hat that may be will make him
yield to our request."

Bleak pondered gloomily. As far as he could recall, the Prohibition
Government had overlooked nothing. The quaint part of it was that some
of its prohibitions, carried to their logical extreme, had curiously
overleaped their mark. For instance, finding it impossible to enforce
the laws against playing games on Sundays, the Government had concluded
that the only way to make the Sabbath utterly immaculate was to abolish
it altogether, which was done. Other laws, probably based upon genuine
zeal for human welfare, had resulted in odd evasions or legal fictions.
For instance, people were forbidden to miss trains. The penalty for
missing a train was ten days' hard labor splitting infinitives in the
government tract-factory. Rather than impose this harsh punishment on
any one, good-hearted engineers would permit their trains to loiter
about the stations until they felt certain no other passengers would
turn up. Consequently no trains were ever on time, and the Government
was forced to do away with time entirely. Another thing that was
abolished was hot weather. It had been found too tedious to tilt the
axis of the earth, therefore all the thermometers were re-scaled. When
the temperature was really 96 degrees, the mercury registered only 70
degrees, and every one was saying how jolly cool it was for the time of
year. This, of course, was careless, for there was no such thing as
time or year, but still people kept on saying it. Bleak was thinking
over these matters when he suddenly recalled that it was forbidden to
remember things as they had been under the old regime. He pulled
himself up with a start. In order to make his mind a blank he tried to
imagine himself about to write a leading editorial for the Balloon.
This was so successful that he did not come to earth again until they
stood in the ante-room--or as Quimbleton called it, the anti-room--of
the Bishop.

"Who is to be spokesman?" he said apprehensively, gazing with distaste
at the angular females who were pecking at typewriters. "It would be
unseemly for me to present my own claims in this project. Quimbleton,
you are the one--you have the gift of the tongue."

"I would rather have the gift of the bung," whispered Quimbleton
resolutely as they were ushered into the inner sanctum.

The dreaded Bishop sat at an immense ebony flat-topped desk. The room
was furnished like his mind, that is to say, sparsely, and w