extreme, had curiously overleaped their mark. For instance,
finding it impossible to enforce the laws against playing games on
Sundays, the Government had concluded that the only way to make
the Sabbath utterly immaculate was to abolish it altogether, which
was done. Other laws, probably based upon genuine zeal for human
welfare, had resulted in odd evasions or legal fictions. For
instance, people were forbidden to miss trains. The penalty for
missing a train was ten days' hard labor splitting infinitives in
the government tract-factory. Rather than impose this harsh
punishment on any one, good-hearted engineers would permit their
trains to loiter about the stations until they felt certain no
other passengers would turn up. Consequently no trains were ever
on time, and the Government was forced to do away with time
entirely. Another thing that was abolished was hot weather. It had
been found too tedious to tilt the axis of the earth, therefore
all the thermometers were re-scaled. When the temperature was
really 96 degrees, the mercury registered only 70 degrees, and
every one was saying how jolly cool it was for the time of year.
This, of course, was careless, for there was no such thing as time
or year, but still people kept on saying it. Bleak was thinking
over these matters when he suddenly recalled that it was forbidden
to remember things as they had been under the old regime. He
pulled himself up with a start. In order to make his mind a blank
he tried to imagine himself about to write a leading editorial for
the Balloon. This was so successful that he did not come to earth
again until they stood in the ante-room--or as Quimbleton called
it, the anti-room--of the Bishop.

"Who is to be spokesman?" he said apprehensively, gazing with
distaste at the angular females who were pecking at typewriters.