ent is certain to be accompanied; when the steam is up they fly,
when the fire is out they crawl, and that, too, with a very uneasy sort
of motion; and when a bolt is broken, they who have just been riding
without the smallest trouble to themselves, are compelled to get out
and push the load ahead as well as they can, frequently with very rueful
faces, and in very dirty ways. The cars whisk about, precisely as the
locomotive whisks about, all the turn-outs are necessarily imitated,
and, in short, one goes after the other very much as it is reasonable to
suppose will happen when two bodies are chained together, and the
entire moving power is given to only one of them. A God-like in Leaplow,
moreover, is usually a Riddle. It was the object of Noah to hitch on
to one of these moral steam-tugs, in order that he too might be dragged
through his duties without effort to himself; an expedient, as the old
sealer expressed it, that would in some degree remedy his natural want
of a cauda, by rendering him nothing but tail.

"I expect, Sir John," he said, for he had a practice of expecting by
way of conjecture, "I expect this is the reason why the Leaplowers dock
themselves. They find it more convenient to give up the management of
their affairs to some one of these God-likes, and fall into his wake
like the tail of a comet, which makes it quite unnecessary to have any
other cauda."

"I understand you; they amputate to prevent tautology."

Noah rarely spoke of any project until his mind was fairly made up; and
the execution usually soon followed the proposition. The next thing I
heard of him, therefore, he was fairly under the convoy, as he called
it, of one of the most prominent of the Riddles. Curious to know how he
liked the experiment, after a week's practice, I called his attention to
the subject, by a pretty direct inquiry.

He told me it was altogether the pleasantest mode of legislating that
had ever been devised. He was now perfectly master of his own time, and
in fact, he was making out a set of charts for the Leaplow marine, a
task that was likely to bring him in a good round sum, as pumpkins were
cheap, and in the polar seas he merely copied the monikin authorities,
and out of it he had things pretty much his own way. As for the Great
Allegory, when he wanted a hint about it, or, indeed, about any other
point at issue, all he had to do was to inquire what his God-like
thought about it, and to vote accordingly. Then