stice; that vice is powerless against virtue. I could quote from their
great writers hundreds of utterances affirmative of these propositions.
One of their poets, for example, has some striking and original lines, of
which the following is a literal but unmetrical translation:

A man who is in the right has three arms,
But he whose conscience is rotten with wrong
Is stripped and confined in a metal cell.

Imbued with these beliefs, the Golampis think it hardly worth while to be
truthful, to abstain from slander, to do justice and to avoid vicious
actions. "The practice," they say, "of deceit, calumniation, oppression
and immorality cannot have any sensible and lasting injurious effect, and
it is most agreeable to the mind and heart. Why should there be personal
self-denial without commensurate general advantage?"

In consequence of these false views, affirmed by those whom they regard as
great and wise, the people of Mogon-Zwair are, as far as I have observed
them, the most conscienceless liars, cheats, thieves, rakes and all-round,
many-sided sinners that ever were created to be damned. It was, therefore,
with inexpressible joy that I received one day legal notification that I
had been tried in the High Court of Conviction and sentenced to banishment
to Lalugnan. My offense was that I had said that I regarded consistency as
the most detestable of all vices.

AN INTERVIEW WITH GNARMAG-ZOTE

Mogon-Zwair and Lalugnan, having the misfortune to lie on opposite sides
of a line, naturally hate each other; so each country sends its dangerous
political criminals into the other, where they usually enjoy high honors
and are sometimes elevated to important office under the crown. I was
therefore received in Lalugnan with hospitality and given every
encouragement in prosecuting my researches into the history and
intellectual life of the people. They are so extraordinary a people,
inhabiting so marvelous a country, that everything which the traveler
sees, hears or experiences makes a lively and lasting impression upon his
mind, and the labor of a lifetime would be required to relate the
observation of a single year. I shall notice here only one or two points
of national character--those which differ most conspicuously from ours,
and in which, consequently, they are least worthy.

With a fatuity hardly more credible than creditable, the Lalugwumps, as
they call themselves, deny the immortality of the soul. In all my stay