again of tendency to hatred, malice, and uncharitableness; of atrophy or hypertrophy of the conscience, of costiveness or diarrhoea of the sympathetic instincts, &c., &c., our spiritual indigestion tabloids will afford unfailing and immediate relief.

   “N.B.—­A bottle or two of our Sunchild Cordial will assist the
   operation of the tabloids.”

The second and last that I can give was as follows:-

“All else is useless.  If you wish to be a social success, make yourself a good listener.  There is no short cut to this.  A would-be listener must learn the rudiments of his art and go through the mill like other people.  If he would develop a power of suffering fools gladly, he must begin by suffering them without the gladness.  Professor Proser, ex-straightener, certificated bore, pragmatic or coruscating, with or without anecdotes, attends pupils at their own houses.  Terms moderate.

“Mrs. Proser, whose success as a professional mind-dresser is so well- known that lengthened advertisement is unnecessary, prepares ladies or gentlemen with appropriate remarks to be made at dinner-parties or at- homes.  Mrs. P. keeps herself well up to date with all the latest scandals.”

“Poor, poor, straighteners!” said my father to himself.  “Alas! that it should have been my fate to ruin you—­for I suppose your occupation is gone.”

Tearing himself away from the College of Spiritual Athletics and its affiliated shop, he passed on a few doors, only to find himself looking in at what was neither more nor less than a chemist’s shop.  In the window there were advertisements which showed that the practice of medicine was now legal, but my father could not stay to copy a single one of the fantastic announcements that a hurried glance revealed to him.

It was also plain here, as from the shop already more fully described, that the edicts against machines had been repealed, for there were physical try-your-strengths, as in the other shop there had been moral ones, and such machines under the old law would not have been tolerated for a moment.

My father made his purchases just as the last shops were closing.  He noticed that almost all of them were full of articles labelled “Dedication.”  There was Dedication gingerbread, stamped with a moulded representation of the new temple; there were Dedication syrups, Dedication pocket-handkerchiefs, also shewing the temple, and in one corner giving a highly idealised portrait of my father himself.  The chariot and the horses figured largely, and in the confectioners’ shops there were models of the newly discovered relic—­made, so my father thought, with a little heap of cherries or strawberries, smothered in chocolate.  Outside one tailor’s shop he saw a flaring advertisement which can only be translated, “Try our Dedication trousers, price ten shillings and sixpence.”

Presently he passed the new temple, but it was too dark for him to do more than see that it was a vast fane, and must have cost an untold amount of money.  At every turn he found himself more and more shocked, as he realised more and more fully the mischief he had already occasioned, and the certainty that this was small as compared with that which would grow up hereafter.