I thought this would perhaps annoy him, but on the contrary it pleased him immensely. "Good!" he said. "You are here to study the institutions of Mecco, and you will stay as long as you have the strength to carry out your task." That was not what I meant, but I let it pass. "I think you had better select the preliminary six months' tour of observation," he said. "After that, you can begin the study of any special branch for which you are qualified, and for which you have an inclination; possibly industry, possibly art, possibly sociology, possibly education. We can decide that at the end of your preliminary period. You will have for your guide, for the first few weeks, Lower Conductor Prigge. As, however, he has just been promoted to a higher rank in the police service, he will not be available after the first few weeks, but I will arrange for a suitable successor." He then presented me with several documents. "This," he said, handing me a thick notebook of some two hundred pages, "is the preliminary diary in which you make your notes in whatever form you like. There are four pages for each day. This is the formal diary for the Time Department, to be carefully entered up each week and posted before Sunday morning. These are the sheets of Instructions specially drawn up for Foreign Observers in Mecco; you will notice they are all marked 'Tour No. 4,' and numbered consecutively. And this," handing me a thin metal plate about half the size of a postcard, "is your identification ticket." It was now the middle of the afternoon. I had had no luncheon, so when Prigge came to take me off to the hotel, I proposed that we should have some tea. He demurred a little, as he did not drink tea, but he consented to have some coffee and a cigar in the smoke-room if I would drink my tea there. So we went on talking over our tea and coffee, and this is a specimen of the conversation:-- "You will understand," said Prigge, "that everything depends upon your own energy and intelligence. If you apply yourself thoroughly to the work before you, you will learn more in a fortnight under my guidance than in a whole year in Luniland. I have had a long experience in conducting foreigners. Most of them have no idea how to observe, especially those who come from Luniland. They want to roam about without any system or method at all. They want to see an Art Gallery one day, and a manufactory the next; or even on the same day. Then they want to see a natural history museum on the same day as an archæological museum; they will fly from pottery to pictures, and from geology to botany. Why, I was taking one of them through our great museum illustrative of the stages of culture, which is arranged in twenty successive centuries, and when we had reached the sixteenth he actually wanted to turn back to look at something in the twelfth!"