ines, plagues, diseases, birthrates, deaths, play, leisure, 
 duration of work, wages, acts of the legislature, and in 
 fact everything, from the adulteration of food and the 
 poisoning of the meat supply to the value of stocks, and 
 in a word every detail of happiness." Thus answered the 
 knightly monarch gravely. 
 
 "Indeed," rejoined I, "it appears to be a prodigious sin- 
 gularity for so late an age of the world, and if my private 
 
GRIFFELAK UNCOVERS SOCIETY 127 
 
 secretary were at hand I would give him a few sugges- 
 tions with which he could prepare in my name a very orig- 
 inal essay on 'The necessity of The Fat Few for the 
 existence of The Lean Many,' which would probably win 
 me a professorship in the University of Africa, Oxford, 
 Berlin, or Chicago, or whatever learned cavity of the 
 globe I might choose to mummify in. My last secretary 
 wrote three brilliant books for me while I was on a little 
 sojourn in Venice. He was in America. I sent him the 
 titles and told him to go ahead, and write what he pleased, 
 with orders to wire me if any of his ideas were too deep 
 for him, and I gave him the sweet liberty to express his 
 own opinions life-sized, provided he did not outrun the 
 originality acceptable to the publishing trade. He had 
 been a college president who inadvertently said what he 
 thought on a certain lamented occasion when he was down 
 cellar and supposed that the house doors were locked. 
 When I found him he was supporting himself as a tramp, 
 in fact he came to my backdoor to beg permission to pull 
 a few weeds out of my garden for a breakfast, which at 
 first I steadfastly refused on account of my loyalty to the 
 Associated Charities, of which it turned out that he was 
 one of the national founders. 
 
 "My friend, said I, I am very tender hearted and I wish 
 to do you good, but can you tell me one righteous thing 
 of which indiscriminate giving is not the bane? I do not 
 know you, nor your wife, nor your grandmother ; they 
 may all have been drunkards, and you may be an illegiti- 
 mate child for aught I know. You use good language, 
 but you have probably learned it in order to deceive me. 
 And then I read to him some of his own previously pub- 
 lished words on the subject of charity: 'What these well- 
 meant philanthropies do in the way of pauperizing their 
 objects, in the way of undermining individual resolution 
 and sapping the sturdiness of individual character, must 
 
128 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 be taken into account no less than the temporary allevia- 
 tions with which they are to be credited. The sum of 
 immediate human suffering is so great at all times, and 
 its evidences so apparent, that it is difficult for the tender- 
 hearted observer to remain philosophical in its presence, 
 yet we are morally bound to hesitate in coming to its re- 
 lief, if by so doing we are helping to perpetuate the condi- 
 tions which give it birth. That this danger is a real one 
 is a conclusion now so well established by sociological 
 investigation as to be beyond the reach of controversy.' 
 Now, my boy, continued I, you are a pauper albeit a very 
 learned one, if you speak the truth, and you were formerly 
 high-placed and respectable; it is possible you were the 
 president of the very college I graduated from, but that 
 is neither here nor there. You have placed yourself beyond 
 the reach of controversy, you purpose to upset the philoso- 
 phy of my attitude for the selfish end of making me sap 
 the sturdiness of your individual character merely to 
 appease your hunger, you are attempting to undermine the 
 well-established conclusions of sociological investigation in 
 your petty personal behalf for no worthier object than a 
 slice of bread : Aren't you ashamed of yourself ! Great 
 as your immediate suffering is I am morally bound to 
 hesitate. Sociologically I can give you nothing. It is my 
 Christian duty to turn you over to the police, or to give 
 you into the custody of Miss Dribble, National Secretary 
 of the Society for the Prevention of Giving Milk to the 
 Babies of the Poor for Fear of Degrading Their Mothers. 
 She will exhume your genealogy to learn whether you can 
 be helped without cheating the rich. This is the mission 
 of the Associated Charities. It is noble and kind of her 
 to do this, for it will use up thirty days of her valuable 
 life, and her salary for doing it is only two hundred dollars 
 a month." 
 
 "Oh, Sir," pleaded the wretch, "I was a great and pros- 
 
GRIFFELAK UNCOVERS SOCIETY 129 
 
 perous man when I wrote those miserable words, and it 
 never occurred to me to investigate what hunger was 
 before writing a treatise about it. I was influential, proud 
 and rash ; I wished to divert all benevolent funds from the 
 poor to my college; give me a crust and I will never write 
 on the principal subjects of my ignorance again!" 
 
 "Now is your time," I replied, "to exemplify your doc- 
 trines with resolution : what better thing can you do for the 
 world than to starve in behalf of the right channels of 
 philanthropy ?" 
 
 However, after standing in the door for some time con- 
 templating his shivering emptiness, with stern philosophi- 
 cal regret I began to be drawn to him and concluded to 
 temporarily alleviate his adversity at the risk of his refor- 
 mation and authority as a scientist with a little weak tea. 
 Cultured as he was, he was dirty from sleeping in barns. 
 What most prejudiced me in his favor was his wonderful 
 politeness, he being so polished at that time that he was 
 afraid to speak above a whisper lest he should offend some- 
 body. I had to place an ear trumpet near his mouth to 
 get the slightest idea what he was attempting to say. 
 
 "I took him into my house and had him washed and 
 subjected to a course of feeding, meanwhile having one 
 of my servants pump up his lungs, alternately inflating 
 and exhausting them with a bellows, to strengthen them 
 for audible conversation. When he had in some measure 
 recovered the use of his languages, of which he had nine, 
 and recalled to his features the vanished shadows of a 
 few forgotten smiles, I led him to a structure that adorns 
 my place for the free expression of opinion. Its walls 
 are several feet thick, padded with formidable layers of 
 embalmed literary eloquence warranted to kill both sound 
 and the germs of thought, containing neither window nor 
 door, and the entrance is through a winding passage under 
 ground starting downward from the bottom of my cellar, 
 
I30 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 where a brace of famished bulldogs guard the opening to 
 discountenance the curiosity of strangers. Having hoisted 
 the doctor up through the floor of this fortress and bidden 
 him to speak his mind bravely to the void I departed. In 
 the ceiling, by a deft contrivance of my architect — who 
 by the way is so much below me in social standing that 
 I never speak to him on the street and frequently cufT him 
 when we are debating architectural plans alone — is an even- 
 tempered machine for recording one's words and serving 
 them up unfeelingly on another occasion. You know not 
 these tell-tale incorruptible contrivances here, Griffelak, 
 and I am sorry. You could have your wife's words re- 
 engraven on your heart whenever they faded, without call- 
 ing her back. 
 
 "However, into this vocabulary-vessel the good presi- 
 dent unconsciously talked himself, being so delighted with 
 the sensation of courage that I could hardly draw him out 
 of the fort to his meals. I kept him in there eighteen 
 hours a day and resolutely forbade him the use of this hall 
 of heroism another minute in the twenty-four. A copyist 
 transcribed what he said out of the embalmer and I found 
 him to be a very polychromatical genius. He had many 
 honest ideas of his own, which he now permitted to escape 
 for the first time, and which led me to suspect that other 
 great professors might develop some rudimentary inde- 
 pendent thoughts if I could only get them into my trap. 
 To cut a long story short, for I know Your Exaltation is 
 wasting away to talk yourself, I published all he said under 
 the very seductive title, The Literary Explosions of a 
 Tramp,' which the public devoured with insatiable horror 
 and avidity, I was afraid to sign my name to it for fear 
 of violence from the government, and its authorship was 
 attributed to an organization of assassins, tho from internal 
 evidence the learned world proved it to be a buried copy 
 of the writings of one of those Chicago monsters so enter- 
 
GRIFFELAK UNCOVERS SOCIETY 131 
 
 tainingly hanged a few years ago for saying what every- 
 body is saying now, and by preaching which a recent presi- 
 dent rose to fame. Little mattered it to me, for I made 
 more out of it than Walter Scott earned in all his lifetime 
 of dingy industry. When the storm subsided a little I 
 acknowledged the authorship, explaining in the preface that 
 I was its sole, true and unaided originator. I felt no pangs 
 for stealing my secretary's work, for all writers of great 
 books do this now. True geniuses, poor dogs, must be 
 contented to sell their brains and suppress their names. I 
 don't say the Money Sack created all mind, but it owns all. 
 
 "My reputation was thus established as a transcendent 
 writer, which, on the strength of that brilliant book, it has 
 remained ever since. I am now able to emit the greatest 
 twaddle in book form on any subject or science I deign 
 to treat of, all that is necessary to revolutionize human 
 thought in that department being its emanation from my 
 supposed pen. I particularly enjoy these convulsions of 
 thought and sometimes launch several of them in the same 
 department of learning at the same time on conflicting sides, 
 to watch the sputter created. A great writer can be bur- 
 dened with no principles. To have human beings behave 
 like a body of minstrels each playing a different measure, 
 or like several unfriendly vortical motions in the same atom, 
 or like a group of dissonant souls combined into one per- 
 sonality, in a word to have all men idiots, dervishes or 
 devils, gives the author artistic tingles and something to 
 write about. So, being a great man, produced by high 
 heaven to amuse the world, it would be a pitiful weakness 
 for him to possess principles and to use them to shape 
 mankind into something better than idiots and devils. 
 
 "Sometimes I allow my gardener to write the treatises 
 and sometimes my coachman ; my butler does it best, how- 
 ever, for he is blessed with a most horrible indigestion 
 from overeating and emits the most startling hypotheses. 
 
132 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 My name carries the authority that sells the book. But 
 I have wandered from my university president. Well, 
 finding him a man of parts I presented him with a box of 
 blacking, loaned him a brush, and engaged him as my 
 amanuensis. He is now writing books for me at a salary 
 of ten dollars a week and boarding himself while I travel. 
 What were you saying when I interrupted? Oh, yes, that 
 the fat people's emotion governs everything with you, and 
 I thought that principle of government a little archaic if 
 not tangled. But go on as if I had not interposed a word." 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 The Terrible Potentate Teaches Me Political 
 Economy 
 
 "It is very simple," resumed the Emperor, who had 
 listened with charming attention to my remarks, "and espe- 
 cially does credit to the wisdom of our thoroughbred 
 cherubs — the fat. They have divided their emotions into 
 nine grades and thus with astonishing niceness determine 
 the welfare of a people: they are a food barometer divided 
 into nine parts. 'Nine' is the exceeding extremity of gener- 
 ous feeling at which, besides allowing the people as much 
 food as they need to eat, they confer upon them their cast- 
 off garments and a lock of their hair. The emotion of the 
 fat at this high pressure is nearly fatal to life, and for the 
 preservation of these our noble lamps of beauty and intel- 
 lect it is not expected to be felt over once in ten years. 
 When their emotion sinks to 'one' food disappears and we 
 have a terrible famine from heaven, there is wailing and 
 gnashing of unoccupied teeth, children die like grasshop- 
 pers, the wrath of God is upon us, which continues until 
 the gluttons' emotion begins to return. They hover be- 
 
THE POTENTATE TEACHES ME 133 
 
 tween two and four when they are what we call normal, 
 which is all the emotion our corpulencies can regularly 
 stand without harm." 
 
 "I suppose," I said, "that this is a manner of saying, 
 with exalted respectfulness for the fat gentlemen and their 
 pudgy consorts, as if their omnipotence caused the calamity, 
 that at certain periods the game runs scarce and all the 
 population fare without." 
 
 "Not at all," cried the Emperor merrily, "the quantity 
 of game has nothing to do with it, nor are we silly enough 
 in this cultured zone to invent soggy fictions to solace 
 empty stomachs. The food never runs slack, but from 
 time to time the globy censors seem to think that the people 
 are indulging in it too freely and shut off the supply, which 
 they can properly do because it is all theirs. I have known 
 thousands to die on such occasions and to breed our prin- 
 cipal plagues. The gluttons go on with their eating as 
 usual and the game hunters continue gathering the game 
 tho swallowing none of it ; what the amiable fat cannot 
 eat is by their order deposited in their enclosures to decay." 
 
 "By Hercules and Heaven !" I exclaimed in petrifac- 
 tion, "what is this I hear! I have never paid a visit to 
 the sub-cutaneous regions of existence where, I am told, 
 this is one of the sardonic novelties, without baptism and 
 allegiance to which I understand a man there is no good 
 devil, but this I declare is the first time I knew it to be 
 practised anywhere above ground. Tell me then, and do 
 not beguile yourself with my credulity as a bud in these 
 parts, do your food-finders go on collecting game and even 
 while they are in a dying condition from hunger for that 
 very food, deposit it in the private wicker yards of the 
 surfeited fat to spoil, because these bloated mammoths are 
 opposed to their eating it? Do you assert this?" 
 
 "You have hit the nail," grinned Griffelak. 
 
 "Then I say here in public, taking my life in my hand, 
 
134 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 fat or lean, cannibalism or gallows, it is the most refined 
 act of savagery ever perpetrated without the assistance of 
 newspapers," which I declared at near the top of my voice, 
 boiling wroth. 
 
 "Certainly it is," agreed His Highness; and would you 
 believe it? he seemed to fancy I had delivered myself of 
 a happy compliment to his country ! "Certainly it is ; we 
 are modestly proud of our refinement and the surpassing 
 advancement of our savagery. It is necessary for us to 
 keep our business standards steeple-high, if you under- 
 stand me, for we are much looked up to by the vulgar 
 races on all sides ; all the tribes within a thousand miles, 
 spellbound by the grandeur of our free liberties, are hasten- 
 ing to build uj) a fat stock to liberally oppress them as we 
 are oppressed." 
 
 Inasmuch as he was serious I gave my indignation a 
 douche of caution and clothed my moral ardor in the stately 
 equilibrium of the passionless scholar. Said I : "Feelings 
 are like birds of the air flying hither and thitherward, emo- 
 tion is but a chance wave of the psychic sea, an accidental 
 ripple in the foam of consciousness : do your brawny intel- 
 lectual folk accept these fleeting perturbations of a few 
 tons of half-living fat as the reverend cause of all their 
 weal and ill? Isn't this thunderingly casual and arbitrary, 
 if I may take a stormy illustration from chance and nature?" 
 
 "If you think so," Griffelak replied ; "you have studied 
 the marvels of soul and ghostly truth with a smoky tele- 
 scope. Do you venture to call the united emotion of these 
 loftiest mountains of our stock, our largest thinkers, our 
 mightiest feelers, our weightiest citizens, our first society 
 men and women, our smart set, who look more like gods 
 than men and have as many cubic feet of emotion in them 
 as cattle, dare you call their emotion casual, arbitrary, 
 bilious? Sir, a wink from one of these globules of glory 
 gives you a vested interest in the stars and a farm on the 
 
THE POTENTATE TEACHES ME 135 
 
 surface of eternity; after that honor you walk on stilts 
 lest your feet should touch the ground and again vulgarize 
 you. Divine oil! heavenly adipose! your emotion is from 
 Above. If you are lodged in a man's skin and can feel, 
 you represent an ordinance of nature, the will of the one 
 God. Is anything accidental in the universe? Have not 
 all things their fathomless cause in the abysmal caverns of 
 holy reality? Is not man's feeling a sacred signal from 
 the supreme essence? a wireless message from the vibrant 
 braincells of the All? It mirrors the placid eddies of the 
 purling mind of the Almighty, duplicates his sensations, 
 re-edits his sentiments, indexes his purpose, communicates 
 his will. We have appointed our noblest brethren to feel 
 for us all, they act but as conductors and depositories of 
 God's emotions, when they feel that we are eating too 
 much we know that it is God's feeling, when they feel that 
 a plague is needed to unflesh and depopulate us we recog- 
 nize it as a deep-planned dispensation of Heaven ; we go 
 to consult their emotions as we interrogate entrails con- 
 cerning destiny, the sky concerning storms, the rain con- 
 cerning water, and we bow meekly to their holy blows with 
 hearts bursting with thanks that God's ways to us are not 
 ambiguous." 
 
 "If you would call these emotions economic laws I should 
 consider you extremely wise," said I, "and should see 
 oceans of fish-sense in what you say, but so long as you 
 fail to name them properly the thing seems to me rather 
 a frog pond of idiocy. Economic laws are direct from God, 
 but where you wilfully insert a ganglion of human emo- 
 tions between, one cannot avoid the horrible suspicion that 
 there is some devil in the last delivery. Stick close to 
 economic laws, my friend, which are the most fashionable 
 
 ♦It Is unnecessary to inform the civilized that Adam Smith was 
 God's latest instructor of any note. He coached the Almighty through 
 difiScultles for a century. 
 
136 THE ttOkROBOOS 
 
 babblings of God since Adam Smith*; then you will be 
 as appropriately miserable as the most tortured creatures 
 with power to feel can be." 
 
 "Suffering!" bawled Griffelak. "Verily indeed! We 
 suffer for our discipline, that is why it is sent: it is the 
 untarnishable glory of our nation to have found this out 
 and made ourselves good and sublime by subjugating our- 
 selves to all the sorrow we can collect. We know from 
 the cruel anguish we feel that it is sweet for us to become 
 emaciated and die when our fat demigods are moved from 
 on high to restrict our food. This was also certified by 
 our great lawmakers in mephitic antiquity." 
 
 "When these famines come do the fat ones also deny 
 food to Your Majesty?" 
 
 "Of course not, for I am supreme and perfect without 
 starvation. Starving can only improve the poor." 
 
 "Being passionately in love with the beauty of anguish 
 for the Kingdom of the Fat Men's Emotions' sake, I 
 think your good people prefer stripes and torments and 
 shackles and tribulations and racks to a square meal in 
 paradise, if The Fat ordain them, and would joyously 
 refuse to eat terrapin in their last hours of hunger, if some 
 one stuffed it into their mouths against the orders of the 
 Obese." 
 
 "You are right," said the Emperor; "the popular rever- 
 ence for religion and the Law of Emotion would prevent 
 them from eating in that case. Your Economic Laws we 
 know nothing about, but we sometimes call our Gluttons 
 the 'Laws of Divine Emotion,' to indicate the serious, 
 necessary and eternal character of their feelings. They 
 who starve are so thoroughly in accord with the starvation 
 system of things that they would uphold the decrees of 
 the gluttons against themselves in the face of armies and 
 navies, and would go to their death fighting for the right 
 of the Fat to starve them. That is another sure proof that 
 the gluttons' consciousness is founded on the Eternal." 
 
HORROBOO GRANDEUR 137 
 
 "It is an excellent thing to call this emotional principle 
 laws of some kind," said I. "Laws have a permanent 
 sound. To be sure it is always the emotion of the owners 
 of property that decides everything and lies behind all 
 laws, but for heaven's sake don't let it be known ; it would 
 upset civilization if not savagery." 
 
 "I tell you we are perfectly satisfied with the truth," 
 he repeated. *'Is the civilized man so stupidly cowardly 
 that, not daring to face the evil oppressors that grind him, 
 he names their tyranny with silly phrases like 'nature's 
 laws' to hide the shame of his craven spirit? We are above 
 such weakness. Emotion it is, and our people worship it 
 naked and known; we have no need to clothe it with lies, 
 tho civilization— do you call it?— may. We are proud of 
 being oppressed. We live for it." 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 The Origin of Horroboo Grandeur 
 
 I gave up instructing him with resignation, and presently 
 asked how these towers of surplus humanity came to be 
 the owners of all the wild animals in existence on which 
 the tribe lived. Did they invent the animals, or create 
 them, or cultivate them, or inherit them from Adam, or 
 what? 
 
 "Nothing of the sort," His Highness answered amused ; 
 "these fertile creatures pour down into our plains from 
 the inaccessible mountain folds where they breed, burrow- 
 ing their way; freely they descend from heaven in the 
 most generous sense, and we are accountable to the 
 heavenly powers for a right use of them. Their owner- 
 ship was acquired by the fat men twelve thousand years 
 ago in the reign of my first ancestor. It was indeed this 
 
138 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 episode that made him Emperor, and he left a chronicle 
 of his life which tells the deathless history. When he was 
 born the tribe was wallowing in the slimy dank of degrada- 
 tion ; they had no king and no fat ; the people were monot- 
 onously happy, all of them occupying the dismal sing-song 
 level of perfect bliss ; they were all kings, for none in- 
 fringed upon another and all were highest ; disease was 
 unknown and food abounded ; there was no word in the 
 language for famine, nor had they the name death, for 
 all departed so contentedly and beautifully at the age of a 
 hundred and ten that none who remained were sorrowful 
 or mourned. This ludicrous dearth of sorrow lasted until 
 my far-smiting ancestor was ninety years old, the comfort 
 and happiness of all being so radiantly complete that he 
 felt himself continually impelled to suicide. It was unen- 
 durable ! There was no satisfaction in having everybody 
 equal! In our annals we call this lugubrious time the 
 Beast Age because all were contented. Peace and good 
 will reigned, there was no ambition to gnaw and defile, 
 pride and contempt there could not be for these vices 
 flourish not among the equal." 
 
 "Great Grififelak," cried I with antecedent compassion, 
 "how did it happen that the Horroboo nation survived that 
 execrable period? The deadliest terror of Christian man- 
 kind today is its dream of Utopia, they scare evil children 
 into goodness with its black horrors, and picture it in the 
 jails to torture the criminal, the poor foam with frenzy 
 against its saving hopes, but to have had the real thing 
 right in your country, living with it from day to day in 
 ideal loveliness and delight, must have been a combination 
 of hellfire, delirium tremens and hydrophobia. Go on, I 
 hold my breath to hear of your miraculous deliverance." 
 
 "Then," said Griffelak, "occurred the change that brought 
 to pass our magnificent evolution to savagery. One day 
 the tribe was sitting in the afternoon sun, a careless glad- 
 
HORROBOO GRANDEUR 139 
 
 some multitude of laughing ebullient children, without a 
 woe in their hearts or a peril in their firmament. A flock 
 of wild geese flew far overhead, and one through accident 
 or age stumbled in its course and descended to the earth 
 in the very midst of our joyous people. The nearest rushed 
 playfully forward and plucked out its feathers, so that 
 shortly the poor bird was utterly bare, while its despoilers 
 decorated their bodies with its former apparel. Only about 
 a hundred person had secured a share of these feathers, 
 and the remainder, when they saw their lucky companions 
 strutting about in the bedraggled ornaments, were direfully 
 chagrined and demanded the privilege of wearing them 
 part of the time. But the hundred would not hear of this, 
 because, said they, 'the goose having fallen near us, heaven 
 evidently intended us to have all its feathers.' But they 
 agreed to allow the others to enjoy a feather for one hour 
 in return for an earth-bird.* This was considered highly 
 just, and was willingly consented to; the lucky feather- 
 owners were able to relinquish hunting, they received such 
 an overplus of food that they were abidingly sick, which 
 was recognized as a testimony of divine interest, and the 
 singular phenomenon of fatness made its appearance. 
 
 ''Still, tho eating all the while and scarcely taking time 
 to sleep, so great was their fidelity to the rights of their 
 stomachs, they could consume but a fraction of the flesh 
 that their feathers earned for them; wherefore it came into 
 their heads to build enclosures for the reception of the 
 surplusage, imagining that their stomachs would grow if 
 constantly exercised and reach the capacity of digesting all 
 their savings. It is a fact that their stomachs did enlarge, 
 and with very notable consequences as the ages passed, but 
 not so fast as their food went to decay. Seeing this and 
 mourning greatly at the loss of it to themselves, they 
 
 *They sometimes cnllod the tribal article of food by this name 
 because if it chanced to escape from its burrow it would fly. 
 
I40 THE HORROBOOS ' ' 
 
 arranged with the hunters to open an account and have 
 the animals due deUvered in the future. By and by, of 
 course a while after my first noted ancestor's time, they 
 figured up the debt and found that more animals were 
 owed than the world could ever produce, so that it burst 
 upon them that they owned the total stock of animals and 
 all their latent progeny forever. Thereupon they naturally 
 rescinded the feather wearing compact and no longer per- 
 mitted the hunters to wear feathers at all, since they had 
 nothing to pay in return. It was a gigantic relief to the 
 people to be delivered from the burden of owning the 
 animals ; few beings are ecjual to the mill-stone worries of 
 possession; the population now shifted all these tearful 
 responsibilities on to the measureless ribs of the fat, and 
 went forward with light hearts and lighter stomachs, gath- 
 ering food just as they had done before, without the crush- 
 ing affliction of owning the shortest hair of it, or the cark- 
 ing abrasion of calculating whether to eat it or not. These 
 topmost theorems of mighty mathematics the fat men 
 solved for them. 
 
 "Afterwards geese became very plentiful ; the people, 
 sorry for what they had done, threatened unrest ; prompt 
 action was immediately taken however by the Stomachs — 
 an honorary title of the Fat, — who instantly appropriated 
 all the wild geese in the sky on the principle of having 
 owned the first goose, thereby preserving the country from 
 the frightful throes and death pangs of revolution. It was 
 then that the Counsellor Class arose, but you must be tired ; 
 let us now dine on a few boiled babies that I see coming, 
 the children of those who can get nothing to do in our 
 celebrated sun-shaming commonwealth, and after you have 
 slept I will introduce you to more enlightened astonish- 
 ments." 
 
HORROBOO SPINSTERS 141 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 HoRROBOo Spinsters 
 
 The babies were a little lean, since the parents had had 
 nothing to feed them, but appeared to have been slaughtered 
 in time to preserve their youthful flavor. I sampled them 
 all, but one I could not eat, which from being killed too 
 soon had the flavor of bob-veal. 
 
 "It is not uncommon," remarked Griff elak, crunching 
 a collar-bone, "for women whose husbands are out of 
 employment to destroy themselves in order to furnish these 
 husbands with food to preserve their lives. The wives 
 esteem this a peculiar ceremony of love because they then 
 become deeply involved in the essence of their lords and 
 remain so according to our scientists several years, which 
 ensures the duration of love for that length of time, for in 
 loving himself a man then cannot help loving his wife. 
 It is the form of death most desired by our choicest women, 
 partly owing to the well-known devotion of that sex to 
 those who do not love them and partly because it assures 
 them of immortality for seven years. There is now con- 
 siderable lack of employment, which seems to be growing, 
 for there are heavenly omens that the fat providences are 
 contracting their bowels of emotion ; there would be much 
 suff"ering if it were not for this special and chosen class 
 of women to fall back on in such crises. They are called 
 child-women, for that they never marry until late in life, 
 and seldom bear children, whence they retain most of the 
 attributes of children down to old age, sometimes never 
 parting with them. They are also our best women, and 
 there is a shrewd motive and purpose in this, for being 
 our brightest female intellects there is danger that they 
 may fall into the loose and libidinous custom of using their 
 minds, and even sink to the profligacy of imparting their 
 
142 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 thoughts to their offspring, leading to the execution of some 
 great design, perhaps to the super-damnable crime of an- 
 nihilating the omnipotence of the fat. Hence our sagacious 
 fat sunbeams take pious measures that these mentally las- 
 civious women shall have no children, or, if any, so far on 
 in life that they lack the lustiness of iconoclasm. Chastity 
 with us consists in avoiding the conception of thoughts; 
 intercourse of young minds is therefore considered most 
 threatening since it might lead to a pregnancy of ideas, 
 and is prohibited by statute ; the most chaste women are 
 those who, being most fitted to think, punctiliously avoid 
 doing so ; feminine virtue is keeping the mind a tabula rasa, 
 or a piece of white paper untarnished by mental activities; 
 if a man approaches a woman with the well-known evi- 
 dences of dishonorable design to lead her astray into 
 thought, she will remain a psychical virgin all her days 
 before she will gratify him. Bodily and spiritual chastity 
 thus go together. 
 
 "These women, having been purified of their psycho- 
 physical infirmities by abstinence from everything, and de- 
 ploring only that there is not something else sunny and 
 pleasurable to abstain from, are crowned with a chaplet 
 of dead leaves to be worn in public as a testimony of their 
 immaculateness, for notification to mankind that their vir- 
 tue is absolute ; and the reverence thenceforward paid them 
 by men is of a most touching character, for they revere 
 them so highly that as the women approach the men all 
 go over to the other side of the street that they may not 
 contaminate these angel essences by a closer presence. It 
 is the will of the fat that this shall be so. While such 
 women are still young and beautiful the men are afraid 
 of them for fear they may lose the esteem and favor of 
 the fat, and do not ask them in marriage, for nothing could 
 more endanger our fat system than intelligent children. 
 When the fat withdraw their good will from anyone the 
 
HORROBOO SPINSTERS 143 
 
 omens portend a private famine for him. We call it a 
 private famine when a man is dislodged from employment 
 hy the fat lords, and a public one when they cut off the 
 whole nation's food. Owing to these overhanging dangers 
 the men themselves are not a little wary of anything in 
 woman that savors of intellect, and know that the symp- 
 toms will pass away if her passion of love is put upon a 
 permanent diet of disinfected wind. Socially enforced 
 spinsterhood is therefore used as a cure and is applied to 
 those females who exhibit the most alarming signs of 
 intelligence. 
 
 "The men also bave a little fear on their own account, 
 being haunted with the nightmare that women might make 
 some things better if they should acquire sufficiently ex- 
 panded minds to realize the stupidity of the men, which 
 illumination tlie males oppose with dreadful vehemence. 
 Having now by dint of prayer, commercial thievery and 
 politics brought the earth down to its vilest inventible 
 plight, the men maintain a determined inquisition against 
 all that would reveal their lazy and degraded natures to 
 women. They carefully teach women that things have to 
 be as they are, altho the brutish men themselves knowingly 
 made things what they are, and keep them so. Tho from 
 this perpetual attitude of mind the men have nearly all 
 grown to look like sneaking servile donkeys (when they 
 are allowed food enough to look like anything but sneak- 
 ing ghosts), strangely enough the women think them very 
 beautiful and can be got to marry the disgusting slim 
 cravens any time. 
 
 "We have a party which we call The Changeless, who 
 carry out their principles against improvement with ador- 
 able devotion and subtle logical force. They consider every 
 change immoral, since it might chance to improve some- 
 thing. A wicked change, according to this High Stationary 
 Set, and one which reveals the iniquity of the soul of 
 
144 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 nature, is the advancement of beauty in children as they 
 mature, but this it is proposed to rectify by cutting atro- 
 cious furrows in their faces, paring off the end of a beauti- 
 ful nose or breaking it, and taking other moral precautions 
 against perfection. This is a miraculous prophylactic 
 against progress in the countenance and establishes a unity 
 between the features of man and those of society by mak- 
 ing them equally stationary and ugly. We recognize that 
 if it is dangerous for men to depart from present ways 
 and change into something better now, it was a mistake 
 for mankind to have left older ruts and advanced to present 
 standards in the past, so that progress was always sinful." 
 
 Griffelak paused out of breath for he had spoken rapidly 
 with an impetuous relish for his subject. I nudged his 
 memory on a momentous point. "Why would there be 
 suffering in times of depression but for these excellent 
 child-women, or prolonged virgins?" 
 
 He answered : ''They are a reserve fund for the men 
 who lose their work. Such men being utterly destitute 
 and having not a morsel in their larders, marry a child- 
 woman from stark desperation. In gratitude the women 
 take their own lives to become their husbands' cold lamb, 
 preserving them until the fat men's prejudice against their 
 eating wears off and they are reprieved from idleness. 
 After their long maidenhood there is nothing earthly in 
 the love of these chastened ex-children ; one who marries 
 them enters into the thin ethereal emotions of heaven, which 
 has been called by one of our poets 'the spaceless infinite 
 of ineffable intangibility' ; in this vacuum of holiness the 
 men would die speedily if they did not eat their sainted 
 wives with dispatch. But the women, having immaculated 
 themselves by mortal abstinence through all their lovely 
 prime and parted with their carnal womanly potencies to 
 feel, hasten to immolate themselves in the invisible, and 
 die chanting an immortal dirge named 'Spectral Pinions 
 
GRIFFELAK THE GREAT r.c 
 
 of Phantom Purity'; death is the apotheosis of their un- 
 sulhed perfection, for they make excellent phantom beef- 
 steaks tho good for nothing else but virtue." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Griffelak the Great 
 
 The last cutlet being devoured we turned our conversa- 
 tion back into heroic fields, and I inquired of His August 
 Solemnity how his family came into the purple. "Griffelak 
 
 A ?M, '^rn ^' ""'"'* ^'^""^ combined the eminences of 
 Achilles Ulysses, Dick Turpin, George Washington, Beel- 
 zebub, Elijah, Judas and President Kruger " 
 
 'Well," answered His Majesty, "convey your mind back 
 to the episode of the goose. Griffelak the Great, altho 
 he was not then great, was, I have remarked, ninety years 
 old and in the apple of his prime. He was the mightiest 
 youngster of them all, except in his headpiece as I shall 
 prove to his credit by and by. Time passed and the people 
 began to send hungry glances back to the days when they 
 were equal, contented, happy and perfectly fed. Some 
 mourned and were not comforted for the loss of all these 
 things by the glory of wearing a goose-quill. The death- 
 rate rose like the tide, they were tossed about on the surges 
 of turgid anxiety to collect the needless food rent for their 
 teathers, and a mortal misery submerged the race. From 
 the beginning there had been a remnant not exceeding a 
 fiftieth of the tribe who did not appreciate the value of 
 goose feathers and cared not to wear them, preferring diet. 
 They stubbornly rejected the contract in which the others 
 had engulted themselves, and furnished no surplus victual 
 to the fat; they prognosticated that the people's food-debt 
 to the Gorgers would soon out-volume the sands of the 
 
14.6 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 sea, and they resolved to hold their claim to the food stock 
 unmortgaged ; nor would they be silent regarding the scan- 
 dalous wrong, but were ceaselessly assailing its perpetrators 
 and proclaiming the future sorrows of the people. By 
 this unseemly interference with natural law they incensed 
 the fat, who subtly stirred up the feather-lovers against 
 them as seditious traitors. Their lives were never safe, 
 and finally the feather-owners, well knowing that a truth- 
 teller is a brand of fire in a rotten world, seized an occa- 
 sion when the people were a perfect furnace of wrath 
 against the patriots who had implored them to resume their 
 rights to bread and butter, incited the masses to put them- 
 selves in chains for revenge, and while these raging masses 
 were surfeiting their madness upon their own shackled 
 bodies and on their posterity, caused them to vote the 
 strongest man in the tribe to be their emperor, to protect 
 them against their hated saviors. Martial law however 
 was not rescinded until they had discovered the strongest 
 man. His residence was in the mountains and he never 
 visited the borough except on market days, when he was 
 liable to swoop down with a club as large to their terrified 
 eyes as a tree and to carry oft" several of his fellow country- 
 men for his private refection. He was distinguished from 
 common men also by the length of his bodily hair which 
 sprouted out several inches in soft consistency on every 
 part of his being. His ancestry was remarkable and 
 richly suited to kingship, for he was descended from a long 
 line of complete idiots on lx)th sides, none of whom could 
 express their range of ideas with more than three slightly 
 varying grunts. 
 
 "They transmitted their idiocy unimpaired from genera- 
 tion to generation by a system of marriage something more 
 than divine, for they considered the family so sacred that 
 it should never be allowed to alter or perish but be endowed 
 with an enduring impregnable stability unknown in the 
 
GRIFFELAK THE GREAT 147 
 
 lecherous universe, by shutting it solidly within itself. 
 They were of course monogamists ; as for divorce they 
 hewed any brother into first principles whose grunt con- 
 tained a lush suggestion of it, and their famous family 
 validity was cemented by the blessed sacrament of parents 
 regularly marrying their children and prohibiting all wan- 
 ton intercommunication with stranger blood. The family 
 once formed was immediately sealed up and remained with 
 its contents perfect, absolute, and the same forever. There 
 could be no doubt of either the stability or holiness of their 
 marriage institution under these indissoluble circumstances. 
 Besides accomplishing the preservation of idiocy and guard- 
 ing the chemical chastity of their veins, they banished all 
 happiness and intelligence from the marriage relation, mak- 
 ing its sanctity heavenly. Altho their minds decayed under 
 this vertical nuptial regimen, as was shown by the dis- 
 appearence of two of their grunts, their bodies throve pro- 
 digiously and Griffelak the destined Great was endowed 
 with a muscular force equal to that of an army of meanly- 
 begotten Horroboos on a lower level of matrimony. Hence 
 he was in all points the proper king for the occasion, and 
 Mr. Carlyle, had he been living, could have written some 
 glowing volumes of odd panegyric of him, for which his 
 skin, owing to its vastness, had it been taken ofif and dried, 
 would have formed the inspiring parchment. 
 
 "The first problem was to catch this able monarchist, 
 a delicate business since his animosity to his foully begot- 
 ten congeners was so clean and pious that he slew them on 
 sight. r>y means of a great trap set between two moun- 
 tains he was finally captured however, the whole tribe unit- 
 ing in the drive and afterward bearing him down to the plain 
 in their clasped arms. There the hair was shaved off him 
 up to the neck by several barbers with sharp stones, to give 
 him a kind of undress coating of civilization before he 
 entered into the solemn contaminations of authority. 
 
148 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "He was the ideal choice of the feather-men. They 
 shrewdly humored his family prejudices, granting that his 
 blood had trickled down in a straight sluice from the 
 empyrean apex, that divorces and love marriages were the 
 only simon-pure crimes in Africa, and that the possession 
 of intelligence indicated great lack of intellect, after which 
 they could do whatever their whims invited with him. 
 Apart from his marital megrims he was as docile as a 
 chambered carp. They entertained themselves pulling his 
 tail, of which there was still some left, and jerking the 
 returning hairs out of his body, with great pain to him 
 but more delight, for they would say to him that it was 
 done to see his blue blood flow after the hair, the very 
 sight of such blood throwing him into convulsions of pride. 
 If His Idiot Majesty sometimes grew angry when the 
 feathery fat patricians tweaked his nose in savage sport, 
 it needed but a declaration that in theory they agreed with 
 him in everything, and the alarming monster immediately 
 melted again into an amiable mess of soft-soap, sap and 
 honey. They used him to wash their soiled linen and feet, 
 and for other herculean tasks; he chastised their enemies 
 and carried their friends on his back, trotting up and down 
 with his load in front of their fatnesses' palaces for hours; 
 he cleaned their chimneys and blacked their shoes, he stood 
 guard at their gates all night while they slept and carried 
 away the hillocks of greasy bones which remained after 
 their meals in the daytime; in a word he was a pattern 
 emperor, tenderly obedient to his amorphous masters, the 
 Money-Bags, and about all he asked in return was the 
 imperial privilege to strut upon his legs, yell, now and then 
 kill somebody, and brandish his prejudices and his ances- 
 tors. 
 
 "Such an one was my peerless progenitor, Griffelak First 
 and The Great. The fat soon called on him to slaughter 
 a few traitors to them, which earned him the right to wear 
 
GRIFFELAK THE GREAT 
 
 149 
 
 three fish-bones in a raised triangle on the hair of his chest 
 in witness that he was the savior of his country. George 
 Washington Griffelak, he is sometimes styled by his mod- 
 ern admirers, but some secretly name him Judas Caesar 
 Griffelak. Of those priceless fish-bones there are only a 
 few in our inland country, lifting their value above the 
 avarice of purchase. The executed traitors were those 
 truculent clodpolls who had refused to sign over their prop- 
 erty in the food to the fat, those arrant opponents of com- 
 mercial growth for whom pits and millstones were too kind. 
 Let me add proudly that this crowned heavy-weight was 
 the first to use force in the tribe and that he inaugurated 
 the constitutional custom of putting progressive malefac- 
 tors to death. I may here run ahead of my story to say 
 that a later Griffelak purged the commonwealth of all the 
 descendants of these cankerous recalcitrants. It was when 
 the fat calculators found by Horroboo logarithms that the 
 renters of their feathers owed them more food than all 
 known breeds of eaten animals could ever procreate, and 
 foreclosed their mortgage on all future flesh. Those who 
 had never rented feathers declared themselves exempt from 
 this act and insisted on their right to the animals as before. 
 Here the Counsellors saved commerce by citing an ancient 
 statute, lost and obliterated from record and that never 
 existed, which restricted the claim of these unruly men to 
 the animal offspring over and above those which all the 
 existing animals and their descendants could reproduce. 
 Since this vanished statute was said to have been enacted 
 some centuries after the goose fell to earth, with the pro- 
 vision that it should act backward, the proof was clinch- 
 ing, and the tribe, being much addicted to dancing, drunk- 
 enness and philosophy, was whirled away into delirious 
 conviction by the argument. The Counsellors further con- 
 victed the protesters of being evil, by using the well-known 
 annihilating theological argument that 'evil is evil,' so 
 
150 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 leaving the obstructors with no theoretic ground to stand 
 on. 
 
 "Nevertheless my active forefather was more useful than 
 the thinkers: he choked the objectors to death one by one 
 wherever he met them, and having restored harmony by 
 exterminating all dissonance, confirmed the title of the 
 Fat to all the food forever." 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 The Chief Eaters and Their Advanced Anatomy 
 
 "Were the feather-owners very happy in their new voca- 
 tion while these adventures were in the wind?" I asked. 
 
 "Neither then nor for ten thousand years afterward," 
 admitted he. "According to the record this period was 
 consumed in adapting themselves to the privileges of their 
 gastric regimen. How they missed the pleasure of hunt- 
 ing ! for they could no longer go out into the fields to mingle 
 frolicsomely with their former equals, now inimitably be- 
 neath them ; all their manly exertions and felicities ceased, 
 leaving a bad appetite, eternal colic, appendicitis, and 
 grandeur as their only respites from mortal tedium ; they 
 sat at home in a noble dining palace hollowed out in the 
 earth, and ate and slept day and night in the same spot, 
 and hated and fre(^uently assassinated each other to enliven 
 the maddening monotony — when they could get enough 
 awake to do so. They died young, scarcely ever exceed- 
 ing thirty years, having thus reduced their earthly residence 
 below one-third of its normal period ; but they said a merry 
 life is the thing, and we have secured the illustrious and 
 abiding boon of greatness; and the merry fellows rotted 
 through their brief youthful years with loathsome diseases 
 for which there were no names because they had never 
 
THE CHIEF EATERS 
 
 151 
 
 been seen or heard of before. At first they strove to prick 
 their spirits up by a daily mimic hunt in the aristrocratic 
 seclusion of the palace yard, a hole in the ground two hun- 
 dred feet square, where they waddled after kittens with 
 a furious simulation of excitement, but they missed the 
 jocund presence of their former equals, now reduced in- 
 feriors, while their growing corpulency and distempers 
 greatly restricted their power to waddle. The vulgar 
 appearance of usefulness was delicately extracted from 
 these hunts by their austere avoidance of catching anything, 
 which would have savored of a relation to the lower and 
 productive classes, whereas the motions of hunting were 
 compatible with their exalted station, if tarnished with no 
 practical results. Weakness from overfeeding and chronic 
 blood poisoning soon caused them to detest and abandon 
 even these formal motions. 
 
 "They ate and slept in perpetual fear of murderers, 
 owing to the sudden prevalence of insanity, which had 
 burst out in the tribe nobody for the life of him could 
 tell why, altho the prophets had sat with the tops of their 
 heads against one another for twenty-seven nights investi- 
 gating themselves for the cause. At the end of that time 
 one of them, in the lowest tones and most modest manner, 
 had inquired of the head of his neighbor if the madness 
 might not arise from popular despondency over withdrawal 
 of the food supply, causing general famine, for which 
 blaspheming of the fat the others had promptly kicked him 
 to death. Another vociferously roared that it sprang from 
 base popular jealousy toward the good fat men in their 
 honest possession of the feathers and bread, a murky pro- 
 letarian sentiment deservedly punished with insanity from 
 heaven, — and this blameless seer was presented by his 
 comrades with a tripod of beans, and by the fat was adorned 
 with a new rank called 'Fat Bags' Advocate,' in recogni- 
 tion of his reptilian insight. 
 
152 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 *'We have a surgery which alone preserved the Hue of 
 the fat through ten thousand years of stress and pain. An 
 aperture was made in the wall of the stomach through 
 which the superflux food could be automatically ejected 
 as they ate; in this manner they could eat without cessation 
 and yet without bursting ; digestion and fattening advanced 
 steadily, while the admirable safety-valve preserved the 
 anatomical system from destruction. The aperture, ' if I 
 know myself, was like a foreign market out of which the 
 fat capitalists who, God bless them, were bound to eat 
 everything so that the people might get nothing, could 
 naturally discharge the national surplus from their system 
 and still eat and still not explode, but you are better versed 
 in that topic." 
 
 I assured Griffelak of the brilliancy of his suspicions, 
 and he went on. 
 
 "Toward morning nightly, when the stomachs made their 
 nearest approach to emptiness, servants came and intro- 
 duced into the holes the nozzles of bellows which they 
 worked to blow the stomachs full of air, distending them 
 as far as they would go and thus gradually increasing their 
 executive capacity. Consequently a notable change has 
 taken place in the fat men's internal departments and they 
 are not like other men's. To accommodate the preternat- 
 ural quantity of work required of it the stomach entered 
 into competition with the other vital organs, usurping their 
 space and diminishing their size, whereby the blood assumed 
 a peculiar superior nature, having retained a great many 
 of the excellent qualities which the kidneys and other 
 thievish organs are wont to pilfer and carry out of the 
 food to the body's loss. It is therefore no dream that the 
 fat are composed of different blood and a higher nature 
 than the rabble population, that their essence is 
 endowed with rich attributes wasted and rejected from the 
 common anatomy, that their spirits contain various acids 
 
THE CHIEF EATERS 153 
 
 and salts severely indispensable to perfection, that they are 
 a new creation higher than man but not quite so high as 
 God, that their blood is an ichorish white liquid middling 
 between melted grease and glue. Naturally these superior 
 creatures with their refined and attenuated emotions con- 
 sider redblooded men a gross species of tamed animals or 
 domesticated gibbon, with which their spirits have nothing 
 in common." 
 
 "Have you an inner map of this rare anatomy?" I cried 
 ardently; "I should like to carry a portrait of these expan- 
 sion stomachs and abdomens back to the United States, to 
 patent and suggestively sell to the rich." 
 
 "I can give you a pretty accurate description." replied 
 the Emperor, "and you can make the drawings. The cen- 
 tral stomach found it hugely laborious to digest for its 
 distant dependencies — the legs and arms and head, and 
 therefore organized a branch stomach in each of these 
 provinces. The one in the brain is peculiarly interesting, 
 occupying a noble arena in the central region of the enceph- 
 alon, where it furnishes the substance of thoughts direct 
 to the brain-cells, without the delay of heart-beats and 
 arterial journeys. These thoughts are many grades nearer 
 the true nature of things than common men's thoughts, 
 since they come straight out of the food in its natural state 
 in the head, free from the numerous transformations of 
 its being and removals from spirit wrought in lower men 
 by its confused wanderings through the body in digestion. 
 They thus assimilate ultimate being and reality unchanged 
 out of the food into their thoughts.* We have therefore 
 
 •We have been very snobbishly censured by some foreigners for our 
 cnnnlbnllsni, remarked GrifCebik aside soon after, but here we have Its 
 scientific basis; and he asserted that It was no counsel of perfection 
 that the loitering peoples of Europe and Aiuerica would some day arrive 
 at its adoption. Since cooking, he said, destroys the life of grain and 
 meat, the cooking nations feed on ashes; we prefer to feed life with life, rather 
 than with death. But it is of no less moment what forms of living cells 
 we feed on, whether high or low; now grains and vegetables are low 
 
154 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 the highest system of philosophy ever introduced into the 
 world, but of course it is only comprehensible to the fat- 
 men, a mind not fed like theirs by the metaphysical essence 
 of food being unable to grapple with the mechanism of 
 their conceptions. We know for example the exact nature 
 of God, where he is and how large; we have a correct 
 analysis of his fairly numerous essences ; nothing remains 
 to be learned about Being, Spirit, Consciousness, Thought, 
 Matter, Energy, or Life, all having been comprehended 
 in their most ultimate meaning; matter has been transmuted 
 into consciousness and consciousness into matter. The 
 chemical composition of Sin and Love has been untangled, 
 all through the operation of the mind-stomach, which con- 
 veys all these things in their natural state directly into 
 thought, thereby unveiling their most secret properties and 
 essence. Love of any quality and intensity can now be 
 manufactured in the laboratory, and being swallowed or 
 inhaled will invade the system of the swallower with its 
 nature. A particular kind of love has to be compounded 
 with reference to each individual toward whom the emo- 
 tion is to be felt, for no two loves in the universe are 
 alike. Sin turned out to be an indigestion of ideas — which 
 will be obviated hereafter by the mental stomach. In truth 
 everything marvelous has been reduced to the simplicity 
 of light by our great fat thinkers, so that the humblest 
 
 aufl tit only to make brutes, as tlicy do; the animals arc one stage 
 bi^lifr, yet if eaten can only proiluee inferior hcastlikc forms of men, 
 and very bloodthirsty ones as eivilization shows; but when men are 
 eaten, and especially if devoured alive, the system of the devourer Is 
 nourished by the highest elements of life that are available and a 
 humanity bordering on the divine appears. The devourer consumes 
 the high thoughts and emotions of the consumed. Witness our divine 
 Fat, who feed freely on their best fellow countrymen. Thus, living 
 cannibalism is sclentiflcally and morally sustained, and we contemplate 
 sending out missionaries to inspire the derelict white races with It by 
 and by. On this principle it is much more elevating to eat the philoso- 
 phers, the poets, the musicians, and the inventors than to devour mere 
 ordinary men, and to derive the greatest benefit they should certainly be 
 eaten alive at the moment when engaged in their highest thinking. 
 
THE CHIEF EATERS 155 
 
 Horroboo has an infinite knowledge of absoluteness. We 
 are glad to possess this information altho none of us has 
 the faintest conception what it means, for infinite thoughts 
 like the fat men's are not for finite minds, and since the 
 fat are always asleep they can never realize or impart what 
 they think. 
 
 "One prominent teaching alone we clearly comprehend, 
 namely, that God is like a fat man considerabiy magnified. 
 He has no feeling for the lean because he is not in the 
 least like them. He is at least four times as large as our 
 fattest. There were skeptics on this point until some two 
 thousand years ago when a revelation occurred. The lower 
 ribs on the left side of the fat suddenly gave way and 
 the stomach bulged forth gibbously about two feet in that 
 quarter; dyspepsia which had been due to stomach con- 
 striction then disappeared, the outer apertures in the stom- 
 achs closed up, for the digestive power had increased two 
 feet and was equal to all rational demands, and it was 
 recognized that after ten thousand years of virtuous suf- 
 fering and struggle the fat were rewarded, adapted and 
 finished, which never could have been done except by a 
 god sufficiently like the fat to realize and sympathize with 
 their needs. 
 
 "Several circumstances thereupon improved astoundingly. 
 Things had reached a state where preparations were mov- 
 ing for voluntary tribal extinction by suicide, fat and lean, 
 feathered and featherless, suffering acutely and fiercely 
 disgusted with existence. Wc were diverted back to duty 
 by Providence, who on the very day that he expanded the 
 fat men laterally caused one of the featherless lean weigh- 
 ing sixty pounds to bring forward a plan which preserved 
 the tribe, restored happiness and has crowned us with that 
 illustrious superiority over other terrestrials which you 
 admire. The fat were about to erase themselves from 
 being on account of their dreadful wretchedness, the people 
 
156 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 were gasping after annihilation because neither by dili- 
 gence, virtue, prayerful flattery nor smiling chicanery could 
 they force open the doors into the envied sphere of agony 
 and fatness. On the verge of these final horrors it was 
 proposed that a small aperture should be cut into that dole- 
 ful precinct to permit the principle of the excluded com- 
 moner to pass in, while keeping the commoner himself out 
 — mark, it was a commoner who proposed it : this reformer 
 boldly alleged and advocated that of those who had no 
 feathers certain carefully chosen individuals should be 
 permitted under very delicate conditions to acquire them 
 and to cross the sacred bar into the social tabernacle of the 
 fetid felicities hitherto reserved for the fat men's children 
 exclusively, saying plausibly that if the principle of equality 
 without its reality were established, they would need be at 
 no pains to go deeper for salvation. If we acknowledge 
 the principle of the rights of men, why should they clamor 
 for their rights too? We reasoned that enjoyment of the 
 principle without the rights should satisfy them, and we 
 found that it did." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 HoRROBOo Equality 
 
 "This renowned protocol of amity between the hunter 
 bumpkins and the exalted caste of the saintly fat provided 
 that every five years one from the lowly ranks should be- 
 come fat to the extent of wearing feathers and eating or 
 rotting food that would naturally supply a thousand, though 
 his stomach could not be expected to swell through his 
 ribs immediately nor all his diseases to arrive at once. By 
 means of this generous concession, in one generation, 
 which had then sunk down to twenty years, four persons 
 
HORROBOO EQUALltY 157 
 
 would rise out of the lowly ranks of the mean and lean 
 into the precious azure of corpulency and spirit, which 
 would culminate in a glorious total of twenty emancipations 
 in a brief hundred years. As a counterpoise to this noble 
 grant the institution of carrying their fat lordships which 
 you have seen in all its flaming grandeur was invented, 
 lest the heads of the simple masses should be turned by 
 their good fortune, — which is avoided by dividing the popu- 
 lation into body-servants or carriers of the eminent, who 
 are non-productive but are bathed in the odor of honor 
 by proximity to its fountain, and common hunters, who 
 never enjoy the perfume of grandeur and work twice as 
 hard under the stress of collecting food for the carrier class 
 as well as for themselves; but the sense that one out of 
 them all in the term of five years will graduate from his 
 humble sorrows, consoles and intoxicates them and they 
 have many of the sensations reserved for the fat gods. 
 Meanwhile the carrying has been of heroic benefit to the 
 fat themselves by drawing them out of their palatial hole 
 in the ground where for ten thousand years they had eaten 
 in damp, moldy and majestic solitude, and diminishing the 
 hours wherein they can exclusively eat. 
 
 "Now this just and redeeming fifth-year initiation into 
 fatness was a fiash of master genius, albeit struck out in 
 the grimy mind of a crawling plebeian. It restored equal- 
 ity, in whose wake returned contentment, happiness and 
 the soothing fusion of honied class-love. Amazing to think 
 that for a hundred centuries society had been groaning 
 heavily under inequality and had never learned this truly 
 amazing secret of equality without its sting! How the 
 tribe cursed its torpid forefathers for failing to devise the 
 glittering necromancy earlier ! Unequal equality now healed 
 the sorry strifes and angry breaches of humanity." 
 
 I now addressed him : "Gorgeous Substance of the Sun, 
 you appear to be speaking soberly, nor to be regaling me 
 
158 'rHE HORROBOOS 
 
 with the torrid scandals of African pleasantry, but here 
 you have a tribe of fifty thousand soul-pods — for I do not 
 think there is a true soul (in the theological seminary 
 sense) in one of these shuffling shapes — of whom one hun- 
 dred only belong to the order of shining corpulency, and 
 four more that are admitted to that unblemished collec- 
 tion of abominations during man's lifetime — four out of 
 fifty thousand may 'better their condition' in a generation, 
 and this you call equality! Is this African wit?" 
 
 "Not so much wit as the highest kind of equality," he 
 answered gravely. "Because any one in the tribe may 
 be one of those fortunate four. A person who may become 
 the greatest among us is surely equal to the greatest all 
 the time — that ought to be logically clear to a mosquito." 
 
 "Perhaps," said I, "for seeing things wrong with cock 
 logic is generally the logic of mosquito minds. But we 
 are not mosquitoes, I hope, let us therefore examine. The 
 49,896 dust-motes of each generation who will never ascend 
 to the honored position of fat men are equals of the fat 
 because four out of their ranks become fat?" 
 
 "Absolutely equal, since all of the 49,896 have the same 
 chance as the four." 
 
 "There is prodigious strength in your logic," said I, "to 
 elevate so many with so little help, but I would gently 
 submit a thought or two to Your Holy Infinitude. Those 
 who are to become equal are not so until they have become, 
 are they?" 
 
 He admitted this. 
 
 "Then those who never will become equal are neither 
 now nor ever equal to their superiors?" 
 
 "It is quite true," said he. 
 
 "The fifty thousand minus four are never equals of the 
 fat men, it seems." 
 
 "So it seems," cogitated his royal eminence, "but you 
 forget that the whole tribe can be one of these four." 
 
HORROBOO EQUALITY 159 
 
 "Do you think that more than four can be four?" I 
 asked. "Can four include fifty thousand?" 
 
 "Not precisely that," said he, very red under his ebony 
 skin, "but all can join the race." 
 
 "But joining the race does not make all winners. You 
 say that all are equal to the successful because all have an 
 equal chance to run, but all have not an equal chance to 
 win, and winning is what makes them equal to their superi- 
 ors, who are the goal. Suppose it were decreed that all 
 might run for fatness and none attain it, would you then 
 assert that all were equal to the fat?" 
 
 "Emphatically not," said he; "how silly!" 
 
 "But they would all have an equal chance to run, which 
 was your standard of equality, and the difference between 
 none winning and four winning is ridiculously slight. And 
 I will tell you why you are confused on this point, for I 
 studied logic in connection with the ministry : logic would 
 clarify the ministry of cant if their salaries were paid for 
 their being logical. You imagine that all are equal, at least 
 in opportunity, to the highest, because you do not happen 
 to be able to select the destined four who will be equal ; 
 if you could select them and have the very individuals 
 before your eyes it would be clear that all the residue of 
 the fifty thousand are hopeless and permanent inferiors 
 to whom the word equality in no way applies at any time. 
 But they are a definite four and no others, there they are 
 among the fifty thousand, living bodily without vagueness; 
 the rest might as well be out of the race, for inequality and 
 inferiority are their dark mortal doom." 
 
 "Why do you take such an interest in this?" he asked, 
 sniffing suspiciously ; "do you design to reason us out of 
 our institutions?" 
 
 "By no means," I protested. "My motto is sweetness 
 and light ; I desire to give you light that you may know 
 what wonderful institutions you have in order to be sweet 
 
l6o THE HORROBOOS 
 
 while they destroy you. What are sweetness and light for 
 but to make you reverently appreciative of the blessings 
 you have tho they be few, and to keep you from making a 
 fuss to get more?" 
 
 "If that is all," said he, his snuffles dying away and a 
 bespeaking leer taking their place, "don't go to the trouble. 
 Heavens ! did you suppose that anyone, fat or mean, great 
 or lank, imagines we have practical equality or desire it? 
 Lord, no; it is theoretical equality we live on, sweetly the 
 fat and full, and sourly the thin and hungry, blit gladly all, 
 for practical equality is a detestable idea to the low as 
 well as the high, while theoretical equality is a constant 
 banquet for the soul. The low are more jealous of their 
 divine right to have and worship superiors than the high 
 are of their right to spurn and despise their worshipers. 
 But while it would be disgusting to have every clodhopper 
 your practical equal it is elevating to consider him so in 
 your mind. It generates in the brain the true constituent 
 gases of love, which there firmly and safely corked propa- 
 gate a thousand delightful little tinkling emotions that 
 swell and fill the soul, circulating through it, proud, crabbed 
 and exclusive though it be in reality, and invade it with a 
 vapory decoction of sentiment so that every cell whirls 
 about with a loosened ecstacy, stretched by the expansive 
 power of the love gas to its tenderest distention, the cells 
 all throbbing violently to quicken the love storm. This is 
 what theoretical equality does for the lover by confining 
 itself within the head. Now if this festal disturbance 
 should escape from the walls of the mind and actually go 
 out to hunt after the loved creatures to lavish itself upon 
 them in the shape of practical equality and friendship, 
 the strength of its compression in the head being removed, 
 its sweet sensations would vanish away by volatile diffu- 
 sion, and there would be no pleasure in equality. Practical 
 love and equality are opposed to universal nature and are 
 
HORROBOO EQUALITY i6l 
 
 seductive agents of grief to humanity as a whole. Scien- 
 tifically disciplined love has nothing to do with its objects; 
 it is but a gaseous fermentation in a closed mental space 
 for which purpose and its safe exercise the bones of the 
 cranium have been implanted in man. He would be a 
 thankless scalawag who should suffer these precious fumes 
 to filter out and be lost in the air of common mankind, 
 emptying the vault of his mind of all its emotional gems. 
 
 "The masses, I can tell you also, do not prize or wish 
 this practical equality, for like their fat brethren their most 
 pungent felicity is derived from loving generalities within 
 the head. Whoever has a head can love an imaginary man ; 
 he possesses the stalwart faculty for generating love's fiery 
 vapors toward some one a great distance off. The lean 
 and starved usually select a fat gentleman as the target 
 of their higher emotions, conscious that if they place their 
 affections on things above, their souls will ever ascend 
 toward the object. Theoretic equality, by which two leap 
 the gap of caste in a decade, shows them that their aspira- 
 tions are not hopeless ; but practical equality, by placing 
 them all on the sublime pinnacle of things at once, would 
 rob them of high objects to strive for and reduce their 
 natures to a barren emotionless calm. Equal love is like 
 a drought. To secure a powerful activity of the affections 
 you must project them upon some one higher or lower 
 than yourself. The lower calls forth the pleasing exudations 
 of pity, the higher fructifies the mighty ramifications of 
 reverence; each prevents contact and pens the divine dis- 
 tillation in the cockles of the brain. Practical equality 
 would pluck out the fragile fangs of tenderness. We 
 achieve theoretical equality by the coronation of four new 
 fat creatures every generation ; practical equality would 
 oblige us to open up the rich pastures of edible flesh to all 
 human kind, and to allow all to eat." 
 
 "Here we have a man fitted for a high sphere in civiliza- 
 
l62 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 tion, rusting at the head of a dirty African Empire!" I 
 broke out impetuously, forgetting my deity attributes. 
 
 "America, with its flags, froth, fraud, jokes, starvation 
 and embalmed specimens of extinct freedom, is the place 
 for you, with your Ethiopian morals and powers. You 
 would earn a glorious income in vanity and swag. And 
 you could deposit your profits in the First National Bank 
 of Isaac and Christ, which I intend to found and founder, 
 where it will be safely kept until the latter's second com- 
 ing, and you can return to Africa without fear of ever 
 seeing it again. You are the soundest philosopher of this 
 century and deserve a place with Tupper, Twangle, Eddy, 
 Tingley, Twinkle, Besant and Blavatsky. You are a true 
 saint, a second Buddha, who ought to go into business as 
 a manufacturer of Messiahs of Equality." 
 
 The leader of men replied blushing: "But you don't 
 fathom my ambition. Serenity ; I am a literary genius, and 
 I want to have my Horroboo writings translated to the 
 world so that I may dazzle all mankind as I have blinded 
 my nation with them at home. My literary method is chaste 
 and up-to-date. I use literature as the art of picking out 
 microscopic granules of pleasure from the common mire 
 of human experience, sticking them together in a dough 
 of sparkling sprightly words, and giving the product to 
 the public as an accurate specimen of human life, to pro- 
 mote contentment with poverty. I hold that an author 
 who cannot tickle the ribs of laughter to convince his read- 
 ers that bad is good, and misery a divine thing for the 
 majority, is no better than a literary cow. He must close 
 his eyes to the realities of the world and sift out as many 
 little grains of brightness from the general woe as he can 
 find. If none can be found he must invent some. Then 
 let him glue them together in an esthetic mush of adhesive 
 grammar, and sugar all with optimism to anodyne the 
 multitude. I have dazed and enchanted the whole Horro- 
 
ttORROBOO EQUALITY 163 
 
 boo tribe and established literature as a deadly power to 
 strangle truth, by following these tenets of literary crea- 
 tion, and I think I can strangle the rest of the world with 
 them." 
 
 His eyes were set with devouring eagerness as he uttered 
 these radiant words, and from the depth of my soul my 
 answer came : 
 
 "Griffelak, for the discovery of these deep laws you are 
 entitled to an early grave in Westminster Abbey, while 
 your foul soul floats friendless in the dizzy dome of the 
 universe. You deserve an imperishable rocking-chair at 
 the first lunch counter of civilized letters. With humor 
 you can chortle through the abysses of human injustice, 
 iniquity and wrong, seeing nothing. You can sweeten life 
 for all robbed and outraged sufferers by telling them they 
 are not suffering; and to all the creators of their suffering 
 you can bring heaven's own peace by singing in poetry that 
 all their victims are more blest for being ruined. Here 
 is my hand, old pirate, I will translate your books." 
 
 As a hungry lion caresses his keeper for meat, or an 
 affectionate dog licks the skin of his master, so Griffelak 
 kissed my fingers a thousand times and would have applied 
 the same fondness to my face if I had not reminded him 
 that sentiment and business had long since been divorced 
 and marriage between them abolished, and that we still 
 had things commercially profitable to talk about. 
 
 "To resume, I will take you on a circuit of civilization 
 to conciliate workingmen with their lot. Our workingmen, 
 blessed little gullibles, are making trouble on account of 
 their imaginary degradation; and they are such excellent 
 objects of your kind of love — if rich people only knew 
 the theory — that love would be immediately generated in 
 great quantities, causing the workingmen to recover from 
 the distemper they are in from not understanding that 
 they are really equal in your way to everybody else. 'Un- 
 
41 
 
 164 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 equal Equality' is the amalgamating formula. The poor 
 devils' ignorance must be buttered thick with it; we will 
 carry it to the workshops and sweatshops. And when 
 your silvery solo is heard, there will be massive contribu- 
 tions from the wealthy to the cause of Equal Inequality." 
 
 "I will go wherever you wish," said Griffelak, "for I am 
 an apostle of light if the salary is what it should be. I 
 would even preach in a Fifth Avenue church." 
 
 I replied, patting him on the back: 
 
 "That savory discrimination of love in the head from 
 love in the world deserves a pope's diadem and a trust 
 potentate's salary, and certainly will be as epoch-making 
 in the sphere of factories and enlarged grave-yards as 
 Darwin's beautiful introduction of us to our ancestors 
 was for a time a storm-maker in ecclesiastical tea-parties." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 I Meet the Fat 
 
 The lecture contract being ratified and a brief sleep 
 taken, with a lunch of baked human possibilities, we re- 
 turned to the subject of institutions. "Tell me," said I, 
 "how it is that the four who are to be honored with fat 
 are selected." 
 
 "By an honest competition of worthiness," he answered. 
 "Every five years we have a rivalry of the whole tribe to 
 ascertain who can longest abstain from eating; the victor 
 in the greatest number of these noble trials is the happy 
 Horroboo who is elevated to the proprietorship of feathers 
 and fat ; if there is a tie among several a separate contest 
 is held to decide." 
 
 "I fail to see how this sheds light upon the virtue of the 
 contestants, or upon their fitness for the exalted station of 
 fatmen." 
 
I MEET THE FAT l^^ 
 
 "It is not supposed to show their virtue or fitness for 
 anything, for virtue has no connection with fatness or 
 examinations ; but you must have some standard of human 
 promotion and provided it is severe enough I don't see 
 that it makes much difference what the criterion is. Some 
 were in favor of making it the amount of vinegar a man 
 could drink, others the period he could stand on his head, 
 yet others the number of loose and disconnected sounds 
 he could fasten longitudinally in his memory, a few even 
 contended that the surest test would be to select the man 
 who could hang longest by the neck without dying, but at 
 length all agreed that fasting was best, since a man capable 
 of starving himself soundly must surely have a pat ability 
 for starving others, which is a power fat men must continu- 
 ally exercise. 
 
 "The equality revolution I have described brought the 
 feather-men not only better health but a new tranquillity 
 of mind. No longer in fear of bodily molestation they 
 abandoned their occasional moments between eatings to 
 sleep, and even taught themselves to eat and sleep at the 
 same time. During recent centuries they have seldom 
 awakened to full consciousness and it is known that they 
 have clean lost a bundle of feelings and intellectual powers 
 belonging to the herd and marking their vulgarity: for 
 example, they show no sympathy for others under any 
 conditions and the range of their ideas is limited to the two 
 processes of eating and preventing others from doing so." 
 I exclaimed, horrified : "Do you tell me that others of 
 your tribe hanker to become the counterparts of these dis- 
 mal mentally and morally eviscerated diseased congenital 
 idiots?" 
 
 "All of them do; it is a sure evidence of refinement to 
 lose a natural impulse or a feeling or an ability to think: 
 altho one may never be a fatman himself, to be like them 
 is the nearest thing to complete Horroboo culture." 
 
l66 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "Your Imperial Highness," I cried, struck by an inquisi- 
 tive idea, "I should like to talk with some of these distin- 
 guished beings." 
 
 "Talk with them? Gladly, they are always happy to 
 talk." 
 
 "But tell me one thing first that I may not make myself 
 ridiculous. Besides the servants bearing their excellencies 
 I notice under each frame the impressive figure of a man 
 walking; his head and shoulders are horizontally bowed 
 because he cannot go erect underneath: what is he? — the 
 physician to their sick highnesses? or their scavenger? or 
 errand-boy? and why does he not walk outside where he 
 can hold up his head?" 
 
 "Those are the Counsellors," answered Emperor Grifife- 
 lak. "The stooped position in which you remark them is 
 their natural one. Having stood and walked in that folded 
 attitude for many thousand years they have grown so, 
 and now are born bent and curved ; nor are they allowed 
 to walk except where you see them, lest striving to 
 straighten their necks they should forget the reverence 
 due the masters lying above them, on whom their thoughts 
 must be exclusively intent." 
 
 "Select the fattest, Your Puissance," I requested ; "I may 
 be able to get more out of them." 
 
 GrifTelak signalled a group bearing a brace of fabulous 
 rotundities to approach and deposit their load of sleep upon 
 the earth. The recumbent hillocks did not stir and I could 
 canvass their topography without impertinence. They were 
 about six feet in length and fourteen in breadth and thick- 
 ness, for certainly as they lay on their backs the perihelion 
 of their stomachs was not short of fourteen feet from the 
 ground, nor was the circumference of the man's leg by 
 actual measurement, which I took near the thigh, an inch 
 less than eleven feet ten. The head on the contrary was 
 about half the normal size, indicating the disappearance 
 
I MEET THE FAt 1^7 
 
 df faculties, which even the cranium stomach had not 
 entirely made good. 
 
 "Wake them," I said. 
 
 Griffelak spoke a few words to the fifty attendants of 
 the serene sleepers, who vigorously seized on them and 
 rolled them up and down the avenue the space of a hun- 
 dred feet, then kneaded and thumped their flesh, and lastly 
 held them upside down to concentrate some blood into their 
 heads. This treatment finally elicited a few groans to sig- 
 nify that their consciousness was approaching. 
 
 I addressed them very civilly, saying that I should enjoy 
 their companionship in travel for the benefit of science and 
 the enlightenment of the twilight places of the earth where 
 they were unknown, to which they discourteously replied 
 by merely opening their mouths to the breadth of a fissure 
 that obliterated the other features and suggested a crevice 
 in eternity on account of the awful things below, where- 
 upon a couple of attendants sprang forward with bags 
 and began to fill the openings with choice carvings of raw 
 flesh and live pigs, frogs and toads. Here was the visual 
 typification of their belief that live things must be eaten 
 alive to transfer the principle of life to the eater. They 
 also swallowed many animals whole to avoil impairment 
 of the life principle in its passage from the original owner 
 to them. The size of the life thus swallowed was a pon- 
 derous item of their dietetics, whence they were all too 
 often choked in the sturdy effort to force down souls too 
 wide for their gullets. In the nick of their odious dis- 
 courtesy a voice which might have emanated from the 
 entrails of the mammoths began to speak and I perceived 
 the lips of the counsellor in motion, who replied without 
 looking up from his feet in these words: 
 
 "We consent to be pleased by your celestial ofTer, we 
 even deign to flatter Your Godliness with a reply: never- 
 theless we must decline. Where could we find the institu- 
 
l6§ THE HORROBOOS 
 
 tion of sleep so enterically established as here? Where 
 else are grateful multitudes candidly deprived of these 
 bounteous carloads of food which no one eats? In what 
 clime is commerce so fearfully appreciated and humanity 
 so divinely depreciated? God knows, nowhere. We have 
 free libraries and free lead: free books for the empty 
 brain and free bullets for the empty body. Politely pardon 
 us therefore if we say that your offer of heaven is a little 
 stale. This is heaven. Do you realize the pleasure of 
 being shot? Learn it, for you will not then boast idly to 
 us of the dazzling advantages of public lectures in foreign 
 lands : we have blessings which ye know not of and we 
 prefer to disseminate them at home. Mankind here has 
 long since left the zenith of perfection below. Our fat 
 is the symbol of equal privilege — all are equally entitled 
 to look at it. None are debarred from becoming like us; 
 we have solved the social troubles of mankind by delight- 
 ful variety of stimulating social grades upon a ground- 
 work of indestructible equality of fancy. Besides we have 
 equality of dreams. Think of it ! Every man is freely 
 permitted to dream what he pleases ! Who could ever do 
 that before? All are equal to us except in appearance and 
 reality; all own equal property with us save in the faint 
 details of feathers and food, our only values here, which 
 we, the worthy fat parasites, retain exclusively for the 
 general good." 
 
 The slick fellow said much more in the same strain, 
 ghbly and unctuously as if he had it by heart, never look- 
 ing away from his toes. I turned to the Emperor for 
 explanation. 
 
 "It is the fat gentleman speaking through the tongue of 
 his Counsellor," said His Majesty. "Thinking on politically 
 dangerous and heterodox subjects, by which I mean those 
 foreign to the monopoly of food, was many thousand years 
 ago found to be incompatible with the accumulation of fat; 
 
I MEET THE FAT 169 
 
 to relieve our fat prophets of this delay in their mission 
 by lifting the drag of thinking from their intestinal vitality, 
 the cleverest brains of the tribe were selected and set 
 apart for their use. These Counsellors are not separate 
 entities or individuals as you might suspect from the cir- 
 cumstance of their living in separate bodies, they are a sec- 
 tion of the fat drones divided off by moral fission as a 
 physical annex for the deposition of the fatmen's brains. 
 You notice they speak in the first person, they recognize 
 themselves as the mental essence of the parent stock. It 
 is a beautiful case of division of labor, transferred func- 
 tion, absolute identity of one person in two bodies, a mys- 
 terious compound problem of chemical psychology, our 
 famous unsolved surprise of spirit oneness with spatial 
 twoness." 
 
 "But haven't the fat gentry something to say for them- 
 selves?" I persisted. 
 
 "They have given over learning to talk. It is a great 
 and wasting exertion, contumelious to fatness, in which 
 they do not need to engage since everything even to think- 
 ing and talking is better done for them by experts; it 
 nourishes friction in the brain and its utility for personages 
 of high birth and large estate is problematical ; enough to 
 say it takes off flesh." 
 
 I was studying the physignomy of the curved varlet. 
 He looked his part wonderfully, you were sure he was 
 somebody beside himself : a shadowy furtive clairvoyant 
 face, wild wavering legal eye, hair long, lank, straight 
 and tousled, for all the world an international statue of 
 Forensic Solemnity. From appearances he might have 
 been a police judge, a county shyster, or a Supreme Justice 
 of the nation. On my making a tour of inspection around 
 his eager slimness some unexpected traits of his character 
 disclosed themselves ; as I turned his various corners new 
 individuals seemed abruptly to stand forth in his nude 
 
I70 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 essence: in spite of his courageous ail-but nakedness, I 
 was at one instant morally certain that I saw a French- 
 man, after the next curve in my path it was a German, 
 then an Englishman, later a Russian, and the last of his 
 facets was indisputably Yankee. In deep bewilderment 
 I traced my course around him a second time only to dis- 
 cover the same unprecedented reflections produced in the 
 same order. While I stood mopping by brow and battling 
 with the gurgling billows of my amazement, the complex 
 object began to speak again, droning his words out down- 
 ward and dolefully; my traveling proposition was still on 
 his mind: 
 
 "To leave our country would be cruelly unjust to our 
 countrymen, for fat is a dropsical hindrance to those who 
 must work, and now, as it has pleased God that all but 
 ourselves shall ceaselessly work, how great would their 
 burden of suffering be if above the weight of their toil 
 they were constrained to carry that of fat also ! We came 
 to their rescue and divided the labor: we carry the fat 
 and they the toil, we dedicate and surrender our bodies 
 a sleeping sacrifice to bear the cross of all the people's fat 
 and rescue the workers from the desperate weight of that 
 curse. We are somewhat assisted in carrying this fat by 
 those who carry us, but you must remember that their 
 exertion is noble, since like us they support fat, and their 
 effort in doing it is not to be compared with ours, for 
 while they sustain the same quantity of fat that we do, 
 there are fifty of them to uphold upon these poles the 
 burden which only two of us are obliged to maintain upon 
 our bones. We also redeem the tribe from the toilsome strain 
 of eating food by eating it for them ; we deliver them from 
 the dangers to life incident to taking foreign substances 
 into the system through the mouth, which exceed the infi- 
 nite. We give our inner substance to the conjugal teeth 
 of microbes to preserve our countrymen from their inju- 
 dicious lacerations. We cannot abandon our country." 
 
I MEET THE FAT 
 
 171 
 
 I availed to hold my sides together and keep my latent 
 explosions limited to facial athletics and wrinkled roars, 
 and eventually straightened myself to inquire from whence 
 he derived his thoughts. 
 
 "I never rest from recognizing that I am His Worship," 
 he answered, pointing to the drooping tun of avoirdupois ; 
 "I have no self and therefore no mind of my own, for I 
 could not store it in this borrowed body ; my thoughts come 
 to me out of that vast thinker's fat brain, which is my super- 
 liminal mind." 
 
 The Emperor came again to relieve my perplexity. "They 
 all look like this one and you never could guess how it is 
 done. When they are very young and before it has grown 
 to much size, so that the operation is safe, we take their 
 wills out through a slight incision in the skull. The bone 
 heals and all appears as before. The thinking power 
 remains intact, in truth is strangely facilitated and aug- 
 mented in its growth by concentration of all cerebral nutri- 
 ment in itself with no food waste on volition ; bereft of 
 voluntary force they readily accept all ideas that come 
 from authority, and being taught from infancy that they 
 are the personality of the fat men they believe it with 
 inexpugnable conviction ; and they grow marvelously clever 
 and cunning, but all for the benefit of the fat, whom, 
 regarding as themselves, they worship with violent infatu- 
 ation. It is absolute selfishness unconsciously turned to 
 absolutely altruistic uses : they serve the State in the per- 
 sons of the Fat, while imagining that it is solely themselves 
 they are exalting." 
 
 I questioned him if they had no other function. 
 
 "Yes, numerous ones : they amuse us with songs of 
 their invention praising the Gluttons and their wisdom ; 
 they contrive long harangues for delivery in public places 
 showing the matchless worth of our Horroboo breed above 
 the rest of created creatures, which, they derisively avouch. 
 
1/2 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 are foaled, not born; whenever a citizen grows discon- 
 tented during a famine occasioned by the fat men's feel- 
 ings they prove from the language of the bark of trees, 
 legible to none but them, that it is the will of the Great 
 Spirit to have a period of popular starvation ; they are 
 the instructors of the young in what pertains to a useful 
 life — that is, in the mythology of lost Ethiopian tribes and 
 the supposed shape of their larynx in the pronunciation 
 of words, with photographs of the impressions they left 
 on the air, the language of Adam as reconstructed from 
 the beats of a perfect man's heart after death, the places 
 sat upon by extinct thinkers, whether prophets were first 
 made of smoke or sorrow, the bearing of fingernails on 
 the roots of trees, the moral character of the departed as 
 shown by the longitudinal texture of their disappointed 
 bones, the obligation of obedience to the grandparents of 
 our first grandparents in all untried emergencies to come, 
 to save the mind from wearing out, the universal history 
 of feathers, ditto of fat, ditto of vacuums, a study of the 
 life of Griffelak I. to form the morals of the young, the 
 location on the first goose of the feathers transmitted to 
 the present first families as they lie on these litters, dic- 
 tated from the memory of a band of young rememberers 
 trained to recall the past by looking eighteen hours a day 
 into graves, a microscopic analysis of the dried skins of 
 first families for emulation, the mystery of the qualities 
 of fatness, the holiness of the undiscovered, the heavenly 
 beauty of earthly ugliness and vice versa, the relation of 
 entrails to eternity, and a number of other pithecoid prob- 
 lems upon which our public school system turns its glassy 
 eye." 
 
THE FOOD INCLOSURES 173 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 The Food Inclosures 
 
 It was now declining toward the cool of the afternoon 
 and we took our way to the food inclosures. They were 
 in a circle of the city set apart for them, quite central, so 
 that at all times but especially during famines the people 
 might have the quantities of collected and forbidden food 
 under their eyes. They were thus disciplined to self- 
 control, a sense of the awful nearness of death, and respect 
 for the awfuler rights of property. The decaying nutri- 
 ment would send its fumes far and wide, proving to each 
 slowly dying abstainer the beauty and holiness of firmly 
 starving in an ocean of food. 
 
 About these inclosures ethics abounded. Every man 
 cared more for his principles than for his constitution ; 
 here all lived for the pure idea in opposition to the sordid- 
 ness of nutrition ; food was despised and dreaded as mate- 
 rial ; a righteous skeleton was more honored than a heart 
 corrupted by lusting after bread and milk; their pious 
 precept was that God had special heavenly mansions for 
 such skeletons ; they held it evil to preserve life against 
 the sound religion of submission to law ; faith in God was 
 medically declared to be more physically strengthening (for 
 the poor) than beefsteak, and cheaper; if any food besides 
 Faith in God was needed by the poor, a potato was recom- 
 mended ; might for the first time politely groveled to right 
 before grinding it to atoms. Who among these skyward- 
 starving saints would care to hang paving-stones to his 
 soul by snatching a knob of flesh from legal and orderly 
 decay to increase the tears of his life? Who would steal 
 a criminal bone in the presence of the frowning God in 
 the Fat? Who would jeopardize his religious notions and 
 ethical foundations and practical rules and principal corol- 
 
174 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 laries, for nothing but vile happiness on a mean globule 
 of transitory matter spinning forever through an idle void? 
 No true Horroboo would stoop so low ; the teaching of 
 his Sunday School had saved him from that ; Eternity was 
 always present in their eyes, tho nothing was present in 
 their stomachs. It was a Horroboo proverb that when a 
 man was very hungry he had eaten God, which made hun- 
 ger the essence of their worship. The Fat had composed 
 this proverb, but they had never eaten God. 
 
 The inclosures were formed by a low fencework of 
 interwoven brush reaching about to the neck of an average 
 man but transparent to small women and children through 
 the interstices ; over the meshed gate of each was the 
 owner's name in fancy lithograph ; and their size varied 
 according to the number of goose feathers the owner's first 
 ancestor had been entitled to wear. The amount of food 
 the nabob could own and rot increased directly with the 
 size of his title to these goose feathers. 
 
 Despite my respect for the ethical verities I could not 
 help exclaiming. "If this is where the unused carcasses 
 are thrown I should think the famished people would jump 
 in and snatch them." 
 
 "Not for this world and a handsome load of interest- 
 bearing bonds on heaven ! They would feel themselves 
 dishonored forever and foresee their dead souls moaning 
 through infinite spacelessness clad in a rancid pall. What- 
 ever may be their outward appearance as to cleanliness and 
 intellect, our people are developed to a very delicate alti- 
 tude morally; they are like reverent lobsters in a boiling 
 kettle with the lid of conscience on — under that lid they 
 are well contented to stew or fry, asking no reasons for 
 the heat consuming them if they can see that reassuring 
 cover through the steam. Three deaths a day to each of 
 them, spiced with torture and vivisection, could not goad 
 them to pluck a bone through these hallowed twigs." 
 
THE FOOD INCLOSURES 175 
 
 I summed the matter up to His Horroboo Highness as 
 I thus far understood it and asked him if I was right. 
 I said: "These fleshy persons, Their Royal Fatnesses, are 
 in possession of the entire sustenance of the tribe, to give 
 or withhold as they feel moved ; they cause measureless 
 quantities of food to be wasted, of which their fellow tribes- 
 men are in perishing need, with no cause but the chance 
 occasional turbulence of their comatose corpulency; and 
 they are not only useless and most of the time asleep, being 
 nothing but a great sewer upon society carrying everything 
 good off. to ruin and waste and leaving depletion and 
 wretchedness worse than ten battle-fields, but they are 
 utterly powerless both in mind and body to protect and 
 enforce their spurious fantastical claims : and yet your 
 mighty nation of fifty thousand quasi souls sufl:'ers and sub- 
 mits to them ; and to crest all, or rather to load all with 
 unimaginable infamy, these hundred bladders of senseless 
 grease are not human, for the normal faculties and sym- 
 pathies of men are dead in them, having been absorbed 
 and transmuted into eating and fat ; and finally though they 
 are a colossal deception openly and visibly, and so decayed 
 and imbecile that they cannot support the fraud by any 
 thought or act of their own, others, these spineless coun- 
 sellors and slaves, are employed to carry on the shameless 
 hoax for them, and the people revel in the murderous lie 
 which they inflict upon themselves. It is as if the nation 
 revered a hundred moribund sheep or swine and appointed 
 them to be owners of their food sources and the gods of 
 their life." 
 
 "You learn like a god yourself, and testify your immacu- 
 late descension," Milto and Griffelak simultaneously roared. 
 
 "Thank you, I deserve no credit; for the moment I felt 
 myself back in civilization attending a directors' meeting, 
 and I think I was dreaming when I spoke; if you have 
 any other equally progressive institutions to show off let 
 us see them at once." 
 
176 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "After coffee," they said, "we have afternoon coffee 
 now.' 
 
 In a cheerful spot with ripe bananas hanging over our 
 heads and brihiant flowers garnishing the lawns of shaven 
 grass, with brooklets rippling musically past our feet and 
 shady dells inviting the listener with divine notes of native 
 birds concealed in their airy aisles, we drank the steaming 
 Hquid which sable servants brought in a shining samovar. 
 The cups were of the usual size and carved from ivory, 
 the sugar was as sweet as any I have tasted, and the wine 
 jelly proudly transfused a most ancient suggestion. We 
 also smoked, for by this time I had circulated the cosy 
 habit, tilting our chairs against the trees companionably, 
 while exchanging a few white and black anecdotes in a 
 conversational tone. The mocha thawed the vitals of Grif- 
 felak and under its genial effluence he reached beneath 
 the table and drew out a bottle. We clicked our ivories 
 and drank. It was ambrosia, for no liquor in civilization 
 compares with it, I imbibed sparingly, as interviewing two 
 kings, and had no intention of spoiling a choice bit of news 
 through drunkenness. 
 
 "Is this a popular drink?" I inquired. "If so I could 
 readily enthrall myself among your lower classes ! it is a 
 heavenly beverage in which I have already counted numer- 
 ous godlike flavors." 
 
 "We do not waste this on the common trash," replied 
 my royal friend. 
 
 At this moment the fat men's procession filed somberly 
 across the noble esplanade, visible through the spaces of the 
 trees. Every soul of them had the neck of a skin bag in 
 his mouth which he was sucking with great fury, about 
 two gallons in size. 
 
 "This is their drinking time," commented Griffelak, tap- 
 ping his bottle : "the same, ambrosia do you call it ? nepenthe 
 in our syntax; they drink two gallons each at this hour 
 
THE FOOE) INCLOSURES 177 
 
 and four at bed-time to drown their sorrow for the poor 
 starving people whose woe gnaws them to the quick with 
 a bitter muriatic, anguish. They suffer sorely because it 
 is against the laws of the Cosmos buried in their abdomens 
 to give the sufferers food, whence they keep themselves 
 in a state of intoxication day and night to be unconscious 
 of the misery they are compelled by the Order and Avarice 
 of the Universe to inflict." 
 
 "What do the popular dregs drink?" I queried, thinking 
 I might learn something for the cause of temperance at 
 home. 
 
 He drew on a long face and spoke as it were from a 
 new-made grave. "Ah, Sir, this is the whole trouble with 
 the populace class — they drink. God save me from speak- 
 ing ill of my countrymen, but they are addicted to their 
 cups: they have a spirit composed of ninety-nine parts 
 rain-water and one sulphuric acid with which they ravish 
 their vitals weekly ; it keeps them poor ; it is manufactured 
 by command of the fat men and sold to the people at a 
 prodigious profit, one per cent, of which is given to free 
 lectures on astronomy. Were it not for these astronomical 
 lectures the traffic might be abolished, for none are more 
 opposed to this damning drink habit in the masses than 
 the fat, but what would the common people know about 
 the stars if this free learning were interdicted by the aboli- 
 tion of inebriousness ? The Fat also give a thousandth of 
 one per cent of their drink profit to support addresses on 
 the evils of intemperance and if the manufacture of liquor 
 and drinking were stopped these discourses would have to 
 collapse for want of funds, our war against the sin of 
 drink would then have to cease, the consumption of intoxi- 
 cants would multiply ten times and the working people 
 would be lying dead drunk in one spirituous heap the year 
 long. The Fat Absolutes often earnestly expostulate with 
 them, through the medium of their delegated brains, upon 
 
lyS THE HORROBOOS 
 
 the wickedness of drinking up their substance, and it is 
 fortunate for them that they have not as much food as 
 they have drink for they would be as great gkittons as they 
 are tipplers and sots if they could. Gluttony as opposed 
 to the genius and piety of our nation is much spoken against 
 by the Counsellors under command of their broad-bellied 
 patrons. The Gorgers have a series of annual frowns 
 which they exhibit at evening meetings in the fall to dis- 
 suade the people from giving a loose rein to their carnal 
 appetites. 
 
 "Now," concluded Griffelak, with the supersolid infinite- 
 ness of a university philosophy-doctor in his maimer, "I 
 have proved by the foregoing chain of arguments that the 
 unbridled lust for liquor which throbs like a cruel demon 
 in the alcoholic marrow of our rabble is the cause of their 
 dreadful indigence and ruin. If it v/asn't for the profit that 
 we make on the liquor, drunkenness would end. We pray 
 for this continually, the fat and I, and are careful to see 
 that our prayers are not answered. Should this transpire 
 tiie fat would give them as much less food as they now 
 spend for drink, which would keep the same profit in the 
 corpulent coffers without wandering out to the people and 
 back — but there would be less business activity and fewer 
 lost souls to establish the prophesied frailty of human 
 nature. We have to guard that frailty with great scruple 
 to protect the credit of the prophets. The tendency to 
 gluttony from which the Ilorroboo herd now suffer uncon- 
 sciously, their stomachs and morals being much broken 
 down by it without their knowledge, would be corrected 
 by the shrinkage of their affluence, however, and the food 
 of the many now squandered on drink could be saved by 
 the fat men to invest in their inclosures." 
 
PILLARS OF HORROBOO STATE 179 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 Pillars of the Horroboo State 
 
 This eloquent view of the temperance question being new 
 to me I hazarded no comment and we walked arm in arm 
 to the locality of another leading Horroboo institution. 
 It was one of the grand metropolitan circles, whither I 
 perceived from a distance that we had been preceded by 
 the first citizens. Here and there were corpses in various 
 grades of decomposition by whose sides lay stretched out 
 the fat dotards on the customary support of their backs. 
 The stench was the familiar mephitic one of decayed 
 humanity, but of titan texture; J refused to go further 
 when I saw the odorous cause and examined the deadly 
 position with my field glasses. 
 
 "In heaven's name, what does this portend?" gasped I 
 through my handkerchief. 
 
 "These bodies are the spoils and perils of our last war," 
 gurgled Griffelak, inhaling a luxurious breath. "Of course 
 like all other nourishment they belong to the well-bellied 
 proprietors. After the possession of a feather and the 
 inflated stomach the highest dignity is to possess a body 
 killed in battle. The Fatmen do not wish to eat them, 
 for the honor of owning what others have not would then 
 vanish, so they convene here every afternoon and occupy 
 the remains until the softening carrion has evaporated 
 entirely away. The distinction of owning these cadavers 
 is twofold : human flesh of foreigners is the prime delicacy 
 of all seasons to the tribal palate, all long with florid but 
 restrained savage propriety to feel a morsel of this cloy- 
 ing nutriment between their molars, which the Fat deny 
 themselves and forbid to others with an elegant sense of 
 patrician exclusiveness ; it is also considered an act of fine 
 prowess to kill an enemy, which the fat alone are worthy 
 
l8o THE HORROBOOS 
 
 to perform (albeit quite unable to do so), and the theory 
 is that the fat men are the doughty slayers of all the bodies 
 that are brought in from battle, altho they always take to 
 their beds and remain there with their heads under cover 
 counting their feathers while the others sally forth to fight. 
 Pictures are painted of the fat giants fiercely seated on 
 snorting elephants with flames of fire darting from their 
 eyes, and killing thousands of their enemies with a blast- 
 ing look, and the rustic hinds of the tribe who have done 
 all the fighting there was, abase themselves before these 
 glorious photographs, worshiping the bravery of their supe- 
 riors' pictures and hopelessly praying that they may some- 
 time themselves become valorous. 
 
 "Sitting thus on decomposing flesh causes fevers and 
 sudden deaths among the fat veterans, but they murmur 
 not at the blows of destiny if they can maintain the honor 
 of their position by the sacrifice of their lives, especially 
 as their mental powers are insuflficient to associate sick- 
 ness and rot together. Besides, to see their tribesmen 
 feasting on these dainty corpses would engender greater 
 mortality among them." 
 
 "Disgusting!" said I in English, and the two potentates 
 thought I was praising them in celestial and clapped their 
 hands. 
 
 "By breeding the fat together patiently," confided Grif- 
 felak, "we hope to get a species four times larger. It will 
 be an unprecedented consolation. The fatter you are the 
 more room you have for fat if you always put it on the 
 outside. We are a pretty proud nation now, for we invented 
 this idea of the repeated combination of great personali- 
 ties until everything great is under one head, but if our 
 personal geniuses should swell two or three times in extent, 
 the small people would go to pieces with their arrogant 
 haughtiness at having reared up such hitherto unattainable 
 splendors," 
 
PILLARS OF HORROBOO STATE igj 
 
 Milto, however, had grown sober and stern hstening to 
 his friend's account of things and he now spoke: "If we 
 had those bloated beasts in our habitation we should eat 
 them in short space and get them out of the way to have 
 our own food without their pampered pretension to inter- 
 ference." 
 
 Griffelak shrunk into half of himself with groans of 
 mortal terror. "Hush!!" he simpered. "If a Horroboo 
 should hear such baleful words the liberties of the people 
 and my ancient throne would be smashed! If that heinous 
 sentiment pierced through the mailed prejudice of a single 
 mind here it would be fatal to every precious thing that 
 exists under the smiling bloodstained shackles of my gov- 
 ernment ! Let them once imbibe the fallacy that they could 
 eat these hideous whales — which in secret I confess they 
 are — and they would do it in defiance of our lying Seventy- 
 Thousand- Year-Old-Book, the teachings of Counsellors, or 
 the clubs of my Brain-Breakers, — and logic, religion, high- 
 feeding and faith would die out of the world; we should 
 become a prey to devils and general nourishment; Hades, 
 pandemonium and happiness would possess the earth; the 
 sin of general justice would foam over the planet! No! 
 We keep up the embalmed edifice of society by a balance 
 of powers : the fat are balanced on the backs of the people 
 that carry them, these are balanced on the necks of the 
 people that feed them both, and I and the Counsellors 
 balance this whole three-storied human cathedral by dis- 
 tributing ourselves around its side walls and seizing on to 
 anything we can get for support. The fatmen thus sus- 
 tain me and teach the people below by the immense weight 
 of their prestige that I am their indispensable protector; 
 if I said this alone, unbuttressed by a vast capital of fat, 
 the people would regard it as a self-interested statement 
 and throw me off. I respond by treating the Gluttons with 
 all the reverend punctilio of a clerk and assuring the people 
 
l82 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 that the entire fabric of popular happiness stands on feath- 
 ers and fat, tho of course I know that these corpulent 
 beasts have been absolute fools these ten thousand years. 
 Still, they are the prop of my throne, my very existence 
 as an Emperor depends on their wink, and I can't give 
 them up. The counsellors, being easily shuffled and moved 
 about and elastically fitting into any hole, preserve the 
 equilibrium of the balance. Of course these demented 
 tumors take themselves seriously, so far as a ray of con- 
 sciousness ever penetrates their putrid bulks, but those 
 shrewd fellows the counsellors, although wanting in the 
 power or desire to interfere, and fancying themselves with 
 one lobe of the brain identical with their masters' brains, 
 see through it all with the other lobe : they know what a 
 fraud I am and what a stupendous fable these shapeless 
 oil tanks are, but they are wedded to their position as one 
 of fame and honor, altho it is the most infamously servile 
 one in the state. The expurgation of their wills in child- 
 hood deprived them of the force to realize a condition of 
 servility and they are never so flattered as when a fat man 
 slaps them. They then jump about him like a pet fawn 
 and kiss him wherever they can and the more rapidly the 
 blows fall about their ears the more thickly they slaver on 
 the kisses." 
 
 "I should like to be taught that process of will chirur- 
 gery," I interrupted, "for I rank it from your account as 
 the best spiritual anaesthetic ; it would relieve servants 
 high and low, as well as indigent educated gentlemen with 
 mind who live by professing character, from all sensitive- 
 ness to humiliation ; there are countries where it would be 
 an untold blessing and a due ballast on the antics of aspira- 
 tion. It would save our professors and clergymen from 
 some mysterious mortifications. It seems to be the com- 
 plete welding of thought and dollar to which all fine forces 
 of civilization tend, yet have not absolutely attained." 
 
PILLARS OF HORROBOO STATE 183 
 
 "You shall be taught the art," rejoined Griffelak gra- 
 ciously. "It effects the euthanasia of the moral nature in 
 its germ, leaving the mind a highly sharpened thinking 
 machine devoid of moral impulse or perception." 
 
 "Capital!" I observed; "it is the very discovery the 
 learned world has been seeking these many centuries, and 
 to think it should have been dormant here in these musty 
 wilds for twelve thousand yawning years !" 
 
 "As I was saying," Griffelak resumed, "the coimsellors 
 do their share of keeping up our splendid system because 
 they derive huge enjoyment from walking curved over 
 beneath their masters, and because they secretly imagine 
 that the whole fabric of state rests on them, from the power 
 of their eloquence to keep the people in the slavish path. 
 Their crooked spines are to them a badge of the mighty 
 affairs of the community which they carry. They are quite 
 contented with these austere rewards and ask nothing 
 more. Their food is the skins and claws of the ani- 
 mals which the fat men eat, plentiful such as they are, 
 but a little dry. When a fat patron dies his Counsellor 
 is respectfully burned alive to accentuate the identity; also 
 because he may need his brains in the next world. The 
 Counsellors live in a circle by themselves, indulging no 
 intercourse with the hunter caste, whom they consider dogs 
 because their spines are not curved. If you observe you 
 will notice that they never lift their eyes from their own 
 feet, for which they feel an electric veneration compounded 
 of esthetics and religion; none of them has ever seen the 
 sky, it would be an infallible pollution, expiable only by 
 twelve days of diet on unseasoned hair. The last of their 
 kind who ventured to look at the sky became blind with 
 horror at the evil possibilities that he saw in it. This was 
 three thousand years ago. They are now providentially 
 aided in resisting the temptation to look upward by the 
 lost use of the muscles that revolve and raise the head, 
 
l84 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 which have atrophied in such a degree that if one of them 
 designed to catch a ghmpse of the heavenly vault he would 
 be obliged to lie upon the bend of his neck and shoulders 
 with his feet elevated against a wall." 
 
 Just then a common Horroboo passed with a feather 
 about an inch long fastened) to his loin-cloth and the upper 
 part of him confined in a species of cage which brought 
 the higher links of his neckbone and his head into the rain- 
 bow shape of the counsellors and held them there fast. 
 
 "What does this mean ?'' I queried nervously ; "I thought 
 feather-wearing was now limited to the abdominous giants ; 
 is this strange object getting up a revolution?" 
 
 "He is a dangerous character," answered GrifTelak. "He 
 is a common food-digger who has somehow acquired the 
 power to think. This renders him foully pernicious to 
 the commonwealth since his back is neither bent fixed nor 
 his will extracted. He might communicate his thoughts 
 to others and topple the empire down. To avert this crisis 
 we bribe him in the delicate manner that you see. He is 
 honored with the privilege of wearing a pin-feather one 
 hour a fortnight, and is put in training for the proud posi- 
 tion of Counsellor by that cage, which is training his head 
 down to the right angle. The counsellors are also teach- 
 ing him to read the bark of trees, which must always be 
 done in a closed space under ground, for otherwise the 
 language refuses to appear." 
 
 "Have you lamps?" 
 
 He scratched his head, and I defined lamps. 
 
 "Oh, no, light would dim the meaning, it has to be done 
 in the dark." 
 
 "Poor wretch! doesn't he suffer in that brutal cage?" 
 
 "Horribly, but he is happy. He can never be a coun- 
 sellor himself because he still has a will, but that is to be 
 taken out of his children, who, if they inherit his thinking 
 genius, will be full-fledged counsellors, if not they will 
 
PILLARS OF HORROBOO STATE 185 
 
 hungrily hunt. He has to associate with the common flesh- 
 catchers all his life, but they stand in painful awe of him 
 by reason of his cage and feather, and on his part he con- 
 siders them a community of worms, he speaks to them only 
 when he must, in terms of insolent hate, he bitterly re- 
 proaches them for polluting the sphere with their existence 
 tho he was yesterday one of them in all points and is to-day 
 no better, but worse in undergoing a thousand tortures to 
 accomplish the mutilation of his children. He proudly 
 bears his griefs and sores, chewing the sour cud of expec- 
 tation that his children will be found worthy to become 
 spiritual eunuchs. And he never tells the people his 
 thoughts. By cage and feather and pride he is converted 
 into a sepulcher of the light of his soul ; being a thinker 
 he was divinely intended to lead his brethren out of bond- 
 age, but a cruel cage and a pin-feather badge purchase and 
 persuade his mind and quell his manly stirrings eternally. 
 This nobly simple arrangement has preserved the State 
 from overthrow unnumbered times. 
 
 "Man is governed by invisible soapbubbles ; we did not 
 know that formerly and resorted to force, which kindled 
 his wrath : we were in jeopardy and invented the inscrut- 
 able soapbubble ; ocean froth does excellently well only it 
 is too real, being impregnated with salt; uncompressed 
 steam, if it has vanished, does the work, or a man's breath 
 if it is ten centuries old ; the imprint of a faded memory 
 is cogent, not less so the smoke of the first fire ever kindled ; 
 other powers being absent the collected friction of the orig- 
 inal star-dust answers, or even the dreams of Eve before 
 she was removed from Adam ; I have known the sentiment 
 that evaporated from a drop of rain that never fell to light 
 up destructive emotion in a mob; you can keep men from 
 taking what is theirs by daily doses of the colors of pre- 
 historic rainbows ; another infallible remedy is porous emp- 
 tiness buried in the center of the earth in the surviving 
 
l86 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 pods of languages that were never spoken, inhaled at one 
 o'clock nightly through a long tube. With all these agencies 
 at command to carry on government and keep the poor 
 people loyal to canned dreams we seldom call in the whip- 
 ping post or harpoon." 
 
 "It can't be that all who stumble on the ability to think 
 will perjure and sell themselves for these full- feigned frip- 
 peries !" I declared ; "you must have some occult method 
 of heading off potent inflammations and insurrections." 
 
 The swarthy monarchs twinkled their protuberant eyes 
 at each other luminously. "Let us tell him," said Milto, 
 and the Horroboo proceeded as follows : 
 
 "Now and then a hunter learns to think who will not 
 sell himself to us. He nurses in solemn wrath his criminal 
 purpose to speak the unmangled truth to his compeers. 
 He resists the gallant feather and syren cage, the bubbles, 
 rainbows and departed smell of precosmic smoke, and goes 
 about uttering vainglorious calumnies against visceral dig- 
 nitaries and my just rule. We prefer not to make a public 
 example of these misguided rebels against the harmonious 
 perfection of our social miracle, and thus to nail them into 
 the arching blue of martyrdom and advertise their mis- 
 creant social creed and murderous names. Their well- 
 known self-centered motive in posing as friends of men 
 is a sordid desire for notoriety ; as one of our Counsellors 
 has said in a faculty meeting: 'They crave notoriety at 
 any cost, for some men prefer to be prominent on the wrong 
 side of any given issue, rather than to be unrecognized 
 on the right,' of whom in general we may specify one 
 Socrates and another Jesus, notorious characters in their 
 day who did not belong to our tribe, and who have been 
 too freely advertised considering how they were disposed 
 of by their contemporaries; the less said about them the 
 better, and the former was allowed to live too long before 
 they brought his notoriety to the hemlock: — they should 
 
Pillars of horroboo state ig; 
 
 have kept the latter aHve reforming Jerusalem in connec- 
 tion with practical philanthropists, to emasculate his enthu- 
 siasm, if they had wished to throttle his heresy; let others 
 heed and take warning and reflect on the untimely con- 
 sequences of unpopularity. 'Martyrdom perpetuates per- 
 nicious creeds,' says an ex-hangman living in retirement. 
 
 "We therefore incubate a war in our communal coops 
 to extirpate the heretics and calm the frenzies. There has 
 been a perpetual dual alliance for this purpose between 
 King Milto's ancestors and mine against our subjects 
 through misty generations back, only known to the dead 
 and ourselves. If one of us has trouble with domestic 
 afifairs he telephones the other to begin a war on his out- 
 skirts and makes the welkin ring with the iniquity of the 
 invading Rinyo or Ourselves, our domestic complaints are 
 snufifed out by inarticulate alien rage, our pestilent thinkers 
 turn their thoughts to the extinction of foreigners, which 
 is the only state-recognized object of thinking at all times ; 
 prophets, philosophers and saints on each side of the bloody 
 dividing ditch have now no thought above the hallowed 
 carnage of their opponent vermin (also saints, philoso- 
 phers and prophets at home), pulpit doors are nailed up 
 and laboratories cease from sighing, college presidents beat 
 their pens into bullets and their brains into syndicate 
 shares, all send the common people forth to battle for the 
 Lord, and thirst to have their neighbors die bravely to 
 leave a glorious reputation and some property, we put the 
 fat men to bed, the dangerous thinkers in the front rank 
 and the generals in the rear, Milto and I retire to distant 
 elevations behind our troops respectively to direct opera- 
 tions : at the end of the battle, which we craftily convert 
 into a draw to preserve the balance of power as natural 
 friends and allies must, we find our nations purged of the 
 bloody villains who threatened government, gluttons and 
 culture with thought, and we return to our homes with 
 
l88 THE ttORROBOOS 
 
 neither heretics nor their incendiary doctrines to mar our 
 repose or stimulate our subjects' appetites. And I can 
 assure you that this is a better way of wiping out schisms 
 than your ecclesiastical autos-da-fe, for the schismatics 
 here wipe themselves out to the bray of horns and think 
 they are saving their country." 
 
 I felt that we had done a large day's work and retired 
 to rest on the imperial couch between my regal comrades 
 full of gratitude that I had discovered many things which 
 were needful for the further progress of civilization. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 HoRROBOO Religion 
 
 We took the remaining sights of the town more leisurely. 
 There was a circle where religion was kept but it was 
 not to be seen. Griffelak related that the tribe, having 
 been formerly harassed with it daily and finding it a waste- 
 ful exercise of the knees, brought it hither for deposit at 
 high usury to be collected in the next world. Their theol- 
 ogy, if not profound and poetical like ours, at least deserves 
 the respect of civilization for its simplicity and ingenuity. 
 I. Man is finite in all but one attribute, they say, which 
 is his weakness: he is infinitely weak. 2. The world is 
 infinitely bad. 3. Infinite weakness cannot wrestle with 
 infinite badness. 4. Only God, who is infinitely strong, 
 can do so. 5. Therefore man may as well sit down and 
 have a good time and let God wrestle. 6. The reward 
 of sitting down and having a good time here will be heaven, 
 for God is most honored by our recognizing his infinite 
 power and letting him show it, and those who honor him 
 in this way will receive the highest heavenly pay for their 
 right attitude. 
 
HORROBOO RELIGION 189 
 
 This religion by its natural strength had vanquished a 
 number of rivals, wor the smiles of the state, and conquered 
 for itself a high place in men's hearts, and it had been 
 lodged on a platform elevated far up a vast perpendicular, 
 capping four pillars composed of countless shaven trees 
 spiced one above the other with thongs, commodiously 
 situated in the enclosure; where, being placed as near the 
 sky as could be reached in tha.t climate and with their simple 
 architecture, it did not conflict at all with the genuine 
 affairs of life. Before the good time given by plank Five 
 of their Religious Confession had extended much, it was 
 voted by the nation that the principle of Division of Pleas- 
 ure should be applied to it, as otherwise the world might 
 not continue as bad as the perfect religion required it to 
 be, when, after much urging, the fat consented to enjoy 
 all the pleasure in order to deliver the rest from its gross 
 earthly embarrassments. 
 
 It is generally believed by these pious Horroboos that 
 men may become spirits while they live, in room of waiting 
 to be so when they are dead; or if not invisible spirits at 
 least visible ones, which is the religious vindication — or 
 shall I rather say holy cause — of the Gourmands' depriv- 
 ing the community of nearly all nutriment. By starving 
 the common people they bring them as near the blessed 
 condition of beatified spirits as is attainable in this mun- 
 dane stage of pain. Science and religion are diverted with 
 this experiment, in which the semi-spirit people themselves 
 even take some interest; it is the bridge of sighs whereon 
 religion and science fraternize. A workingman without 
 a body and capable of equal work with those in the flesh 
 is the thing sought, to prove the immortality of the soul 
 and reduce wages. He will need to eat nothing and can 
 shovel with his spirit in lieu of arms. 
 
I90 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 The National Harem 
 
 Then there was the harem circle, almost oppressively 
 interesting on account of the exalted sentiment toward 
 women which forbade the recognition of their sex. There 
 were some foolish errors of nature difficult to reconcile 
 with the sublime spirituality of the Horroboo race, but 
 these errors were industriously ignored by the population 
 until the twenty-fifth year of each babe, after the wise 
 manner of civilized countries. Up till that time the national 
 system of education courageously affirmed the identity of 
 the sexes in everything. Before that age the erroneous 
 existence of sex was not mentioned to children. Prior to 
 that time, however, a system of instruction was allowed 
 in secret by a set of licensed teachers called Libertines, 
 who roved at large through society spreading vice and 
 disease, and it was generally believed that some progress 
 in understanding was made, tho this was never known for 
 the parents and grandparents and official teachers were 
 restrained by modesty from inquiring. 
 
 At twenty-five, while the heads of all were averted and 
 their brows were furrowed with terrible censure, the chil- 
 dren were formally invited to make known what pseudo- 
 love diseases they had contracted up to that date, or what 
 injuries they had unwittingly done themselves on account 
 of the deathlike silence on these matters maintained by 
 all who were tenderly interested in their welfare. Follow- 
 ing their disclosures the collected tribe sat down in the 
 gloomiest posture, as if they were in the lower exit of 
 purgatory, and all picked up handfuls of dirt and threw 
 them in the direction of the culprits, to symbolize the loath- 
 ing in which such enormities were held and to ingrain the 
 solemnity of the warning. The emphasis of the occasion 
 
THE NATIONAL HAREM 
 
 191 
 
 was tremendous from the fact that all the elders had suf- 
 fered in like manner from the same neglect. Then the 
 convocation arose and most of the men, taking their sons 
 by the hand, proceeded to the national seraglio. 
 
 For ample amends were made for these rigorous aus- 
 terities by the Grand Harem, a house of general corrup- 
 tion for the empire, for males of all ages from childhood 
 up. Fathers and sons met each other in this Temple of 
 Eros and exchanged confidential greetings and winks, with 
 jokes which all of them seemed very much to enjoy about 
 their wives, mothers, sisters and sweethearts. The girls 
 detailed to serve in the institution were chosen by lot* 
 and were given the choice between assuming this enlight- 
 ened occupation and having their bodies sawed into two 
 parts under the heart. The choosers were about equally 
 divided in their affection for being sawn asunder and their 
 consecration to public duty, and the government signified 
 its displeasure toward those who elected the saw by placing 
 a tall foolscap on their heads as they were led along the 
 boulevards to the block. 
 
 The precious tribal modesty, which bloomed outside of 
 the harem like the tropical palm, was left at the gates of 
 this glorious circle, to be resumed when the visitors 
 emerged, and indeed so much modesty was daily consumed 
 on account of the vast amount of it exercised in education 
 and conversation, in the home and physiology classes, that 
 there was none left to be used in private anywhere. 
 
 There was one remarkable and unusual class of men 
 that kept entirely aloof from women, with a crabbed tem- 
 per of mind most inhuman toward the gentler sex. These 
 
 •I was compelled to acknowledge to His Highness that the Horroboo 
 method of selecting their prostitutes is eminently more fair and h 'mane 
 than the Christian usage which grants a monopoly of this function 
 almost exclusively to the daughters of the laboring classes, and selfishly 
 endeavors to prohibit the young women of other ranlis of society from 
 sharing Its emoluments. 
 
192 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 atrocious males, who were objects of rabid persecution 
 from the rest of the tribe, also refused to be fathers of 
 children, because they said the children could only make 
 half-men so long as their mothers were but half-women. 
 My own wrath was so intense toward these abhorrent 
 creatures that I hit one of them a sharp cut with my stick 
 as he passed us, to show him how civilization felt about it. 
 The spotless married women replied to the slanderous 
 action of these misogamists with the contemptuous silence 
 it deserved, and spiced their contempt by remaining unin- 
 telligent and undeveloped with the sternest fortitude. 
 
 The respectable women philosophically recognized the 
 Harem as one of the primal and necessary National insti- 
 tutions, equally divine with the family itself and the basis 
 of its preservation, and made no outcry against it, blandly 
 accepting the harem diseases which their husbands pro- 
 fusely brought home and imparted to them, as a destined 
 dispensation of their diseased gods. This may startle you, 
 as it did me until I came to understand the Horroboo phil- 
 osophy on the subject. With the Horroboos every disease is 
 sacred, and what is more wonderful every disease has its 
 guardian deity, who is angry if a disease is cured. Their 
 doctors are the priests of these gods and their function is 
 to preserve the diseases from extinction. The longer they 
 can keep a man sick, the more the grateful wretch pays 
 them. It is also a part of their honored priestly code 
 to protect the citizens from a knowledge of the laws of 
 health, which not only pleases the diseased gods but de- 
 servedly enhances the revenues of the priestly doctors. 
 
 I was astounded at the information that every one of 
 the gods who was the patron of a particular disease had 
 that malady in a very aggravated form himself, and that 
 naturally many of the doctors to each of these gods were 
 likewise afflicted with the appropriate complaint. It was 
 reasoned that without having a disease himself a doctor 
 
THE national; harem 193 
 
 could not be perfectly competent to preserve it in another 
 man's constitution. I noted them intently and could not 
 deny that the physicians were faithfully devoted to their 
 calling and pursued it so ably that no disease was ever 
 allowed to become extinct, and for their devotion to the 
 well-being of the diseases the appreciative people made 
 many of them monstrously rich. 
 
 But especial credit was earned and received by those 
 incomparable lights of medicine who were the protectors 
 of harem diseases. Their success was so grand that nearly 
 eighty per cent of the males of the empire were infected 
 with these gay plagues at some time in their lives, only 
 about twenty per cent of the population entirely missing 
 their happy contamination. The indolent doctors who were 
 responsible for this twenty per cent were bitingly censured 
 by the rest of the medical fraternity and were drummed out 
 of the profession for violation of the medical code. Of 
 course the virtuous women benefitted indirectly by this 
 excellent practice of the physicians, in having the harem 
 maladies communicated to them and their children by their 
 husbands at home, so that they did not miss the advan- 
 tages of the harem plagues. These brilliant achievements 
 of the diseases were due to a Horroboo medical law, re- 
 enacted every year at the altars of the Horroboo Harem 
 gods by the anointed harem physicians, that the existence 
 of the harem diseases should always be solemnly denied 
 by the doctors, with the most awful oaths to confirm the 
 denial, and that the whole stunning array of jocund deaths 
 resulting directly or indirectly from them should be publicly 
 ascribed to inscrutable divine love with thanks to God for 
 their infliction. 
 
 After mastering this Horroboo theology of disease, altho 
 criticising it at some points by the blazing light of our 
 superior Christian practice, I seemed to realize for the 
 first time the divine economy of diseases and why we have 
 them. The prolific idea of diseased gods dissipated the fogs. 
 
194 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 Budding Angels. The Beautiful Empress 
 
 "Here is a circle," quoth my royal guide, "which I vow 
 is without parallel in the universe. It is the Pity Circle. 
 Contiguous barbarians may outstrip us in the length of 
 their feet and in some other marvels of the arts and sciences, 
 but we claim pre-eminence in this. Here in this acre we 
 sow the first idealets of the Infinite in the minds of our 
 young, especially of our Gourmands' and our Sufferers' 
 young. On Saturday afternoon once a month the most 
 emaciated children are collected and brought hither to a 
 matinee; they are placed in a shallow pit circumscribed 
 by a rim on which the children of the Fat are pleasantly 
 perched : the lean children are there to be pitied, the fat 
 ones are there to pity them. We name the event our 
 School of Social Pity. The true relation of classes is taught 
 in this school. Here the fat youths learn to feel themselves 
 infinite, and the lean learn to look up to them as so, and 
 on themselves as infinitely finite; it is the first idea they 
 all obtain of God. The fatlings furnish a collation of 
 worms' feet and tears to the dear little shadows in the pit, 
 the only meal of their skeleton guests during the month, 
 owing to the stern decree of the Fat Fathers that the food 
 surplus shall not be touched. The Fathers purpose to 
 keep a pitiable class in tragically deep sorrow by the action 
 of confirmed emptiness, in order to exercise their offspring 
 in the qualities of pity and mercy, traits that would prob- 
 ably never appear in them at all if these most wretched 
 objects of their attention did not exist. 
 
 "This excellent repast of worms' feet and tears is like- 
 wise another of those manifold agencies for saving the 
 State, or the state of the Fat, by awakening early in the 
 hungry spirits of the common sufferers a deep sense of 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL EMPRESS 195 
 
 gratitude for the favor shown by their superiors. Why, 
 they would die if this banquet did not come monthly just 
 when it does, and many of them die in spite of it!" 
 
 I professed regret that I could not witness one of these 
 charitable ceremonies, so fraught with healing for broken 
 hearts and abandoned digestions, when Griffelak joyfully 
 exclaimed Whook! Whook! and drew a paper from the 
 cowskin bag at his girdle and handed me the sheet : it was 
 a copy of the Horroboo Public Defiler containing a graphic 
 idyl of the last meeting of the Pity Society; I perused it 
 and begged permission to keep the Defiler, which is now 
 among my dearest souvenirs of Africa. It thus read : 
 
 "Horroboo Pity Day. Town ablaze with mercy. Gen- 
 eral downpour of pathetic tenderness. Union of the Four 
 Hundred with the Forty Thousand, Full and Empty, with 
 Kisses thrown down from above by the Full. A mag- 
 nificent collection of bones unusually visible. Former dis- 
 plays surpassed. Roses and Rags. Unequal distribution 
 of Fat. No' Socialism at this dinner. Pity however equal- 
 izes happiness. Many tears gratefully received. Price of 
 worms' feet forced up by the demand and the market skil- 
 fully cornered by the fat babies ; they will be great specu- 
 lators when they grow up. Beautiful ceremony of worship 
 when the Emaciants fall on their knees to the Fatlings and 
 promise them faithful service forever in return for Pity. 
 Statue of Pity as a fat child erected in Obesity Park and 
 the pitied swear allegiance to it. Their next meal one 
 month from to-day. Life-preserving power of pity between 
 meals. Prominent Digestions present at to-day's feast." 
 
 These were the headings in quite artistic Horrobesque 
 type, followed by the calmer description: 
 
 "The givers of the feast were appropriately another 
 400 children of the well-to-do classes, who, as members of 
 the Children's League of Pity— surely title was never more 
 appropriate— are taking in early life an interest in the wel- 
 
196 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 fare of those who are less happily placed than themselves. 
 The League of Pity is, of course, affiliated to the National 
 Society, which has now a membership of nearly all the 
 children of the Fat. Some of the darlings sturdily refuse 
 to pity and prefer to stimulate the starving with pins. The 
 400 members who contributed to the cost of yesterday's 
 entertainment included the children of the Duchess of 
 Hooka-Porka, the Countess of Damnpeople, the Right-Hon. 
 Lady Skintenant, the Hon. Lady Drinkblood, Lady Cram- 
 daddle, Earl Heartripper, Lord Stealall'er and the Hon. 
 A. Grabworker, 
 
 " 'While the guests were being entertained in the body of 
 the King's Hall, the juvenile hosts and hostesses surveyed 
 the fruit of their good work from the galleries, which were 
 as well filled as the tables at which the feast was served.' 
 One of the sweetest episodes occurred when 'the guests 
 heartily responded to a call for cheers for the givers of 
 the feast, Miss Toadwell (the secretary of the league), and 
 the Empress, the patron of the society.' " 
 
 "Curious," said I, "London often has something like this 
 too, and so far away from you ! How could they have 
 borrowed the idea?" 
 
 Griffelak bent his beetling brows upon me and said : "H 
 our system of perfect equality ever fails, the union of all 
 classes accomplished by these monthly spreads of pity is 
 expected to cement the hearts of my countrymen to me 
 and the fragments of state into a perduring conglomera- 
 tion. If we can induce the fat to part with enough prop- 
 erty to make a prize we shall offer one to the best pitier." 
 
 "Old Chap," I said banteringly, "you have been keeping 
 some very delightful institutions in the background. There 
 is Her Majesty, tke Empress, your wife, mentioned by this 
 paper, and the Nobility — where are they?" 
 
 "My Consort you shall see," responded his Ebony High- 
 ness, "but I beg you will not insist on looking into the 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL EMPRESS 197 
 
 nobility. They are an experiment, just in the early graft. 
 Merely owning and eating all the food is getting to be an 
 old story and the Gluttons want new excitements and hon- 
 ors, as well as distinctions among themselves upon the 
 basis of their rank in flesh. We don't know yet how the 
 population will stand this. They are well contented with 
 the fact of their slavery and would never rebel against 
 that, but it is another thing to make a public memorandum 
 of it and to acknowledge the fact in a word : the institution 
 of nobility is all right so long as it isn't called so, but to 
 make it up into a phrase and inaugurate that phrase into 
 the language may cause a revolution. Humanity is an odd 
 snake, and you have to be careful of it. We are getting 
 psychologically ready by printing the idea daily in the 
 papers and ridiculing its danger or novelty ; we suggestively 
 post the word 'nobility' on every public billboard to reclus- 
 ter the Horroboo affections, and time will root the institu- 
 tion in. But the Empress Queen shall be summoned." 
 
 Her Highness, whose dazzling beauty in the Horroboo 
 eye had been the cause of many court cabals and some 
 scandals not wholly favorable to the longevity of certain 
 highborn subjects, was brought forward in a sedan of 
 peeled sticks carried by six chained Ethiopians. She was 
 squat, swart and must pustulated, nevertheless with a dis- 
 tinguished bearing, no other indeed than six royal brothers, 
 the sons of a noble king who had been recently caught by 
 a great Horroboo commander with a brotherly letter under 
 a flag of truce, by being invited to dinner, and there while 
 drinking a bumper of amity beheaded from behind. In 
 case Griffelak should have no male issue it had been gener- 
 ally decided that this illustriously treacherous commander 
 should ascend the throne after him, to encourage the war 
 art of conquering difficult enemies by white flags, hospi- 
 talities and forgeries. I was sorry that I could not cable 
 these valuable ideas to some of our Philippine generals, 
 but there was unfortunately no cable. 
 
198 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 Queen Griffelak-Stackwaddle-Wigwaggy took no interest 
 in anything that I could see, further than to manifest a 
 very picturesque contempt for the Emperor, and delight 
 in the plaintive wails of a little Siamese poodle whose ears 
 she returned to pulling viciously after her state introduc- 
 tion to me. Her most illustrious lineament was the noble 
 construction of that part of her face where there is usually 
 a nose. A wide forward-slanting plane obtained in that 
 area, causing many envious Horroboo ladies of the peerage 
 to amputate their own nasal extensions. I learned that 
 she was famous throughout Africa as a leader of charity, 
 for she sent a load of straw annually to the horses of the 
 poor. 
 
 She was also devoted to art, being patroness of that 
 famed Horroboo school of artists which has worked out 
 the distinctive field of death agonies with so much glory. 
 Her own gallery includes the brilliant collection of 5,000 
 pieces representing the Lean in every stage of death for 
 5,000 minutes before the final event, and as these are 
 arranged in a line, the lover of art can, by slowly walking 
 from one end to the other, gain a most vivid and pleasur- 
 able impression of the death-process, with the effect of our 
 moving pictures except that in this case the spectator 
 moves, whole by going in the other direction he obtains a 
 beautiful realization of resurrection. The Empress her- 
 self dabbles a little in paints and is quite an adept in catch- 
 ing the changing expressions of starving infants. She has 
 in fact received several prizes from the Horroboo Academy 
 for her work, consisting of dead babies' eye-sockets — 
 appropriately those of the very babies she had sketched best- 
 
GLORIES OF HORROBOO SCIENCE 199 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIIT 
 The Glories of Horroboo Science 
 
 After my many amazements in this wonderful country 
 and feeling supersaturated with advanced light, I besought 
 their highnesses to change the program of the fourth day, 
 when it had been designed to conduct me through a circle 
 of educational institutions presided over by the semicircu- 
 lar counsellors, on the plea that I could not remember half 
 of the iridescent novelties I had already imbibed, tho 
 secretly convinced that in matters of education they could 
 not be one whit ahead of our universities, and not wish- 
 ing to load myself with a repetition of civilized life, sug- 
 gesting in place of a dismal day with the pedagogues a 
 walk into the argent air of the campagna, for the smell of 
 the war carcasses had become impregnably fortressed in 
 the whole capital and I feared being made sick. 
 
 "We can accommodate you very well with the country 
 and some education too, as this is the Field Day of the 
 great Gluttonian University, our principal institution; the 
 departments go out into the hills this morning to conduct 
 their work," 
 
 This I thought would be something new. Each class 
 took its station on a separate hillock and began affairs. 
 The geologists were counting the grains of sand and com- 
 menced where they had ended on their last visit ; they were 
 to ascertain how many grains there were in Africa, and 
 after that in the rest of the world. The botanists were 
 counting the blades of grass. The meteorologists were 
 counting the particles of fog in the air. The chemists and 
 physicists were counting the atoms of the universe. The 
 biologists were counting the hairs and cells of the animals. 
 Psychologists were taking measured note of each other's 
 snores, their multitude, their width, their cause, and Ihe 
 
20O THE HORROBOOS 
 
 intervals between. Political economists were enumerating 
 the bounties of the living Fat Men to their people, and his- 
 torians were numbering the blessings past which had been 
 publicly conferred by fat patriots now dead. There were 
 students of language, beginning rightly with the grunt of 
 Griffelak I. as the primary root of all language, and closely 
 engaged in counting over the squeaks and sounds uttered 
 by each man that had since lived, a task demanding a large 
 and delicate ear and consummate erudition in all the sci- 
 ences and languages, branches of mathematics and astron- 
 omy, higher classes being already devoted to sorting over 
 and summing up the number, variety, key, circumstances 
 of utterance, and motions of the aggregate of sounds that 
 had emanated from the inhabitants of the stars. Advanced 
 mathematics were subsidiary exercises to counting the lat- 
 ter and were consequently called higher. The obscurities 
 to be untangled only made the results more fruitful when 
 derived; for example, it had to be ascertained how many 
 men had lived, before the sounds they had made could be 
 counted, and the sounds of each individual then cast up 
 separately. As fossils here came into play, the surface of 
 the earth several miles deep as well as of the stars was 
 to be dug over before the knowledge of languages could 
 be called complete. 
 
 These original studies, or more properly original count- 
 ings, were declared to be the components of a compendi- 
 ous total embracement of all being called philosophy, which 
 they produced in this manner; human sounds are the ex- 
 pression of the soul of man, and other sounds (produced 
 by nature) express the soul of the universe — therefore 
 by collecting all the human sounds that have been uttered, 
 and uniting them with those made by nature, a plenary 
 comprehension of man's soul and of the infinite soul is 
 secured. This is Philosophy. And thus moreover a prac- 
 tical guide of life will be obtained when all the countings 
 
GLORIES OF HORROBOO SCIENCE 201 
 
 are completely finished and added, being derived by work- 
 ing out the mathematical effect of every past act from the 
 count, and deducing therefrom the effect of every pro- 
 posed act before deciding to perform it. This is Ethics. 
 I forgot to mention that the medical faculty was employed 
 in counting the microbes of infinite being, which had sug- 
 gested to a new sect of seekers after the soul to count the 
 quantity of submicrobes domiciled in a microbe with the 
 expectation of finding the pure and final soul element in 
 the smallest of these. 
 
 I was enormously pleased that I had not gone away and 
 missed their higher education in its broad-girthed ideality. 
 "I am a university man," I said to Griffelak, "topped off 
 with a seminary. My university was Scarvard, but I con- 
 fess it falls a little short of yours in some points. Does 
 this sound educational system of counting everything lead 
 ultimately — I mean, of course, in the indefinite sometime, 
 when every thing shall have been counted — to anyone's 
 improvement? happiness? good? or to general social uplift- 
 ing? or, er, such like?" 
 
 "To the fat men's," he answered, "it uplifts them. Edu- 
 cation is composed of unfathomable mysteries. It is not 
 yet but may sometime come to be the main pin on which 
 society hangs, raised high by it above the turgid pool of 
 self-contending chaos. It is with us a fast-anchored tradi- 
 tion that when all things here, hereafter and heretofore 
 shall have been duly and accurately counted, as verified by 
 a second count without deviation in any item from the first, 
 the fat will be evicted, the food supply opened freely to 
 all, the specter of famine banished, and happiness will 
 return in a flood of undying light. To fend oft" this hideous 
 apparition of looming joy is the problem of superior edu- 
 cation, of universities, of semilunar instructors. The coun- 
 sellors, or fat men's second selves, who manage the depart- 
 ments, collect a number of infinite tasks, many of them as 
 
202 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 impossible as they are useless, on whose completion (never 
 to be) attention will be turned with the great (and useless) 
 information derived, to the improvement of popular life, 
 the removal of suffering, the good of mankind, the joy 
 of the individual. With that ravishing goal in view all 
 are stimulated to work ever and energetically on at count- 
 ing, that labor of Sisyphus and Death, in perseverance 
 wherein there is no escape for mankind from their chains 
 to the Fat. As you may conjecture, the Fat have endowed 
 this university richly and guard it jealously, spewing all 
 thoughtful counters out of it gustily. Not only is counting 
 an occupation not of the excellent parts of man's mind, 
 but it is deadening to what is most excellent in him, reduc- 
 ing his finer perceptions to insensibility, so that he cannot 
 see that his labors are carrying him away from the goal he 
 thinks he is approaching. For nine thousand years, the age 
 of the university, the tribe, particularly its young, have 
 been counting faithfully; to this is due the progress and 
 permanence of the venerated institutions you have re- 
 viewed, and they will be preserved by education until the 
 world shall end its astral blusterings by some encounter 
 with a wandering astronomical bully more monstrous." 
 Thus spoke the ripple-tongued Horroboo, son of many 
 scholars. 
 
 "And no counter ever sees the cheat and insanity of 
 counting!" I sighed. "Mysterious!" 
 
 "Well, some do," he conceded. "The counting of the 
 advanced students is called original work; the lower schol- 
 ars learn by heart what these creative geniuses count. Once 
 in a long while some advanced student says: 'We have 
 now counted hard and enormously, let us employ the results 
 of it as far as we have gone to the condition of our race 
 and bring all the people up to the present level of our 
 numbering.' 'Oh, no,' says the Counsellor, intoning, 'that 
 would not do at all, for don't you know, our counting may 
 
1 GLORIES OF HORROBOO SCIENCE 203 
 
 yet be found to be wrong in some respect, so that if we 
 began practical improvement now we should have to go 
 back and undo it all by and by, and there would be a 
 bitter disappointment and delay in reaching perfection. 
 No, no, let us stand still and not wiggle or wink until the 
 whole counting is done, and then jump straight over into 
 the ineffable.' 'But,' says the student, still unconvinced, 
 'what is to recompense these generations of the past twelve 
 thousand years and those of the twelve million years to 
 come ? Haven't they given their sorrow gratuitously ? Can 
 you pay one generation off by making another happy? 
 Can you make it up to a needlessly miserable one by the 
 hypothetical gayety of its posterity? With that bliss-bathed 
 generation only to arrive twelve million years later? And 
 when, after all, the most ultimate happiness of any is only 
 a pacifying guess of yours?' 
 
 "Now, says the Counsellor, you land on the impregnable 
 rock of theology as well as on the smaller stones of ethics, 
 political economy and applied athletics. Theology rightly 
 says we know nothing about this and should not ask ; such 
 knowledge belongs exclusively to God, and it is the highest 
 godliness for us to live on the spikes of a guess; very 
 likely God enjoys seeing his fellow creatures agonize, it 
 appears so from looking at their history ; and a race which 
 cannot subsist on a mystery twelve million years is not fit 
 to live and suffer. That is theology, and its last word is 
 Die and Hope — die first and hope afterwards. Then comes 
 ethics with some adhesiveness for those who didn't stick 
 on the surface of theology. Says ethics. All this deadly 
 human agony is for moral discipline, we discipline a few 
 million generations for the good of those that follow; 
 don't worry, you are being disciplined and that will be the 
 end of you, but in twelve million years or so, when the 
 disciplining and counting are done, some generations will 
 come along and need no disciplining because the counting 
 
204 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 is done — if a mistake in the numbers is not found, and then 
 It may be twenty-four miUion years, but what are a dozen 
 million years compared with accurate counting? So says 
 ethics, and catches several Horroboo students in its glue. 
 Now comes politcal economy and takes a shy at the still 
 unstuck. Says it : Natural law settles this, natural law 
 made man unequal intentionally, ergo it is only intended 
 that the Fat shall be happy; the rest of you miserable 
 beggars ought to be very much obliged to your Father 
 which is in Natural Law for begetting you at all and con- 
 ferring the curse of natural woe upon you. This catches 
 quite a number more, indeed all the hardheaded sound 
 reasoners, the alabaster wits and marble-brained geniuses 
 in a word, who all stick in a row behind the theological 
 and ethical rows. Then the department of applied athletics 
 arrives for the enlightenment of the remnant, and cracks 
 their heads in two with bludgeons and swords, and that 
 is the terminus of their skepticism. Thus by a reasonable 
 system of education are the spooks of intelligence expelled 
 from inquisitive childhood brains." 
 
 As I stood inscrutably meditating I was seized on either 
 side by my companions and hurried across a 3'awning gulch 
 up a perpendicular brow of brush-bearded nature to inter- 
 cept an approaching cavalcade in a path between two sen- 
 tinel rocks. 
 
 "How fortunate!" cried the Emperor gleefully, "I 
 had forgotten my orders to the Ministry to send out another 
 civilizing expedition to-day." 
 
 A band of African music walked with radiant tread in 
 front, on whose heels came four dervishes with a copy of 
 The All-Wisdom Book open upon an oblong platter of art- 
 fully latticed bolos ; then a life-size image of the tribe's 
 Supreme Being, represented as dead;* then, mirabile! a 
 
 •It is. as I havp before told you, the singular conceit of these nations 
 to emblemize all their pods as dead; they declared they felt much safer 
 with their deities in this condition, that since they' had slaughtered 
 their Providences they had been much better waited upon. 
 
GLORIES OF HORROBOO SCIENCE 
 
 205 
 
 corpulent monster and his wife! after them a pair of cir- 
 cumflex counsellors bearing tablets with the results of the 
 count of things up to that moment; and last, all clad in 
 priests' toggery, consisting of a skin bag six feet long by- 
 eight inches in diameter flung across their shoulders and 
 from which as from a golf case I could see spears and 
 other affectionate implements of holiness protruding, tho 
 carefully screened from less observing eyes by a shroud of 
 gauze prayers, about seven thousand men whom nobody 
 would ever have mistaken to be anything but multimurder- 
 ers and who were in truth the convicts of the tribe, pur- 
 posely bred by misuse and misery to their profession of 
 liberating souls from bodies, for militant ends. When not 
 piercing the bodies of the lost with their spears they per- 
 form the office of priest to the fallen and pierce their hearts 
 with the love of God. They all threw themselves on their 
 heads when they perceived the Emperor, except the fat 
 couple, who spit upon him, and the Emperor acknowledged 
 the salute by falling on his head to the pair of obese Car- 
 rion. 
 
 "Here is another spark of savagery striding forth to 
 burn lovingly in the blank void of heathendom," mumbled 
 the monarch, wiping away the blood which his ardent inti- 
 macy with the nettled rock had lured from his regnant 
 front, and ejecting some gravel from his eminent lips. 
 
 "Explain, Dread Monarch." 
 
 "We are undertaking to spread the light of Fatness over 
 the world ; no people can be happy without its hundred 
 Gluttons; we cannot spare our hundred but we send out 
 two of them to some adjacent race which we wish to bless, 
 to found the institution and breed the remainder of it. 
 With the grace of heaven we shall soon lift all the nursery 
 peoples to our plane. We are obliged to contend against 
 many prejudices, but these are mostly contended against 
 by our priests, who convert themselves temporarily into 
 
2o6 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 warriors, for which their previous profession of convict 
 has finely quaHfied them, take their spears out of their 
 sacred sacks, and chastise a number of the prejudiced 
 natives v^ith death; thereupon the fat proclaim their pro- 
 prietorship of the converted nation's food and build an 
 enclosure for its storage and decay. The Gluttons are 
 great unifiers of the world; wherever they go my rule 
 accompanies them ; in time all the nations of Africa will be 
 skipping joyfully into the spirit land under their reverend 
 panoply." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 We Stumble upon the Fountain of Happiness 
 
 As we sauntered townward we encountered a thousand 
 men running in a circle about a personage sitting on springs 
 under a palmleaf umbrella. The runners carried stone clubs 
 and frequently struck at imaginary objects as they ran. 
 At signals from the umbrella-man they reversed their 
 course, dodged, jumped over, or darted between the legs 
 of one another, fell upon all fours and ran like animals, 
 skulked and crept on their bellies at a high rate of speed, 
 curved themselves into a hoop about their clubs as an axle, 
 connecting these with consummate skill into a long straight 
 line, and trundled themselves forward with astonishing 
 velocity, stretched themselves out on the ground in rows 
 and rolled in parallel lines and zigzags, still parallel, and 
 performed I cannot remember how many other strange 
 maneuvers, most of them parallel. 
 
 The umbrella personage had scrambled out into the sun 
 and given us his place, I waited for the Emperor to speak, 
 he seemed disinclined and looked foolish, I finally had to 
 start him. 
 
WE STUMBLE UPON HAPPINESS 207 
 
 "There is nothing to be ashamed of in a national game." 
 
 "It is the Domestic Guard," he admitted reluctantly. 
 
 "That is queer. I thought your perfect institutions pre- 
 served themselves — with the help of your educators." 
 
 "They do, but we have to have an institution for pre- 
 serving the institutions." He spoke resentfully, as one 
 caught thieving. "Perfect outward things cannot remove 
 the depravity of the human heart. Neither perfection nor 
 starvation can entirely quell irruptions." 
 
 "You keep the equilibrium of state by equality and a just 
 balance of clubs, then ; well, tell us about it, even Jove had 
 thunderbolts and Jahweh military angels, all Christian civi- 
 lization rests on the bomb-shell." 
 
 The silvery light of a smile glinted through his scowl 
 and he began. 
 
 "All our hunters and carriers have to take their turn in 
 the militia, we have a thousand in service at a time, who 
 serve a month and are then replaced by another thousand. 
 They suppress the insurrections of their fellow hunters and 
 carriers and are loyal to Flesh and Throne as long as they 
 are on guard duty ; when they leave it they generally create 
 an insurrection themselves, which is suppressed by the 
 next monthly guard, composed of citizens who had been 
 suppressed by the retiring regiment the previous term. So 
 it goes in a constant rotation: the people who are rebelling 
 to-day at the desperation of their lot, are put down by their 
 companions who were rebelling for the same cause yester- 
 day and will be doing so again tomorrow, when their mili- 
 tary service expires. But the outbreak of tomorrow will 
 be quelled by some of their friends and families who are 
 rioting to-day, whose turn comes next to do the military 
 work." 
 
 My power of surprise having long since died, I closed 
 my mouth and turned my gaze upon the objects that were 
 preparing themselves for usefulness by just then charging 
 
2o8 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 one another in squads of fifty and laying on their clubs 
 where they could with something more than perfunctory 
 ceremony. I leaned over and laid my hand on his knee: 
 "Grififelak, in the name of universal security tell me how 
 it is done." 
 
 He did so. "It is the effect of a word and a stained toe- 
 nail. We stain the little toe-nails of the military blue and 
 green, excepting the officers, whose big toe-nails receive 
 the colors. It lasts just a month and then disappears sud- 
 denly. While they have on this magic stain they are vain, 
 haughty, overbearing and glad of the orders to kill others. 
 Yet we have found that their loyalty cannot be wholly 
 trusted without the assistance of some magic word: patri- 
 otically stimulated only by the toenail colors they are liable 
 to side with their fathers, sweethearts and brothers. The 
 mystic word is ool, tho alone it is too strong and has to 
 be diluted with other sounds ; it has no meaning, but its 
 potency is like that of oxygen for life, but opposite. It 
 reduces all the faculties to a state of temporary death, ex- 
 cept the faculty of hate and the desire to kill. As the Home 
 Guard rush against the members of their families and their 
 neighbors to quell an irruption, they shout the word in 
 mad ecstacy, feeling themselves fused into little suns of 
 bravery. 
 
 "At one time we gave them a piece of colored cloth to 
 carry between their lips suspended by a tooth, but this 
 was frequently lost or stolen. At the beginning of each 
 month I deliver to them the word and the stone clubs with 
 all the dreadful seriousness of my high office, deepened 
 by a piercing groan from the official groaners : sometimes 
 it is gool, sometimes mool, pool, rool, dool, fool, or in more 
 strenuous times when starvation is more suggestive than 
 usual we enlarge it, saying begool, bemool, berool, bedool, 
 befool, etc. Our reason for changing it is that loyalty to 
 a single expression wears out, the people seem to grow 
 
WE STUMBLE ON TO HAPPINESS 
 
 209 
 
 ftired of killing their friends from the same motive, and 
 we have to invent a new sound to give them a new sanc- 
 tion for murder. Yet ool must ever be an ingredient or 
 the witchery fails. 
 
 "Often in their struggle for freedom and food the people 
 resist this fireside military, employing two modes of war- 
 fare — ^they endeavor to cut off the colored toenails of the 
 soldiers to break the spell upon their minds, for this invari- 
 ably follows if the nail is amputated or the color rubbed 
 out ; the militia are then abruptly able to see things as they 
 are and to comprehend that they belong to the people whom 
 they are slaughtering, in spite of stained toenails. But we 
 circumvent this by putting a metal thimble over the toe, 
 perforated so that the colors can be seen. Of late, however, 
 the people have taken to amputating thimble, toe and all, 
 while the militia are asleep, and we may be obliged to case 
 the entire foot in metal. It will be a black day for peace 
 and poverty if they ever get to lopping off both military 
 legs. 
 
 "The other artifice of the people is the effort to deprive 
 the soldiery of the power to utter the charmed ool word 
 smoothly, by slitting their tongues, which sets them free 
 from its mystery. To escape from this strange bondage 
 to ool, the nation, with the exception of Me, the Gorgers, 
 and the Counsellors, is conspiring to slit every tongue in 
 the tribe and to remove the toenails of the children : it will 
 make no difference if they do, we shall propose some new 
 sound of loyalty to the Gluttons and Ourself, and no sooner 
 will a thousand receive their appointment, badges and clubs, 
 than they will lose their ordinary identity and fight for us 
 until we give a new lot their turn. Thousands of coun- 
 sellor philosophers having wasted their vitals seeking an 
 explanation of this humano-bovine principle, killed many 
 cattle in probing for it, and gone insane over its intricacies ; 
 the search is now interdicted for the preservation of the 
 Horroboo brain." 
 
2IO THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "Destiny and all the mysteries surely fight for you and 
 the hundred Gourmands," I said; "which proves design 
 and Providence in things; they were intended to be just 
 as they are, and as they are is best. God is in his world. 
 At the same time all these common people of his and yours 
 had better commit suicide and get out of it and leave it to 
 Him and You." 
 
 Griffelak squirmed and answered vehemently: "Sire, 
 Almighty One" — through the force of my personality he 
 had at length succumbed to the conviction that I was the 
 Supreme Being — "Sire, don't gird at a fellow King, you 
 know the Gluttons and We are only secondary in this miU- 
 tary affair, the Family Guard is for the protection of the 
 people themselves, their homes, to protect each home from 
 the other, and give them all peace through continual blood- 
 shed. Without peace no man can starve in quiet. We 
 recoil from disturbing the last days of sufferers. 
 
 "All the blessings of savagehood are contained in peace 
 and order, which we find can be best inoculated into society 
 by a daily administration of Domestic Serenity clubs. The 
 most peaceful quality of our peace is the public bloodshed 
 to preserve it. Just imagine the state of society if these 
 food and freedom irruptions were not sternly trampled out ! 
 Not a fat man could eat in peace or drink in plenty ! The 
 wonderful system of food-rotting might be destroyed! 
 Counting might be abolished! Dream-equality overthrown! 
 Industry abrogated ! For who would hunt game for the 
 enclosures or carry the corpulent on their shoulders if 
 the peaceful strokes of the military clubs languished? It 
 is not for the Fat that we preserve order but for the people 
 under the fat, that the fat may by thriving continue to 
 bless them. 
 
 "I trust you now see that the Family Guard is not a 
 bloodthirsty whim of anybody's." 
 
WE STUMBLE ON TO HAPPINESS 21 1 
 
 On the fifth day Milto, incredibly improved in health, 
 and I with a high relish for enlightened savage institu- 
 tions, gathered our entourage together and returned home. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 I Prepare to Depart, the Richest Man in the 
 World. My Last Miracle 
 
 The days glided fleetly by, box after box of presents 
 from Buzzrack was taken from the ground, gold was hourly 
 added to gold; not long would it be before I should have 
 as much as I could convey to the sea with all the pack 
 beasts of the realm. The guides that had brought me were 
 not due until the end of the year, a term I had no reason 
 to await; altho but five months in Africa my dizzy yet 
 well-earned success had made me the richest man in the 
 world, the richest of all time, in sooth — provided I 
 managed to regain civilization unrobbed. It was a risk 
 to remain — who could tell what indecent thing might over- 
 take me among these unbalanced mystics? 
 
 One thought tortured my reflections: I needed the as- 
 sistance of fifty devoted menials for working my caravan 
 through to the coast, to ward off the emotions of impetuous 
 fanatics and to load and tend my cattle on the long jour- 
 ney, stiff work for a goodly company of able-bodied mule- 
 teers since the beasts would number about four thousand. 
 I estimated that one man could manage and conduct eighty 
 animals, so that fifty men would suffice for the whole out- 
 fit. 
 
 In other respects my plans had been long matured. The 
 fortunate caravan which had been commissioned by heaven 
 to supply my needs had brought along a great mass of 
 leather-lined sacks and box material sawed into appro- 
 
212 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 priate lengths and accompanied by nails, only needing to 
 be hammered together. They must have expected favorit- 
 ism from primitive stocks. From time to time I had put 
 together a few score of these boxes as the gold heaps 
 swelled, and when all of them, as well as the sacks, were 
 filled I computed that it was as much as the four thousand 
 beasts could be entrusted with, lest some should break 
 down in the desert. 
 
 I will not say whether my pile of gold was so vast that 
 some even then remained for me to bury in the nights, and 
 which I revisited Africa to recover, or whether I buried 
 and left it for a time not yet come of shocks and reverses 
 in the business world, as a bank which cannot fail. I dis- 
 relish the excitement caused in white men by visions of 
 buried treasure, even if it has since been dug up. 
 
 The selection of my camel drivers demanded keen judg- 
 ment of men. I could trust neither the King nor the com- 
 mon sort for this trenchant service ; the poor King was 
 fast dwindling away, losing his last rays of mind, and 
 could not live long, from no perceptible malady — which 
 I could have cured with drugs, — but the great modern 
 realities with which I had irrigated his soul had been more 
 than he could physically absorb, I might say; they had 
 crippled his vitals, the endeavor to fathom their purport 
 had consumed his zest for life. It was a stroke from above 
 from which I could not defend him. If one of the ordinary 
 people should learn of my purposed exit with the shimmer- 
 ing dross he would too likely tattle as vulgar folks will 
 and worship would change to nasty hate. In short, altho 
 my warnings that the mineral was for another world had 
 been peremptory, altho they understood that I was merely 
 an instrument of Omnipotence, altho they had yielded to 
 the laws of profit and right and given me a full quitclaim 
 on gold and everything, I thought I could dimly sense a 
 selfish distastf for my taking all this healthy capital out 
 
MY LAST MIRACLE 213 
 
 of their country; it gave them work where they formerly 
 had none, it caused money to circulate freely, their salaries 
 were liberal and prices high, so high that when they had 
 paid the prices nothing was left of the salaries, for I, as the 
 just owner of the productive agencies of the country, fixed 
 and collected these prices before the salaries got out of 
 sight. No wonder they did not wish their capital and capi- 
 talist to emigrate. They had never known prosperity be- 
 fore and if I went they would never know it again. No, 
 the common people were not to be trusted. 
 
 There remained the great. Their morals were of a 
 more liberal hue. They could be depended on to under- 
 stand me, and cleave to civilization, and appreciate a good 
 opening for themselves. They were free from the paro- 
 chial bonds of loyalty which held the common mob to- 
 gether about their nation ; they stood aloof from the pat- 
 riotic drove in all things save acceptance of its feeding and 
 favors, cordially despising it, boasting themselves to be 
 of a different brand of blood, welcoming every occasion 
 to do the gross crew that fed them harm. This was true 
 not alone of those who had weltered in greatness for a 
 few weeks but of all, tho they might have been reared 
 to grandeur only twenty minutes before. 
 
 To fill out the necessary number, annulling civil service 
 rules against my will, I therefore increased the great to 
 fifty and invited them up to my cave one evening for a 
 fellowship tea. It was an honor I had never before in- 
 dulged them in and they came with fluttering trepidation. 
 
 "Leave your poles at the door, gentlemen," said I as they 
 arrived, "let us waive ceremony among ourselves this eve- 
 ning and drink and chaffer as trusting financiers." 
 
 Then I took them into my confidence. "My friends." 
 said I, "You are fitted by your graceful demeanor, shifty 
 natural qualities and reptilian ambitions, to partake largely 
 in the recuperation of the moral world now being con- 
 
214 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 ducted by the civilized; altho your skins are black your 
 hearts are white, your souls have been schooled to the bur- 
 den of great financial responsibilities, you would all of you 
 make excellent capitalists and foreign travel would sit upon 
 you lightly and become you well, I am inclined to consider 
 you capable of drawing interest, you have bravely shown 
 your ability to let other people work for you, your disposi- 
 tions have been tried and found agreeably wanting in the 
 qualities that make enlightened and fraternal men, your 
 deportment toward inferiors is that of the tiger and boar 
 in accordance with the ripest etiquet of civilization, you 
 have a fine sense for getting what is not your own and 
 making it appear that it is your own, as I saw at the in- 
 auguration ritual of the first vintage of rubies, you are 
 fitted to play a larger part in the world than you can do 
 cooped up among these short-sighted silurian hills. Here 
 your diet is limited by the sparsity of the population, out 
 in the great world there are more people than the leaves 
 of the trees, most of them ready to be eaten if you approach 
 them in the right way. Your associates here are beneath 
 you : why vulgarly wear away your lives with the mean, 
 when in other parts of the world there are nations on a 
 par with you morally and inferior to you in the pigment 
 of their skins ? I will conduct you to these fragrant parts ; 
 we will load the camels, donkeys, mules and yourselves with 
 gold and leave these wretched beings that surround us 
 here, to cross the desert till we reach a paradise. What do 
 you say to it?" 
 
 As when the skeptic orb of night peeps forth upon a 
 Halloween, so peered I from the cynic azure of my skyful 
 intellect upon a nameless antic. And when my crockery 
 was all broken and even my bric-a-brac bemauled, they 
 fretted to be gone that instant, only asking time to collect 
 the beads of the multitude and clandestinely relieve the 
 King of his portable possessions; I could depend on their 
 
MY LAST MIRACLE 215 
 
 silence they lustily vowed to the frighted night, and im- 
 plicitly trust the sanctity of their oath to betray the tribe 
 with fidelity. 
 
 My path was now clear. I secretly condensed my re- 
 maining goods for the excursion, leaving little to be done 
 at the last. Then I notified the corporation that another 
 box of glitter and dreams had arrived, more adorable than 
 the others, and all accompanied me to the burial ground 
 of the tenth jewel-case. It was filled with nickel watches, 
 wind instruments of music for the innocent, dolls that could 
 reason, glass eyes that could see, white neckties, hairpins, 
 and every delirious object in which the savage and his bride 
 delight; then came the miracle of the false bottom and 
 the sweet things on which they now relied as a divine smile. 
 The present confection excelled all others and was impreg- 
 nated with a sure and deadly poison. 
 
 I was about to deliver my final stroke, as I had conceived 
 it before enlisting in the missionary business at New York. 
 It was necessary for this tribe, with whom I had lived on 
 such singularly agreeable terms for almost half a year, to 
 be exterminated in order that I might safely escape, and 
 for this reason I had brought the sweets now to be admin- 
 istered. Could I have been assured of retiring in peace 
 with my own, the heavens might have sunk into hades 
 before I would have harmed a hair of their shaggy heads ; 
 indeed my affection had grown mightily intense for them, 
 as I am sure had theirs for me ; they were a guileless darl- 
 ing race of childlike beings — but there was the gold, my 
 property, earned by a thousand risks and toils : to refuse 
 me free passage with my own would be downright robbery, 
 a corrupt assault on the property rights which I had estab- 
 lished for their benefit, and I was justified in guarding 
 against this potential outrage with pungent sagacity. 
 
 In distributing the candy equally as usual, the women and 
 children getting their share, I slipped a harmless sort to 
 
2i6 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 the great men, who I intended should assign the destruc- 
 tion of their fellow countrymen to divine wrath. Com- 
 manding them to eat immediately I held my watch to time 
 the result : in twenty minutes the noble Rinyo tribe was no 
 more. 
 
 I was really sorry to part with the faithful and pleasant 
 creatures whom I had learned to love, who had spared my 
 life on sundry tempting occasions and done me countless 
 kindnesses, who cherished and revered me in the triple 
 relation of father, god and proprietor, one above mortals, 
 descended from the rainbows to be their guardian and ad- 
 vance their happiness, and who by hard labor which had 
 ravaged the health of nine-tenths of them had made me 
 the richest man within the fecund purity of astral light. 
 I felt that I owed them something and would fain have 
 rewarded them by sparing their lives if it could have been. 
 It was a painful conflict of two duties : I must have en- 
 hazarded my wealth and jeopardized the unspeakable good 
 to be done with it in civilization to a type of beings before 
 whom these groveling cannibals were but pestiferous in- 
 sects. Further reflection and earnest prayer convinced me 
 that I really owed the ebony lobsters, which they practi- 
 cally were considering their morals, a very small debt if 
 indeed any; viewed broadly and in the Hght of the Gospel, 
 they still owed me something and I should have taken it 
 had there been anything left. I had presented them with 
 the Word, revealed political economy to their imperilled 
 understandings, given them the holy sacrament of labor, 
 laid the knightly rod of commerce and capitalism on their 
 backs until their backs broke, taught them book-keeping to 
 facilitate the reckoning of their debts to me, and held out 
 other inducements for them to get on in the world and on 
 to the tricks of the next, blessings for which gold could not 
 pay nor love atone. 
 
 I had denied myself for them. For nearly six months I 
 
MY LAST MIRACLE 217 
 
 had worked with them like a slave, confined to my seat in 
 the shady observatory under the tree, and had enjoyed 
 the pleasure of paying their board by not forbidding them 
 the use of whatever their wives could find for them to 
 eat on my estates, and during that time my salary had been 
 limited to four billions in bullion with a few thousand 
 millions in chance diamonds casually picked up. They 
 ought to have been deeply thankful for their board and 
 were less so than the occasion merited. 
 
 As to my life, it was neither their love nor leniency that 
 had saved it, but my own Yankee skill ; my instrinsic nat- 
 ural goodness had drawn their devotion out to me and 
 they deserved no credit for this, the credit for my winsome 
 sweetness being mine ; my brain, the merit of which be- 
 longed to God above only, had extorted from their impious 
 heathen labor-power the gold which burdened a soil other- 
 wise useful for churches, real estate agents and rent. I 
 mused with some enthusiasm on the benefit my gold would 
 confer on civilization : it would preserve the normal value 
 of money and deliver the creditor from the nature- 
 appointed necessity of taking advantage of the debtor, to 
 the hurt and horror of the former's good soul, for if gold 
 should grow scarce and its value rise it would be the 
 sainted economical duty of the creditor to require as much 
 cf it from his debtor as when the same was plentiful and 
 cheap, to defend political economy from the contempt of 
 the poor. 
 
 On the other hand, what could be more base and use- 
 less than these sodden atrocities called creatures, mistakenly 
 wearing the shape of men, whose highest notion of happi- 
 ness was devouring one another, whose principal theory of 
 usefulness was licking one another's feet, who envied and 
 despised each other by a dogma no less empty and atheisti- 
 cal than the length of certain wooden sticks borne distress- 
 ingly upon their iliums, impeding every healthy and pleasur- 
 
2i8 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 able activity, whose women had no higher conception of 
 the loftiness of human womanhood than to meanly exist 
 knitting leaves together by ridiculous rules to maintain an 
 artificial standard for mutual contempt and hate? Such 
 people were a layer of slag upon the anxiously pregnant 
 earth, hideous, anomalous, choking down the useful and 
 beautiful verdure of sprouting syndicates, — he who should 
 have the courage and power to remove them would de- 
 serve blessings from the human race, Rinyos of course 
 excepted. 
 
 It had really become a duty, too, their compassionate 
 extermination, as in mercy we mitigate the sorrows of sick 
 animals by death. Labor had hopelessly sucked out their 
 racial stamina, even the women and children were paling 
 shadows since I had finally sent them into the diggings to 
 lessen the cost of production and break up their unholy 
 idling over fashions, needles and leaves. They could not 
 adapt themselves and perished in shoals. After that edict 
 board became more scrappy and unfeeding. It was their 
 own fault, they would continue weaving their leaves, and 
 since they could not do so by day they sat up all night, 
 which I considered an outrageous disregard of health, and 
 was compelled by it to withdraw my sympathy. The sweet- 
 natured King had been nearing his death-bed for weeks 
 and a few more brief fortnights would have parted us for- 
 ever (for he was not converted), through the sad ordinary 
 course of fading nature; I should only have deferred my 
 grief for the separation by waiting, and I loved to have sad 
 scenes pass. 
 
 So, as I looked upon the thousands of corpses of my for- 
 mer intimates lying stark athwart the mesa with set agon- 
 ized faces, a great joy filled my soul for what I had done, 
 strength coursed through my veins in the vision of further 
 usefulness before me, and I called the great men to my 
 side to witness that a sternly benevolent Avenger had 
 
THE SIGN OF THE NOSE 219 
 
 struck their nation dead for its filthy sins, only sparing 
 them because of their pearly cosmopolitan virtues. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 The Sign of the Nose 
 
 My work was done and on the second morning after the 
 sacrifice a noble caravan moved out of the now desolate 
 valley of the tribe of Rinyo, I prepared the guns of the 
 recently extinct prospectors for use, having had a dream 
 that my life was sometime to be saved by firearms. Some 
 delays occurred on the march owing to the obstinate resolu- 
 tion of the great men to wear their poles as they walked. 
 In vain I expostulated, in vain I dilated upon their present 
 strenuous equality, emancipating them from the irksome 
 need to wear insignia of height, since, all their inferiors 
 being luckily dead, they were disagreeably superior to none. 
 This was the direfulest blunder of my checkered African 
 holiday. 
 
 "If none are inferior to us, tell us the gain of being 
 superior," they subtly wept. "What profits it us to be 
 superior persons unless we are superior to somebody ? Why, 
 Holiness, you can't be superior in that case, you become 
 just a common mean individual on the lowest level, nobody 
 looks up to you, nobody's servility reminds you of your 
 grandeur and goodness, there are no props or buoys or 
 wings to your higher aspirations, — we prefer death." 
 
 They were profoundly grieved, listless, dispirited, their 
 apathy deprived them of appetite and strength ; if it were 
 permitted to great men to have friends, the loss of all 
 theirs could not have stricken them worse. 
 
 I sought to cheer them. "You are as great as ever," 
 said I ; "it hasn't affected your quality nor diminished your 
 intrinsic selves that those below you are no more." 
 
220 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 "It has destroyed our station in life," they cried, the 
 banks of their eyes again swept with raging tears, "it has 
 taken away those whom we despised and hated to see 
 aHve, now we can despise no longer, you have stolen away 
 our joy." 
 
 "Well, well ; don't cry, don't be unhappy, it will pass off, 
 you will forget it ; put on your poles and let us wag along 
 or you will never reach paradise." 
 
 They did so, sobbing sorely, but they would eat no break- 
 fast. I mounted the camel that bore a sack of revolvers, 
 expecting trouble before sunset and keeping in the rear 
 of the line to observe transactions, also leading a mule 
 padded with rifles and shot guns. The natives muttered 
 and chattered together with increasing vehemence, gesticu- 
 lating like politicians about to nominate a president. At ten 
 o'clock they collected their animals in a group and leaving 
 them with two or three guards came plunging toward me 
 clanking their poles, brandishing their spears, and would 
 you believe it? swearing full-bearded American oaths. I 
 have owed my life to many odd things in its course but 
 never to anything so ridiculous as these savage escutcheon 
 poles which they would not even now lay off for fear of 
 curdling their haughty cream blood. It gave me time to 
 unlimber my long-toms and retire behind the rampart of 
 my kneeling camel. A rifle served at far range and I 
 stretched a brace of the foremost aristocrats on the plain; 
 then followed a broadside of buckshot which perforated 
 some and struck all panicky and brought on a premature 
 discharge of their shafts, too soon to do me harm. Not 
 wishing to more than decimate them, from the value of 
 mule drivers to my cause, I leaped the barrier and made 
 at them with a shotgun in either hand and revolvers numer- 
 ously dispersed over my person. A shot or two into the 
 air finished the business, they fled precipitately, nor would 
 they stop until nearly out of sight, certain that my machines 
 would carry death as far as the eye could reach. 
 
THE SIGN OF THE NOSE 221 
 
 The guards of the beasts were utterly craven, but it was 
 hours before I could entice the others back, who sat on 
 knolls like prairie-dogs, staring and smelling disconsolately 
 at the camp where I had prepared a savory meal of their 
 dead companions, numbering four, as bait. Hunger over- 
 came them at length; one by one they stole in, but before 
 allowing them to eat I had each thoroughly flogged by his 
 comrades. Altho it was near evening I compelled them 
 forward through the sand, bearing their poles on their 
 bleeding hips, until they could not move another step, when 
 we pitched our camp for what remained of the night. 
 
 I imagined they would be grateful for sleep after a day 
 of such liveliness, tho naturally I was not, but what did 
 several of them do when silence reigned but stealthily arise 
 and run themselves through with their own pikes, moan- 
 ing distractedly in their last breath that life was not to be 
 lived if they could not be more virtuous than others. From 
 time to time through the ghostly hours some one arose and 
 shortened the pole of his nearest comrade and returned 
 to rest with a transfigured smile of heavenly repose. I 
 know not what the effect of these perfidious acts would 
 have been on the victims if it had not appeared when the 
 morning porter took down the shutters of heaven that each 
 survivor had so shortened his neighbor's pole to curtail 
 his honor that all were still equal. The expressive coun- 
 tenances of these ferocious extortioners when the discovery- 
 was made would have formed the germ of a new school of 
 art. 
 
 On the morrow the day and the caravan dragged drearily 
 forward while I pondered what should be done. It was 
 clear that the pitiful drooping wretches could not long sur- 
 vive, bereft of their motive to breathe; when night came 
 they sank upon the sands and slept tearless and foodless : 
 then I undid their poles with great caution and made a 
 bonfire of them. On their awaking T called them to me 
 
222 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 and delivered the quickening information that we were to 
 have a restoration of inferiority. 
 
 "In place of the poles you will now have the Order of 
 the Cord. You have all shown a parallel proficiency in 
 licking, so that the poles are no longer marks of excep- 
 tional greatness, but I shall be very much astounded if 
 we do not find something in which all are not on a par. 
 If not, nature is no longer just and squint-eyed. We will 
 determine who is the greatest man by his bravery." 
 
 They capered gleefully at this news and asked how they 
 were to decide the tournament, jumping up and down 
 unpleasantly close on every side of me. "Shall we fight one 
 another and adjudge the conquerors to be the bravest in 
 the order of the number of foes that they overcome?" 
 And I thought they would begin to beat each other to death 
 then and there. 
 
 "No, no !" thundered I authoritatively, shooting two 
 revolvers into the ground for emphasis. "Don't you see 
 how wasteful of human misery that would be, destroying 
 some who might just as well live to be despised, and con- 
 tracting the victors' area of happiness and contempt by 
 putting some of the possible objects of their scorn out of 
 the world ? How frivolous ! When will you learn to think 
 before you act ! And can't you understand that this would 
 be no test of bravery either? For the beaten ones might 
 possess as much courage as the others, but their strength 
 might give out or an untimely blow lay them senseless or 
 dead. Fighting is merely a measure of brute strength, skill 
 or luck, but not the least of bravery." 
 
 "How can we decide, Lord God?" they asked, baffled. 
 "If bravery is such an inward matter who is to weigh 
 it?" 
 
 "Think," urged I, as they stood about me like school- 
 boys, with blankly open mouths. It was no use, they had 
 no heredity behind them. 
 
THE SIGN OF THE NOSE 
 
 223 
 
 "Use the Socratic method," said I, "there's money in 
 it," — looking affectionately at my saddled gold. "The 
 bravest man may often be beaten, may he not?" 
 
 "He may." 
 
 "Because his strength is gone?" 
 
 "Quite so." 
 
 "But his courage may still remain?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "And if he had strength would he still continue the 
 fight?" 
 
 "Most assuredly he would." 
 
 "How then is he to show that although his strength is 
 gone his courage remains?" 
 
 "That is no simple matter, O Colonel Brady, the argu- 
 ment grows complicated ; tell us how if you know." 
 
 "Is it not by manfully continuing to endure the beating 
 which he has not strength to repel, not wailing or com- 
 plaining, but with an exultant heart and joyous smile invit- 
 ing the blows and earnestly petitioning his foe never to 
 cease striking while he is alive?" 
 
 "That would indeed seem to be the mark of the perfect 
 and consummate hero." 
 
 "And that," I said, "is the method we will now pursue. 
 The cheeks are a part of the body with little if any im- 
 portance to the economy of the whole but to keep in food 
 for a transitory period until deglutition supervenes : is that 
 so?" 
 
 "It is," they said, "since you assert it, and magically your 
 words glide." 
 
 "Moreover, they are a positive hindrance to the functions 
 of nature, enabling only a small quantity of food to be 
 taken into the mouth at a time, drowning and smothering 
 the voice, which otherwise might go out on all sides of 
 the face at once, preventing us from learning to talk to 
 different persons with the two sides of our tongue at the 
 
224 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 same time, and keeping the teeth buried away in the dark 
 from the healthy microbe-kilHng action of the sun." 
 
 "It is reasonable," they assented, "and modern." 
 
 "Still, I have not mentioned all the disadvantages of the 
 cheeks. The resources which nature builds into them 
 might be applied elsewhere to the construction of useful 
 muscle or even brain, without them men could not grow 
 unsightly hairs over their countenances to falsify their 
 true lineaments, the cheeks conceal the thoughts of the 
 mind and therefore make us liars, acting as a mask or 
 second screen before the brain, as is proven by the superior 
 expressiveness of a naked skull, but most of all they pre- 
 vent the entire tongue from being used in licking, with no 
 impediment, on a grand scale." 
 
 My last hit appealed to their everyday perceptions and 
 they cheered. 
 
 "To discover your greatness and bravery and to free you 
 from these invidious appendages, I shall have your cheeks 
 cut away little by little from day to day, and those who 
 endure the pain with the slightest outward evidences will 
 be pronounced the bravest and greatest among you." 
 
 "But how will it be known and remembered which is 
 greatest if w^e have on no poles to display it?" 
 
 "By the Order of the Cord, and the Sign of the Nose. 
 All of you shall wear a rope around your waists trailing out 
 behind, the greatest being honored by dragging after him 
 the mightiest attachment. But of the rest later, let us get 
 to work with the knives for the time is passing." 
 
 When the first operation was over the caravan moved 
 forward suffering pitifully but nobly stoical and with all 
 signs of discontent gone. They must have credit for scor- 
 ing magnificent fortitude. Several times a day the surgery 
 was repeated, each one making a wider gap in their cheeks, 
 but they certified true greatness of soul by steadfast silence 
 and placid immobihty of remaining features. You may not 
 
THE SIGN OF THE NOSE 225 
 
 believe it, yet I positively assert that having cut away all 
 their cheeks in vain, I was obliged to spread on a blister 
 of pepper and salt brightened with tabasco sauce before 
 I could distinguish the variations of their endurance. Their 
 health through this ordeal was wonderful, sustained un- 
 doubtedly by the keen anticipations of pleasure and quality 
 to come, when the contest should be decided. The salt 
 nevertheless brought them down one by one so that on the 
 fifth day came the distribution of honors. First, I con- 
 ferred on each of them a codfish tail of equal size in per- 
 manent reminder of their human identity, fearing they 
 might drift apart into separate species; then their cords, 
 a number of clotheslines taken from the vanquished cara- 
 van, which they were conveying into the wilderness for 
 domestic purposes after marriage with the natives. These 
 being cut into appropriate lengths, one about ninety feet 
 long was connected with the greatest man. It did my soul 
 good to see him parade up and down the sand, ever glanc- 
 ing vainly back at the feather which he had tied to the 
 rope's far end the more distinctly to recognize his mag- 
 nificence. 
 
 Through a luckless miscalculation of mine the rope gave 
 out before going around, and to correct the deficiency X 
 proposed a moderate general shortening, only to meet a 
 downright refusal from those in possession, who would 
 give up nothing. Fortunately there was a spool of barbed 
 wire in the outfit. I know not for what purpose the gold 
 hunters had brought rt unless to protect their claims from 
 one another, but it was a godsend to me: unrolling several 
 coils while all the fashionable society fluttered about look- 
 ing on, I was going to snip off a few feet for the inferior- 
 most when the others, who already had ropes, gave vent 
 to a new cry of indignant opposition. The upshot of it 
 was, they regarded the barbed wire as a higher distinction 
 than the rope, wherefore to pacify them I was obliged to 
 
226 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 begin all over again, meting out ninety feet of barbed wire 
 to the greatest — for he would accept no less — and propor- 
 tionate quantities to the others as long as the wire lasted. 
 The case was now almost as bad as when they had the 
 poles, for they were constantly lacerating themselves with 
 the wire, frightening the camels, and getting caught in 
 the stones and bushes as they strained along. But I was 
 growing tired of resistance and concluded to bear my trials 
 like a Christian as long as food held out. 
 
 They did not forget my promise to endow them with 
 other proofs of superiority and they were soon clamoring 
 for the Sign of the Nose. I made them an oration explain- 
 ing the nature of these signs and declaring that I should 
 not insist upon their adoption ; but as they were obstreper- 
 ous in the affirmative I reluctantly set about their gratifica- 
 tion. There were forty-two survivors, and I specified that 
 the lowest fifteen must be contented with their cords until 
 some above them died. Of the sixteenth from the bottom 
 I cut oflf one toe, of the seventeenth two, and so went on 
 advancing them in greatness until the thirty-fifth was 
 reached, whose superiority to those before him was shown 
 by the amputation of his twenty fingers and toes. There 
 remained the greatest seven. First I removed the fingers 
 and toes of them all that they might not be in any attribute 
 less than the preceding; of number thirty-six I took off 
 an ear, of the next both ears, then both ears and had the 
 hair pulled out of one side of the head, of the next in 
 order the hair on both sides, then all this and the extin- 
 guishment of one eye, number forty-one parted with both 
 eyes, and finally the chief man received all these marks of 
 greatness and the supreme one, the amputation of his nose, 
 because it was called the Sign of the Nose. The last two 
 being sightless could do nothing, but of the very greatest 
 it is usual to expect little. 
 
 I anticipated some of the martyrs to die of their mutila- 
 
MILLIONS OF MAD CANNIBALS 
 
 227 
 
 tions but happily none did. Their blood was gushing fast 
 and of good quality from living overnight with jubilant 
 images of once more dealing and receiving the blows of 
 affliction, so they were somewhat recovered from the shat- 
 tering months of gold digging and their flesh quickly basted 
 itself together. Each fortified himself for the hardships 
 of the days to come by hoping for the death of some one 
 over him in rank, when he would be promoted toward the 
 top by the loss of a finger, his hair, an eye, or a nose. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 Millions of Mad Cannibals. The Hand of Providence 
 
 And there were, I am sorry to say, hardships. We lost 
 our way and were attacked by the bloodthirsty two-legged 
 man-eaters into whose jungles we had inadvertently wan- 
 dered, and not having time to convert them to their own 
 destruction it was necessary to forcibly stand them off. 
 Hordes of their fiercest demons came sweeping rudely in 
 upon us from every side, thoughtlessly bent on our instant 
 annihilation; my feeble few were crippled so that a third" 
 of them could not draw a bow; and yet we were saved by 
 one of those miracles which always attended my course 
 and which to this day I look upon as divine interpositions, 
 probably secured by my missionary standing. As the 
 dense black races approached, for many had joined to 
 stamp us out, whooping and lashing themselves into a 
 very lustiness of courage and anger, upon the foremost 
 ranks broke the ghastly spectacle of my warriors' cheek- 
 less visages, the horrible red scars forming huge terrifying 
 apertures from ear to ear and eye to lower maxillary bone, 
 with the gums and teeth protruding fearfully, some also 
 eveless. earless, hairless or noseless, and thev mistook this 
 
228 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 smart set for devils just out of hell as they looked. Panic 
 seized their marrow. Turning they plunged back maniacally 
 into the shrieking mass behind, who had not yet observed 
 the fiendish expression of my company and still pressed 
 madly forward, imagining they were attacked. They fell 
 on one another and fought like scalded tigers; those who 
 saw the faces of my men being possessed by a cruel fear, 
 murderously attempted to tear their way through the 
 oncoming black wall: and while we sat calmly, never 
 lifting a hand or offering resistance — for there was nothing 
 to resist — and I lighted my pipe, these men tore one an- 
 other to death, the rear host believing they were fighting 
 us made manifold by some black art, until thousands of 
 dead strewed the soft green sward and the relics fled. 
 
 My religious emotions had been somewhat inactive on 
 account of my infidel environment up to the present time 
 but they now blossomed forth irrepressibly. I taught my 
 wild guard to sing te deums to their Savior for our splendid 
 deliverance, pointing to the bloody field as evidence of 
 divine protection and love, which was so unmistakable 
 that even these dwarfed, gnarled and scrubby intellects 
 absorbed the lesson. I succeeded in converting nearly 
 half of them to Christianity, which cleansed my conscience 
 of a cloudy feeling that I had not done my whole duty 
 by the missionary society that sent me out, an omission 
 I had intended to make good by a decent yellow contribu- 
 tion. As this obligation was now liquidated the gold 
 could be applied to a university bearing my name which 
 I had in contemplation, the Colonel Fessenden Brady Uni- 
 versity, of Boston, where it would have a great field to 
 shine in by itself with no palpable competitor, with a de- 
 partment or two devoted to civilizing wasted savages in 
 Asia, Boston and Africa, and several departments on the 
 commercial attributes of God, with an eye to the amusing 
 traces of some derelict and rudimentary moral organs of 
 
MILLIONS OF MAD CANNIBALS 229 
 
 His, extinct in the solar system since the death of the 
 ancient Greeks, and I sat up that night writing a letter 
 to inform the Missionary Society of the number of souls 
 I had saved and the perilous situations that I had been 
 obliged to occupy in order to save them. 
 
 While I sat recalling my native language and meditating 
 the appropriate religious terminology, imprecations arose 
 in the direction of the largest mound of slain. Fearing 
 new enemies and realizing that they could not see my 
 people in the dark, whose countenances, or deficiency of 
 countenances, were our sole protection, I hastily lighted a 
 mass of fuel beforehand provided, calling upon my men to 
 rise and expose themselves. Not one of them was in 
 camp — but neither was there an enemy near. The din was 
 caused by a hot altercation in progress between two groups 
 of them. Rushing between hostilities in time to avert 
 violence, what should I find but that my converts from 
 heathendom had risen in the stillness of the infinite night 
 and gone out to lay claim to all the corpses in the field; 
 the others, also watchful, had followed them, and beginning 
 with scholarly theological argument they were far on the 
 road to religious persecution and bloodletting. 
 
 "What is this all about?" I demanded angrily, out of 
 all patience. The new Christians answered volubly. 
 
 "The great God you told us of who now belongs to us, 
 the one that slew all these vermin enemies for our good, 
 surely didn't do it for these unsaved pagans in our midst 
 who do not believe in Him — it was for us, his disciples. 
 Now with lowly befitting humility, for God's will be done. 
 Hallelujah! we declare that we have no vital animosity 
 toward these evil wretches who refuse to be converted, 
 if they keep their hands ofif God's bounties and control 
 their greed, — and thus we prove our Christian spirit; for 
 in their unregenerate vileness they are no better than the 
 foreign devils whom our loving God slew, and we wonder 
 at him for not slaying them also." 
 
230 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 I expostulated, I reasoned, I pleaded. "You fools you!" 
 I finally blurted out, boiling, "Can't you see that there 
 are five hundred times more corpses than all of you can 
 eat? We shall have to go on and leave most of them 
 to rot anyhow." 
 
 But the converts sat like the lockjaw and declared that 
 it was their religious duty to the good Sky-Owner to keep 
 the whole. As for themselves they disclaimed all personal 
 interest in the corpses, affirming that they were only per- 
 forming a hard and selfdenying service to the Supreme. 
 They called their brethren unconverted savages and imag- 
 ined themselves as having covered many centuries of pro- 
 gress during the preceding night, in fact catching up the 
 word 'civilized' which they had sometimes heard me utter, 
 and christening themselves with it: 
 
 "Do not ask civilized Christians, who are assured of 
 immortality and already feel pardoning bliss in their bones, 
 to dwell with polluted heathen who have rejected the 
 free gift of divine grace, whose morals are execrable, 
 whose education is limited to stealing by brute force, and 
 who have never learned that it is the greatest sin against 
 heaven for the surface of the body, which heaven made 
 with its eyes shut, to be seen. Look at their pagan 
 nakedness!" This was the absurd manner of their talk, 
 and they argued so keenly that I felt they had taken the 
 very words I should have used under similar circumstances 
 out of my mouth and I hated them. 
 
 How was I to deal with such stubborn donkeys? After 
 sitting there an hour in the dark and cold, for the fire had 
 gone out, it came to me to propose a solution. I thus ad- 
 dressed them: "If our God means you to have all these 
 rich cadavers he will reveal it to you by enabling you to 
 eat them all. Go at them now and eat up every one of 
 these dead things, and know that if you do not succeed 
 it is because your Jehovah intends the others to have some 
 too" — so they began to devour. 
 
MILLIONS OF MAD CANNIBALS 23I 
 
 They ate for their stomachs' sake until they were full, 
 and then continued on for their religion's sake the rest 
 of the night, while the other savages looked on dubiously 
 with crucified desires, believing that the new religion would 
 enable their adversaries to swallow everything there was, 
 and therefore wavering and nearly ready to be converted 
 to this all-absorbing faith. It was also a trying time for 
 me, for I feared that the spirit of progress would again 
 exercise the Christians if they failed, and cause them to 
 discover a new motive for abolishing the heathen in 
 their iniquity, which would force me to abandon part of 
 my gold. Except for this I should have been in full sym- 
 pathy with them. In principle they were right. They 
 had comprehended and embraced the divine conception 
 toward the world, they had adopted the principles of civi- 
 lization, or intended to do so as soon as they could pur- 
 chase the necessary clothes-stufYs, and it was plain that 
 they appreciated the spirit of civilization perfectly and 
 were already permeated by its ennobling sentiments. 
 Hence I was naturally on their side. I owed it to my 
 religion to be so. Still, I could not sacrifice money, even 
 for the advantage of turning darkness into light by putting 
 out the light of a few dark countenances. 
 
 I little knew the savage capacity. They ate until they 
 were gorged, then they ate on till they were unconscious, 
 and even then their jaws continued to move digestively. 
 Only three or four died of this gluttony. Forty-six hours 
 later the survivors came to themselves ready to acknowl- 
 edge that it was not the purpose of the supreme god for 
 them to have everything on that occasion, lifting the dark 
 menace of Christian consecration from my mind. As 
 long as they stayed with me however, I was unable to dis- 
 lodge the idea from their heads that having everything 
 was a Christian privilege and function. 
 
 On our march we met with strange phenomena. The 
 
232 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 savage villag-es in our pathway were deserted, while in 
 each we found meals of freshly sacrified human flesh, in 
 every instance upon the choicest family plate. It was 
 fortunate that I had early learned to enjoy the staple 
 article of international diet, for otherwise I should have 
 fared sorrily in these wilds, the non-human articles of 
 food being very thin and singular. What was the meaning 
 of the terror and worship we inspired everywhere in ad- 
 vance? I told my companions that gods and civilization 
 universally had this effect upon the unconverted, but in 
 my heart I knew well it was because we were taken for 
 devils. 
 
 God or devil, my purpose was served just the same. 
 After nearly three weeks of trials and wandering we 
 reached the summit of a mountain pass and there below 
 us a day's journey only, over a country whose character 
 with its welcome adorning evidences of the white man's 
 presence, was strikingly different from the barbaric raw- 
 ness in our rear, lay the ocean and a military harbor 
 town. 
 
 I needed my great men no longer; how should I dis- 
 encumber myself of their richly emetic presences? Their 
 surprisingly frightful appearance would involve me in 
 trouble with the whites, while if we chanced upon inlanders 
 with whom to converse they would be slyly boastful over 
 the righteous fate of their tribe; or some of those unprinci- 
 pled adventurers in which every African port abounds 
 would be worming after information of the contents of my 
 packs. I could not elude them nor could I turn them 
 loose like cattle, for they would not go, and a scandalous 
 shame it would have been to leave them trespassing about 
 the veldt, carrying consternation among the innocent as so 
 many loose satans, until they were ignominiously exter- 
 minated, which was sure to eventually and painfully happen. 
 Human life is to me precious and sacred, and I think we 
 
MILLIONS OF MAD CANNIBALS 
 
 233 
 
 are warranted in holding our own to be the most sacred 
 part of it. I resolved to appoint Fate the arbiter. 
 
 "Come, boys," I said, "paradise is near and tonight you 
 shall celebrate." From one of the bales I undid a keg of 
 precious spirits, and from another some long bladed 
 daggers which I distributed, saying, "You may have to 
 fight your way into paradise, people often do in the present 
 uncertain state of theology." Those bereft of fingers were 
 at a disadvantage in handling these weapons but they 
 could wield them with the stubs of their hands joined. 
 
 Rum was a new sensation to these fallow creatures, so 
 were evangelical dirks — what more need I say? A fervent 
 night of bacchanalian symphony is better than a long and 
 tedious life vacant of rapturous thrills and spirit puis- 
 sances. Black men have much to die for in this life and but 
 little to live for. As to the sinners of my flock, they 
 were a menace to mankind and I was glad to have them 
 called down. 
 
 In the morning I pressed on alone to the town, where 
 I found a British troop in possession and a vessel soon to 
 depart for London, in which I took passage. Not to 
 arouse the cupidity of the ship's people I spoke lightly of 
 the value of my merchandise, too lightly, for a fearful 
 storm overtook us and before I knew what was going on 
 they had heaved half of my precious storage into the 
 morgue of the sea. I cursed the hour of my birth but 
 concluded to save the rest by taking the captain into my 
 confidence, for I was still a thirty-fold Croesus with enough 
 to command the preliminaries of American repose, who 
 extorted a heavy indemnity for sparing me and not pooling 
 the whole of my African traffic in his private person. In 
 truth, this excessive scoundrel declared that he would 
 have me thrown overboard and possess himself of what 
 remained of my enormous happiness if I did not share it 
 equally with him. Not feeling myself bound by a promise 
 
234 
 
 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 wickedly extracted through force, on reaching England 
 I turned the lewd fellow over to the leisures of the law, 
 where in due time he received a proper sentence for his 
 illiterate ethics, and my own was restored. Although half 
 of my original treasure and heart were gone I was still 
 hugely rich with the preserved moiety, and when it was 
 safely lodged in the Bank of England I felt that the pri- 
 mary purposes of human life had been achieved." 
 
 Colonel Brady paused, swallowed another glass of 
 champagne, as he had done from time to time during 
 his narrative, and concluded by saying: 
 
 Gentlemen, I have told you a long and surprising story, 
 now for the first time issued from the press of my lips, 
 but I swear to you that every word is true. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVni 
 The African Prince 
 
 For some time after the history, listened to with breath- 
 less tension by us all, was concluded, no word was spoken. 
 Brady continued to drink, and with strained feelings we 
 rose by common consent and filed unsteadily to the deck, 
 leaving him tippling. The mighty hand-formed monster 
 of the deep was plunging on through the strident swells 
 of the insolent sea, the wind pounded and cut our faces and 
 whistled with savage deviltry through the spars, it was a 
 huge and realistic entertainment for the beginning of a 
 year, ruggedly suggestive of inappeasable civilization and 
 progress. 
 
 Some of us talked together a few minutes, most speakers 
 warmly lauding the Colonel as an able, amazing, far-plan- 
 ning man of the w^orld, one of its Stirling ornaments ; as 
 for me I was choked with loathing for the villain, and two 
 
THE AFRICAN PRINCE 235 
 
 or three others shared my horror. We who felt thus drew 
 together and remained a while in the booming blizzard to 
 lull the tempest of our nerves. As we stood in the shadow 
 Colonel Brady issued forth, staggering tipsy, and shambled 
 slowly away from us; the tall dark young man who had 
 listened to the story sauntered by his side supporting him. 
 In a dim place where we could barely see their forms they 
 stopped and seemed to converse; then, before we could 
 realize, or act, or cry out, we saw the giant lift Brady 
 clean into the air above his head, hold him there squirming 
 a second, and hurl him far over the rail into the boiHng 
 flood. 
 
 We ran forward along the rocking deck and sprang upon 
 the murderer as he stood calmly supporting himself by a 
 stanchion and pensively contemplating the surge; he did 
 not resist, though his leonine strength against three seden- 
 tary men of the street must have caused a momentary 
 inconvenience to us. 
 
 "Gentlemen," he said, in broken English but with nobly 
 commanding dignity, "I am at your mercy, one man cannot 
 cope with so many, I have no desire for your lives, do with 
 me as you will : I now care not what becomes of me, the sole 
 object of my bitter existence is accomplished." 
 
 "What do you mean?" we demanded, nonplussed. 
 
 "I am the Prince of the African tribe which that reptile 
 destroyed, the only son of the trusting King whom he 
 betrayed." 
 
 We did not give the alarm. On such a night nothing 
 could have saved the wretched life floundering in its ruin, 
 and besides, the feeling hot and uppermost in every one of 
 us then was how richly the infamous Brady deserved his 
 tardy doom. 
 
 The Prince delivered his story with a truthful simplicity 
 and a passionate intensity of feeling which none of us 
 could distrust. While the missionary was conducting his 
 
236 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 nefarious intrigue he had been absent from home on a 
 far expedition winning by adventure the quaHties to reign, 
 a Rinyo custom answering he understood to the education 
 of heirs apparent in European nations to prepare them for 
 thrones. When he returned the stays of Hfe were broken. 
 During the twenty moons of faithful mountain climbing 
 to fit him for the lofty duties of state, he had fallen in with 
 some civilized white-skins from Berlin and Chicago, who 
 had furnished him with a small knowledge of English and 
 German, a large knowledge of gold and its natural right, 
 as the best of earthly things, to survive over man, and 
 some notion of the white-man's native frolics beyond the 
 wave, in return accepting his various accoutrements and 
 traveling companions and allowing him to contribute his 
 services as a pack-bearer, until through the illegal agency 
 of an earthquake he had escaped. 
 
 When his sorrowful eyes fell upon the whitened vestiges 
 of his departed kindred he perceived that the first blessings 
 of civilization had arrived, and there on his stricken knees 
 pledged himself to devote his whole life to revenge. At 
 first it was his mad resolve to travel through the civilized 
 world killing whomsoever he could, trusting to Providence 
 to preserve him in this sacred work through many useful 
 years. In poignant agony he had tarried to wrest from 
 his ancestral parks a mass of the all-conquering sun-colored 
 weapon of enlightenment, and as he was starting vaguely 
 forth in quest of some clue to the murderers, or of whites 
 on whom to expend the first spasms of his vengeance, one 
 of his own people had wandered in, wearing hardly the 
 similitude of human expression, all his features save one 
 eye and his nose being gone, while, most wonderful to 
 relate, he was possessed of the mania for cutting off even 
 his nose to further enhance his consequence. This distress- 
 ful ghost had divulged all the cruel past, meantime implor- 
 ing the Prince to cut away his own fingers, ears and nose, 
 
THE AFRICAN PRINCE 
 
 237 
 
 and to destroy his eyes that he might become, as the son 
 of a King deserved to be, the greatest being alive. 
 
 The Prince had immediately sailed for Europe, where 
 presently he saw that his quest would be favorably pro- 
 moted by less prominence of his royal African culture and 
 some training in surrounding usages, and he had submit- 
 ted to rigorous private polishings to scour off the outer 
 manifestations of savagery, so far as he could endure them, 
 at the hands of the best masters. Then, accompanied by 
 several Oxford Fellows whom He took into his pay as 
 friends, keeping them ignorant of the object of his devious 
 courses, he had drifted through the great cities of the old 
 and new worlds seeking his foe. But he had failed, for 
 this astute financier had shrewdly buried his identity in 
 trackless oblivion, if he had not through the wrath of 
 astonished heaven or his own alarmed repentance vanished 
 from the remorseful flesh. Had he not perchance been 
 perpetually mocked and scourged by the apparition of his 
 impending fate? And yet, the strange confluence of the 
 two on this ocean ship and the unsearchable accident of 
 this New Year's tale were all that had finally revealed him. 
 It was well for having followed the phantom trail without 
 a gleam of light through ten years, the Prince's faitK in 
 the dogma of eternal justice was fading; now, having 
 strangled the career of this arcH transgressor, his repose 
 in the abiding verities was restored, he again loved God and 
 was prepared to meet his Maker witH ardent cordiality 
 and calm. 
 
 Such was the confession of the poor Prince whose nation 
 had been wiped out by the abandoned infamy of him whose 
 breathless body now floated far in our wake. Returning 
 to the smoking-room witH the Prince, for whom we dis- 
 covered something of the veneration always appropriately 
 stirred by royal presences in tHe sensitive hearts of our 
 'foremost countrymen, with" a due degree of pride in the 
 
238 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 exalted acquaintanceship, we consulted together beyond 
 His Highness' bereaved hearing what was incumbent on 
 us to do. We found ourselves spontaneously of one mind : 
 the Prince had done his duty, the wretched Brady was 
 where he belonged, and we would keep our tongues in our 
 teeth about what we had seen. In the morning, when the 
 Colonel's disappearance should become noised, the others 
 of our smoking-room set would relate that he was last seen 
 drinking himself drunk, and all the ship would conclude 
 that he had gone out later and rolled overboard. We com- 
 municated our decision to the Prince and pledged abiding 
 secrecy, warmly shaking him by the hand, which deeply 
 affected his impulsive primitive nature. At his suggestion 
 we promised to be seen little in his company during the 
 remainder of the voyage. 
 
 Brady's death was the sensation of the next morning, 
 and subsided with the storm by noon. 
 
 Greyson finished his narrative, as Colonel Brady had 
 done ten years ago that night on the Atlantic liner. As he 
 did so one of our company fell heavily forward from his 
 chair upon the floor. It was the Hon. David Ryerson, a 
 financial citizen of rare public repute and fondly regarded 
 by us all. We carried him to the divan and restored his 
 faculties. 
 
 "What was it, old man," we inquired solicitiously, "was 
 that tale of horrors too much for you?" 
 
 Pouring off a glass of cognac to steady his nerveless 
 limbs he feebly said: 
 
 "Colonel Brady was my brother, the leading member of 
 the Diamond Trust of Ryerson Brothers. Brady was our 
 real name, but when Fessenden reappeared from Africa 
 he wished to drop the old family title and call the stupen- 
 dous business absorption which we organized Ryerson, 
 after my Christian appellation. I did not trouble to ques- 
 
THE AFRICAN PRINCE 239 
 
 tion why. He had a humorous fancy for traveHng under 
 assumed names, and latterly had fostered a fresh affection 
 for the one under which he was born, with the appendix 
 Colonel, which he said he had earned in the rescue of 
 Christendom. His means were literally unlimited and he 
 bought in competing houses like second-hand furniture. 
 He told me a very different story of the origin of his wealth 
 from the true one; I was deceived and I agree with you 
 that he deserved his fate, — you did right, Greyson, you 
 did right. He had upon his person that night a belt con- 
 taining a million dollars' worth of precious stones which 
 he was bringing home from abroad and they went down 
 with him. The loss of these was nothing, but I feared 
 they were wrong in surmising the manner of his death, 
 and that there might have been foul play : it was his method 
 always to carry a small fortune about on his person despite 
 my protests, which might have become known. He was 
 sensitive and enjoyed the intimate physical presence of 
 riches. I believe he would have liked to bathe in a mint 
 of gold. I was right in my dread that he had died a violent 
 death, but no other retribution could justly have culminated 
 such a life." 
 
 We sat with white faces, tense with the denouement of 
 the weird tragedy. The midnight bells began to clank the 
 death-rattle of the sinking century. A letter was handed 
 in to Greyson postmarked Paris, with directions for de- 
 livery on the last night of the year. He tore it open, 
 ran through it, then ground his teeth, dashing the crum- 
 pled paper to the floor. By this time we were strung up 
 to hear and believe anything. 
 
 "Read it," he moaned, and one of us did so aloud. It 
 was as follows: 
 
 "My dear Greyson: I hope you will receive this about 
 the middle of the last night of Nineteen Hundred. If you 
 do, it will recall a good deed of yours committed ten 
 
240 THE HORROBOOS 
 
 years ago when three of you saved the hfe of an 
 
 African Prince, do you remember him? I was the Prince 
 that night, altho I abdicted at the end of the voyage, 
 but thanks to the charming story of our friend Colonel 
 Brady I drew a salary of a million dollars for the brief 
 period of my reign. I knew that he carried diamonds 
 of great value, then in his stateroom through the chafing 
 weight of his belt, which I had inspected. By the law 
 of beauty I coveted them, but how by that law or the 
 stauncher one of private expansion was I to obtain them 
 and elude the search of the ship which would immediately 
 follow their loss? 
 
 "I shaped my plan out of his alluring adventures as I 
 listened, and adopted his African King for my father. The 
 bait seemed much to your liking, for you made a hearty 
 meal of it. Of course you and your friends could not visit 
 his stateroom after the tragedy to invoice his effects, with- 
 out exposing the secret or implicating yourselves if you 
 were seen; but I could and did drop in there after leaving 
 you, and assimilated the precious stones. 
 
 "You can't trace me. I was so adapted for the occa- 
 sion that I could not have been known by my own father — 
 Milto — and that was ten years ago. I've changed since 
 and am now a prodigiously rich and respectable citizen 
 in a certain opulent capital, I will not state whether of 
 Europe or America, though in tribute to the soaring spirit 
 of my countrymen I will say that I was born in a righteous 
 American home. I am, dear Greyson, in my own wide 
 sphere of banking and the general fraternity of trade, very 
 much the kind of splendid public figure that our lamented 
 companion Brady was internationally. 
 
 "Did my conscience ever afflict me? It might have done 
 so had I not been deeply schooled in a long evening of 
 Colonel Brady's morals. Altho I followed him upon the 
 voyage for the jewels I had no purpose against his life, 
 
THE AFRICAN PRINCE 24I 
 
 nor should I have taken it if my attempts on his wealth 
 had failed, had I not learned from his lips the true prin- 
 ciples of world commerce in which till then I had been a 
 gentle novice. Since he could gain incalculable loot by 
 the bounty of international ethics, why should I recoil 
 from dipping a share out of his vessels with his own 
 ethical instruments? No, my conscience never has 
 troubled me, and I have since then gloriously succeeded 
 along the track which he was kind enough to spread before 
 my dazzled gaze. — And I contribute regularly to send out 
 missionaries as pioneers of God and commerce. 
 
 "I fearlessly give you plenty of clues, you see; I am 
 now traveling with my dear wife who is the daughter of 
 one of your most distinguished countrymen, whose inter- 
 national ethics beautifully coincide with mine, and we are 
 stunningly happy. For your courtly courtesy I thank 
 you, its memory always softens me, it was a tribute to 
 American soul; every one should be a king once in a 
 while to learn what a gurgling fountain of affection there 
 is in his fellowmen. I owe you a great deal. If you 
 are ever in trouble — but I couldn't very well help you. 
 could I? 
 
 "Your Gracious and Appreciating ex-Sovereign, 
 
 "The African Prince." 
 
 THE END. 
 
JAN 2 7 '51 
 
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