w easy it is
to seem a lunatic to a person who has not been taught as you have
been taught. If I had told Sandy I had seen a wagon, uninfluenced
by enchantment, spin along fifty miles an hour; had seen a man,
unequipped with magic powers, get into a basket and soar out of
sight among the clouds; and had listened, without any necromancer's
help, to the conversation of a person who was several hundred miles
away, Sandy would not merely have supposed me to be crazy, she
would have thought she knew it. Everybody around her believed in
enchantments; nobody had any doubts; to doubt that a castle could
be turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs, would have been
the same as my doubting among Connecticut people the actuality
of the telephone and its wonders,--and in both cases would be
absolute proof of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. Yes, Sandy
was sane; that must be admitted. If I also would be sane--to Sandy
--I must keep my superstitions about unenchanted and unmiraculous
locomotives, balloons, and telephones, to myself. Also, I believed
that the world was not flat, and hadn't pillars under it to support
it, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of water that
occupied all space above; but as I was the only person in the kingdom
afflicted with such impious and criminal opinions, I recognized
that it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too,
if I did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by everybody
as a madman.

The next morning Sandy assembled the swine in the dining-room and
gave them their breakfast, waiting upon them personally and
manifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives of
her island, ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let its
outward casket and the mental and moral contents be what they may.
I could have eaten with the hogs if I had had birth approaching my
lofty official rank; but I hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidable
slight and made no complaint. Sandy and I had our breakfast at
the second table. The family were not at home. I said:

"How many are in the family, Sandy, and where do they keep themselves?"

"Family?"

"Yes."

"Which family, good my lord?"

"Why, this family; your own family."

"Sooth to say, I understand you not. I have no family."

"No family? Why, Sandy, isn't this your home?"

"Now how indeed might that be? I have no home."

"Well, then, whose house is this?"

"Ah, wit you well I would tell yo