the British flag,
reinstated the British tyranny, reduced the nobility to the condition of
commoners again, and then straightway turned their diligent attention to
the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam patches, and the
rehabilitation of the old useful industries and the old healing and
solacing pieties. The ex-emperor restored the lost trespass law, and
explained that he had stolen it not to injure any one, but to further his
political projects. Therefore the nation gave the late chief magistrate
his office again, and also his alienated Property.

Upon reflection, the ex-emperor and the social democrat chose perpetual
banishment from religious services in preference to perpetual labor as
galley slaves "with perpetual religious services," as they phrased it;
wherefore the people believed that the poor fellows' troubles had
unseated their reason, and so they judged it best to confine them for the
present. Which they did.

Such is the history of Pitcairn's "doubtful acquisition."

THE CANVASSER'S TALE

Poor, sad-eyed stranger! There was that about his humble mien, his tired
look, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the mustard,
seed of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the empty
vastness of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under his
arm, and said to myself, Behold, Providence hath delivered his servant
into the hands of another canvasser.

Well, these people always get one interested. Before I well knew how it
came about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attention
and sympathy. He told it something like this:

My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless child. My uncle
Ithuriel took me to his heart and reared me as his own. He was my only
relative in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous. He
reared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no want that money could satisfy.

In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went with two of my
servants--my chamberlain and my valet--to travel in foreign countries.
During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens
of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one
whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with
confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you
too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands I
reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the