icture of the famine is most striking. The rider of the black
horse is shown bearing a pair of scales, typifying the exactitude of
weight--for single grains counted in these days. A man's full day's
wage would purchase only a pint and a half of wheat (a choenix) and
that would form but a _scant_ feeding for the day for himself. But
there will then not be wheat enough to go round, and people will hail
barley with the rapture of starving souls.

The tendency of the days in which we write these lines, is an
ever-increasing luxury in eating and drinking, and this, too, among all
classes.

That tendency will increase more and more, so that the inhabitants of
the famine stricken earth will feel scarcity more than they would
otherwise have done.

The pestilence followed the famine, until from war, famine, and
pestilence a fourth of the entire population of the earth was swept
away.

During the last twelve months quite a crop of false Christs had arisen.
Each of these, in his turn, had had a certain following for a brief
period, and each had had an untimely end.

The only really notable impostor was a man who had suddenly appeared in
London, and who had immediately attracted immense attention. His
knowledge of scripture, of the prophecies especially, was marvellous to
those whom he addressed. No one ever attempted to verify his
quotations, much less his connections of scriptures. For as Jannes and
Jambres, Pharaoh's two chief Magicians, withstood Moses by demonology
and jugglery, so, by a hellish jugglery, did "Conrad the Conqueror" (as
this false Christ styled himself) juggle with the scriptures.

Apleon, the Anti-christ, had, apparently, taken no notice of any of the
petty tribe of mushroom-like false Christs. That he was well
acquainted with the sayings and doings of each of them goes without
saying, as it was equally so as regarded this more presumptious of the
crew "Conrad the Conqueror." There were many, in London especially,
who wondered that Apleon did not appear and refute this man's claims,
if they had no foundation.

The evident success of the imposter wrought his own downfall. Inflated
with his success he publicly declared that Apleon would perish beneath
a blast of his (Conrad's) nostrils, and announced that on a certain
evening at ten o'clock on St. Paul's steps he would publicly re-state
his claims, and also defy Apleon.

In the first year after the Rapture, the whole of the shops and
warehous