stinence from the popular fashion.

Now therefore the artful Irregular whom I described above as the real
author of this diabolical Bill, determined at one blow to lower the
status of the Hierarchy by forcing them to submit to the pollution of
Colour, and at the same time to destroy their domestic opportunities of
training in the Art of Sight Recognition, so as to enfeeble their
intellects by depriving them of their pure and colourless homes. Once
subjected to the chromatic taint, every parental and every childish
Circle would demoralize each other. Only in discerning between the
Father and the Mother would the Circular infant find problems for the
exercise of his understanding--problems too often likely to be
corrupted by maternal impostures with the result of shaking the child's
faith in all logical conclusions. Thus by degrees the intellectual
lustre of the Priestly Order would wane, and the road would then lie
open for a total destruction of all Aristocratic Legislature and for
the subversion of our Privileged Classes.

SECTION 10 Of the Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition

The agitation for the Universal Colour Bill continued for three years;
and up to the last moment of that period it seemed as though Anarchy
were destined to triumph.

A whole army of Polygons, who turned out to fight as private soldiers,
was utterly annihilated by a superior force of Isosceles Triangles--the
Squares and Pentagons meanwhile remaining neutral.

Worse than all, some of the ablest Circles fell a prey to conjugal
fury. Infuriated by political animosity, the wives in many a noble
household wearied their lords with prayers to give up their opposition
to the Colour Bill; and some, finding their entreaties fruitless, fell
on and slaughtered their innocent children and husband, perishing
themselves in the act of carnage. It is recorded that during that
triennial agitation no less than twenty-three Circles perished in
domestic discord.

Great indeed was the peril. It seemed as though the Priests had no
choice between submission and extermination; when suddenly the course
of events was completely changed by one of those picturesque incidents
which Statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and
sometimes perhaps to originate, because of the absurdly
disproportionate power with which they appeal to the sympathies of the
populace.

It happened that an Isosceles of a low type, with a brain little if at
all a