to get you a
pair of rings, hang them in your ears, and go preach, your immanent
morality to the South African Pappoos. But before you go, you shall
taste of the rigour of our law, you insolent, brazen-faced, unmannerly
scoundrel!"

And we are assured that the Boss did not remain immobile as be spurted
forth this mixture of wrath and wisdom, nor did the stogies; for
moved by his own words, he rose promptly to his feet. "And what
of it," exclaims our Scribe. "Surely, I had rather see those boots
perform any office, high or low, as to behold their soles raised like
mirrors to my face." But how high an office they performed when the
Boss came forward, we are not told. All that our Scribe gives out
about the matter amounts to this: namely, that he walked out of the
room, and as he looked back to see if Khalid was following, he saw him
brushing with his hands--his hips! And on that very day Khalid was
summoned to appear before the Court and give answer to the charge of
misappropriation of public funds. The orator-dream of youth--what a
realisation! He comes to Court, and after the legal formalities are
performed, he is delivered unto an officer who escorts him across
the Bridge of Sighs to gaol. There, for ten days and nights,--and it
might have been ten months were it not for his devoted and steadfast
friend,--we leave Khalid to brood on Democracy and the Dowry of
Democracy. A few extracts from the Chapter in the K. L. MS.
entitled "In Prison," are, therefore, appropriate.

"So long as one has faith," he writes, "in the general moral
summation of the experience of mankind, as the philosophy of
reason assures us, one should not despair. But the material fact
of the Present, the dark moment of no-morality, consider that,
my suffering Brothers. And reflect further that in this great
City of New York the majority of citizens consider it a blessing
to have a _rojail_ (titman) for their boss and leader.... How
often have I mused that if Ponce de Leon sought the Fountain of
Youth in the New World, I, Khalid, sought the Fountain of Truth,
and both of us have been equally successful!

"But the Americans are neither Pagans--which is consoling--nor
fetish-worshipping heathens: they are all true and honest
votaries of Mammon, their great God, their one and only God. And
is it not natural that the Demiurgic Dollar should be the
national Deity of America? Have not deities been always
conceived after m