In the little planet Lucifram, that spun a brilliant and solitary course among the stars, exchanging annual salutations with them as the waxing and waning of the solar laws brought them out of the void and within hail, the people each and all walked upside down. The trees were upside down, the houses, the churches with their steeples, the palaces, the oceans, rivers, lakes, mountains, animals, and fishes, each and all, reversed our own conception of mundane propriety. Cultivate a patience with the seeming strangeness of this extraordinary planet, even to the reading of this simple book, and let that virtue lead you nearer to another sphere, more to your liking. There were a few, indeed, upon this sphere who did their best to stand upon their feet. Sometimes they succeeded; but others were bowled down in the struggle and ended by standing once again upon their heads, or lying crushed, paying the debt they owed to Outraged Custom. The circumference of this sphere was something like two thousand miles. It bulged out towards the north and south, with giant hollows to the east and west. And because _everything_ that existed was contrary to our idea of things, all things looked normal. When Nature and architecture combine to alter things, making them contrariwise, as people call it, what wonder if morality and all ethics blend with the custom? To begin with governments and kingships. Unlike those upon a two-legged basis, a king was never chosen for his worth, but for his frailties. He was chosen to strew the path of his subjects with flowers which all might pick like little children out at play, and then would quarrel over. Alas! To be a king in the planet Lucifram! That little planet topsy-turvy. Here, though a ruler might have the will of a Hercules to turn a somersalt and land upon his feet, some diviner instinct calling him to that, the pigmies around him pinned him with millions of tiny threads, an anchorage whereby to hold his head safe to the ground. Threads worked in gold! Held for the wonder of the multitude. So for the kings. The Gods of all the stars looked down on them. They heard those faint sighs of weakness—those breathings after higher things—and pitied some, and smiled at others. And though in the topsy-turvy synagogues and churches the people prayed for them, no prayers reached heaven except those simple few the kings themselves breathed in solitude. Prayers that must travel very, very far, as all prayers must, and which needed the giant strength of great simplicity to bring them to the end of their weary journey. So for the kings and princes. An arduous task is theirs—bound thus with chains—God only knows how hard! As each insidious little link might whisper, telling its own small share in the universal tale. In our world we always speak of “Church and State”—a correct and steady way of speaking—but in Lucifram ’tis always “State and Church,” and that is why the palaces and kings claimed our attention first.