this turn to the conversation had fallen
asleep and was roaring in the nose like a beast. The rush of a river near
by, as it poured up a hill from the ocean, and the shrill singing of
several kinds of brilliant quadrupeds were the only other sounds audible.
I waited deferentially for the great antiquarian, scientist and courtier
to resume, amusing myself meantime by turning over the leaves of an
official report by the Minister of War on a new and improved process of
making thunder from snail slime. Presently the oracle spoke.

"You have been born," he said, which was true. "There was, it follows, a
time when you had not been born. As we reckon time, it was probably some
millions of ages. Of this considerable period you are unable to remember
one unhappy moment, and in point of fact there was none. To a Lalugwump
that is entirely conclusive as to the relative values of consciousness and
oblivion, existence and nonexistence, life and death. This old man lying
here at my feet is now, if not dreaming, as if he had never been born.
Would not it be cruel and inhuman to wake him back to grief? Is it, then,
kind to permit him to wake by the natural action of his own physical
energies? I have given him the advice for which he asked. Believing it
good advice, and seeing him too irresolute to act, it seems my clear duty
to assist him."

Before I could interfere, even had I dared take the liberty to do so,
Gnarmag-Zote struck the old man a terrible blow upon the head with his
mace of office. The victim turned upon his back, spread his fingers,
shivered convulsively and was dead.

"You need not be shocked," said the distinguished assassin, coolly: "I
have but performed a sacred duty and religious rite. The religion
(established first in this realm by King Skanghutch, the sixty-second of
that name) consists in the worship of Death. We have sacred books, some
three thousand thick volumes, said to be written by inspiration of Death
himself, whom no mortal has ever seen, but who is described by our priests
as having the figure of a fat young man with a red face and wearing an
affable smile. In art he is commonly represented in the costume of a
husbandman sowing seeds.

"The priests and sacred books teach that death is the supreme and only
good--that the chief duties of man are, therefore, assassination and
suicide. Conviction of these cardinal truths is universal among us, but I
am sorry to say that many do not honestly live up to th