king 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 above four degrees--accidentally dabbling in the colours of some
Tradesman whose shop he had plundered--painted himself, or caused
himself to be painted (for the story varies) with the twelve colours of
a Dodecagon. Going into the Market Place he accosted in a feigned
voice a maiden, the orphan daughter of a noble Polygon, whose affection
in former days he had sought in vain; and by a series of
deceptions--aided, on the one side, by a string of lucky accidents too
long to relate, and on the other, by an almost inconceivable fatuity
and neglect of ordinary precautions on the part of the relations of the
bride--he succeeded in consummating the marriage. The unhappy girl
committed suicide on discovering the fraud to which she had been
subjected.

When the news of thi