Being adopted, the invader is treated with indulgent condescension, nicknamed _Tish_, a froglet, (in allusion to the Great Batrachian Theory, that humans sprang from frogs, or, according to one branch of the school, degenerated from them), and allowed to roam around with a child, who is about his equal in intellect. All goes well until the politely tolerated guest has the temerity to fall in love with a native maiden. This means death, by the painless Vril method (a marvelous application of electricity), in order to prevent the disgrace of so uneugenic an alliance; and the calamity is averted only by the skill and resourcefulness of the lady herself, who manages to return the unwelcome wooer to his native outer clime. This is made possible through the use of wings, another invention of this advanced people.[103] The story has considerable picturesqueness, nor does it fail in point. The _Modern Utopia_ of Wells is anticipated in the emphasis on sanitation and material welfare. As in _Looking Backward_, crime is eliminated through the elimination of poverty and disease. The dramatic conclusion is that this underground people are to be the coming race, against whom we must be prepared if we would not by them be conquered and exterminated. The philosophical conclusion, however, is the old paradox, the inescapable dilemma of stagnant perfection.[104] Disraeli’s _Popanilla_ was a _jeu d’esprit_ of his youth, and develops an opposite situation from that of the preceding. Instead of the Britisher abroad, he pictures the foreigner in England, thus affording us a chance to see ourselves as others see us.[105] The mechanism by which this new scrutiny is brought to bear upon our old establishments is well worn and familiar, but has some novelty in the application. A sailor’s chest is washed ashore on a remote island, and found by one of the aborigines, Popanilla, who becomes inoculated with ambition through perusal of some documents discovered therein. He immediately organizes a proselyting campaign, but encounters too much opposition from a recalcitrant public to make much headway. The people are well content with their present peaceful existence, and quite averse to receiving the serpent of aspiration in their idyllic though socially sophisticated Garden of Eden. They are provokingly obtuse even to the argument that “they might reasonably expect to be the terror and astonishment of the universe, and to be able to annoy every nation of any consequence.”[106] Finally to settle the trouble caused by the convert’s tactless propaganda, which has had the lamentable effect of inducing the young men to desert society for politics, the king orders the disturber of the peace to be set adrift, and bids him farewell with this encouraging prophecy:[107]