Each family and each tribe of gnomes had its own head and leaders, whom they implicitly obeyed, without even knowing the possibility of disobedience, because they were not given to arguing, and all were ruled by Bimbam I. The administration of the kingdom was very simple; there were no taxes to pay, and everyone had what he wanted, because nobody wanted more than he had. The king took whatever he needed, and never more than he cared to have. Custom-house duties, monopolies, privileges, and corporation nuisances were entirely unknown, and there was no newspaper to disseminate gossip, cause dissensions, and ruin characters for the sake of getting up a sensation. There were no shams. The nobility consisted of gnomes that were truly noble, and not merely pretended to be so; the doctors actually knew something, and did not merely make believe that they were in possession of knowledge; the goodness of the good could be estimated by the amount of light that radiated from their stars, and their character was indicated by the colour of the star. Consequently each individual sphere of light slowly changed when a new emotion or virtue grew in a gnome. Anger made them red, love blue, intelligence yellow, sensuality green, wisdom violet, and so forth. The ladies of the gnomes occupied positions similar to those of our wives and daughters. The lower classes joined the males in their work; the higher ones were of a more ornamental character, and protectors of arts. The world of gnomes, the same as ours, would have been dreary without female beauty and loveliness. Many of the gnomesses were exceedingly beautiful and ethereal, others were homely; but all of them were very amiable, because they acted in a natural manner, made no attempt of disguising their feelings, and knew of no such thing as deceit; neither did they disfigure their forms by absurd fashions in dress.