et which I had
brought from the temple of Boro Budor, her head quite covered in by it.
Then, the little hairs at her lip-corners still wet, says she:

'Vices and climes, climes and vices. Always the same. What were these
climes and vices?'

'Robberies of a hundred sorts, murders of ten hundred--'

'But what made them _do_ them?'

'Their evil nature--their base souls.'

'But _you_ are one of them, _I_ am another: yet you and I live here
together, and we do no vices and climes.'

Her astounding shrewdness! Right into the inmost heart of a matter does
her simple wit seem to pierce!

'No,' I said, 'we do no vices and crimes, because we lack _motive_.
There is no danger that we should hate each other, for we have plenty to
eat and drink, dates, wines, and thousands of things. (Our danger is
rather the other way.) But _they_ hated and schemed, because they were
very numerous, and there arose a question among them of dates and wine.'

'Was there not, then, enough land to grow dates and wine for all?'

'There was--yes: much more than enough, I fancy. But some got hold of a
vast lot of it, and as the rest felt the pinch of scarcity, there arose,
naturally, a pretty state of things--including the vices and crimes.'

'Ah, but then,' says she, 'it was not to their bad souls that the vices
and climes were due, but only to this question of land. It is certain
that if there had been no such question, there would have been no vices
and climes, because you and I, who are just like them, do no vices and
climes here, where there is no such question.'

The clear limelight of her intelligence! She wriggled on her seat in her
effort of argument.

'I am not going to argue the matter,' I said. 'There _was_ that question
of dates and wine, you see. And there always must be on an earth where
millions of men, with varying degrees of cunning, reside.'

'Oh, not at all necessalily!' she cries with conviction: 'not at all, at
all: since there are much more dates and wine than are enough for all.
If there should spling up more men now, having the whole wisdom,
science, and expelience of the past at their hand, and they made an
allangement among themselves that the first man who tlied to take more
than he could work for should be killed, and sent to dleam a
nonsense-dleam, the question could never again alise!'

'It arose before--it would arise again.'

'But no! I can guess clearly how it alose before: it alose thlough the
sheer care