Bim was quite frantic at this bold announcement. To have a real Archdeacon pronouncing benediction on Fairyland was beyond expression delightful. No suburban aristocrat paragraphed in a London paper could have rejoiced more fully. He lost himself in ecstasy, and compelled that audience to cheer for three solid minutes, till they were hoarse and began to feel foolish. The Archdeacon took advantage of the well-spread enthusiasm to eat another voice lozenge. "The fairies will be with us in our enterprise; the angels also. Both these spiritual forces are on our side. Dear me! dear me! How wonderful it seems! Now to facts! Naturally from my office I am most concerned with the materialism about us, a materialism which finds expression in the hateful cocksure ugliness abounding in this London of ours, as well as in the devil-may-care thriftlessness, the drunkenness and vice, the mean excitements of gambling in its many forms, the squalor, the poverty, the want, which make wide areas of this unequalled Metropolis a Devil’s City. Everyone here knows, as well as I do, the shame of it all; and the greater shame which hangs over us, the practical men, for the existence, persistence, continuance of this state of things. It is iniquitous, intolerable; yet it goes on. How much longer shall it continue? For years, or for weeks, or for days? That rests with us. All here, following the Lord Mayor’s example, have written down resolutions, which, if they are kept, will modify this evil everywhere, and end it in parts. The more thoroughly we live up to our intentions, and redeem our voluntary pledges, the sooner the end of these iniquities will come. For mark this, gentlemen. The greed or the carelessness--more the latter than the former--of individuals has wrought the havoc. The unselfishness and scrupulous care of individuals alone can undo it. It is no good crying for Government to do the work." "Hear, hear!" "The Ministerial machine is a lumbering instrument. It takes the breath of gods to inspire it, to get it to move along the right way, and then is apt to break down suddenly and finally, in an amazingly human manner. The State is a sleepy inconsequent monster, which when it acts is apt to do so like a thunderstorm, with violence and but casual good results. It is individuals--you, I, the man in the street--who can do things, if we will: and now we must do them. We are pledged to it. Our words have been taken down by the Mercuries of the Press to be--within an hour or so--flashed to all parts of England, eventually to reach the farthest limits of the earth. We are bound, in honour, to keep our words!" After that mouthful of eloquence the Archdeacon was compelled again to pause. But the audience, their due excitement heated and quickened by Bim’s insistence, cried incessantly, "Go on! Go on!" while June, far away from this effort of prose statesmanship, was dreaming of Faerie.