as much as secure a vote during the campaign, nor even help to keep the lowest clerk in office. That sort of morality is good for your mountain peasants or other barbarous tribes. But the free and progressive people of the United States must have something better, nobler, more practical. You’d do well, therefore, to get you a pair of rings, hang them in your ears, and go preach, your immanent morality to the South African Pappoos. But before you go, you shall taste of the rigour of our law, you insolent, brazen-faced, unmannerly
And we are assured that the Boss did not remain immobile as be spurted forth this mixture of wrath and wisdom, nor did the stogies; for moved by his own words, he rose promptly to his feet.
“And what of it,” exclaims our Scribe. “Surely, I had rather see those boots perform any office, high or low, as to behold their soles raised like mirrors to my face.”
But how high an office they performed when the Boss came forward, we are not told. All that our Scribe gives out about the matter amounts to this: namely, that he walked out of the room, and as he looked back to see if Khalid was following, he saw him brushing with his hands—his hips!
And on that very day Khalid was summoned to appear before the Court and give answer to the charge of misappropriation of public funds. The orator-dream of youth—what a realisation! He comes to Court, and after the legal formalities are performed, he is delivered unto an officer who escorts him across the Bridge of Sighs to gaol.
There, for ten days and nights—and it might have been ten months were it not for his devoted and steadfast friend—we leave Khalid to brood on Democracy and the Dowry of Democracy. A few extracts from the Chapter in the K.L. MS. entitled “In Prison,” are, therefore, appropriate.