in
it; and the _Chuckler_ had a very funny article, bursting with new and
flowery turns of speech, by its special polyglot contributor who made
you die o' laughing about the Peirastic and Percipient Pauper.

[Illustration]

So the Pauper was not allowed his evening out for a month; and it became
a question whether he ought not to be brought up before a magistrate and
charged with something or other; but the matter was magnanimously
permitted to drop.

By this time the public had had a little too much of it, as they were
nearly reduced to beggary by the contributions they had given to one
ideal-originator after another; and they certainly would have lynched
any new aspirant to the Idea, had one (sufficiently uninfluential)
turned up.

And, meanwhile, the Idea had been quietly taken up and set going by a
select company of patriotic personages who were in a position to set the
ball rolling; and the Idea grew, and developed, and developed, until it
had attained considerable proportions and could be seen to be full of
vast potentialities either for the welfare or the injury of the Empire,
according to the way in which it might be worked out.

[Illustration]

Now, at the outset, owing to tremendous opposition from various
quarters, the Idea worked out so badly that it threatened incalculable
harm to the commerce and general happiness of the realm; whereupon the
public decided that it certainly _must_ have originated with the Pauper;
and they went and dragged him from the workhouse, and were about to hang
him to a lamp-post, when news arrived that the Idea was doing less harm
to the Empire than had been supposed.

[Illustration]

So they let the Pauper go; for it became evident to them that it had
been the Clerk's Idea; and just as they were deliberating what to do
with the Clerk, it was discovered that the Idea was really beginning to
work out very well indeed, and was decidedly increasing the prosperity
of the realm. Thereupon the public decided that it must have been the
Private Secretary's Idea, after all; and were just setting out in a
deputation to thank the Private Secretary, when fresh reports arrived
showing that the Idea was a very great national boon; and then the
public felt that it _must_ have originated with the Prime Minister, in
spite of all that had been said to the contrary.

[Illustration]

But in the course of a few months, everybody in the land became aware
that the tide of national prosperi