reality they have nothing to do
with his selection. The method of choosing a man for _Tnediserp_ is so
strange that I doubt my ability to make it clear.

The adult male population of the island divides itself into two or more
_seitrap_[1] Commonly there are three or four, but only two ever have any
considerable numerical strength, and none is ever strong morally or
intellectually. All the members of each _ytrap_ profess the same political
opinions, which are provided for them by their leaders every five years
and written down on pieces of paper so that they will not be forgotten.
The moment that any Tamtonian has read his piece of paper, or _mroftalp_,
he unhesitatingly adopts all the opinions that he finds written on it,
sometimes as many as forty or fifty, although these may be altogether
different from, or even antagonistic to, those with which he was supplied
five years before and has been advocating ever since. It will be seen from
this that the Tamtonian mind is a thing whose processes no American can
hope to respect, or even understand. It is instantaneously convinced
without either fact or argument, and when these are afterward presented
they only confirm it in its miraculous conviction; those which make
against that conviction having an even stronger confirmatory power than
the others. I have said any Tamtonian, but that is an overstatement. A few
usually persist in thinking as they did before; or in altering their
convictions in obedience to reason instead of authority, as our own people
do; but they are at once assailed with the most opprobrious names, accused
of treason and all manner of crimes, pelted with mud and stones and in
some instances deprived of their noses and ears by the public executioner.
Yet in no country is independence of thought so vaunted as a virtue, and
in none is freedom of speech considered so obvious a natural right or so
necessary to good government.

[1] The Tamtonian language forms its plurals most irregularly, but
usually by an initial inflection. It has a certain crude and
primitive grammar, but in point of orthoepy is extremely
difficult. With our letters I can hardly hope to give an
accurate conception of its pronunciation. As nearly as possible
I write its words as they sounded to my ear when carefully
spoken for my instruction by intelligent natives. It is a harsh
tongue.

At the same time that each _ytrap_ is sup