Pending the slow preparations of the Government of the island to provide the requisite laws for the issue and use of the new money, various enlightened individuals attempted to anticipate official legislative action by putting into practical operation, on their own account, the principles involved in the new fiscal system. The first of these who thus acted was a secretary for the interior part of the island, whose chief business was to supply the heathen--for whom, it will be remembered, Robinson Crusoe took up contributions--with beef. There had been a suspicion for some time past hanging over this official that the heathen did not get all the beef that they were entitled to; but the suspicion probably had no further foundation than the inability of the heathen to make the sense of completion harmonize with the sign of transmission. To satisfy the heathen, and at the same time effectually clear up his character, the official in question now hastened to have prepared a large number of pictures of fine, fat cattle, which he dispatched by a Quaker to the heathen, with a request that they would kill and eat, and be satisfied, adding in a postscript that they would do well to begin to learn economy by saving the skins. As the Quaker never came back, it was deemed reasonably certain that, at least, the first part of the request had been complied with. The managers of the Island Provident Society also promptly determined to develop and apply the ideal system in their sphere of usefulness to the full extent that circumstances permitted. Thus a large part of the business of this old and respected society was the distribution of clothing to the destitute; and, as is always the case when times are hard, the extent of the demands made upon it for aid tended to exceed the means of supply contributed by the charitable. The managers, however, knew that it never would answer in using the ideal system to subserve the work of charity, to put the locally needy on the same footing as the heathen, and in answer to appeals for raiment distribute to them elaborate pictures of fine clothing, cut from the fashion-plates; for there was this essential difference in the situations, that the needy were at their doors, while the heathen were a great way off. They, therefore, hit upon this happy mean: they employed a competent artist, with a full supply of paints and brushes, and when any destitute person applied for clothing, they painted upon his person every thing he desired in way of clothing of the finest and most fashionable patterns, from top-boots to collars, and from blue swallow-tailed coats to embroidered neck-ties, with jewelry and fancy buttons to match. Of course, the first man who appeared in public thus arrayed created a profound sensation. But the idea was so novel, and had obviously so many advantages over the old way of clothing one's self, that the supremacy of the ideal over the real was at once greatly strengthened.