One day the Caliph rose gingerly and stealthily from his bed of gold and placed himself at a window of his palace. He then took a pen of turquoise, and for some hours traced hieroglyphs on a piece of paper. They consisted of patches and lines, and it was impossible to say what he was doing. Apparently exhausted by the effort, he sank back on his bed of gold and slept heavily for ten hours. Waking up in the small hours of the morning, he called for a messenger and despatched him in search of Mahmud and Hasan, respectively the most ingenious engineer and the most experienced architect in his dominions. He was in fine fettle when they arrived. He pointed with a certain facetiousness to his design lying outspread on a table. He then addressed them as follows:--“I am extremely dissatisfied with the shape of my city, so I have done a design of a new city, or rather of a typical street in a new city. It is a little vorticist effort that I threw off while I was dressing this morning.” He negligently curled the tip of his beard. “I want you to look at it and tell me what you think of my skill.” Mahmud and Hasan bent over the design, and, noticing that their lord’s eye was dancing, they indulged in a few hurried guffaws, scraping their feet and pushing each other. The Caliph then said, “Oh, Mahmud and Hasan, that is a very funny design. But it is my will that such a street should rise beneath the windows of my palace, work starting on it at ten o’clock to-morrow morning. It is your unpleasant duty to invent the shapes and conditions that would make it possible to realise my design. You have till ten to-morrow morning in which to produce the requisite plans and instructions for such a work. Should you fail to do so your heads will fall as soon as I have been informed of your failure, that is to say, between ten and eleven to-morrow. Good-night, oh Mahmud and Hasan.” Those two tremendously able men burst into a cold sweat. Their eyes protruded from their intelligent faces. They clicked their tongues, shrugged their shoulders, and shuffled out with gestures of despair. After a half-hour of complete paralysis of their brilliant faculties, they pulled themselves together, and by ten o’clock next morning a series of the most beautiful plans that had yet been made in Baghdad (retaining with an exact fidelity the masses and directions of the potentate’s design) were ready for their master. And within a month a strange street transfigured the heart of that cultivated city. _The Bull Sounds_ We are all agreed as to the deplorable nature of the form-content and colour-content around us. But there agreement ceases. The divergence of opinion gathers round the following points: Is it not preferable to have every manifestation of the vulgar and stupid constantly, in an appetising, delicious form (something like the “highness” of game), at the disposal of our superiority and wit?