that brought it over, for it cannot speak a word of English itself,
I shall probably read of the eruption of some Vesuvius, or the
overflowing of some Po, true or forged, which brought it into this
condition. I do not hesitate, in such a case, to suggest work, or
the almshouse; or why not keep its castle in silence, as I do
commonly? The poor President, what with preserving his popularity
and doing his duty, is completely bewildered. The newspapers are the
ruling power. Any other government is reduced to a few marines at Fort
Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily Times, government
will go down on its knees to him, for this is the only treason in
these days.

  Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics
and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human
society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding
functions of the physical body. They are infrahuman, a kind of
vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on
about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of
digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is
called. It is as if a thinker submitted himself to be rasped by the
great gizzard of creation. Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of
society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are
its two opposite halves- sometimes split into quarters, it may be,
which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but states, have thus
a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what
sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but
also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering, of that which we
should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking
hours. Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our
had dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other
on the ever-glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand,
surely.

                               THE END
.