ters,' said the Owl. 'If you fly down a
moment you can look in; but don't wait long, because of the dynamite. It
would be just like them,' he added pensively, 'to blow it up when we are
here.'

Queen Mab obeyed, leaving the owl, still a little nervous, seated
invisible on the dome.

'I have heard the music,' she said when she flew back, 'and seen the
singers, and the great golden pipes the music comes out of. What a
beautiful big place it is! We have nothing like that in Polynesia.'

'No, I should think not,' returned the bird. 'Look round you. That
street where all the people and the vehicles are rushing up and down is
Cheapside.'

'Why do they all go so fast?' said the fairy.

'Oh, for many reasons. Competition, struggle for existence, and all
that. They are in a normal condition, in that street, of having trains
to catch, and not having any time to catch them in. Besides, they are
dragon-worshippers, most of them, and it is part of their religion to
walk as fast as they can, not only through Cheapside but through life.
The one who can walk fastest, and knock down the greatest number of
other people, gets a prize.'

'Who are the big men in black robes who stand at corners, and look as if
everything belonged to them? Are they the owners of the City?'

'They are policemen,' said the Owl. 'Products,' he went on learnedly,
'of the higher civilisation, evolved to put the lower civilisation into
prisons.'

'What are prisons?'

'A kind of hothouses,' said the Owl, 'for the culture of feeble moral
principles that the Struggle for Existtence has been too much for. They
are a wonderful system. The weak morality is supplied with bread and
water and a cell to develop in, and it is exercised on a treadmill, and
allowed to expand and pick oakum, and so it is turned into a beautiful
plant of virtue.'

'What do they do with it then?'

'Then they let it run wild, unless it comes across a Home Missionary, or
a School Board, or Dr. Barnardo, and gets trained.'

'Oh!' said Queen Mab. 'Are there many of these hothouses?'

'A good many. You see, such a number of the members of the lower portion
of the higher civilisation have moral principles that need training. The
moral principle is the latest product of evolution, or so the professor
says, and evolution has not yet got quite into the way of always turning
it out first class. Like everything else, it wants practice. Some moral
principles are excellent; but others are rea